2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

As community college students transfer to four-year institutions, they commonly encounter a phenomenon called “transfer shock” that can impact their academic success negatively (Smith et al, 2021). Along with other issues, one of the main issues transfer students face is a lack of social integration at the new institution. This includes a lack of personal relationships with faculty as well as no integration into a peer group (Monroe, 2006, Walker & Okpala, 2017). Qualitative research has shown that this lack of personal connection can be linked to less help seeking behavior shown by transfer students, which, in turn, is likely to affect their academic success negatively (Elliott & Lakin, 2021). One of the tools that can help address this issue is the facilitation of quality interactions with faculty and peers through mentoring (Dhin & Zhang, 2020; Smith & Van Aken, 2020; Winterer et al., 2020). To help increase the number of low-income community college students who successfully transfer to four-year-institutions, graduate with an engineering baccalaureate degree, and enter the STEM workforce/graduate school, the current project, funded through an NSF S-STEM grant, developed a comprehensive scholarship program to help underrepresented low-income students from diverse backgrounds. To address the issue of social integration, the comprehensive scholarship program included structured faculty and peer mentoring that transfer students enrolled in the program received as part of their participation. On the one hand, based on their chosen engineering major, they were matched with an individual faculty mentor to provide them with guidance. On the other hand, they were matched with a more advanced transfer student in their major to promote social integration. The aim of the current study is to showcase the mentoring program and students’ perceptions of the mentoring program in terms of its benefits and opportunities for improvement. Findings will help inform the improvement of the existing program and the development of future mentoring programs that aim to specifically support transfer students.