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Engineering Community College Transfer Pathways through Pre-Transfer Programs

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Title: Engineering Community College Transfer Pathways through Pre-Transfer Programs
Language: English
Authors: Grote, Dustin M. (ORCID 0000-0002-9189-2424), Richardson, Amy J., Glisson, Hannah E., Knight, David B. (ORCID 0000-0003-4576-2490), Lee, Walter C. (ORCID 0000-0001-5082-1411), Watford, Bevlee A.
Source: New Directions for Community Colleges. Sum 2022 (198):77-91.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 15
Publication Date: 2022
Sponsoring Agency: National Science Foundation (NSF), Education and Human Resources (EHR)
Contract Number: DUE1644138
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Postsecondary Education
Two Year Colleges
Descriptors: Community Colleges, College Transfer Students, Academic Advising, Access to Information, Engineering Education, Comparative Analysis, Educational Experience, Undergraduate Students, Program Descriptions
Geographic Terms: Virginia
DOI: 10.1002/cc.20512
ISSN: 0194-3081
Abstract: Community college scholars and practitioners consistently seek ways to support vertical transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions. An emerging practice to streamline coursework transfer is the use of tailored, intrusive pre-transfer advising to increase information access for students still enrolled at the community college. In this article, we explore how one pre-transfer program--the Virginia Tech Network for Engineering Transfer Students (VT-NETS)--improved the transfer pathway in engineering through early integration programming and advising structures that help to streamline vertical transfer. Using a quasi-experimental design, we compare the experience of transfer students who participated in VT-NETS with transfer students that did not participate in the pre-transfer program. Based on our findings, we make practical recommendations that may be useful to community colleges and university partners seeking to establish, improve, or scale up early-integration programs for prospective transfer students.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2022
Accession Number: EJ1331092
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0156056613;0yg01jun.22;2022Apr04.04:52;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0156056613-1">Engineering community college transfer pathways through pre‐transfer programs </title> <sbt id="AN0156056613-2">INTRODUCTION</sbt> <p>Community college scholars and practitioners consistently seek ways to support vertical transfer from community colleges to four‐year institutions. An emerging practice to streamline coursework transfer is the use of tailored, intrusive pre‐transfer advising to increase information access for students still enrolled at the community college. In this article, we explore how one pre‐transfer program—the Virginia Tech Network for Engineering Transfer Students (VT‐NETS)—improved the transfer pathway in engineering through early integration programming and advising structures that help to streamline vertical transfer. Using a quasi‐experimental design, we compare the experience of transfer students who participated in VT‐NETS with transfer students that did not participate in the pre‐transfer program. Based on our findings, we make practical recommendations that may be useful to community colleges and university partners seeking to establish, improve, or scale up early‐integration programs for prospective transfer students.</p> <p>Community college scholars and practitioners consistently seek ways to support vertical transfer from community colleges to four‐year institutions. A substantial amount of literature highlights the importance of credit equivalencies and articulation agreements to strengthening transfer pathways (Bahr et al., 2013; Gross et al., 2009). Most articulation policies seek to preserve and align credits between institutions (Roksa & Keith, 2008), but the efficacy of these agreements on improving transfer of coursework is mixed, varying across institutional and state contexts (Hodara et al., 2017; Montague, 2012). Among the challenges to sustaining effective articulation policies, less attention is focused on the influence advisors have on the transfer of coursework process, particularly as they work to collaborate effectively across 2‐year and 4‐year institutional contexts. An emerging practice to streamline coursework transfer is the use of tailored, intrusive pre‐transfer advising to increase information access for students while they are still enrolled at a community college (Bahr et al., 2013).</p> <p>The Virginia Tech ‐ Network for Engineering Transfer Students (VT‐NETS) program is an early integration transfer partnership between Northern Virginia Community College, Virginia Western Community College, and Virginia Tech' s College of Engineering. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the program aims to broaden participation in engineering for minoritized, low‐income, and first‐generation students by improving the transfer pathway in engineering through early integration programming and advising structures that help to streamline vertical transfer. This article focuses on elements of the program related to transfer advising and streamlining the process of transferring coursework.</p> <p>The analysis in this article is based on semi‐structured interviews with 10 vertical transfer students who participated in the VT‐NETS program as well as 19 vertical transfer students at Virginia Tech who did not participate, each enrolled in engineering. We explore how participants' involvement in the VT‐NETS program influenced their experiences and ability to navigate the process of transferring coursework and identify distinctions in the experiences of non‐participating students. The guiding questions for this study were:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> How does participation in an early integration transfer program influence students' experiences of the transfer of coursework process?