Expanding the Education Pathway to Undergraduate Engineering through Strategic Two-year and Four-year Institution Partnerships

Abstract

To enhance the minority participation in undergraduate engineering, strategic partnerships with community colleges have been identified as an essential component in the U.S. STEM Education system with a total of 1,738 2-year institutions: 967 public, 100 non-profit and 671 private.1 In 2012, there were over 20 million students enrolled in an academic institution across the United States with over 6 million being educated at a two-year public institution.2 These public twoyear institutions also have a large population of underrepresented minorities with approximately 34% of the total number of African Americans enrolled in an academic institution and 46% of the total number of Hispanics students enrolled in academic institutions.3 In addition to expanding underrepresented minority participation through institutional partnerships with twoyear public institutions, 33% of the total female population that was enrolled at an academic institution was enrolled in a two-year public institution. The state of Texas is positioned to be a key contributor to the overall increase in the both the number of STEM graduates and the increased number of underrepresented minorities graduating with a STEM degree, for four reasons: 1) Texas is ranked second in the nation as having the largest number of public community colleges 1 , 2) Texas will experience the largest headcount growth of high school graduates over the next ten years with over 87,000 additional graduates by 2025 4 , 3) As of 2010, Texas is one of five majority-minority states and 4) In fall 2014, Texas was noted as having the second highest estimated enrollment across the Nation with 1,442,610 students, second to California whose estimated fall 2014 enrollment was 2,497,958. 5In response to this anticipated growth and the increased demand for engineers, a co-enrollment Engineering Academy was successfully launched in fall 2013, through a strategic partnership between Texas A&M University Dwight Look College of Engineering and Blinn College-Bryan. The inaugural class consisted of 113 prospective engineering students. By 2014, after a full year of participation in the program, 21% of the participants successfully matriculated into their major of choice within the Look College. Forty-four percent remained in the program as co-enrolled students, taking courses at both institutions. Unfortunately, 35% of the participants were not retained in the program due to grades (19%), voluntarily opting out of the program (13%), or choosing to not return as a continuing student (3%).

“They Helped Me to Get Through”: Investigating Institutional Sources of Support at Two-Year Colleges that Facilitate the Transfer and Persistence of Black Engineering Students

“…Our work focuses specifically on Black engineering students, which is a population currently understudied in the community college and transfer space. Indeed, the bulk of literature examining the experiences of Black engineering transfer students stems from workshops and/or conference proceedings rather than from peer reviewed journals (e.g., Cortez et al, 2015; Espiritu et al, 2021).…”

Insights on Retention of Underrepresented Minority Electrical and Computer Engineering Transfer Students (Experience)

“…Since the ETS project ended, TAMU COE has partnered with Chevron and several two-year institutions across Texas to form the Engineering Academies [9], [10]. The Engineering Academies are unique programs in which students are co-enrolled at the two-year institutions for one or two years and then transition to complete their TAMU engineering bachelor degrees in residence at College Station, TX.…”

“…The Engineering Academies programs include components that address several concerns that ETS participants noted in their transfer experiences: building a community of academic peers, aligning pre-transfer coursework with eventual degree requirements to minimize non-transferable courses, and acclimating transfer students to the TAMU campus culture. Students in the Engineering Academies begin their journeys in cohorts and take math, science, and engineering courses together at their two-year institutions [9], [10]. Coursework for participants in the Engineering Academies aligns with engineering degree plans at TAMU, and COE faculty reside and teach at each of the two-year institutions [9].…”

“…Nineteen (19) students provided information on the survey and participated in the focus groups. WTER conducted two back-to-back focus groups with nine (9) students in the first group and ten (10) in the second group. The first group lasted about 40 minutes, and the second group lasted almost 50 minutes.…”

Board # 136 : Developing Pathways for Increasing Retention and Facilitating Transition of Students from HSIs

“…Of those, 22 were represented at the workshop in March of 2016. A motivation for the proposal as well as a focus of the workshop itself was on the participants of the Texas A&M Engineering Academies (Perez et al, 2016;Cortez et al, 2015) in that each of these sites are a designated HSI in the state of Texas; HCC, El Centro, Texas Southmost, and Alamo Colleges. This program was the impetus for the grant and these conversations held during the HSI Pre-Conference.…”