Transition Coaching

MAPS Coaches

Transition Coaching

MAPS is a free peer-led program, providing a comfortable supportive atmosphere, where students learn how to be successful as a UNC Charlotte engineering student. Coaches help students set goals, gain skills for success, and provide encouragement in a variety of different areas. Your personal success in the W.S. Lee College of Engineering is, ultimately, a function of your own decision-making, communication, and work ethic, but you don’t have to do it alone!

MAPS coaching sessions offer students the opportunity to acquire fundamental skills and principles necessary to succeed in UNC Charlotte’s rigorous engineering, engineering technology, and construction management courses.

What can Transition Coaching do for you?

  • Develop community with other college of engineering students.
  • Learn from upper-class engineering students whose experience can help you to avoid pitfalls in university life and in the study of engineering.
  • Develop and improve academic success-based skills using strategies tried and tested by successful upper-class engineering students.
  • Learn and practice professional development-based skills and strategies utilized by successful upper-class engineering students.

Students who actively participate (attend seven or more sessions) in transition coaching earn an average semester GPA of 3.2, compared to students who do not attend, earning an average semester GPA of 2.7. Weekly group in-class coaching sessions last approximately one hour. Freshman students are led and mentored by two upper-class engineering students. Out-of-classroom sessions involve time spent learning more about engineering, the university, and/or provide certain networking opportunities.

MAPS Coaching Program Manual and Curriculum Guide

MAPS Participant Testimonials

  • “I think MAPS was a good tool that I took advantage of. I learned many things that have helped me get acclimated to college life and to the College of Engineering.”
  • “I truly believe that the benefits of this program far overshadow the time spent here. The amount of advice and knowledge that I received here was a great help. In addition to the in-class sessions, the out-of-class sessions also hold great benefit. Being able to attend a workshop to improve leadership skills, ethics, etc. all holds great benefit in the long run.”
  • “The MAPS program has been very beneficial to me. At every meeting, we go over something essential to being successful as a student. The best part about it is that the advice is from other students that know exactly what we are going through.”
  • “…MAPS has been a beneficial and enriching program to me. The materials closely aligned with what I have been working on with my introductory engineering course throughout the semester, and I know I will continue to utilize a lot of the skills in the future.”
  • “Throughout this semester I have found MAPS to be very valuable. It has helped me transition from my habits made during high school to habits that will allow me to be successful in college.”
  • “One of the big things that I really liked about this program was the ability to meet other people going through the same things I was and learned how they handled it.”
  • “The ability to openly talk about what was happening in my life and to hear about the things others were dealing with added a family dynamic to the group which helped us bond quickly. I thoroughly enjoyed having people to relate to that were experiencing the same things I was. Not only did I build relationships with my peers in the group, but also with the MAPS coaches.”