</item> <p></p> <item> How do students' experiences who participate in an early integration transfer program compare with experiences of students who do not?</item> </ulist> <p>Through this investigation, we highlight elements of the VT‐NETS early integration program that improved students' experiences transferring coursework vertically.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-3">POLICY CONTEXT: ARTICULATION AGREEMENT BETWEEN VT's COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND VCCS</hd> <p>Virginia Tech (VT) and the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) have a guaranteed admissions agreement specifically for the VT College of Engineering. This agreement is managed by the staff at the VT College of Engineering and reviewed and agreed upon every 3 years by approximately 35 VCCS engineering faculty before final approval at each institution. To gain admission to the College of Engineering, students must have first completed a transferable engineering or science Associate's Degree in May of the year they plan on beginning at Virginia Tech. Applicants not completing the Associate's Degree until summer may not be guaranteed a spot in the fall class of the same year. Such students are still guaranteed admission, though admission may be deferred to a later term, dependent on course availability per program. Second, students must also have achieved a cumulative grade point average of not less than 3.2 (in a 4.0 system) on the Associate's Degree, as determined by the Virginia Tech Undergraduate Admissions Office. All course grades on community college transcripts, including repeated classes, are considered in this calculation of the GPA (Virginia Tech & Virginia Community College System, 2018).</p> <p>At the time of this writing, all transfer students are admitted to General Engineering prior to being admitted to a specific engineering program at VT. The transfer students are subject to an enrollment management policy with additional requirements. The enrollment policy outlines that transfer students must complete a minimum of 12 grade point average (GPA)‐bearing credits at VT post‐transfer and earn a minimum of a 3.0 GPA to gain admission into their first choice of engineering degree‐granting discipline. The articulation agreement, as currently written, does not detail particulars of the enrollment management policy or the particulars of that process of admissions into degree‐granting engineering disciplines (see Grote et al., 2020 for a full analysis of how the collision of these policies influence transfer students).</p> <p>Another benefit explicitly outlined in the articulation policy is that students who earn an Associate's Degree from a Virginia Community College will have satisfied general education requirements at VT without doing a one‐to‐one course credit evaluation. The agreement stipulates that students can transfer up to 50% of the number of credits required for graduation. There are 14 engineering disciplines at Virginia Tech, varying from 123 to 135 total credits required to earn a degree. Accordingly, students may transfer in 61 to 67 credits from a 2‐year institution toward their degree; however, the credits must meet a degree requirement in the engineering discipline the student ultimately declares. The agreement does not, however, specify coursework requirements or indicate, at the course‐level, how courses completed at the community college will transfer to individual engineering disciplines. Instead, the agreement acknowledges that graduation from the VT College of Engineering is not assured within a 2‐year period of full‐time study post‐transfer, and thus may not be a feasible 2+2 transfer pathway. Although the articulation agreement supports vertical transfer pathways in engineering between VCCS and VT in some ways, it is not comprehensive enough on its own. Thus, the VT‐NETS program was established to improve vertical transfer in engineering at VT, to address barriers that persist in the transfer process from 2‐year institutions in the state, and to conduct research that informs improved practice for engineering transfer more broadly.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-4">PROGRAM CONTEXT: VIRGINIA TECH–NETWORK FOR ENGINEERING TRANSFER STUDENTS</hd> <p>Funded through NSF's Scholarship for STEM Students (S‐STEM) program, VT‐NETS enables program participants to receive scholarships in each of 4 years of participation—full tuition coverage for two years at the community college, and $10,000 annual scholarships at VT post‐transfer. Beyond receiving the scholarship, VT‐NETS students also gain access to intentional pre‐transfer programs and activities including cohort‐building, intrusive advising, university visits, a study abroad experience, and undergraduate research. Although only participation in the cohort‐building activities and intrusive advising are required, most students take advantage of other opportunities. In addition to the formal programs mentioned, VT‐NETS students have access to advisors and faculty at both the community colleges and Virginia Tech. Each of these pre‐transfer programs provides support and experiences to smooth the transition between institutions.