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Board # 61 : T-SITE: A UMBC Community of Transfer Scholars in Computing, Information Technology, and Engineering

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Conference

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Columbus, Ohio

Publication Date

June 24, 2017

Start Date

June 24, 2017

End Date

June 28, 2017

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topics

Diversity and NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--27891

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/27891

Download Count

786

Paper Authors

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Danyelle Tauryce Ireland University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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Danyelle Ireland is the associate director of the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). At CWIT, Dr. Ireland develops and assesses the impact of programming to support the academic achievement, professional development, and overall success of underrepresented students in computing and engineering majors. She also collaborates with the UMBC College of Engineering and IT (COEIT) to improve the social climate of the College and foster a more diverse and inclusive COEIT community. As an educational psychologist, Dr. Ireland’s research centers on the intersectional nature of social, academic, and occupational identities among underrepresented students in STEM majors, and factors impacting their motivation and persistence in STEM fields. Dr. Ireland holds a B.A. in African American studies and family studies from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from Howard University.

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Penny Rheingans University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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Penny Rheingans is a Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE) and Director of the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is currently on sabbatical leave as a Visiting Professor in the College of Computing and Information Sciences at Northeastern University. She received a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and an AB in Computer Science from Harvard University. She established an internationally recognized visualization research program supported by over $9,000,000 in external funding as PI or CoPI, including the NSF CAREER award. Dr. Rheingans has over eighty peer-reviewed publications, including the NIH/NSF Visualization Research Challenges report, published in 2006 by IEEE. Dr. Rheingans co-chaired the papers program for Eurovis 2013 (Leipzig, Germany) and 2014 (Swansea, Wales), the premier European visualization publication venue, and co-founded the IEEE Vis/Infovis/VAST Doctoral Colloquium to provide mentoring to PhD candidates in visualization at the annual conference. She served on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (2003 – 2015) and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Graphics (2007 - 2010). She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA). Her current research interests include the visualization of data important to increasing student success, visualization of predictive models, visualization of data with variability or uncertainty, perceptual and illustration issues in visualization, and learning analytics. As CWIT Director, she oversees three scholars programs for undergraduates committed to increasing gender diversity in the technology fields and develops programs to increase the interest and retention of women in technology. Together, these programs have a persistence and graduation rate of over 90% in technology majors. She has garnered over $1,800,000 from government and industry sources to support CWIT initiatives in curriculum development, student support, and computing/engineering education research. In 2012, Dr. Rheingans was awarded the University System Maryland (USM) Regents Mentoring Award.

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Lee Blaney UMBC

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Dr. Lee Blaney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering at UMBC. His research primarily focuses on (1) investigating the occurrence, fate, transport, and toxicity of contaminants of emerging concern and (2) developing new technologies for resource recovery. At UMBC, he teaches courses in environmental chemistry, reaction kinetics, and chemical separations.

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Marie desJardins University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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Dr. Marie desJardins is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering and Information Technology, and Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Prior to joining the faculty in 2001, Dr. desJardins was a senior computer scientist at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Her research is in artificial intelligence, focusing on the areas of machine learning, multi-agent systems, planning, interactive AI techniques, information management, reasoning with uncertainty, and decision theory. She has mentored 12 Ph.D. students, 27 M.S. students, and 90 undergraduate researchers. She is also active in the CS education community, chairs the Maryland Steering Committee for Computer Science Education, and frequently serves as a mentor and invited speaker at CS education and outreach events.

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E. F. Charles LaBerge University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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E. F. Charles (Chuck) LaBerge is Professor of the Practice of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and Undergraduate Program Director for the Computer Engineering Program at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), where he teaches a wide variety of courses ranging from Introduction to Engineering for freshmen to Error Correcting Codes and Information Theory for graduate students. From 1975-2008, he was employed by Honeywell’s Aerospace Research and Technology Center and its predecessor organizations. His expertise and professional experience includes precision landing systems and a wide variety of aeronautical radios and applications. His technical, writing and editorial contributions have received numerous citations from both regulatory bodies and technical conferences. Dr. LaBerge is a Senior Member of IEEE, a member of Tau Beta Pi and an inductee in the Order of the Engineer. He received his BES-EE and MSE-EE, degrees, both with Honors, from The Johns Hopkins University and the PhD. in Electrical Engineering from UMBC.

