An idea borrowed from the football gridiron is helping students graduate and drawing major attention, thanks to a multimillion-dollar boost from the National Science Foundation (NSF).聽
Eight years ago, CU Engineering created the GoldShirt program. It鈥檚 modeled after redshirting for college athletes. Promising students who want to be engineers but weren鈥檛 fully prepared in high school are given an extra year to bone up on their skills in premajor math and science courses.
Fifty new GoldShirt students participated in the two-week Summer Bridge Program last summer. The program was full of activities including academic strength assessments, workshops to teach success strategies, hands-on project classes, a field trip to Google, a team-building day in the mountains, an evening at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and numerous fun group activities.
鈥淚t鈥檚 for the student whose high school didn鈥檛 offer AP calculus classes, or maybe their family moved many times while growing up. Engineering programs miss out on a lot of talent because of admission rules,鈥� says Jana Milford, professor of mechanical engineering and GoldShirt faculty advisor.GoldShirt is more than just an extra year. Students also enroll in a unique projects course, live in a residential community, and have mentors to help them succeed.
鈥淲e鈥檙e zoomed in on each student,鈥� says program director Tanya Ennis. 鈥淭hey know they鈥檙e not a number. Someone cares about them.鈥�
The funding will allow engineering colleges at Boise State University, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to establish their own programs and will also provide research funding to study all six schools and evaluate their success for potential future expansion.聽
To Milford, the program鈥檚 accomplishments are already clear.聽
"As a mechanical engineering faculty member, I see the students succeeding in upper-level classes. They're really impressive. You can see very tangibly how GoldShirt pays off," Milford says.聽
Ennis is hopeful the results from the research portion of the grant will convince more universities to invest in their own GoldShirt programs.聽
"If you have a student who wants to be an engineer and is motivated and they just need a little extra of this and a little extra of that to be successful, why wouldn't we do that?" Ennis says.
Since starting the initiative, one thing has become very clear: the program works. Students in it earn higher scores and are more likely to graduate, which has drawn growing interest from other universities. In 2013, the University of Washington and Washington State University created similar initiatives modeled on Colorado鈥檚 success, and now the NSF is expanding the program further with a $5 million grant to a multiuniversity consortium that includes CU Boulder.