2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Transfer Success: A Qualitative Approach to Understanding Transfer Student Experiences at a Teaching-Focused Institution

Presented at Empowering Students: Self-Efficacy, Advising, and Transfer Success

Community colleges serve a diverse student body in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and nationality. They are critical access points in post-secondary education for first-generation students, veterans, and working parents. Community college students who seek to transfer to a 4-year school often struggle with social and academic interactions that are important factors in building a sense of belonging to the receiving institution. Existing research on the transfer student experience mostly focuses on large research universities, while a majority of community colleges are smaller in comparison and have student-focused environments.

This study focuses on community college transfer students who graduated from the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Seattle University, a teaching-focused four-year institution in the Pacific Northwest Region, between Spring 2012 and Spring 2022. Seattle University has received national recognition among four-year institutions for its work in attracting and supporting community college transfer students. The percentage of transfers among students admitted to the ECE program has varied from 25% to 79% in recent years.

The goal of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge on factors that influence the success of community college transfer students, while filling in a knowledge gap that exists in the role that the size of receiving institutions play in this context. For this exploratory study, we use data from senior exit surveys and senior personal statements (also known as reflection papers) to capture in-depth and rich descriptions of transfer student experiences. Thematic analysis is used with an inductive approach to allow themes to emerge from the data collected. For the next phase of this study, we aim to further probe these themes by conducting targeted surveys and focus groups to better understand factors that influence the transfer student experience.

Authors

Dr. Shiny Abraham Seattle University [biography]

Shiny Abraham is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University. She received the B.E. degree in Telecommunication Engineering from Visveswaraiah Technological University (VTU), India in 2007 and Ph.D. from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA in 2012. Her research interests span the areas of Wireless Communication, Remote Environmental Monitoring using Internet of Things (IoT) Technology, and Engineering Education Research. She has served in various officer positions for the IEEE and ASEE and serves on the Board of Inclusive Engineering Consortium (IEC).
Dr. Agnieszka Miguel Seattle University [biography]

Agnieszka Miguel received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2001 from the University of Washington, and MSEE and BSEE from Florida Atlantic University in 1996 and 1994. Dr. Miguel's professional interests involve image processing, machine learning, a
Dr. Kenneth A. Connor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4216-763X Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Kenneth Connor is Program Officer at the Inclusive Engineering Consortium (IEC), whose mission is to enable MSI ECE programs to produce more and better prepared graduates from groups that have been historically underrepresented in ECE careers. He is also an emeritus professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he taught courses on electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation, plasma physics, electric power, and general engineering. His research involves plasma physics, electromagnetics, photonics, biomedical sensors, engineering education, diversity in the engineering workforce, and technology enhanced learning. He learned problem solving from his father (who ran a gray iron foundry), his mother (a nurse) and grandparents (dairy farmers). He has had the great good fortune to always work with amazing people, most recently the members and leadership of the IEC from HBCU, HSI, and TCU ECE programs and the faculty, staff and students of the Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) ERC, where he was Education Director until his retirement in 2018. He was RPI ECSE Department Head from 2001 to 2008 and served on the board of the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) from 2003 to 2008. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE.

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