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For the US to increase diversity in engineering, Community Colleges (CC) will have to play a significant role. Fifty-six (56%) of all Native Americans, 52% of all Hispanics, and 42% of all Black students in higher education are CC students. Nationally for the Fall 2015 cohort, the overall transfer rate from CCs to baccalaureate institutions is only 31.6%, and a mere 15.5% of all students who start at a CC complete a bachelor's degree within six years. Although there has been a shift in research since the 2000s, researchers are more focused on understanding the role of the receiving institutions. Research on CC admission, retention, and preparing minorities for successful transfer and engineering degree completion is still overlooked. Moreover, most CC students require remediation, which poses additional challenges to engineering enrollment. First-time college students taking remedial mathematics are less likely to major in engineering and to complete an engineering degree at a 4-year institution. With current CC demographics and student remediation needs, community colleges must develop a strategy to increase engineering enrollment, retention, and transfer. We hypothesize that underprepared students will likely enroll and succeed in engineering if provided a contextualized strategy that decrease remediation and provided intentional support that make students feel they belong in the profession. To test this hypothesis, Wright College, an urban open-access CC and a federally recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), created frameworks through the National Science Foundation grant to streamline two transitions: 1) High School to CCs and 2) CCs to 4-year transfer institutions. This paper focuses on streamlining the transition from High School to CCs by creating a Contextualized Bridge. The main goal of the Contextualized Bridge is to develop, implement and assess on-ramp strategies for high school students into engineering at CCs. The specific goals are to decrease remediation, increase engineering enrollment, and increase retention and belonging to the engineering profession. The Contextualized Bridge strategies include: 1. address low self-efficacy in the profession due to gaps in math or science skills. 2. develop professional identity by creating a cohort system and promoting socialization activities. 3. alleviate financial barriers by providing a stipend. 4. strengthen connections to Wright College and the profession. 5. build awareness of engineering fields and career opportunities. Outcomes: The Contextualized Bridge was developed with Wright College faculty. It was first implemented in 2019 with 32 participants. After four (4) iterations, Wright College Bridge enrolled 202 diverse participants (70% Hispanic, 12% black, and 25% women). Ninety-five percent (95%) completed the program and enrolled in engineering. One hundred percent of students who completed the Bridge eliminated at least one semester of remedial mathematics, and fifty percent (50%) were directly placed in Calculus 1. Eleven (11) participants in the 2019 cohort transferred to top engineering programs within two years from the Bridge and are on track for bachelor’s degree completion within four years. Most students attribute their success to a cohort system, increased self-efficacy, and a sense of belonging to college and the engineering profession. Future work Wright College will pilot an "Engineering Model Pathway." This pathway will integrate the Contextualized Bridge strategies into high school through dual enrollment to establish belonging to Wright College and the engineering profession early. 

Across the country, community colleges take interventional measures to eliminate factors that thwart the retention, engagement, and success of their respective students. Among the most debilitating of these factors is the lack of self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is defined as the confidence an individual has in their ability to achieve an objective effectively. Considering that low self-efficacy is attributed to a variety of reasons, there is no standard practice to eliminate this issue for every student. A combination of approaches is used concurrently by programs in order to address common causes including diversity exclusion and gender inequality. Community college engineering programs across the country attempt to increase student success through different interventions. However, academically exceptional students often fail to delve into co-curricular activities, especially at the community colleges. Community colleges are often commuter schools and students do not feel the need to get involved with co-curricular activities. Oftentimes, students are apprehensive about appending extracurriculars to their workload with the belief that this may negatively affect their performance to an unknown degree. Although it has been shown that participation in co-curricular activities will increase confidence, leadership and belonging that will increase classroom performance, community college students opt to stay within a comfort zone of their current, solely academic workload and give up vital opportunities to develop professionally. We hypothesize that increased participation in co-curricular activities will increase self-efficacy and will improve academic performance. In this paper, we will correlate co-curricular participation to success. Utilizing personal experiences of ABC engineering students and alumni, this paper will shed light on the comfort zone dilemma and supports the concept of a compounding reward-system as means to increase the self-efficacy of undergraduate engineering students by repeatedly overcoming their comfort zones. The concept of a compounding reward system will be validated by correlating individual students’ grade point averages (GPA) and course workloads to overall time commitments and co-curricular activities per semester. Student participation will also be correlated with time to degree completion at the community college. We will use a survey and case study interviews to assess self-efficacy in relation to community college engineering students’ participation. By correlating student involvement with GPA and time to degree completion we will determine the role of the reward system in increasing student self-efficacy and, thus, student success. 

