Collaborative Research: 2+3 Community College to Graduate Engineering Degree Program: An Innovative Pilot Model for Broadened Pathways Into Engineering Careers

诺福克州立大学与中央弗吉尼亚社区学院、北弗吉尼亚社区学院、托马斯·纳尔逊社区学院和潮水社区学院合作，将向诺福克州立大学颁发工程教育研究奖，以支持研究，以试点建立一个创新计划，利用社区大学进入工程专业的途径。完成2-3社区学院到大学课程的学生将获得三个大专学位：工程学副学士学位、理科学士学位和理科硕士学位。这一试点计划将针对两个主要受众。首先，该计划将向希望利用新实施的后9/11退伍军人法案计划支持完成教育培训的退伍军人量身定做并进行营销。其次，该项目将通过一个颇受欢迎的以团队为基础的机器人项目向高中生进行营销，该项目在吸引学生进入工程学方面有着良好的记录。项目活动分为五大类：课程连贯性；学术充实；指导、咨询和支助服务；社区建设和联网；以及评估和评价。规划阶段的活动将探索在先前对军校学生和社区大学进入工程学的道路上已确定的策略，作为课程设计的指导。项目小组将考虑更好地同步课程和课程提供的方法，并将努力发展制度化的评估机制，可用于收集有关学生表现和成功因素的有用统计数据。最后的项目报告将包括对学生和项目表现的概述，并将概述有效传播到其他社区学院和四年制校园的战略。类似于将文科大学的物理、数学和理科学生连接到工程学科的三加二本科计划，该计划有望成为吸引更多学生进入工程专业的典范。它将提供替代路径的模式，以增加具有竞争力的国家劳动力所需的工程学毕业生的数量和多样性。

This engineering education research award to Norfolk State University, in partnership with Central Virginia Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, Thomas Nelson Community College, and Tidewater Community College will support research to pilot the establishment of an innovative program to leverage the community college pathway into the engineering profession. Students completing a 2+3 community college to university program would receive three post-secondary degrees: the associate degree in engineering, the bachelor of science in engineering, and the master of science in engineering. This pilot program will target two primary audiences. First, the program will be tailored and marketed to military veterans who wish to complete their educational training using support from the newly implemented Post 9/11 GI-Bill program. Second, the program will be marketed to high school students through a popular team-based robotics program that has a good record of attracting students into engineering. Project activities are organized into five general categories: curricular coherence; academic enrichment; mentoring, advising, and support services; community building and networking; and assessment and evaluation. Planning phase activities will explore strategies that have been identified in prior studies on military students and on community college pathways into engineering as a guide for the program design. The project team will consider methods to better synchronize curricular and course offerings.and will work to develop institutionalized assessment mechanisms that can be used to collect useful statistics on student performance and success factors. The final project report will include an overview of the student and program performance, and it will outline strategies for effective dissemination to other community college and four-year campuses. Analogous to the three plus two undergraduate programs that bridge physics, math, and science students attending liberal arts universities into an engineering discipline, this program is expected to be a model for attracting a larger pool of students into the engineering profession. It will provide models for alternate pathways that can increase the number and diversity of engineering graduates needed for a competitive national workforce.