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-5">Cohort‐building</hd> <p>Both community college partners, Northern Virginia Community College and Virginia Western Community College, recruit students for the VT‐NETS program during the summer and early fall. Starting in 2017, a total of three cohorts have participated in the program with 22, 28, and 54 students, respectively. The cohort demographic characteristics as a whole was 76% male and 24% female, White (41%), Asian (15%), Black (14%), Hispanic/Latino (13%), and other ethnicities/races accounted for 17% of the cohort. Transfer students from Northern Virginia Community College comprise 70% of the cohort with Virginia Western Community College representing 30% of the cohort students. To be eligible for the program students must be US citizens, majoring in engineering, and have at least two semesters remaining to earn their degree. Seventy‐five percent of cohort students were enrolled in civil, computer, computer science, electrical, and mechanical engineering with the remaining 25% enrolling in smaller percentages in aerospace, biological, biomedical, chemical, construction management, engineering science and mechanics, industrial systems, material science, mining and minerals, ocean, and undecided engineering programs.</p> <p>Because students are in varying stages of their Associate degree, they do not always take courses together. However, they are required to attend monthly VT‐NETS meetings. These meetings are led by the community college faculty affiliated with the VT‐NETS project and are conducted in a hybrid format (students can attend either in‐person or virtually). The meeting agenda always includes an advising and transfer process portion, with the remaining balance of meeting time organized around students' interests. Example topics include study skills, resume writing and interviewing, choosing an engineering discipline, and research opportunities. Built into each meeting is informal time for students to catch up with one another and share experiences. The monthly meetings serve as a way for students to learn about different aspects of engineering as well as the transfer process from experts and each other.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-6">Intrusive advising</hd> <p>VT‐NETS students are intrusively advised. Intrusive advising involves intentional proactive outreach with students to develop a caring and beneficial relationship that positively impacts students' experiences and outcomes (NACADA, 2021; see Blaney et al. for more information and examples). Community college faculty advisors, who initially received some teaching release that was paid for via the grant to help establish the program and recruit students, meet with VT‐NETS students regularly to check in and assess students' progress toward achieving their goals of earning an Associate degree, transferring, earning a Bachelor degree, and career goals after graduation. An individual plan of study is created for each student by community college engineering faculty advisors, three from Northern Virginia Community college and one from Virginia Western Community College. These plans are reviewed by general engineering advisors at Virginia Tech to minimize potential credit loss. The advising process is intentionally collaborative and engages students in construction of their own advising plans. Students can play an active role in their course plan after they understand the parameters associated with transfer. Student course progress is tracked at the end of each semester, and if changes need to be made following these updates, community college faculty and students will edit the plan as necessary.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-7">University visits</hd> <p>VT‐NETS students are invited to spend the weekend at VT each semester. During fall semesters, students attend the university's open house and engage in activities related to general university life. This event helps introduce students to VT, specifically, but also to a university environment, more generally. Students from both partner community colleges, Northern Virginia Community College and Virginia Western Community College, attend these events and can connect with other prospective transfer students as well as current VT students, including VT‐NETS students who have successfully transferred to VT. During spring semesters, students attend the College of Engineering Open House, a more targeted event that allows students to meet with faculty and students from various engineering disciplines. Students also tour facilities and labs related to engineering during this Spring event.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-8">Study abroad experience</hd> <p>VT‐NETS students are also given the opportunity to participate in a global engineering course that includes a short‐term study abroad experience, paid for by the grant, in their second semester at the community college—63 VT‐NETS students across the three cohorts elected to participate in this experience, with the final cohort's international experience canceled because of COVID‐19. This experience is a collaboration with a larger, established program at VT called Rising Sophomore Abroad Program where rising sophomores, graduate students, and faculty travel internationally for 2 weeks on a program that highlights global engineering (see Knight et al., 2019 for more details about that program). VT‐NETS students who participate in this study abroad experience are required to complete a three‐credit course in global studies in engineering during the spring semester of their freshman year that is led by a VT faculty member or team‐taught by a VT faculty member and a community college engineering faculty member. In addition to engaging in an innovative international experience, the program is intentionally designed to help community college transfer students build a support network and community with VT students and faculty pre‐transfer.