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）项目强调基础STEM教育研究，这将产生该领域的基础知识。随着转学生继续将社区学院作为攻读STEM学位的垫脚石，了解这些学生遇到的独特挑战以及这一重要学生群体的多样性非常重要。本研究将开发一个转学生类型，并调查其与转学生的STEM选择、表现、坚持和STEM学位获得的关系。作为对STEM教育中一个重要但经常被忽视的学生群体开发这种类型学的首批努力之一，该研究将通过在迁移类型学与教育成果和大学经历之间建立更好的联系来推进知识。这一步对于确定哪些显著不同的转学生小组在实现STEM成功方面表现出不同的模式至关重要。这些信息将有助于高等教育机构更有效地分配资源，为每个转移子群体量身定制干预措施。这种方法将更全面地了解转校生通往STEM成功的途径，以及每个转校生亚群之间的细微差异。数据将通过混合方法收集，以了解社区大学转学生在信仰、目标和行为上的差异程度。定量方法将用于识别社区学院转学生中存在的具体类型群体。然后，该项目将调查迁移类型学参考组与学生的STEM选择、表现、持久性和完成STEM学士学位之间的关系。对每个参考组的学生进行一系列深入的定性访谈，将更深入地了解转学生所经历的独特挑战。访谈还将揭示这些学生如何进入大学和STEM教育，他们采用了哪些策略，以及应该制定哪些政策和实践来最好地促进每个群体的转移以取得学业成功。这项研究的结果将为高等教育的研究人员、教职员工、管理人员和政策制定者提供有关转学生群体多样性和复杂性的有意义的见解。更重要的是，本项目进一步建立了每个转学参考群体的转学类型与教育成果和大学经历之间的联系，从而可以为转校生提供量身定制的支持。研究结果还可以提出有效的干预和预防方案，帮助转校生在获得STEM领域的学士学位的过程中避免犯错误和错误，将转校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.