Title: Toward Understanding Engineering Transfer Students' Transitions from Community Colleges to 4-year Institutions
Community college students who transfer to 4-year institutions for engineering degrees are known to face significant adversity. Some common challenges they face include having minimal financial resources, a lack of engineering-oriented mentorship, and prolonged time to degree. Engineering transfer students are naturally diverse, ranging in age, experience, and motivation. Some have carved paths that include, for example, military service, starting a family of their own, or switching their career aims. The nuanced nature of the transfer student experience challenges higher education professionals to identify innovative ways for transfer students to meet their individualized goals. The engineering transfer students aim to transition from a previous institution to a 4-year baccalaureate institution, obtain an engineering undergraduate or graduate degree, and, finally, transition into an engineering-oriented career. These are major transitions. Schlossberg has identified factors that influence an individual’s ability to cope with their experienced transitions, namely, situation, self, support, and strategies. Through this lens, the transfer experiences and transfer shocks undergone by these ambitious students may be better understood and improved. A partnership between a 4-year institution, the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and two community colleges, Imperial Valley College (IVC) and Southwestern College (SWC), has been formed to better understand and support transfer engineering students as they make major transitions in, through, and out of their respective institutions. Through this partnership, a supportive program called EMPOWER has been devised to assemble cohorts of Pell-grant-eligible engineering transfer students so that their diverse and timely needs can be addressed. Scholarships and high-impact practices have been offered to these students. Program activities include cross-campus visits, faculty, and alumni mentorship, financially supported research opportunities, and cohort-supporting social opportunities. Through focus groups and survey questionnaires, the transition experience for these students is further investigated. In this paper, an outline is provided detailing the common challenges faced by engineering transfer students as they transition toward their careers, along with high-impact practices to support them. more »« less
Community colleges are frequently an affordable, accessible entrance to a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and career, but the transition from a 2-year program to a 4-year institution can be tumultuous. In this mixed-methods study, we explore the experiences of transfer and prospective transfer students. Through surveys and interviews, we identify the challenges faced by and the supports desired by biology transfer students. We describe how community college students perceive their introductory biology courses, and we compare the biology identity and self-efficacy of these students to peers at a 4-year institution. Students expressed uncertainty about what to expect from the transfer experience, and they benefitted from interventions that made the university experience more concrete or clarified their expectations. We found that community college students are just as interested in biology as peers at a 4-year university, but they are significantly less likely to believe that others recognize them as “biology people” and report less self-efficacy regarding biology courses. Students felt particularly well-prepared for transfer after community college biology courses they described as “rigorous” and “demanding,” especially because students expressed that the community college environment helped support them through the challenges of higher education.
Castles, R.; Venters, C.; and Goodman, C
(, 2022 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition)
In January 2020 East Carolina University (ECU) in partnership with Lenoir Community College (LCC), Pitt Community College (PCC), and Wayne Community College (WCC) was awarded an S-STEM Track 3 Grant (Grant number: 1930497). The purpose of this grant was to support low-income students at each partner institution, to research best practices in recruiting and retaining low-income students at both universities and community colleges, and to research how such programs influence the transfer outcomes from two-year to four-year schools. This grant provides scholarship support for two cohorts of students, one starting their engineering studies in Fall 2020 and the other starting their engineering studies in Fall 2021. Each cohort was to be comprised of 40 students including 20 students at ECU and 20 students divided among the three partnering community colleges. In addition to supporting student scholarships, this grant supported the establishment of new student support mechanisms and enhancement of existing support systems on each campus. This project involved the creation of a faculty mentoring program, designing a summer bridge program, establishing a textbook lending library, and enhancing activities for students in a living-learning community, expansion of university tutoring initiatives to allow access for community college students, and promoting a new peer mentoring initiative. The program emphasizes career opportunities including promoting on-campus career fairs, promoting internship and co-op opportunities, and bringing in guest speakers from various industry partners. A goal of the program was to allow community college students to build relationships with university students and faculty so they can more easily assimilate into the student body at the university upon transfer. This paper presents the challenges presented to the project in the first year and the pivoting that occurred due the pandemic. Data is presented regarding recruitment of scholars in both cohorts and retention of scholars from year 1 to year 2.
