2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 409: Toward Understanding Engineering Transfer Students' Transitions from Community Colleges to 4-year Institutions

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Community college students who transfer to 4-year institutions for engineering degrees are known to face significant adversity. Some common challenges they face include having minimal financial resources, a lack of engineering-oriented mentorship, and prolonged time to degree. Engineering transfer students are naturally diverse, ranging in age, experience, and motivation. Some have carved paths that include, for example, military service, starting a family of their own, or switching their career aims. The nuanced nature of the transfer student experience challenges higher education professionals to identify innovative ways for transfer students to meet their individualized goals.

The engineering transfer students aim to transition from a previous institution to a 4-year baccalaureate institution, obtain an engineering undergraduate or graduate degree, and, finally, transition into an engineering-oriented career. These are major transitions. Schlossberg has identified factors that influence an individual’s ability to cope with their experienced transitions, namely, situation, self, support, and strategies. Through this lens, the transfer experiences and transfer shocks undergone by these ambitious students may be better understood and improved.

A partnership between a 4-year institution, the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and two community colleges, Imperial Valley College (IVC) and Southwestern College (SWC), has been formed to better understand and support transfer engineering students as they make major transitions in, through, and out of their respective institutions. Through this partnership, a supportive program called EMPOWER has been devised to assemble cohorts of Pell-grant-eligible engineering transfer students so that their diverse and timely needs can be addressed. Scholarships and high-impact practices have been offered to these students. Program activities include cross-campus visits, faculty, and alumni mentorship, financially supported research opportunities, and cohort-supporting social opportunities. Through focus groups and survey questionnaires, the transition experience for these students is further investigated. In this paper, an outline is provided detailing the common challenges faced by engineering transfer students as they transition toward their careers, along with high-impact practices to support them.

Authors

Prof. Karcher Morris http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8628-4280 University of California, San Diego [biography]

Karcher Morris is an Assistant Teaching Professor at UC San Diego. Morris joined UC San Diego's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department within the Jacobs School of Engineering as an Assistant Teaching Professor in 2020.
Dr. Jaclyn Duerr University of California, San Diego [biography]

Impassioned by her own transfer student experience, Dr. Jaclyn Duerr acts as an advocate and agent for student success initiatives at the university-level. She has been collaborating and creating retention services and programs for thirteen years, currently serving as the Director of the IDEA Engineering Student Center at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Duerr specializes in engineering student success, transfer student success, academic difficulty, as well as sense of belonging among commuter students. Within our technology saturated culture, Dr. Duerr seeks to create accessible, cutting-edge, student-centered programs and services in efforts to build students’ connection to the university, other students, and their goals.
Dr. Saharnaz Baghdadchi University of California, San Diego [biography]

Saharnaz Baghdadchi is an Associate Teaching Professor at UC San Diego. She is interested in scholarly teaching and employs active learning techniques to empower students to attain an expert level of critical thinking. Her expertise facilitates students' journey towards connecting facts with practical knowledge to tackle intricate engineering challenges. She excels in crafting innovative assessments and explores their impact on enhancing students' learning outcomes and fostering an inclusive educational environment.
Prof. Bill Lin University of California, San Diego [biography]

Bill Lin received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985, 1988, and 1991, respectively. He is currently a Professor and the Department Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. His research has led to more than 200 journal and conference publications, including a number of Best Paper awards and nominations. He also holds five awarded patents. He has been the General Chair and on the executive and technical program committee of many IEEE and ACM conferences, and he has been Associate and Guest Editors for several IEEE and ACM journals.

Download paper (2.56 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session

For those interested in:

Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology