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1. Work in Progress: Development of a Bootcamp for Freshman Student Success During COVID-19 Transition

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--48348  

   Vargas_Hernandez, Noe; Fuentes, Arturo; Ortega, Javier; Benitez, Laura; Orozco-Leonhardt, Edna (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   Assessment results show that passing rates in introductory courses and retention rates of first year students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of X, a predominantly Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), significantly dropped with the onset of COVID-19. These results and trends highlight the academic preparation of incoming students, particularly the new cohort of underrepresented Hispanic students from underserved and challenged communities in the region, who may not have the necessary skills (e.g., adaptability, persistence, and performance) for the rigor of engineering education. To address this challenge, an onboarding “boostcamp” was created for incoming and transfer students to bridge the transition from secondary education to higher education. The boostcamp primes students to overcome academic deficiencies, develop a critical skills portfolio, learn problem-solving techniques, build a sustainable community of mentoring support with faculty and students, and gain a template to sustain academic and professional success during their undergraduate education. The paper presents the boostcamp's design process steps, including curricular analysis, identification of areas for improvement, skills inventory, and blueprinting, as well as its initial implementation in the mechanical engineering program. The boostcamp was organized over a week and featured hands-on engineering activities, faculty and student talks, and engineering lab tours. It was based on a design thinking approach and structured around Challenge-based Instruction, innovation, design, and mentoring. Daily activities focused on promoting critical thinking, assertiveness in the face of adversity, informed decision-making, and task prioritization. Results indicate that the boostcamp increased student confidence and established a valuable network system among participants. Future work will focus on expanding the boostcamp to include students from other engineering and computer science departments and developing a template for other institutions with similar challenges. 

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2. Opening the Black Box of Vertical Transfer Admission: The Experiences of Community College Students in STEM Majors

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2022.2135041  

   Holland Zahner, Dana G. (October 2022, Community College Journal of Research and Practice)

   Better understanding of how students achieve vertical transfer is vital for advancing equity in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) majors. Among the many sources of barriers, delays, and complexities demonstrated in previous research as influencing vertical transfer outcomes, the transfer admission process has been generally neglected. Using a longitudinal, qualitative design, and drawing on transfer capital and field theories, this study investigated how community college students who are underrepresented in STEM fields successfully navigated admission to a four-year institution in a STEM major. Results indicated that students experienced transfer admission as risky and uncertain. They accrued transfer capital over time, in the form of knowledge about transfer admission and strategies to bolster their competitiveness, including regulating their coursework intensity and actively managing their GPAs. Although these forms of transfer capital helped students succeed in transferring, some strategies could backfire, causing unintended negative consequences, such as time-to-completion delays, excess credit accumulation, or disadvantages in securing admission. Results supported the contention that the transfer admission process is a pivotal, yet largely neglected aspect of student experience in STEM vertical pathways. Conclusions provide suggestions for further research and implications for institutional practice. 

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3. Using Financial Support to Create a Learning Community Among Diverse Community College STEM Students

   Enriquez, A. G.; Lipe, C. B. (June 2012, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   Although many California Community College students from underrepresented groups enter college with high levels of interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the majority of them drop out or change majors even before taking transfer-level courses due to a variety of reasons including financial difficulties, inadequate academic preparation, lack of family support, poor study skills, and inadequate or ineffective academic advising and mentoring. In 2009, Cañada College, a federally designated Hispanic-serving institution in the San Francisco Bay Area, received a National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) grant to develop a scholarship program for financially needy community college students intending to transfer to a four-year institution to pursue a bachelor’s degree in a STEM field. In collaboration with the College’s Mathematics, Engineering, and Science Achievement (MESA) program – an academic, personal, and professional support structure has been designed and implemented to maximize the likelihood of success of these students. This support structure aims to create a learning community among the scholars through a combination of academic counseling and mentoring, personal enrichment and professional development opportunities, and strong academic support services. This paper describes how faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, student organizations, and partners in industry, four-year institutions, and professional organizations can be involved in creating an academic infrastructure that promotes academic excellence, leadership skills, and personal and professional growth among the diversity of financially needy STEM students in a community college. 

