Alumni as a Resource to Increase Student Retention in Early Computer Science Courses

Student persistence in computing majors is one of the keys to providing the talent needed to fill the projected job openings in the computing professions. A range of factors can affect a student's decision to remain in a computing major or change to another major. In this paper we describe an assignment that we use in a course for first semester computing majors. The assignment is based on students interacting with alumni on an individual basis. The nature of the assignment addresses a number of the factors that have been shown to influence students' persistence and may result in an individual student getting the specific intervention that he or she needs.