CAREER: Valuing Education and Career Transition Opportunities Raising Student Success in Engineering

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Two-year colleges play a vital role in educating and awarding advanced credentials to America’s future scientists and technicians. The research supported by this CAREER award will emphasize the importance of and expand understanding of the role that two-year colleges play in the engineering education and career pipeline. Yet, racial and location inequity in vertical transfer highlight a lack of access to life changing educational opportunities. This project will focus on identifying unique geographic and cultural assets to make pre-transfer engineering students, from a variety of backgrounds, locations, and opportunities, more successful thereby increasing the number and preparedness of transfer students. To make this information accessible to engineering transfer students, this project will also develop and test a first-of-its-kind digital Engineering Transfer Student Dashboard where students will receive custom reports identifying assets, areas of strengths, and suggestions for improving engineering transfer student capital. Further, this research aligns with the overarching goals of the NSF Engineering Education program in its focus on exploring diverse pathways to and through engineering degree programs. This educational research will enhance inclusion and participation in engineering which also supports the NSF Engineering Education program’s focus on developing a more innovative and inclusive technical workforce. This CAREER award will provide a foundation for future research supporting innovation at the intersection of two-year college, engineering education, human resource development, and educational leadership fields focusing on valuing education and career transition opportunities raising student success.The purpose of this CAREER proposal is two-pronged. The first, is a mixed methods study to create new knowledge to increase engineering transfer numbers and preparedness more broadly through investigating the geographic and cultural assets of transfer intending two-year college students. The second is to integrate these research findings into digital educational interventions aimed at improving transfer student capital and to test the efficacy of those interventions. The research will be informed by Laanan’s theory of transfer student capital and examines core constructs of transfer student capital. The two research questions for the research portion of this project are: What are assets, factors, and strategies that enable access for two-year college students to engineering transfer pathways? Do assets, factors, and strategies vary in magnitude and/or presence across student demographics, location, institutions, or intention to transfer? The educational portions of this project, directly integrate findings from the research, and aim to answer two additional research questions: How does use of digital learning tools and resources impact transfer outcomes for pre-transfer engineering students? To what extent can transfer outcomes be improved, through use of digital learning tools, for students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds? A multi-institutional team will support implementation of this project including Clemson University, TriCounty Technical College, Piedmont Technical College, Greenville Technical College, and the South Carolina Technical College System. This project aims to broaden participation through improving access to engineering education and baccalaureate degree programs for underrepresented minority, low-income, first-generation, and nontraditional students. Increased transfer pathways and educational innovations specifically designed for marginalized communities can improve transfer outcomes and positively impact college affordability for students from communities not previously well served. This research is distinct from other transfer student research in its combined focus on geographic and cultural assets and needs, inclusion of multi-institutional data, pre-transfer student focus, data disaggregation by subpopulations, and disciplinary focus on engineering. This research will also inform institutional supports, pathways, and resources needed for increased transfer student capital, stimulate interaction of researchers and practitioners with policymakers and the public, and expand of stakeholder capacity to support and engage diverse populations in STEM education through new partnerships.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.