Board 443 - High Impact Student Engagement at an Urban Commuter Institution in a Remote Environment During COVID-19 Pandemic and Continuation Post COVID

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic brought the traditional in-person student engagement activities to a halt and resulted in the redesign and thinking around student engagement that would still maintain the concepts of High Impact Practices that includes experiential experiences. The paper will focus on two programs at the university that were utilized in this process. To address the studies that showed many students at the university did not participate in an internship prior to graduation, and were at a disadvantage in securing employment, the "Program" was designed. The second program utilized, the Federal Work Study program, established in1964, and designed to allow students of lower-income backgrounds to gain work experience while studying were utilized. The host site for both programs was established in the School of Engineering office of Student Resources and Services. The "University Program" utilized a matching algorithm that matched students' interest with the host preferences/job description. Students were matched and were very diverse with majors in Journalism, Computer Science, Forensic Science, Computer Information Systems, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Psychology, Communications, Computer Science and Engineering and Digital Media. Students selected from the FWS program had no such algorithm for matching (all majors were accepted) and consisted of an interview followed by a selection by the host office. The assignments were guided by the students' major and interest. The paper will present the recruitment, selection, project operation, timeline, management, and project development of the participants. This paper will also focus on the continued use of remote internships and experiential opportunities as a High Impact Practice to engage students at an urban commuter university across all majors.