Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success

This report explores an underappreciated part of our higher education system. The report looks at the role of community colleges in women's education, including challenges women face in completing a certificate or degree, or in transferring to a four-year institution. The particular concerns and needs of student mothers and barriers women face in pursuing STEM and nontraditional fields are examined in detail. The report includes recommendations that will strengthen community colleges for all students

The Transfer Playbook: Essential Practices For Two- And Four-year Colleges

Recognizing the critical need to help millions of community college students failed by current transfer practices and policies.  A new report provides a detailed guide for two- and four-year colleges on how to improve bachelor's degree outcomes for students who start at community college.Every year, millions of students aiming to attain a bachelor's degree attend community colleges because of their affordability and accessibility. Most will not realize their goals. While the vast majority of students report they want to earn a bachelor's degree, only 14 percent of degree-seeking students achieve that goal within six years, according to recent research from CCRC, Aspen, and the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The odds are worse for low-income students, first-generation college students, and students of color—those most likely to start at a community college

Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program (SHARP) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

A total of 125 talented high school students had the opportunity to gain first hand experience about science and engineering careers by working directly with a NASA scientist or engineer during the summer. This marked the fifth year of operation for NASA's Summer High School Apprenticehsip Research Program (SHARP). Ferguson Bryan served as the SHARP contractor and worked closely with NASA staff at Headquarters and the eight participating sites to plan, implement, and evaluate the Program. The main objectives were to strengthen SHARP and expand the number of students in the Program. These eight sites participated in the Program: Ames Research Center North, Ames' Dryden Flight Research Facility, Goddard Space Flight Center, Goddard's Wallops Flight Facility, Kennedy Space Center, Langley Research Center, Lewis Research Center, and Marshall Space Flight Center

Data Driven Transfer Students Support Analysis

Low income, academically talented, underrepresented students within the Central Coast of California face barriers in transferring and completing their technical degree. In order to meet future work needs and improve the quality of public life, the path for transfer students needs to be more accessible. To improve access to a high-quality engineering education for local students, the ENGAGE grant (Engineering Neighbors: Gaining Access, Growing Engineers -NSF Grant numbers 1834128 and 1834154) was created. This initiative strives to support local transfer students pre-transfer, during transfer, and post transfer by providing additional academic and financial resources. Five years of Cal Poly transfer student data was collected for analysis on the factors impactful on academic success as measured by Cal Poly cumulative undergraduate degree GPA. This analysis was divided between engineering and non-engineering transfer students. Regression models were created for each subset of transfer students to identify the predictive traits of historically successful students. For engineering students, the developed model included the factors of CSU Mentor GPA (the student’s application GPA), Extracurricular Activity Points (points awarded based upon the number of extracurricular activities on the application), Father’s Education Code (the level of the education achieved by the student’s father), Major (the major enrolled in by the student), Ethnicity Code (the ethnicity the student identified as), and the CA Resident Flag (if the student resided in California at the time of application). These factors were responsible for about 29.61% of variation within the undergraduate degree GPA. Students who had obtained a higher CSU Mentor GPA were predicted to achieve a higher undergraduate degree GPA. Students who stem from primarily underrepresented ethnicities (such as African American/Black preference and Hispanic) and/or were first generation college students were predicted to achieve a lower undergraduate degree GPA within engineering majors. Those who were California residents were predicted more likely to succeed. For non-engineering transfer students, the factors included within the model were CSU Mentor GPA (the student’s application GPA), Major (the major enrolled in by the student), Ethnicity Code (the ethnicity the student identifies as), Work Hour Range Code (the number of hours worked per week), Gender Code (the gender the student identified as), and Academic Extracurricular Leadership Points (the number of points awarded for extracurricular leadership activities). These factors were responsible for 33.88% of the variation with the undergraduate degree GPA. Students who obtained a higher CSU Mentor GPA were more likely to achieve a higher undergraduate degree GPA. Non-engineering students who identified within underrepresented ethnicities such as American Indian/Alaska Native and African American/Black Preference were predicted to achieve a lower undergraduate degree GPA. Those who engaged in six to twenty hours of work per week were predicted less likely to succeed. Based upon both models, any future initiatives in support of transfer students should consider that background of students who have historically achieved lower undergraduate degree GPAs. Several dashboard tools utilizing the statistical program R are presented for future implementation to support the ENGAGE faculty team. These tools include a data overview, numerical variable summaries, categorical variable summaries, variable summary and plots, factor investigation, and regression model creation. These dashboards will be implemented within an interactive data sandbox that will allow users of varying data skill levels to investigate the transfer student data. Thus, through ENGAGE, further analysis of the factors that impact the success of transfer students will be possible within the data sandbox. Then, transfer student programs and resources can be directed to students who would benefit from additional support

The Role of Minority-Serving Institutions in National College Completion Goals

Outlines Lumina's work with minority-serving institutions to boost completion rates, especially among men of color, by building capacity for data collection and analysis, collective advocacy, developmental education policy and practice, and transparency

America's Overlooked Engineers: Community Colleges and Diversity in Engineering Education

16-page report on the community college as a potential pathway to engineeringIn 2004, the National Academy of Engineering published Educating the Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. The report foresees a world of dynamic technological change requiring future engineers to have, in addition to strong analytical skills, an understanding of complex societal, global, and professional contexts; creativity and practical ingenuity; communications, management, and leadership skills; high ethical standards and professionalism; and agility, resilience, and interdisciplinary thinking and teamwork. The Academy’s report inspired “The Engineer of 2020” project, a National Science Foundation-supported set of interrelated studies of engineering education. Prototype to Production: Conditions and Processes for Educating the Engineer of 2020 (NSF-EEC-0550608), or “P2P,” sought to benchmark undergraduate engineering education in the U.S. against the attributes the National Academy report believes future engineers will need in order to be effective. NAE’s report also called attention to the rapid population growth both globally and among minorities in the U.S. Such changes, the report stressed, have “major implications for the future of engineering, a profession where minorities and women remain underrepresented” (p. 4). Because of the urgency of increasing the representation of historically nderrepresented groups in engineering schools and in the workforce expressed by the Academy and numerous others, and given growing calls to capitalize on the nation’s community colleges as potentially fruitful grounds for recruiting diverse students to engineering, the Engineer of 2020 project included a survey of community college students planning to transfer into a four-year engineering program.1 This summary of findings from the Engineer of 2020 project surveys is intended to assist engineering deans, department heads, faculty members, associations and professional societies, industry, and public policy makers in their efforts to diversifying engineering education and better prepare engineers to function effectively in the near- and long-term future.National Science Foundation (NSF-EEC-0550608)http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107460/4/E2020 Study Methods 6.26.14.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107460/1/America's Overlooked Engineers - Community Colleges and Diversity in Engineering Education.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107460/8/Americas Overlooked Engineers FINAL.pdfDescription of Americas Overlooked Engineers FINAL.pdf : America's Overlooked EngineersDescription of E2020 Study Methods 6.26.14.pdf : Summary of E2020 Study MethodsDescription of America's Overlooked Engineers - Community Colleges and Diversity in Engineering Education.pdf : Report on the Community College as a pathway to engineering career

The Perspectives of Reverse Transfer Srudents at Two-Year Technical Colleges

Reverse transfer students begin at a four-year college then transfer to a two-year college. Two-year technical colleges provide career-based education to students for employment in specific trades, The perspectives of seven successful reverse transfer students attending a fwo-year technical college were obtained through in-depth interviews to understand the nature of reverse transferring to a technical college, the reasons for their success, and the lessons that can be learned for sfudents and colleges. From the data five themes emerged: the participants were all successful high school students; they did not adequately select their first college; they held common beliefs about the role of higher education; their ability to connect with other students, staff, and the school impacted their success. Furthermore, findings indicated that they benefitted from the transfer itself: maturing over time; reflecting on their own preferences; and gaining experience outside of the classroom

Multinational perspectives on information technology from academia and industry

As the term \u27information technology\u27 has many meanings for various stakeholders and continues to evolve, this work presents a comprehensive approach for developing curriculum guidelines for rigorous, high quality, bachelor\u27s degree programs in information technology (IT) to prepare successful graduates for a future global technological society. The aim is to address three research questions in the context of IT concerning (1) the educational frameworks relevant for academics and students of IT, (2) the pathways into IT programs, and (3) graduates\u27 preparation for meeting future technologies. The analysis of current trends comes from survey data of IT faculty members and professional IT industry leaders. With these analyses, the IT Model Curricula of CC2005, IT2008, IT2017, extensive literature review, and the multinational insights of the authors into the status of IT, this paper presents a comprehensive overview and discussion of future directions of global IT education toward 2025

Advancing the Engineering Field: Opportunities to Support Transfer Students

Advancements in technology have made it vital that technicians advance their skills to stay current and competitive in the job market. Many technicians choose to transfer to baccalaureate programs in engineering and other STEM fields in order to advance their skills. As a result, engineering programs usually have a large population of transfer students. Many of transfer students are studying while employed in the field and some juggle a career and family while advancing their education. Accordingly, transfer students face various issues when transferring to different university settings. Some of these issues are related to embeddedness into the university community while other issues are more personal in nature. Various academic support programs are focused on providing transfer students with information such as how to enroll in their classes, how to enable them to be successful in their academic program, and how to persist in the program. However, adapting to the new educational environment often means that they have to establish new mentoring relationships, develop a new social peer network, and search for internships or co-op opportunities. Majority of the transfer students enrolled in a midsize institution’s engineering technology program are “non-traditional” students, e.g., veterans, adult students, working students, students with families, etc. This paper discusses specific needs of STEM transfer students, identifies challenges they face, and provides an overview of some of the programming that can be implemented at mid-sized universities that address these needs