2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The 2TO4 Project - Facilitated Transition from 2-Year to 4-Year Electrical and Computer Engineering Studies by Building Student/Faculty Networks (WIP)

Presented at Poster Session-Electrical and Computer Engineering Division (ECE)

The *** is a nonprofit organization that facilitates collective efforts through equitable partnerships between its 21 MSI core members, 15 PWI affiliate members, 8 corporate members and other collaborating organizations. The *** 2TO4 Project builds on its Pathways to Success program to support students who begin their studies at a community college (CC) or other 2-year institution by providing financial support, mentoring and other personalized transition support, professional guidance, and community engagement.

The 2TO4 network of CCs consists of 20 sub-networks built around the 20 4-year MSIs that are core *** members. The vision of 2TO4 is to double the total number of students following this pathway to their BS degree in ECE by sharing promising practices and providing robust transition support infrastructure and increased financial support for CC students. Participating CCs become members of *** and engage in equitable partnerships with 4-year MSIs and PWIs, industry and DoD labs to implement the various building blocks of 2TO4.

During the first year of this multi-year effort, a base version of 2TO4 was created. Program leadership began working through institutional challenges with the 60+ program partners, regular meetings were scheduled, and a general communication infrastructure was rolled out. The first cohort of more than two dozen student participants was selected along with individual faculty and staff who create and deliver student support resources.

During the second year of the project, the number of participating students increased and support infrastructure and programs expanded. The guiding principles of Asset Driven Equitable Partnerships (ADEP) were used to build connections between MSIs and CCs by co-creating and co-delivering new learning opportunities. A new seminar series was developed on Talking about Transforming Transfer: Re-conceptualizing Engineering Transfer to Broaden Participation in Engineering along with a series of in-person and online facilitated meetings on how dedicated engineering transfer professionals can learn to do their job Better Together.
In the third year of the project, new programmatic elements are focused on addressing the very different student experiences at the 20 local hubs because transfer processes and local support infrastructures vary greatly by institution and state. Supported students will be brought together at an in-person meeting in March 2025 to build common ground by having teams co-develop and co-deliver outreach activities, aided by academic and industry mentors. Finally, the hub-model is being implemented by *** industry members, built around schools they work with that have the potential to attract and retain more diverse students in ECE programs. This latter effort will impact both the quality and sustainability of the 2TO4 project.

2TO4 assessment is focused on the extent to which each programmatic component is implemented with fidelity and the program has built the necessary capacity to support students. Formative feedback from each participant is collected and student progress is tracked. Key to this stage of the project is building trust and equitable partnerships, along with making necessary programmatic changes. The developing student/faculty networks described above have resulted from the identification of both problems and opportunities.

Authors

Dr. Kenneth A Connor http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4216-763X Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute [biography]

Kenneth Connor is Program Officer at the Inclusive Engineering Consortium (IEC), whose mission is to enable MSI ECE programs to produce more and better prepared graduates from groups that have been historically underrepresented in ECE careers. He is also an emeritus professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he taught courses on electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation, plasma physics, electric power, and general engineering. His research involves plasma physics, electromagnetics, photonics, biomedical sensors, engineering education, diversity in the engineering workforce, and technology enhanced learning. He learned problem solving from his father (who ran a gray iron foundry), his mother (a nurse) and grandparents (dairy farmers). He has had the great good fortune to always work with amazing people, most recently the members and leadership of the IEC from HBCU, HSI, and TCU ECE programs and the faculty, staff and students of the Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) ERC, where he was Education Director until his retirement in 2018. He was RPI ECSE Department Head from 2001 to 2008 and served on the board of the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) from 2003 to 2008. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE.
Prof. Miguel Velez-Reyes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6983-7250 University of Texas at El Paso [biography]

Dr. Miguel Velez-Reyes is the George W. Edwards/El Paso Electric Distinguished Professor in Engineering and Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). He also holds a joint appointment with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as a Senior Scientist.
Dr. Velez-Reyes is an accomplished educator, researcher and mentor. He is an experienced researcher in exploitation of remote sensing data for earth system science, defense and security, and space situational awareness. His research focuses on integrating physical, statistical, and machine-learning approaches for remote sensing signal analytics. His work is presented in over 180 publications in journals, book chapters, and conference proceedings, and has supervised over 60 post-doctoral, doctoral and master students. Dr. Velez-Reyes is a first generation in college student who received the BSEE degree from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPR M), in 1985, and the MSEE, the Electrical Eng. D., and the PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1988, 1988, and 1992 respectively. He chairs the SPIE Conference on Algorithms, Technologies and Applications for Multispectral and Hyperspectral Imaging. His technical achievements and service to the community have been recognized with the distinction of Fellow of SPIE (The International Society for Optics and Photonics) for his contributions to hyperspectral image processing, and Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of Puerto Rico. In 1997, he was one of 60 recipients from across the United States and its territories of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House. He received the IEEE Walter Fee Out-standing Young Engineer Award in 1999. He is a board member of the Inclusive Engineering Consortium and an advocate to provide access to excellent education to students from underserved populations and foster social mobility of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Furthermore, he is a life member of SHPE and SACNAS, and Senior Member of IEEE. He is also a member of AIAA, ASEE, and AGU.
Dr. Barry J. Sullivan Electrical & Computer Engineering Department Heads Assn [biography]

Barry J. Sullivan is Director of Program Development for the Inclusive Engineering Consortium. His 40-year career includes significant experience as a researcher, educator, and executive in industry, academia, and the non-profit sector. He has developed
Elizabeth Hibbler Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration (CIEC)
Michelle Klein Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. Heads Assoc. (ECEDHA)
Dr. Bruk T Berhane Florida International University [biography]

Dr. Bruk T. Berhane received his bachelorâ€™s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland in 2003. He then completed a masterâ€™s degree in engineering management at George Washington University in 2007. In 2016, he earned a Ph
Prof. Petru Andrei Florida A&M University - Florida State University [biography]

Dr. Petru Andrei is Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Florida A&M University and Florida Stat University (FAMU-FSU) College of Engineering. He is the FSU campus education director for the NSF-ERC Future Renewable El

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The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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