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）计划强调基础STEM教育研究，将产生该领域的基础知识。由于转学生继续使用社区学院作为攻读STEM学位的垫脚石，因此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。本研究将建立一个转学生类型学，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。作为在STEM教育中重要但经常被忽视的学生群体上开发这种类型学的首批努力之一，该研究将通过在转移类型学与教育成果和大学经历之间建立更好的联系来促进知识。这一步将是至关重要的，以确定哪些显着不同的转学生亚组展示了不同的模式，在实现STEM的成功。这一信息将有助于高等教育机构更有效地分配资源，使干预措施适合每个转学分组。这种方法将提供一个更全面的了解转学学生的途径，以干成功和每个转移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根据他们的信仰，目标和行为而变化的程度。定量的方法将被用来确定社区学院转学生中存在的特定类型群体。然后，该项目将调查转移类型学参考组和学生的STEM选择，表现，坚持和完成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，将更深入地了解转移学生经历的独特挑战。访谈还将揭示这些学生如何导航他们的方式到大学和STEM教育，他们已经应用了什么策略，以及应该制定什么政策和实践，以最好地促进每个群体的转移，以实现学术成功。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对转学生群体多样性和复杂性的有意义的见解。更重要的是，这个项目采取了进一步的迁移类型学和教育成果和大学经验之间的连接，为每个转移参考组，因此，它可以导致有针对性的支持转学生的发展和影响。研究结果还可以建议有效的干预和预防计划，帮助转学生在获得STEM研究领域的学士学位时避免失误和错误的转折，将转学生的成功转化为成功。

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.