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-9">Undergraduate research</hd> <p>Students in VT‐NETS are also given the opportunity to apply for summer research opportunities at VT the summer before they transfer. This experience allows students to work closely with engineering faculty and graduate students on an ongoing research project. Students are provided with housing and paid a stipend for the summer. This experience intentionally provides an opportunity for students to establish a network at VT prior to starting classes while gaining familiarity with the institution and surrounding area. It also provides students an opportunity to earn additional income doing work directly related to engineering, as opposed to a more generic summer employment opportunity they may have pursued otherwise. Finally, it exposes students to research and graduate school as potential opportunities post‐transfer and post‐graduation in engineering.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-10">STUDYING VT‐NETS</hd> <p>We explored the influences of VT‐NETS—an engineering pre‐transfer advising program—on students' experiences navigating coursework transfer in engineering. We compared VT‐NETS students' experiences with other engineering transfer students' experiences at Virginia Tech who did not have access to the VT‐NETS pre‐transfer program–this research design can be characterized as a quasi‐experiment, although we followed a qualitative approach to data collection. We invited all VT‐NETS students who had successfully transferred to VT by Fall 2019 semester (17 in total) to participate in interviews. All new vertical transfer students entering VT during Fall 2019 semester were invited to participate in interviews. A total of 10 (out of 17) VT‐NETS students and 19 (out of 317) students not involved in VT‐NETS participated in interviews. To purposely match student profiles by transfer institutions/systems, 17 (89%) of the non‐VT‐NETS students that we interviewed had transferred from a VCCS institution, nine (47%) of which transferred from either Northern Virginia Community College or Virginia Western Community College. Each student received a $25 Amazon gift card for participating, which was in accordance with the university's Institutional Review Board.</p> <p>Interview questions were adapted from previous studies on transfer students (Ogilvie & Knight, 2020, 2021) and customized by a team with relevant professional experience and research expertise related to transfer students, community colleges, and transfer of coursework processes. Interviews explored five primary areas of the transfer of coursework process: 1) how students receive information on transfer of coursework prior to transfer, 2) the role of academic faculty/advisors in the course transfer process, 3) the application of transfer articulation agreements in practice, 4) perceptions of academic preparedness of incoming transfer students, and 5) how transfer of courses and variation across academic programs influence transfer student success. The use of semi‐structured interviews provided consistency through a prescribed set of questions addressed to all students while also allowing flexibility to engage in robust discussion (Corbin et al., 2014). Interviews lasted 30–60 min and were audio‐recorded and transcribed for coding and analysis. We used an inductive thematic analysis of interview data. This involved a phased iterative approach where the codes and themes were derived from the content of the interviews (Braun & Clarke, 2012).</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-11">FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS</hd> <p>Funding transfer student initiatives and programs through grant collaborations between 2‐year and 4‐year institutions, as is the case with VT‐NETS, provides two important advantages. First, the financial resources from the grant mitigate the financial burden placed on individual institutions to start and scale up programs. Second, the collaborative nature of these projects provides an incentive for 2‐year and 4‐year institutions to work together toward mutually beneficial program designs and outcomes (Wyner et al., 2016). Much like for other grant collaborations cited in Aspen Institute's Transfer Playbook (Wyner et al., 2016), grant funding plays a critical role in the success of the VT‐NETS program and the programs and initiatives offered to students. As Wyner et al. (2016) have done, we recommend that community college leaders, practitioners, and transfer agents pursue external grant funds to support transfer collaborations. In the following sections of this article, we also spotlight the most cost‐efficient ways we have found to bolster transfer through the VT‐NETS program. We hope readers, no matter their financial positions, find the following results and practical recommendations to be helpful in supporting transfer initiatives in their contexts.</p> <p>In this article, we organize our findings around practical and user‐friendly recommendations that are hopefully useful as community colleges and university partners establish, improve, or scale up early‐integration programs for prospective transfer students. Although findings from this research focus on engineering students, which has particularly important implications for broadening participation in that field (National Academy of Engineering & American Society for Engineering Education, 2015), we believe that these programmatic elements are translatable to other disciplines. We provide evidence from students of the value of their experiences in the pre‐transfer programming of VT‐NETS and note how students' involvement in the program afforded them advantages over vertical transfer students who did not participate in the program. These practices, informed by student interview data, will be important for improving the transfer process from 2‐year to 4‐year institutions.