Understanding Decision Processes Related to Pathways of Community College Engineering Students

Understanding Decision Processes Related to Pathways of Community College Engineering Students Keywords: Transfer, Socio-economic status, undergraduate, 2-year Institution Research highlights the importance of having strong and strategic partnerships between 2-year and 4-year institutions to increase the number of transfer students in engineering, which has been identified as a key national strategy for broadening participation in engineering and computer science. Currently, research tends to focus on the perspectives and experiences of engineering students who successfully transfer to their bachelor's-granting institutions. These students often are easier to locate and willing to share their experiences with the transfer process. It is often much harder to understand students who followed a different path, particularly those students who had originally planned on attending a particular transfer institution but then made a different decision. Our study is uniquely positioned because of a partnership between both a 2-year and 4-year institution—we have access to and relationships with students who had originally planned on transferring to a particular 4-year institution but made a different decision along the way. We interviewed 11 engineering students who engaged in a pre-transfer program [NAME MASKED FOR REVIEW] that was organized to promote transfer to a particular receiving institution. Those students ultimately chose other pathways, and we focus this particular study on understanding the role that the pre-transfer program played in decision-making processes. Our findings suggest that as engineering students navigate the community college-to-bachelor's degree pathway, the pre-transfer program influences them through three distinct activities of the grant that we have labeled: Recruitment, Program Involvement (scholarship, proactive advising, cohort building, and perceptions), and After Pre-transfer program. Additionally, our findings show the influences on the decision against remaining in the program of these students were ultimately life events, comparable pre-transfer programs, academic challenges, and career shifts. The findings provide insights for fine-tuning programs designed towards engineering students pursing a community college-to-bachelor's pathway and to share unique perspectives and experiences of community college engineering students who typically have not been represented in the literature.