Dancz, C. L.; Adams, E. A.; Orfi, N.; Haden, C; Ahn, Yushin
(, American Society for Engineering Education)
This paper reports on activities and outcomes from years three and four of a 5-year NSF Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) award at a two-year college. The college is a minority-serving institution located in a metro area with high rates of concentrated poverty and low levels of educational attainment. Through the program scholarships are awarded to cohorts of students majoring in engineering selected each fall semester from applications collected the previous spring. After completing transfer preparation curriculum at the two-year college, select scholars who transfer to the local four-year university may remain in the program for continued support. Students in each cohort, including those who remain in the program after transfer, are supported with annual scholarships of up to $6000, depending on financial need. In addition to scholarship money, students participate in a variety of program activities throughout the school year in the form of academic seminars, extracurricular events, professional development, faculty mentoring, peer mentoring, academic advising, and undergraduate research opportunities. Noteworthy elements of the program in years three and four include 1) the selection and award of the fourth and final cohort entering the program, 2) a transition of leadership to a new principal investigator for the program at the two-college, and 3) the increase in number of students who have continued with the program after transfer to the local four-year university. During year three of this five-year program, the first cohort of students successfully transferred and completed a full year at their new four-year university. Supplemental funding has enabled the program to expand support for additional students at both the two-year college and the four-year university after transfer. This has reduced financial burdens and addressed the unanticipated challenge that some students would need more than two years to transfer due to delays brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Program evaluation findings identified requests from students that would enhance the program approach and further prepare for transfer. These included establishing a transferred student panel for students preparing to transfer, seminars on maintaining a positive work/life balance and differences in university systems, further support for peer mentorship for both mentors and mentees, and additional opportunities for collaboration across engineering disciplines. Research findings from interviews conducted with transferred students identified several opportunities to further enhance the transfer preparation approach and support structures needed for success at their new institution. These include intentional preparation for establishing membership in a new community, identification of systems and processes for support at their new institution, including how these may differ from their previous institution, and opportunity to serve as a mentor and engage with students preparing to transfer. In addition, in year 4 program leadership transitioned due to a new role at new university and more students support requests of leadership at both the two-year college and the four-year transfer university than originally anticipated. This has resulted in reflection on the program administration and the people and structures that sustain it. This poster will include summaries of scholar activities, transition in and impact on program leadership, program evaluation results, and research findings from the first cohort of students that have transferred and completed a full year at their new institution.
Black engineering transfer students face unique challenges while navigating the transfer process from a community college to a 4-year institution. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the experiences of these students and the ways in which they adjust to the 4-year school. We identify specific challenges noted by Black engineering transfer students in their experiences related to: (1) heuristics of teaching and learning that they had to adapt to in order to successfully navigate new campus environments; (2) information gaps that students encountered in what faculty seemed to expect them to already know; and (3) problems in having to adjust to the differences in the academic demands of the 4-year engineering program. In addition to unpacking our findings along these specific domains, we attend to the potential impact of having these challenges in a large, urban, metropolitan area.
Community colleges expand access to higher education and play a key role in efforts to increase and diversify the future science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. While community colleges increase access to higher education and millions of students attend them for some portion of their education, the experiences of transfer students remain relatively understudied. Transferring during an academic journey can compound the barriers that students already face when pursuing a STEM degree. This study uses Schlossberg’s model for analyzing human adaptation to transition to understand how STEM community college transfer students navigate and adapt to the 4-year university. Five semistructured focus groups were conducted with STEM community college transfer students attending an urban university. Analysis of the focus groups resulted in a new model: the amended model of adaptation to transfer transition, or AMATT, which illustrates various factors that played a role in STEM community college transfer students’ adaptation a university. Analyses illumined two broad pathways that students tend to diverge into during their transitions—thriving or simply surviving. This work provides a framework for understanding factors influencing the transfer process and ideally will inform institutions and students as they consider maximal transfer student success.
Morris, K, Duerr, J, Baghdadchi, S, and Lin, B. Toward Understanding Engineering Transfer Students' Transitions from Community Colleges to 4-year Institutions. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10544522.
Morris, K, Duerr, J, Baghdadchi, S, & Lin, B. Toward Understanding Engineering Transfer Students' Transitions from Community Colleges to 4-year Institutions. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10544522.
Morris, K, Duerr, J, Baghdadchi, S, and Lin, B.
"Toward Understanding Engineering Transfer Students' Transitions from Community Colleges to 4-year Institutions". Country unknown/Code not available: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10544522.
@article{osti_10544522,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Toward Understanding Engineering Transfer Students' Transitions from Community Colleges to 4-year Institutions},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10544522},
abstractNote = {Community college students who transfer to 4-year institutions for engineering degrees are known to face significant adversity. Some common challenges they face include having minimal financial resources, a lack of engineering-oriented mentorship, and prolonged time to degree. Engineering transfer students are naturally diverse, ranging in age, experience, and motivation. Some have carved paths that include, for example, military service, starting a family of their own, or switching their career aims. The nuanced nature of the transfer student experience challenges higher education professionals to identify innovative ways for transfer students to meet their individualized goals. The engineering transfer students aim to transition from a previous institution to a 4-year baccalaureate institution, obtain an engineering undergraduate or graduate degree, and, finally, transition into an engineering-oriented career. These are major transitions. Schlossberg has identified factors that influence an individual’s ability to cope with their experienced transitions, namely, situation, self, support, and strategies. Through this lens, the transfer experiences and transfer shocks undergone by these ambitious students may be better understood and improved. A partnership between a 4-year institution, the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and two community colleges, Imperial Valley College (IVC) and Southwestern College (SWC), has been formed to better understand and support transfer engineering students as they make major transitions in, through, and out of their respective institutions. Through this partnership, a supportive program called EMPOWER has been devised to assemble cohorts of Pell-grant-eligible engineering transfer students so that their diverse and timely needs can be addressed. Scholarships and high-impact practices have been offered to these students. Program activities include cross-campus visits, faculty, and alumni mentorship, financially supported research opportunities, and cohort-supporting social opportunities. Through focus groups and survey questionnaires, the transition experience for these students is further investigated. In this paper, an outline is provided detailing the common challenges faced by engineering transfer students as they transition toward their careers, along with high-impact practices to support them.},
journal = {},
publisher = {2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition},
author = {Morris, K and Duerr, J and Baghdadchi, S and Lin, B},
}
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