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-12">Faculty advising with "Insider Knowledge"</hd> <p>It can be challenging for students to sort through various information sources to find answers to their specific transfer questions. Having faculty advisors who possessed "insider knowledge" of transfer requirements and procedures at different universities helped VT‐NETS students tremendously. Students participating in the VT‐NETS program perceived that they had a significant advantage in navigating the transfer of coursework process compared to their peers who were not in the program. One student discussed the benefits of early access to intrusive advising while at the community college as benefiting their ability to take the right classes to successfully transfer:</p> <p>"I've always had good things to say about VT‐NETS and ... the real value is having, you know, the additional advising ... making sure that you're taking the right steps and taking those steps well, um, whether it be the right combination of classes or you know, the right schedule or, or whatever it is, just check, you know, trying to optimize or set you up so that you can succeed".</p> <p>Another student highlighted the value of individualized advising provided by community college faculty with insider knowledge of VT transfer coursework:</p> <p>"[The community college advisor] had, she like made spreadsheets for all of us in terms of like, here's the track you want to do, here's the prereqs you need. And I mean, she was professional on a whole different level. So she definitely became kind of a default for, you know, should I take this class, should I drop this and make this other decision and, you know, giving me the confidence to, to move some things around, you know, as I needed to in order to, you know, so that I could still get to Virginia Tech on time, uh, with, with enough credits and also not be, you know, trapped like with one professor or like a, a bad class here".</p> <p>Having insight on what would transfer and course sequencing at the university helped the community college advisor support the transfer student better. Another student compared their experience with that of their best friend and fellow transfer student who did not participate in the VT‐NETS program. They highlighted how much more information they had access to on coursework transfer, and how they became a conduit of that information to their friend in support of his transfer process:</p> <p>"My best friend is actually not in VT‐NETS, but we transferred together. We're in all the same classes... I've brought him up to speed on so many things like transfer credit and what's going on at Virginia Tech. Like this summer I went up there and met with VT‐NETS staff and I texted him anything I've learned. Without it he would have known a lot less about the [articulation] agreements".</p> <p>Other VT‐NETS students shared similar sentiments, noting on multiple occasions that their VT‐NETS advisors had insider knowledge about VT and specific transfer policies that would have been more difficult for the students to find on their own.</p> <p>When asked the same questions, transfer students who had not participated in the VT‐NETS program said that they either felt they had nobody to turn to for support or relied mostly on students a year or two ahead of them. Some indicated that they relied mostly on fellow students who had not yet transferred themselves:</p> <p>"I had known some people who were a year ahead of me who were still going through the process, but no one who had completed the process. So I had some idea of the transfer process, but not directly from the community college".</p> <p>This theme is further supported by how students articulated their understanding of how credits transfer. Generally, VT‐NETS students had more transfer student capital (Laanan, 2004), or the basis for understanding the transfer process, regarding coursework and credit transfer than students who did not participate in VT‐NETS. This difference can be seen in the following responses from each group. First, a VT‐NETS student can clearly describe how they were able to use their knowledge of course transfer to take ownership over enrolling in courses they needed:</p> <p>"I was taking classes over the summer as I transferred over too, so the problem with that is that some of it, it's prerequisites to other classes. So towards August, Virginia Tech put a hold on my account saying, "You can't take this class, you haven't met the requirements of taking the prerequisite" so I had to make some calls to tell them that I've sent my transcript and I need you to re‐enroll me to these classes, because I actually got dropped from a lot of classes".</p> <p>Non‐VT‐NETS students had a harder time explaining transfer credits:</p> <p>"It's a problem because every credit you transfer, the maximum credit you can transfer is half of the credit, the Virginia Tech program, right? So, if you have 123 credit, you might have less credit transfer if you are doing computer science than doing computer engineering".</p> <p>Similar themes were found in students' responses to the interview question, "Who did you contact at Virginia Tech?" VT‐NETS participants indicated that they had significantly more contact within the university while they were still at community college than their non‐VT‐NETS peers. One VT‐NETS participant explained the advantage they felt they had by being part of the program</p> <p>"Because I was in VT‐NETS, I feel like I had a lot more contact. I came up here [to Virginia Tech] like two, two times before, and one of them was signing my agreement with them, and it was a clearly laid out contract that if you do well in these classes, you get in. I kind of knew I was in, but some of my classmates who say, weren't in this program, I know it was a little bit more stressful for them".