2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Research has shown that few community college students engage with STEM professional societies, often due to limited time and financial resources. This is particularly true for women, who are underrepresented in many STEM fields – specifically, in engineering and technology (1). With more students beginning their postsecondary education at a two-year college, encouraging and supporting them through transfer to complete their bachelor’s degrees is critical to addressing the lack of gender diversity in STEM.
This study focuses on women in community college who participate in a program that offers free membership to the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), a STEM professional society that supports women in engineering and technology, with the goal of providing a sense of community to support them through transfer and into their STEM career. This longitudinal mixed-methods research is in its second year of a three-year study, utilizing data from the National Student Clearinghouse data and interviews to determine whether SWE membership influences students’ decisions to declare a STEM major and transfer and complete a STEM degree.
Preliminary findings from Year 1 show that 85% of students have declared a STEM major, with the remaining students enrolled in General Studies or having not yet declared a major. One-third are attending college on a part-time basis, which will likely result in a longer time to transfer. Qualitative results indicate that students benefit from professional society membership by meeting women engineers in industry, understanding what an engineer does, and building confidence to pursue their own career goals.
The findings from this research will influence professional STEM societies and higher education institutions in developing ways to encourage greater engagement among community college students to support their continued STEM involvement.

(1) Knaphus-Soran, E., Rincon, R., & Schaefer, A. (2020, June), Women on the Two-year Transfer Pathway in Engineering Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35586