2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this paper, we use both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine transfer student’s in a scholarship program to better understand their university experiences and what drives them to succeed. The Student Pathways in Engineering and Computing for Transfers (SPECTRA) program is an NSF S-STEM (Award#1834081) that aims to aid students in their transfer from two-year college programs into Clemson University's College of Engineering and Computing and Applied Science (CECAS). In this study, we implemented a modified version of the Motivation and Attitudes in Engineering (MAE) survey to a cohort of students in the SPECTRA program (n=16). The MAE survey was developed and validated by Clemson researchers in 2017 and has been taken by the students within CECAS every year since Spring 2021. The purpose of the survey is to better understand what motivates students to pursue engineering, assess their identities as engineers, gauge their sense of belonging within their communities, as well as several other functions which will not be explored in this paper. At the time of this study, participating SPECTRA scholars were midway through a one credit course in which they were expected to work as teams on various undergraduate research projects. These projects were facilitated under the supervision of a graduate student instructor, who was employed through the SPECTRA program, and a CO-PI of the program. The course is mandatory for first year SPECTRA students and the intent of the course is to support the construction of student cohorts, expose scholars to research, and to develop their skills as engineers. Results show that the students feel a high sense of belonging in their SPECTRA course and are motivated by several career outcome expectations, the highest of which was having job security and opportunity. Following the analysis of survey results, we analyzed interviews with SPECTRA students where they discussed their experience in their research course. Interview data suggests the students find several values in the course including working with graduate students and learning to develop professional skills. As the MAE survey was also conducted with students throughout all of CECAS (n=1174), we are able to compare the results of SPECTRA students with data from across the entire college. Preliminary results show some statistically significant differences between SPECTRA students and all of CECAS in subcategories within student sense of belonging and future-oriented motivation. The qualitative data from interviews was used to further explore these findings.