CAREER: Understanding Community College Transfer Students' STEM Choice, Performance, Persistence, and STEM Baccalaureate Degree Attainment: A Typological Analysis

ECR(教育和人力资源核心研究)计划强调STEM教育的基础研究，这将产生该领域的基础知识。随着转校生继续利用社区大学作为攻读STEM学位的垫脚石，了解这些学生面临的独特挑战以及这一重要学生群体的多样性非常重要。本研究将发展一种转学学生类型，并探讨其与转学学生的STEM选择、表现、毅力和STEM学位成就的关系。作为对STEM教育中一个重要但经常被忽视的学生群体进行此类类型学研究的首批努力之一，这项研究将通过在迁移类型学与教育结果和大学经历之间建立更好的联系来促进知识的发展。这一步对于确定显著不同的转学学生亚群在实现STEM成功方面表现出的不同模式至关重要。这些信息将帮助高等教育机构更有效和高效地分配资源，为每个转移分组量身定做干预措施。这一方法将更全面地了解转学学生通向STEM成功的途径，以及每个转学亚群之间的细微差别。将通过混合方法收集数据，以了解社区学院转学学生在信仰、目标和行为方面的差异程度。本研究将采用定量的方法对社区学院转校生中存在的特定类型群进行识别。然后，该项目将调查转移类型参考组与学生STEM选择、表现、坚持和完成STEM学士学位之间的关系。对每个参照组的学生进行一系列深入的定性访谈，将使他们对转移学生经历的独特挑战有更深入的了解。访谈还将揭示这些学生如何通过他们的方式进入大学和STEM教育，他们应用了什么战略，以及应该制定哪些政策和做法来最好地促进每个群体的转移，以实现学业成功。这项研究的结果将为高等教育中的研究人员、教职员工、管理人员和政策制定者提供有意义的洞察，了解转学学生群体的多样性和复杂性。更重要的是，该项目进一步建立了每个转学参考群体的转学类型与教育结果和大学经历之间的联系，从而可以为转学学生提供量身定做的支持。这些发现还可以提出有效的干预和预防计划，帮助转学学生在获得STEM学习领域的学士学位的过程中避免犯下错误和错误的转弯，将转学学生的机会转化为成功。

The ECR (Education and Human Resources Core Research) program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that will generate foundational knowledge in the field. As transfer students continue to use community colleges as stepping stones to pursue STEM degrees, it is important to understand the unique challenges these students encounter and the diversity within this important student population. This study will develop a transfer student typology and investigate its relationships with transfer students' STEM choice, performance, persistence, and STEM degree attainment. As one of the first efforts to develop such a typology on an important, yet frequently ignored student population in STEM education, the research will advance knowledge by building better connections between transfer typology and educational outcomes and college experiences. This step will be critical to identifying what significantly different subgroups of transfer students demonstrate different patterns in achieving STEM success. This information will help higher education institutions allocate resources more effectively and efficiently to tailor interventions to each of the transfer subgroups. This approach will provide a more holistic understanding of transfer students' pathways to STEM success and nuanced differences between each of the transfer subpopulations. Data will be collected through a mixed-method approach to understand the extent to which community college transfer students vary based on their beliefs, goals, and behaviors. Quantitative methods will be used to identify the specific typology groups existing in community college transfer students. The project will then investigate the relationships between transfer typology reference groups and students' STEM choice, performance, persistence, and completion of STEM baccalaureate degrees. A series of in-depth qualitative interviews with students in each reference group will provide a deeper understanding of unique challenges that transfer students experience. The interviews will also uncover how these students navigate their ways to college and STEM education, what strategies they have applied, and what policies and practices should be developed to best facilitate transfers of each group to achieve academic success. Outcomes from this research study will offer researchers, faculty members, administrators, and policymakers in higher education meaningful insights into the diversity and complexity of the transfer student population. More importantly, this project takes a step further to build connections between the transfer typology and educational outcomes and college experiences for each of the transfer reference groups, and thus it can lead to development and implication of tailored support for transfer students. The findings can also suggest effective intervention and prevention programs that help transfer students avoid taking missteps and wrong turns as they progress to obtaining baccalaureate degrees in STEM fields of study, transforming access into success for transfer students.