The Guided Pathways initiative is among many reform efforts that have been implemented by hundreds of community colleges in the country. Four main practice areas are intrinsic of Guided Pathways: 1) mapping pathways to students’ end goals, 2) helping students choose and enter a program pathway, 3) keeping students on a path, and 4) ensuring that students are learning. Although this approach is an important step toward successful transfer placement, the Guided Pathways do not address the visible and invisible barriers to student success once students transfer to a 4-year institution. This paper presents a novel and holistic approach to transfer that eliminates visible and invisible barriers to student success. The Holistic and Programmatic Approach for Transfer (HPAT) model includes early and active participation of the 4-year transfer partner, structured within a well-thought-out transfer articulation agreement that builds on a joint commitment to quality and student success. Integral to the agreement is the requirement for the rigor of the curriculum at the community college to match that of the 4-year partner, along with exceptional student support, financial assistance, and mentoring from the point of admission at the community college, through transfer and up to the bachelor's or master's degree completion. Unique to this model is the fully collaborative and holistic approach to admission; curriculum alignment, including content; participation in co-curricular activities; co-advising; co-mentoring; and data sharing that drive continuous improvement. Students in the program are concurrently registered in both the community college and the 4-year partner institution, becoming part of both student communities from the start. These students take classes at the 4-year partner at a discounted price while still enrolled at the community college, thus eliminating curricular barriers, ensuring placement as juniors, and facilitating belonging at the transfer institution. In addition, program-specific courses and activities at the transfer institution aim to eliminate the socialization and adjustment barrier upon transfer, further increasing belongingness to both institutions. Preliminary outcomes promise a ninety-five percent (95%) transfer rate within 2-3 years from admission. The Program's success is attributed to a holistic and programmatic approach for transfer that emphasizes cross-institutional commitment, effective mentoring, rigor, quality, and increases in the engineering profession (measured through a belonging survey and "Appreciative Inquiry" case study interviews). Although this approach is Engineering specific, our model is positioned to revolutionize transfer that can be duplicated for other Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and non-STEM disciplines. 

Wright College, an urban open-access community college, independently accredited within the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) system, is a federally recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) with one of the largest community college enrollments of Hispanic students in Illinois. Wright College’s student success rates measured by completion have been strong and improving relative to other national urban community colleges, but are below state and national averages. In 2015 the college piloted a selective guaranteed admission program, Engineering Pathways (EP), to one of the nation’s top engineering schools (The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, UIUC). Initial results for the small first-year cohort were very positive: 89% transfer rate and all students who transferred to UIUC graduated. The program’s initial success rested on a) cohort model with a small number of students and strong controls; b) co-branding that attracted local students interested in pursuing engineering at UIUC who might not otherwise have enrolled at Wright; c) academic rigor (small class size with Wright College’s curricula matching UIUC); d) robust student support services and structures; and e) a holistic college commitment to equity and inclusive excellence. Wright College obtained a National Foundation Science (NSF)-HSI research grant in 2018 to support the Engineering Pathways. The grant examines EP students’ self-efficacy and sense of belonging. Wright College foregrounds student “belonging” in its equity efforts. Equity work calls for the systemic analysis and tracking of student performance, engagement and participation throughout the student life-cycle, with data-informed analysis of behavior and outcomes through a lens of race, gender and wealth. EP students shared similar racial and ethnic backgrounds as Wright College’s non-engineering students. They attended the same elementary and public schools, have similar family structures, socioeconomic status (SES) and supports. NSF resources assisted Wright College’s creation of a contextualized engineering summer bridge and a more structured pre-engineering program. As enrollment in the EP program increased, the college dedicated additional resources, including faculty, enhanced student support, and guaranteed junior-level transfer to other nearby baccalaureate engineering schools. Central to the effort was significantly greater structure and monitoring of student performance, including academic and support frameworks for non-EP students. Wright College and baccalaureate transfer institutions reviewed and updated articulation agreements. In the Engineering Summer Bridge Program’s first two years, forty-five (45) students who would otherwise have been denied admission to EP are thriving and are positioned to transfer to four-year engineering programs. In this paper, Wright College will review the college’s equity efforts, the structure and implementation of the Engineering Pathways, and the creation of new engineering transfer programs. It will explore visible and invisible barriers to students’ success, contrasting students in Wright College’s EP program with other Wright College students. The authors argue that the systemic pursuit of equity, particularly with a focus on self-efficacy, belonging, and the creation of an environment committed to inclusive excellence, will result in very strong student outcomes.