Two-Year Follow-Up of the Community College to PhD Scholars Program: Impact on Alumni’s Research and PhD Preparation

Abstract

Objective: We evaluated mid-term outcomes of the Community College to PhD (CC2PhD) Scholars Program. This undergraduate research program is novel in that it intentionally prepared community college students to navigate forthcoming institutional barriers to upper-division research and PhD preparation at the transfer university. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews and surveys with seven CC2PhD alumni 2 years after they completed the program. We conducted a thematic analysis of interview data and examined descriptive statistics of the survey data. Results: We identified six themes. The first through fourth themes were that CC2PhD helped program alumni (a) apply for upper-division research opportunities, (b) conduct upper-division research, (c) engage in PhD preparation, and (d) start research and PhD preparation earlier as a transfer student. Fifth, despite being relatively prepared, some of our alumni still struggled with transfer-student-specific institutional barriers to upper-division research and PhD preparation. Sixth, CC2PhD helped alumni make informed decisions about continuing or ending their pursuit of academia as a prospective career. Conclusions: While it might not entirely nullify institutional barriers, our results suggest that providing community college students with research training and PhD preparation knowledge can positively impact their community-college-to-PhD journey. Our findings also indicate that typical community college transfer students, who are less prepared than CC2PhD alumni, may have an even harder time navigating these institutional barriers. As such, universities should do their part to implement transfer-receptive policies to broaden access to undergraduate research and PhD preparation.

Community College to PhD Scholars Program: Short-Term Outcome Evaluation of an Undergraduate Research and PhD Preparation Program

“…In terms of future research for the CC2PhD Scholars Program, we conducted a 2-year follow-up evaluation of the 2018-2019 CC2PhD cohort during summer 2021. This forthcoming paperwhich is available now as a preprint (Nguyen et al, 2023) focuses on evaluating CC2PhD on its theorized mid-term outcomes (refer back to…”