WIP: investigate recruitment strategies used by engineering bridge and success programs to recruit underserved students

Engineering bridge and success programs have been used to support the transition and retention of students in engineering and computing majors at 4-year institutions in the U.S.Many bridge and success programs also aim to broaden participation in engineering and computing by recruiting underserved students such as underrepresented minorities (URMs), women, first-generation students, and low socio-economic status (SES) students.However, their program leaders frequently report difficulties recruiting students from these groups.There is little literature focusing on the recruitment of bridge and success programs.Understanding effective recruitment strategies to reach and convince underserved students to participate in those programs can increase the use of effective practices by program leaders and disseminate best recruitment practices.Our research aims to identify which recruitment strategies are in use, which are most effective, and barriers to communicating with prospective underserved students of the engineering bridge and success programs.The research project includes several stages, investigating perspectives from both program leaders and students.This stage of the study will explore the effectiveness of different communication channels and change agents to reach and persuade underserved students to participate in engineering bridge and success programs from program leaders' perspectives.This is an explanatory sequential mixed method study based on the Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory framework.This work-in-progress (WIP) paper will report on instrument development, sampling procedure, planned data analysis, and current progress.This research will also broaden knowledge on applying DOI theory to increase recruitment effectiveness.