</p> <p>The faculty advisors at the community college were able to obtain insider knowledge by working closely with advising, admissions, and faculty at Virginia Tech—that development had not been in place prior to this intentional program.</p> <p>We recommend involving and educating community college faculty advisors in the transfer process and the coursework transfer process at the 4‐year institution. Doing this empowers these faculty advisors, armed with transfer knowledge specific to the receiving institution and discipline, to provide tailored support for students throughout the transfer process (Wyner et al., 2016). By working with students throughout their community college journey, faculty advisors at the 2‐year institutions gain substantial knowledge about many aspects of the transfer process and can help students navigate issues that arise. Wyner et al. (2016) recommend that 4‐year institutions assign advisors to prospective transfer students to communicate essential information to them in advance of transfer. We suggest that, by establishing strong partnerships between advisors at 2‐year and 4‐year institutions, faculty advisors at 2‐year institutions can also serve in this role, and given their established rapport with students and understanding of the 2‐year institution, they can serve as a critical transfer agent (Dowd et al., 2013) in supporting students through transfer of coursework processes. Building transfer support into the workload for 2‐year institution faculty reaped tremendous rewards for transfer students in our program and contributed to establishing and maintaining a transfer‐sending culture, as called for by Jain et al. (2011).</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-13">Building a pre‐transfer culture among community college students</hd> <p>Students participating in the VT‐NETS program attended monthly cohort meetings with faculty advisors. VT‐NETS participants were advised entirely by faculty advisors with support from transfer advisors at VT. These students reported that having additional touchpoints with their faculty advisors increase their transfer knowledge, engineering discipline knowledge, and current research. These frequent, recurring check‐ins allowed students to gain confidence that they were on a clear path, as one student explained:</p> <p>"[VT‐NETS], it's a scholarship program. Yes, there is a money aspect too, but the real value is, is being plugged into like the VT network is having, you know, the additional advising. Sure. You know, making sure that you are doing what you're doing or you're taking the right steps and you're hopefully, you know, taking those steps well, um, whether it be the right combination of classes did that at that time or you know, the right schedule or, or whatever it is, just check, you know, trying to optimize or set you up so that you can succeed".</p> <p>The monthly meetings provided more social support than one‐on‐one advising sessions. Throughout the interviews, VT‐NETS students referenced information and experiences that were directly related to these monthly meetings. Engaging students in regular cohort meetings allows the opportunity to forge connections with faculty advisors and among students themselves. These meetings can be used as a common place to provide updates and information related to the transfer process.</p> <p>We recommend that community colleges provide an opportunity for ongoing, major‐specific meetings to build a pre‐transfer culture among students. Dedicated resources and spaces for transfer students help signal to transfer students that they are important to institutions' missions (Wyner et al., 2016). These meetings can be formal or informal spaces to allow students to get to know each other and topics surrounding their major and transfer—an advantage of this activity in VT‐NETS is that it was low cost, particularly as they became hybrid‐format where students could attend from home or on campus. Encouraging conversations about what happens after transfer helps to build motivation and demonstrate to students that others have been successful in transfer and they can be to. Although community colleges, by design, enable a range of starting points and times on the long path to a bachelor's degree, seeking to build a cohort mentality appeared to be useful for these students and ultimately helped them successfully navigate the transfer process.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-14">Clarifying articulation agreements</hd> <p>Unlike the other findings from this study, we found no differences in responses from students who participated in VT‐NETS and those who did not when discussing articulation agreements. Our interviews demonstrated that most students, both those in VT‐NETS and those not in VT‐NETS, still did not fully understand the purpose of the articulation agreement between institutions. Some students thought the policy provided more allowances than it does. Others did not think the articulation agreement was important to their transfer process or were unclear on whether they used the agreement in their own transfer process.</p> <p>Most students interviewed could not say for certain whether they transferred using the articulation agreement. Although students were aware of policies related to the transfer of coursework, students did not have a robust understanding of the policy that guaranteed them admission to VT. One student responded in the following way, indicating uncertainty about their use of the agreement:</p> <p>"Actually, that's a good question. I think I did as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, that's the thing, I think I didn't because I didn't have the associate's at the time. Like I said, I technically got it in May".