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Susan Martin University of Maryland

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Dr. Martin currently serves as the Program Director for Doctoral Career and Professional Development at the University of Maryland. As a team member of both the University Career Center & The President’s Promise and The Graduate School, she creates, builds, and implements programs and services that support doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers to fully explore and actively prepare for a wide range of highly satisfying careers in academia, industry, nonprofits, and government. She has held advising, career development, administrative, research and assessment positions that directly impacted student success at research universities and in the community college setting. Her work has positively impacted hundreds of culturally diverse college students, including adult learners and transfer students, to identify and achieve their academic and professional goals. While serving as the Associate Director of the Center for Women in Technology at UMBC she was a co-investigator on a number of successful NSF funded research projects related to improving the retention and success of transfer students, underrepresented groups in STEM, and first-year computing majors. Dr. Martin earned her Ed.D. in Higher Education from The George Washington University, a M.A. in College Student Personnel from The University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Carolyn Seaman UMBC

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Dr. Seaman is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Her research generally falls under the umbrella of empirical studies of software engineering, with particular emphases on maintenance, organizational structure, communication, measurement, and technical debt. She also conducts methodological research in qualitative research methods, as well as research in computing pedagogy. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, a MS in Information and Computer Science from Georgia Tech, and a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from the College of Wooster (Ohio). She has worked in the software industry as a software engineer and consultant, and has conducted most of her research in industrial and governmental settings (e.g. IBM Canada Ltd., NASA, Samsung, Xerox).

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Gymama Slaughter University of Maryland Baltimore County

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Anne Marie Spence Baylor University

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Professor of the Practice
Mechanical Engineering

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Abstract

A diverse technology workforce remains a key requirement of sustained innovation and discovery in an increasingly global marketplace where there are expanded opportunities in high tech fields. Students who begin their college careers in community college can play an important role in growing and diversifying that workforce. The Transfer Scholars in IT and Engineering (T-SITE) program recruits, retains, and graduates academically talented transfer students in computing and engineering majors, with an emphasis on serving women, underrepresented minorities, and students with financial need. T-SITE is funded by the National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program and managed by the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

T-SITE Scholars are part of the larger CWIT community of Scholars and Affiliates, which supports academic success and professional development through a number of integrated program components. The academic support elements include a First Year Experience seminar during the first semester, regular meetings with an advisor to set goals and track individual progress, and development of leadership skills through involvement in student organizations and K-12 outreach. Through professional development activities, T-SITE Scholars are matched with faculty and peer mentors in their major, explore career options, develop lifelong career management skills, and identify internships and post-graduation jobs with the assistance of an assigned industry mentor. This holistic model of support safeguards the transfer process and nurtures the development of T-SITE Scholars as successful UMBC students and future professionals in engineering and computing.

Since 2012, T-SITE has served a total of 32 transfer students with diverse backgrounds from Maryland community colleges who are majoring in engineering or computing and have demonstrated financial need. Forty-four percent of these scholars identify as women, and 47% identify as African American or Black. Scholars in the first four cohorts came to UMBC with an average transfer GPA of 3.41 and 59 credits completed. One hundred percent of all students in the first four cohorts were retained in engineering or computing majors. The average time to graduation for T-SITE Scholars is three years after transferring to UMBC. Twelve of the thirteen scholars in the first two cohorts have graduated and eleven had attained jobs prior to graduation. Seventy-nine percent of T-SITE scholars in the first four cohorts have engaged in an internship or research experience. The fifth cohort of scholars entered the program in Fall 2016.

This poster presentation will discuss the impetus for designing scholar programs to (1) address the unique needs of transfer students (particularly women and underrepresented minorities) in computing and engineering, (2) disseminate key outcomes that highlight successful and replicable elements of the T-SITE Scholars program, and (3) discuss the challenges encountered throughout the implementation of T-SITE, as well as some ways to respond to these challenges.

Ireland, D. T., & Rheingans, P., & Blaney, L., & desJardins, M., & LaBerge, E. F. C., & Martin, S., & Seaman, C., & Slaughter, G., & Spence, A. M. (2017, June), Board # 61 : T-SITE: A UMBC Community of Transfer Scholars in Computing, Information Technology, and Engineering Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27891

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2017 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015