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Transfer Students: Tailoring a Freshman Program to their Needs Abstract

At a large public university, the class entering the College of Engineering comprises freshmen and transfer students, and the latter are predicted to increase in number in the coming years. When transfer students move to a university engineering program, they often encounter a “Freshman Program” that impedes full articulation in transfer to the university. Freshman programs that are designed to inform traditional freshmen of the available engineering majors, and to prepare them for academic success within those majors, usually have a full year of required “Introduction to Engineering” type courses. These courses are usually prerequisites either for entry to the degree-granting programs or for subsequent required courses in any engineering path. Transfer students who cannot cover these introductory freshman engineering courses with transferred credits are often essentially relegated back to freshman status and to taking the freshman program courses—and this is not a good situation. At Virginia Tech, about 150 transfer students on average enter the College of Engineering (CoE) each fall, and anywhere from about one quarter to one third of them require the freshman program courses. In past years, we sprinkled these transfer students among the traditional freshmen in the many sections (~40) of the first engineering course. In fall 2006, however, at the prompting of the CoE Academic Affairs office, a new course was offered to replace both semesters of the freshman program for transfer students. This new course, along with a peer-mentoring program for transfer students that had been initiated the prior year, seemed to offer a much needed support system for the transfer students. The synergistic impact of the fall 2006 course and the concurrent mentoring program led to slating the course for transfers as a summer 2007 offering with the mentoring effort integrated into the course. This paper provides details on course design and administration, and on the integration of the peer-mentoring program. Student evaluations of the course and the mentoring are provided, as are insights from the summer mentors. This program, tailored for transfer students, is also suitable for true freshmen who enter with substantial advanced placement (AP) or dual enrollment credit.

Introduction

Today, many people are opting to begin their engineering education at community college and then transfer to a four-year institute. Escalation of college costs1-4 is the major motivation driving this trend,5 but community colleges offer more than just a less expensive trek through the first two years. They often provide a smaller, more intimate campus, and a greater flexibility in class scheduling, with more evening classes. They also offer an opportunity to pick up remedial math and science for those who decide to pursue engineering too late to prepare for that path in high school.6 With a transfer in mind, taking fundamental freshman- and sophomore-level courses at a community college can also mitigate a rocky academic start toward a four-year degree. For those recent high school graduates and those older students who are unsure of which major to pursue, less expensive part-time academic explorations at community college offer the ability to hold a full time job while deciding on future directions. Most engineering transfer students do hale from community colleges, and for non-elite receiving universities, the number of community college transfer students is on the rise and expected to increase steadily over the coming years.6, 7 In fact, a recent report by both the National Academy

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Kampe, J., & Edmister, W., & Boone, C., & Watford, B. (2008, June), Transfer Students: Tailoring A Freshman Program To Their Needs Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3784