2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The diverse group of students served by community colleges holds great potential in contributing to the desired diversification of the engineering workforce (Fay, 2022). However, more effective support for community college students transferring to four-year institutions is needed to ensure their success (Strickland, 2018), as transfer students commonly experience a “transfer shock” when transitioning from community colleges to four-year bachelor-degree awarding institutions. This can affect their academic achievement, retention, and degree attainment negatively (Elliot & Lakin, 2016, Smith et al., 2022, Zhang, 2019). One way to assist transfer students in the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions is the provision of structured support programs, such as NSF’s S-STEM programs. However, to develop the best support system possible, we need to have a clear understanding of what drives students to engage in engineering in the first place, what obstacles they might be perceiving in their path to success, and what unique assets and experiences they bring to engineering. In the current study, we are investigating students’ motivations for pursuing engineering, being part of a scholarship program, the obstacles they are perceiving and the goals they are ultimately looking to achieve. To this end, we analyzed data collected from 122 students in an S-STEM scholarship program for low-income engineering transfer students. As part of the scholarship program application process, students submitted essays discussing their career goals, their motivation for joining the scholarship program and the obstacles they are perceiving for their future success. Using thematic analysis, essays were analyzed for prominent emergent themes. Results revealed a nuanced picture of students’ manifold career goals, the challenges they encounter along their career path as well the needs students hope to address by joining a scholarship program. In addition, they possess unique assets that will support their success. Having a deeper understanding on what drives the students involved in the scholarship, their needs and assets will allow us to improve and create better support programs to help and empower engineering students from diverse backgrounds to persist in their degree programs and future advanced study and engineering careers.