</p> <p>The articulation agreement does not stipulate that students must have completed an Associate degree at the time they apply. In fact, this student did meet the criteria of the articulation agreement because they had earned the credits for the Associate degree by May, which matches the agreement's timeline.</p> <p>Interestingly, when asked whether they would recommend to others that they transfer using the articulation agreement, almost everyone responded with a resounding "yes," providing enthusiastic responses like these:</p> <p>"I would think so. At least I feel like it should be a default place to be. ...... But as far as I guess the most secure way to get there, not just being guaranteed in, but it'll save you a bit more money and a few other things. I think it should be a default".</p> <p>"Yes. 110%. Do the guaranteed admissions, if you can. Yes, yes. Do it. It makes life so much easier. Especially moving to Virginia Tech. There's so many factors that you have to consider when you move down here".</p> <p>The disconnect between students not knowing for sure if they used the articulation agreement and their strong endorsement of the agreement to others seems to indicate a lack of understanding about what the agreement entails. Both sets of students—those participating in VT‐NETS and those not—mentioned advantages to using the agreement that are not actually stipulated in the agreement, such as different admissions processes, coursework transfer guarantees, and admission directly to an engineering discipline. Although the guaranteed admission agreement is an integral part of the transfer process is it not <emph>the</emph> transfer process. The transfer process involves applying, admissions, coursework transfer, then enrollment. We recommend institutions continue to improve the language in their articulation agreements and to educate faculty, staff, administrators, and students at both 2‐year and 4‐year institutions about articulation policies and how they can benefit vertical transfer. More work can be done to make the process abundantly clear for students involved—and paying attention to students' understanding of communication materials and processes (and adjusting those materials and processes as needed) would be a strong step forward for universities to improve in this area.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-15">Broader impact of student initiatives</hd> <p>Part of the VT‐NETS pre‐transfer programming involved leveraging existing university programs to integrate community college students socially and culturally as early as possible in the pre‐transfer process. As we described, these programs included university visits, a study abroad program, and summer undergraduate research. When VT‐NETS students were asked about their impressions of the program, they mentioned these three aspects as being an invaluable source of inspiration and motivation, as one student explained:</p> <p>So having these, these extra things that, you know, don't have anything to do with money [scholarship], don't have anything to do with the curriculum itself. Just keeping you motivated and keeping, I guess the dream feeling, feeling real ...</p> <p>Students stated they found a renewed sense of motivation in anticipation of exciting things to come during and post‐transfer that provided the drive needed to persevere through the challenges they would encounter in the transfer process.</p> <p>The VT‐NETS students we interviewed felt confident in their transfer knowledge from admissions to course transfer, and so the additional information they sought pertained to housing, career fairs, and extracurricular activities to bolster their experience. The VT‐NETS students seemed to possess this sense of security in the transfer process because program leaders walked them through the process. The program followed students from the start of their Associate degree through transfer and worked with them every step of the way. This included mentorship, cohort meetings and experiences post‐transfer. As a result of this work, there was a level of confidence in the relationship between institutions, and program leaders could anticipate student questions and issues. When asked what colleges could do to help students transfer in engineering, one student responded:</p> <p>"I would say that something that would be kind of a motivation thing, is if somebody from Tech came down and was like, these are the opportunities you're going to have if you work hard, and end up making it here, kind of thing. If they brought the Formula 1 car, or the SAE car down".</p> <p>These suggestions for improvement distinctly contrasted with the suggestions from transfer students who did not participate in VT‐NETS when asked the same question. These non‐participants wanted more transparency with course equivalencies and the entire transfer process, more transactional in nature:</p> <p>"....maybe to get out there and connect with students and explain to them easy ways to transfer in or more guidelines to transferring because for me, all I had was basically this transfer guide of like, "Hey, take these courses. Good luck." I had nothing else really. And I don't know, just more information that's easily accessible, ..."</p> <p>When transfer students can feel confident in the steps of transfer, they are able to begin to integrate to non‐course aspects of the university culture pre‐transfer. This integration can not only provide motivation while still at community college but can potentially alleviate transfer shock during their first semester after transfer.