2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Students who transfer from one institution to another face a variety of challenges as they explore transfer pathways and acclimate themselves to their new institution’s policies and practices, including lack of sense of belonging, navigating degree requirements and developing engineering identity. These challenges represent significant barriers to students, negatively impact their retention, and disproportionately affect low-income and underrepresented minority students in STEM. We report on our initial efforts to establish a successful transfer partnership between a minority-serving 2-year college and a 4-year degree granting institution to promote engineering degree pathways that have a high potential for providing economic mobility opportunities to underserved student populations. Our effort is part of a larger initiative that aims to establish an engaged community of practice of 10 transfer partnerships between 2- and 4- year institutions state-wide. The goal of the broader STEM Transfer Partnership program is to increase bachelor’s degree completion of low-income transfer students.

Our initial efforts focused on identifying shared data needs around student success barriers, establishing inter-institutional data sharing protocols, and developing a framework to significantly increase, diversify, and enhance our existing outreach, recruitment and academic advising practices in support of these students. We present a holistic data model for transfer pathway (Academic Success, Career Preparation, College and Transfer Navigation, Basic Needs and Funding, and Psychological Factors) to build on the Transfer Student Capital model (Moser, 2014) to obtain a more complete understanding of educational barriers as they interplay with each other.

BIPOC, low-income, and older graduates are more likely to be transfer students than other students (Wootan, 2021). Thus two-year colleges provide a critical pathway for diversifying the engineering workforce. Highline is both an AANAPISI and an MSI, with over 70% BIPOC students. About three quarters of UWT’s undergraduate students population are transfer students, with 54% first generation learners and 34% underrepresented minorities, most from 2-year institutions. As such the practices that we establish in our partnership will have significant potential for institutional scale-up of DEI practices to positively impact the educational experience of underrepresented students in engineering.