Integrated pre-freshman engineering and precalculus mathematics

Engineering curricula share a reliance on mathematics as the prerequisites for nearly all science and engineering courses. As such, it's not surprising that student success in mathematics is highly correlated to retention of engineering students. As part of an effort to improve retention in engineering, a new course was offered to freshmen in the College of Engineering at Boise State University. This course, which incorporated many elements of our Introduction to Engineering course, was designed to be taken concurrently with the 5-credit Precalculus course which many of our students must pass before they can move on to Calculus I. In addition, the standard Introduction to Engineering course was modified to more directly support students concurrently enrolled in Calculus I. Preliminary results indicate that students who concurrently enroll in an engineering course along with the Precalculus or Calculus I achieve higher success rates in their math class.