The untapped community: Community colleges as an opportunity to broaden participation in engineering

到2022年，对工程师的需求预计将超过他们预期的学位课程毕业人数100万。随着该国人口结构的变化，也迫切需要吸引妇女和传统上在工程领域代表性不足的群体，以解决劳动力短缺问题。社区学院非常适合成为这些努力的资源，有可能增加这些合格工程师的数量和多样性。虽然社区学院近年来受到了广泛的关注，但人们对社区学院工程专业学生在社区学院完成课程并转入人生的下一个阶段（例如，认可的工程计划或他们的职业生涯）。由于这段时间严重影响学生选择的工程职业道路，本研究旨在了解社区学院工程专业学生的生活和讲述经验，特别关注那些代表性不足的群体（URG）。由于这是一个新兴的，多样化的人才库，有希望满足劳动力的需求，这个项目有可能发现的障碍和催化剂，URG的经验，因为他们在他们的教育在多种情况下的进步。该项目涉及跨越三个美国人口普查地区的各种社区学院课程，可以为全国各地的社区学院课程和四年制机构提供信息。这项工作还利用了国家科学基金会先前在社区学院投资的进展，同时解决了社会正义问题，如不平等和排斥，当特定学生群体（这里是社区学院学生）获得学士学位的途径较少时，这些问题就会持续下去。具体来说，该项目将解决以下研究问题：RQ 1：什么是生活和讲述的故事，社区大学工程专业的学生从URG？第二个问题：URG社区大学的学生如何理解他们的经历，以及这些经历与环境的关系如何影响他们未来的教育和职业计划？RQ 3：如果有的话，社区学院工程专业学生的叙述以什么方式揭示了压迫、特权和不平等的问题？在这个叙事探究项目中，该项目将对弗吉尼亚州、德克萨斯州和亚利桑那州三个社区学院系统中代表性不足的群体的参与者进行一系列深入访谈，这些社区学院系统中的选定机构都为代表性不足的群体的大量学生提供服务。 这些社区学院是故意选择的，因为它们与具有工程项目的四年制机构关系密切和/或签订了衔接协议。更好地了解学生体验有望积极主动地制定策略，为学生从社区大学学习开始就攻读四年制学位做好定位和准备。此外，这项研究的结果有望揭示为什么现有的提高四年制大学转学率的努力效果有限，这可以为学术界，工业界和政府提供信息。

By the year 2022, the demand for engineers is projected to exceed their anticipated graduation from degree programs by 1 million. With the shifting demographics of the country, there is also an imperative need to attract women and people from groups traditionally underrepresented in engineering to address this workforce shortage. Community colleges are well suited to be a resource in these efforts with the potential to increase both the number and diversity of such qualified engineers. Although community colleges have received much attention in recent years, little is known about the experiences of community college engineering students as they complete their coursework at the community college and transfer to the next stage of their life (e.g., accredited engineering program or their career). As this time period critically influences students' chosen pathways to engineering careers, this study seeks to understand the lived and told experiences of community college engineering students, specifically focusing on those from underrepresented groups (URGs). As this is a budding, diverse pool of talent with promise in meeting the workforce needs, this project has the potential to uncover barriers and catalysts that URGs experience as they progress in their education in multiple contexts. This project involves diverse community college programs spanning three U.S. Census regions, which could inform both community college programs and four-year institutions across the country. This work also leverages the progress of prior National Science Foundation investments in community colleges while addressing issues of social justice such as inequity and exclusion, which are perpetuated when pathways to Bachelor's degrees are less accessible for particular groups of students - here, community college students. Specifically, the project will address the following research questions: RQ1: What are the lived and told stories of community college engineering students from URGs? RQ2: How do URG community college students' understandings of their experiences and the relationship of those experiences to the environment influence their plans for future education and careers? RQ3: In what ways, if any, do community college engineering students' narratives bring to light issues of oppression, privilege and inequality? In this narrative inquiry project, the project will conduct a series of in-depth interviews with participants from underrepresented groups at three community college systems in Virginia, Texas, and Arizona, where the selected institutions each serve large numbers of students from underrepresented groups. These community colleges were chosen intentionally as they have close proximity to and/or articulation agreements with four-year institutions with engineering programs. Gaining a better understanding of student experiences promises to enable proactive development of strategies to position and prepare students to pursue four-year degrees from the inception of their studies at community colleges. Moreover, findings from this study promise to shed light on why existing efforts to increase transfer rates to four-year institutions have had limited effectiveness, which could inform academia, industry, and government.