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Beginning the path to a bachelor’s degree in community college has the potential to be a more cost-effective higher education option. Previous research on transfer students has focused broadly on curriculum alignment, articulation policies, and academic advising in efforts to reduce credit loss. Credit loss can significantly impact transfer students and result in unnecessary time and costs for them. Minimal research quantifies and visualizes credit loss or explains in detail how and why it occurs throughout students’ entire education trajectories. This study visualizes credit loss for bachelor’s programs seeking engineering transfer students who began at in-state community colleges using data from the sending and receiving institutions. Findings revealed that credit loss can occur throughout the entire degree pathway, including high school dual enrollment and advanced placement credits to community college credits. This work has implications for informing degree pathways and policies that promote successful transfer and degree completion. 

This lessons learned paper delves into the realm of effective student-centered teaching practices within middle and upper-level engineering classes, with the primary goal of enhancing students' acquisition of disciplinary knowledge. The research is anchored by a central inquiry: what student-centered teaching approaches do exemplary engineering faculty employ to promote knowledge-building in their courses, and how do these approaches align with their beliefs about teaching? To address the research question, the study employed the participatory action research (PAR) methodology, which prioritizes the invaluable input and expertise of participants. A diverse group of participants renowned for their teaching excellence was selected from five departments. A total of ten participants were chosen, and data was collected using a variety of methods, including classroom observations, analysis of course materials, surveys, and focus group discussions. Our observations across various courses have revealed common practices employed by instructors to foster effective learning environments. These practices encompass dynamic and diverse class introductions that utilize strategies like revisiting prior content, storytelling, and addressing student well-being to establish a strong foundation for the session. Throughout the class, instructors consistently maintained student engagement through techniques such as group activities, structured interactions, active problem-solving, and thought-provoking question-and-answer sessions. Visual aids and technology were integral in enhancing content delivery. Instructors also ensured the content was relatable by linking lessons to research findings, relatable examples, and familiar landmarks, grounding theoretical concepts in real-life relevance. Personalized support was a priority, with instructors offering targeted feedback to smaller groups and individual students, including one-on-one sessions for additional assistance. Some instructors introduced unique practices such as debate activities, involving students in decision-making processes, cross-course connections, and specialized problem-solving techniques. These diverse approaches collectively underscore the multifaceted strategies instructors employ to create engaging and effective learning experiences. Another significant initiative undertaken in our study involved organizing a summer workshop that provided a platform for instructors to convene and engage in collaborative discussions regarding their teaching practices and their top five teaching priorities. During this workshop, we also deliberated on the preliminary findings from our data collection. The instructors collectively emphasized the importance of getting students engaged in the learning process. We identified several overarching categories of priorities that held relevance for all instructors, including the establishment of personal relationships with students, the effective organization of course content and class activities, strategies for motivating students, and the integration of course content with real-world applications. During the lightning talk, we will share a comprehensive overview of the study's research findings as well as the importance of student-centered teaching practices in engineering education. 

This paper examined the role of climate (e.g., interactions with others) in the skill development of engineering and physical science doctoral students. Skill development in graduate school often is connected to students’ primary funding mechanism, which enables students to interact with a research group or teaching team. Advisors also play a pivotal role in the engineering doctoral student experience; however, less is known about how positive mentoring influences specific skill development for engineering doctoral students. Analyzing data from the Graduate Student Funding Survey (n = 615), we focused analyses on three climate Factors (Advising climate; Faculty and staff climate; Peer climate) and specific skill development variables (research, teamwork and project management, peer training and mentoring, and communication). We found that advising climate was statistically significant for all four career-related skills, faculty and staff climate for peer training and mentoring skills only, and peer climate for both peer training and mentoring and communication skills. Our findings highlight the importance of climate from a variety of sources within engineering doctoral programs for the development of career-related skills. 

A recent study published in Educational Researcher by White (2023) examined superintendent gender gaps. This work required 4 years of internet searches to identify and match superintendent names with each of the roughly 13,000 school districts in the United States. Although this study provided important insights into the superintendent gender gaps, the study is unable to examine gaps for females of color or the long-term career pathways of superintendents. The lack of a national longitudinal superintendent dataset has meant researchers and policymakers have limited insights into superintendent racial and gender gaps, turnover rates, experience, and career pathways to the superintendency. Drawing on data from the Texas State Longitudinal Data System, we offer several findings to provide a glimpse of what could be accomplished with a longitudinal dataset. Policymakers, school boards, search firms, and communities will fail to understand the full range of challenges and opportunities to diversifying and strengthening the superintendent workforce until such a dataset exists and is accessible to researchers and other interested parties. 

Graduate education in engineering is an extremely challenging, complex entity that is difficult to change. The purpose of this exploratory research paper was to investigate the applicability of the Collective Impact framework, which has been used within community organizing contexts, to organize the change efforts of a center focused on advancing equitable graduate education within engineering. We sought to understand how the conditions of Collective Impact (i.e., common agenda, backbone organization, mutually reinforcing activities, shared measurement system, and continuous communication) could facilitate the organization of equity-focused change efforts across a college of engineering at a single institution. To achieve this, we took an action research approach. We found the Collective Impact framework to be a useful tool for organizing cross-sectional partnerships to facilitate equity-focused change in graduate education; we also found the five conditions of Collective Impact to be applicable to the higher education context, with some intentional considerations and modifications. Through coordinated efforts, the Collective Impact framework can support the goal of reorienting existing decentralized structures, resource flows, and decision processes to foster bottom-up and top-down change processes to advance equitable support for graduate students. 

Knowing how policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention will significantly advance our understanding of how resources matter for K–12 student learning. This study sheds light on this issue by estimating how legislative funding changes in Washington state in 2018–2019—induced by the McCleary court-ordered reform—affected teacher salaries and labor market outcomes. By embedding a simulated instrumental variables approach in a mixed-methods design, we observed that local collective bargaining negotiations directed new state funding allocations to substantially increase certificated base salaries, particularly for senior teachers with 16 years or more of teaching experience. Variability in political power, priorities, and interests of both districts and unions led to greater heterogeneity in teacher salary schedules. Suggestive evidence shows that state average teacher turnover rate was significantly reduced in the first year of reform. The McCleary-induced salary increase particularly reduces mid-career teachers’ (8–15 years of teaching experience) mobility rate and late-career teachers’ (23+ years of teaching experience) leaving rate. The McCleary-induced base salary increase has mostly null effects on teacher hiring in the first 2 years of implementation.