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Completing the engineering and computer science transfer pathway: Transfer students’ post-matriculation experiences through a four-year institution

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Conference

2022 CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity)

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

February 20, 2022

Start Date

February 20, 2022

End Date

July 20, 2022

Conference Session

Technical Session 11 - Paper 2: Completing the engineering and computer science transfer pathway: Transfer students’ post-matriculation experiences through a four-year institution

Tagged Topics

Diversity and CoNECD Paper Sessions

Page Count

28

DOI

10.18260/1-2--39108

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/39108

Download Count

440

Paper Authors

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David B Knight Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490

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David B. Knight is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and Special Assistant to the Dean for Strategic Plan Implementation at Virginia Tech. He is also Director of Research of the Academy for Global Engineering at Virginia Tech and is affiliate faculty with the Higher Education Program. His research tends to be at the macro-scale, focused on a systems-level perspective of how engineering education can become more effective, efficient, and inclusive, tends to leverage large-scale institutional, state, or national data sets, and considers the intersection between policy and organizational contexts. He has B.S., M.S., and M.U.E.P. degrees from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Higher Education from Pennsylvania State University.

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Amy Richardson P.E. Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Education

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Amy Richardson is a Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech in the Department of Engineering Education along with an Assistant Professor of Engineering at Northern Virginia Community College. She has been teaching math and engineering courses at community college for the past 12 years. She has a BS and MS in Civil Engineering at the University of Cincinnati and is a registered Professional Engineer.

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Dustin Michael Grote Virginia Tech Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9189-2424

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Dustin M. Grote holds a PhD from Virginia Tech in Higher Education Research and Policy and currently serves as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He is currently involved in several NSF-funded projects spanning undergraduate and graduate STEM education. His interdisciplinary research agenda includes graduate funding in STEM, transdisciplinary, experiential and adaptive lifelong learning, undergraduate education policies, systems thinking, organizational change, broadening participation in engineering, improving community college transfer pathways in engineering, curricular complexity in engineering, and assessment and evaluation in higher education contexts. Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., Dustin served as a Director of Admissions at Community College of Denver and in Outreach and Access Initiatives for the Colorado Department of Higher Education. Beyond academia Dustin enjoys spending time outdoors hiking, mountain biking, skiing and playing sports with his wife, kids, and dog.

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Walter C. Lee Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-5082-1411

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Dr. Walter Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Education and the director for research in the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED), both at Virginia Tech. His research broadly focuses on inclusion, diversity, and educational equity—particularly as it relates to students from groups that are historically marginalized or underrepresented in engineering. Lee received his Ph.D. in engineering education from Virginia Tech, his M.S. in industrial & systems engineering from Virginia Tech, and his B.S. in industrial engineering from Clemson University.

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Bevlee A. Watford Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Watford is Professor of Engineering Education, Associate Dean for Equity and Engagement and Executive Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity.

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Janice Leshay Hall Florida International University

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Janice L. Hall is a Postdoctoral Associate in the School of Universal Computing, Construction and Engineering Education (SUCCEED) at Florida International University. She is also a member of the inaugural cohort for the ASEE 2021 Engineering Fellows (eFellows) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Her research centers on broadening the participation of women and minorities in the engineering workforce. She holds a B.S. in Biological Engineering and an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering, both from Mississippi State University. As a 2015 recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Hall obtained her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech.

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Hannah Glisson

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Abstract

Keywords: Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology; Transfer; Undergraduate, Two-year institution

Strengthening the community college to four-year institution transfer pathway has been identified as a strategy that is not meeting its full potential with respect to broadening participation in engineering. Much research has focused on credit equivalencies and articulation agreements to understand how students’ credit loss can be minimized. This prior work has sought to ensure curriculum is in alignment across institutions so that courses may transfer in ways that enable continued progression to degree without needing to re-take required courses. A growing body of literature, including from our own group, has focused on some of the on-the-ground ways in which advisors at both the community college and four-year institution as well as smartly delivered information from other sources can help students build knowledge about the transfer process to ensure seamless transition. This accumulation of “transfer student capital” has been shown to be important as students navigate between institutional settings. Once a student successfully transfers to a four-year institution, they must engage in a variety of different adjustment processes, including academic adjustments, social adjustments, and psychosocial adjustments. These post-matriculation adjustments are just as important as the pre-matriculation factors that help determine students’ persistence in engineering and ultimate timely degree completion.

In this session, we will focus on how engineering and computer science students worked through these different adjustments to the four-year institution. Unlike prior research that has focused on the pre-matriculation and immediate post-matriculating timing, we focus on engineering transfer students who have been at the four-year institution for one or more full academic years. Such an approach will allow our findings to illuminate the long transition process so that we may understand whether or when students no longer think of themselves as “transfer students” but instead as fully integrated members of the community.

Our session will draw on data collected from the Virginia Tech – Network for Engineering Transfer Students (VT-NETS) program, which is an early integration transfer partnership between Northern Virginia Community College, Virginia Western Community College, and Virginia Tech‘s College of Engineering. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Scholarships for STEM Students program (S-STEM), the program aims to broaden participation in engineering for minoritized, low-income, and first-generation students by improving the transfer pathway in engineering through early integration programming and advising structures that help to streamline vertical transfer. VT-NETS enables program participants to receive scholarships in each of four years of participation—full tuition coverage for two years at the community college, and $10,000 annual scholarships at Virginia Tech post-transfer. Beyond receiving the scholarship, VT-NETS students also gain access to intentional pre-transfer programs and activities including cohort-building, intrusive advising, university visits, a study abroad experience, and undergraduate research. Although only participation in the cohort-building activities and intrusive advising are required, the majority of students take advantage of most other opportunities. VT-NETS students also have access to advisors and faculty at both the community colleges and Virginia Tech. Each of these pre-transfer programs provides support and experiences to smooth the transition between institutions. Following transfer, students have access to College-level student support services and have maintained their connections with their peers in their cohort.

Our session will present findings from interview data with the VT-NETS participants after they had been enrolled at Virginia Tech for at least a full academic year. The primary area of exploration for these interviews with students was to better understand the impact of intentional interventions on the trajectory of former community college transfer students enrolled in the Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering and extend our understanding of transfer student capital in the trajectory of students who began at a community college. Topics that we will report on include how students felt they adapted to a new academic environment, physical location, and connected with the larger community through activities such as co-curricular engagement. We prompt students to specifically describe how elements such as prior classes, faculty, advising, the scholarship program, and co-curricular activities either facilitated or inhibited their transition processes. Lastly we ask students to retrospectively indicate whether the transfer path could or should have been adjusted as well as describe shifts in and plans for future career trajectories. In combination, these interviews shed insights on the post-matriculation segment of the transfer process, which can often be overlooked in the literature.

Knight, D. B., & Richardson, A., & Grote, D. M., & Lee, W. C., & Watford, B. A., & Hall, J. L., & Glisson, H. (2022, February), Completing the engineering and computer science transfer pathway: Transfer students’ post-matriculation experiences through a four-year institution Paper presented at 2022 CoNECD (Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity) , New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/1-2--39108

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