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goals and highest potential,” says Hidalgo. “Through STEP, the College has been preparing incoming freshman students for the past several summers for the transition into the College. The program provides remediation in mathematics and English; deicits in those subjects keep many students from successfully pursuing an engineering or computer science degree in a successful and timely manner.”Increasing Retention & Graduation RatesAccording to Hidalgo, the main goals of STEP are to increase retention and graduation rates for undergraduate students and improve their time-to-degree completion, close achievement gaps in mathematics and other key areas, prepare students for the challenges of college-level work, provide the necessary skills for students to evolve academically and personally, and graduate the highest- potential, career-ready students from the College.Faculty members across the College consider STEP a much-needed addition, especially to address remediation in mathematics among incoming students. The students involved have seen clear beneits.“In the end, it was rewarding to come to STEP, not only for its academic perks, but also to become acquainted with my new, welcoming family at Cal State L.A.,” says Ethan Christopher, a irst-year civil engineering student.“I also learned more of what it means to become an adult.”STEP has achieved remarkable results so far in developing students’ math and writing skills. In six years, more than 1,300 ECST incoming freshmen have successfully completed STEP with an overall mean passing rate of90 percent in the math exit exams. The percentage of students requiring remediation in math has decreased each year since 2011, and STEP has enabled more incoming freshmen to take calculus 1 at the start of their irst quarter at the College.This means that as a result of STEP many more incoming freshmen from fall 2010 through fall 2014 are in a position to graduate from Cal State L.A. with an engineering, computer science, or technology degree in four to six years because they are starting at the desired level for their curriculum.“Once I was involved with STEP, I realized that it was giving us a chance to not only to excel academically, but also to meet new people, make new friends, and experience what college is really like,” says Nicholas Martinez, a irst-year electrical engineering student who attended the program last summer.Dean Emily Allen states, “In the future, the College would like to implement a similar summer program for rising high school seniors to further prepare them for ECST programs before high school graduation.” •InSights | 11