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The Alternative Pathways to Excellence (APEX): Engineering a Transfer-Friendly Experience program at the University of St. Thomas is an NSF S-STEM 25-514 Track 2 project, award number 2130042. The aim of the grant is to build a foundation for non-traditional students and transfer students through recruitment, academic support, community-built retention efforts, student success, networking, graduation, and post-graduation placement in industry and/or graduate school. Key to the efforts is development of the support system for high academic potential students from low-income households through removal of systematic curricular barriers, strong empowerment through a community of peers, hidden curriculum mentoring from culturally informed faculty, industry coaching, and up to $10,000 annual scholarships. The inaugural APEX scholar cohort enrolled in Fall 2022. The effectiveness research examines data related to enrollment, retention, and success metrics for students in engineering, specifically comparing these factors among engineering transfer students and the APEX scholars group. Although not all APEX students are transfer students, the program targets the transfer student population by creating new pipelines from five community college partners. This paper reviews key comparison data points, quantitative analysis of this data, qualitative analysis of student feedback, and demonstrates the initial success of the program.
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Board 267: Engineering a Transfer Friendly Experience with Alternative Pathways to Excellence
The Alternative Pathways to Excellence (APEX) program at the University of St. Thomas is an NSF funded S-STEM Track 2 project that seeks to strengthen efforts to recruit and retain STEM transfer students by integrating financial, academic, and practical supports. The APEX program provides student support services, formal and informal mentoring, curricular and co-curricular supports, and cohort building activities all formulated to create accessible pathways into engineering careers for a population of academically talented students with low income and high unmet financial need. The goals of this program are to increase recruitment by partnering with five regional community colleges, to award S-STEM scholarships of up to $10,000 annually to cohorts of 4-6 students each year, to increase retention by developing retention-friendly supports, and to graduate APEX scholars who go on to meaningfully contribute to fueling innovation in industry and/or academic post-graduate study. Generation of knowledge is based on studying the APEX program as a model and evaluating qualitative and quantitative data surrounding students’ successful transitions to a four-year institution. Program evaluation is focused on understanding how well APEX recruitment strategies contribute to increasing the number of low income and underrepresented students who transfer into the University of St. Thomas Engineering program and understanding the extent to which retention efforts are most beneficial to retaining students. In this work, we showcase initial program activities, and the initial results based on the first year of study and our first cohort of scholars.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2130042
- PAR ID:
- 10561799
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Baltimore , Maryland
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--42719