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4. Strengthening Community College Engineering Education Through Collaboration and Technology

   Enriquez, A. G.; Cheung, E. P.; Reardon, T. (June 2013, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   There has been a recent increase in awareness of the important role that community colleges play in educating future engineers, especially in broadening participation among students from underrepresented groups. However, budget problems at the state and national levels have resulted in continuing budget cuts in community colleges. With limited resources while responding to increasing variability of lower-division transfer curricula as required by four-year engineering programs, it has become increasingly difficult for small community college engineering programs to support all the courses needed by students to transfer. Meanwhile, transfer admissions have become increasingly more competitive because of budget cuts in four-year universities. As a result, prospective engineering students who attend community colleges with limited or no engineering course offerings are at a disadvantage for both transfer admission as well as time to completion upon transfer. This paper is a description of a collaborative project among community college engineering programs in California to address this problem by aligning engineering curriculum, enhancing teaching effectiveness using Tablet PCs, and increasing access to engineering courses through online education. The project includes a Summer Engineering Teaching Institute designed to assist community college engineering faculty in developing a Tablet-PC-enhanced model of instruction, and implementing online courses. The project also involves a partnership among California community college engineering programs to design and implement a Joint Engineering Program that is delivered online. This paper summarizes the results of the first two years of implementation of the project, and explores its potential to strengthen the community college engineering education pipeline in order to increase and diversify the engineering workforce. 

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5. Building Capacity: Enhancing Undergraduate STEM Education by Improving Transfer Success

   Brown, P. (August 2022, 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN)

   A combination of strategies was implemented to reduce barriers to transfer from associate to baccalaureate programs, and baccalaureate degree completion. These strategies include creation of the STEM Transfer Collaborative (STC). an adaption of the CUNY Pathways articulation initiative. Components of the STC include articulation agreements, shared professional development to align pedagogy and curriculum, outreach and collaboration by both the sending and receiving college faculty to begin transfer preparation and support before transfer occurs, and regular updates to community college faculty on the success of their transfer students. The second strategy employed is Momentum to the Baccalaureate (MB), an adaption of the CUNY Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP). MB provides support for junior and senior-level transfer students who are either community colleges associate degree graduates (external transfer) or associate degree graduates who transferred to bachelor’s programs at the same comprehensive college they earned their associate degree at, which has a 2+2 degree structure (internal transfer). Components of MB include personalized mentoring, advisement, and monthly stipends to students who maintain full-time enrollment and good academic standing. Participating majors include computer engineering technology, computer systems technology, construction management and civil engineering technology, electrical engineering technology, and applied chemistry. Propensity matching was used to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies. Participating campuses are part of the City University of New York (CUNY), and include six community colleges (Borough of Manhattan Community College, Bronx Community College, Guttman Community College, Hostos Community College, Kingsborough Community College, and LaGuardia Community College), five of which are Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and New York City College of Technology (City Tech), also an HSI, which offers associate and bachelor’s programs (2+2 structure). Our first cohort of 40 students started upper-level studies in fall 2019, and has completed 2 years (four semesters) of post-associate degree study. The second cohort of 40 students, started in fall 2020, and has completed one year (two semesters) of post-associate degree study. Cohort 1 students receiving MB, supports had a significantly higher graduation rate after two years than the college average. Additionally, for cohort 1, the STC seems to have reduced “transfer shock,” the typical drop in GPA the first semester after transfer. There was no statistical difference in GPA, credits completed and semester-to-semester persistence of internal and external transfers in the MB program. Cohort 1 external transfer students who received support though MB also had a statistically significant improvement in their semester GPAs for their first 3 semesters at City Tech compared to matched students who were not provided support in the junior and senior years. There was no statistically significant difference by the 4th semester. Cohort 2 internal transfers receiving MB supports in their junior year had a statistically significant improvement in credits earned and persistence compared to a matched cohort without MB supports. There was no statistically significant improvement of external transfers compared to a matched cohort, who did not receive MB supports The inability of external transfer students to come to campus due to the pandemic, may have negated the sense of community and belonging that MB was intended to create. Overall, these preliminary results suggest that targeted pre-transfer and post-transfer supports improve transfer student outcomes. This project (NSF grant #1832457) was funded through the NSF Division of Education, Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program. 

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