2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Complete Research paper details the unique experiences of low-income engineering transfer students by exploring the challenges they face in their journey to completing an engineering bachelor’s degree along with their unique strengths and assets. Community college students have the potential to help diversity the engineering community (Fay, 2022). Unfortunately, transfer students often experience extra challenges when transferring to 4-year bachelor-granting institutions (Townsend, 2008). For instance, they have to not only get acquainted with a new environment, but also need to integrate themselves into already existing social networks and establish new support systems at the new institution, which can be a challenge (Monroe, 2006, Walker & Okpala, 2017). In addition, given their differing socio-demographic backgrounds (Velasco et al., 2024), transfer students’ life experiences are likely to differ significantly from those of a lot of freshmen. However, these lived experiences and unique cultural experiences provide them with valuable skills and knowledge that can help them succeed in engineering. Engineering education needs to better understand and elevate these unique strengths and assets that transfer students, particularly those who are low-income or from minoritized backgrounds, possess. In line with scholars calling for a move from a deficits approach to an assets-based approach in engineering education (Bang et al., 2013, Mejia et al, 2018), the goal of the study is thus to explore and showcase not only the challenges transfer students face, but also the unique assets they possess. This study uses data from 122 diverse low-income engineering transfer students (27% Female, 48% Hispanic, 26% Asian, 55% First-generation college-going) who transferred to a 4-year minority-serving institution (both Hispanic-serving and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving) in the Southwest of the U.S and were enrolled in an scholarship program focusing on low-income engineering transfer students. As part of the scholarship program application process, students submitted essays discussing their motivation and goals for studying engineering and wanting to join the scholarship program. Using thematic analysis, essays are analyzed for personal challenges and assets students describe to have encountered on their educational journeys. The coded data are then further categorized into prominent emergent themes. Analyses show that transfer students encounter a range of challenges in their pursuit of higher education from experiencing financial need, having to manage competing responsibilities as well as societal and familial expectations to facing a lack of guidance, opportunities and social support. However, findings also show that students possess a multitude of personal assets that help them actively overcome challenges, such as their intellectual ability, their learning orientation and creativity, their practical experiences, their determination and overall well developed (inter)personal skills fostering their maturity. These findings inform the design of educational programs and practices to help mitigate existing challenges, and to also build on the strengths and assets that these low-income transfer students possess and actively contribute within the engineering education space.