</p> <p>We recommend leveraging and integrating community college students into existing student engagement, advising, and support programming at the 4‐year institution pre‐transfer. Because the VT‐NETS program helped streamline coursework transfer for students, ensuring students need not worry about how their courses would transfer, students were able to integrate with the university in other ways pre‐transfer. Thus, our findings lead us to recommend offering opportunities for students to connect with receiving institutions prior to the time of transfer that move beyond a foundation of course‐specific information. Thanks to intrusive transfer advising by faculty advisors, students in the VT‐NETS program were able to devote less energy to figuring out the intricacies of the transfer process and instead could focus their energy to look ahead to life outside of academics at university. Prospective transfer students' only have so much time to devote to learning about the transfer process; when institutions can help students understand the transactional portion of the transfer process, they can spend more time thinking about other important elements that are tied to student success.</p> <p>We acknowledge that integrating students in these university activities pre‐transfer depended on access to funding from the VT‐NETS grant and on the assumption that students can participate based on their lives and needs outside of campus. For institutions considering establishment of some of these initiatives on their campuses, we found that intrusive advising, monthly meetings with students, and university visits tended to be lower cost or had some costs already built into the institutional recruitment structures, and thus required much less external grant support. Conversely, both study abroad and undergraduate research were higher cost initiatives that required much more fiscal support from the external grant.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-16">RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRACTICE</hd> <p>What should institutions do that seek to integrate students in these kinds of activities without an established grant partnership? We have several suggestions. First, an increasingly common and comprehensive approach for 2‐year and 4‐year institutions that are proximally located is to establish a co‐enrollment partnership, such as the Texas A&M Academies (Nelson et al., 2020; Ogilvie et al., 2015). With this approach, students enrolled at the 2‐year institution have access to the same programs and amenities that students enrolled at the 4‐year do, which may enable easier and more affordable access to some of the activities like those in VT‐NETS program.</p> <p>When scholarships are not available to support prospective transfer students financially in these kinds of high‐cost integration activities, another possibility is to fund students through federal work study mechanisms. For example, at Northern Virginia Community College, faculty in engineering often hire multiple work study students to help support the department, including support of research labs, and in doing so providing opportunities for undergraduate research. In another example, institutions often have comprehensive Information Technology units which could provide excellent learning opportunities for engineering and computer science through a work study approach. Alternatively, more targeted advertising of research opportunities at 4‐year institutions to students at 2‐year institutions may increase the participation of students in undergraduate research—such a targeted approach could help transfer students feel like they have the same kind of opportunities to access those kinds of experiences as first time in college students. Another useful approach that we regularly used for VT‐NETS university visits was cost‐sharing with other outreach efforts. For example, VT‐NETS university visits were aligned with other recruitment events where program leaders could share buses and reduce costs. Finally, the onset of the global COVID‐19 pandemic in 2020 necessitated institution‐wide improvement of virtual events, which can be less expensive and easier to enable broader access. Virtual university visits, for example, may be much more common now and enable wider and more cost‐effective engagement with pre‐transfer students.</p> <p>Another important consideration of this research is the impact that the scholarship component may have had on keeping VT‐NETS students engaged in these grant‐related activities. Although participation in monthly meetings, advising appointments, and study abroad may have been lower if students were not also receiving a scholarship for tuition and fees from the grant, several of our students suggested that our initial recruiting plan for students to enroll in the program was not particularly effective. Our initial advertising of the program placed the scholarship award ($6000/year at the community college, $10,000/year at the university) front and center with the programmatic elements as a secondary consideration. Several students suggested that we should flip the advertising to showcase the programmatic elements first and the scholarship components second. The students cited that there is a plethora of potential academic scholarships available to students, particularly while at the community college, but there was not a comparable transfer support program. Students noted that having access to activities like study abroad, undergraduate research, and university visits were most attractive. Despite this information from students enrolled in the program regarding what motivated their participation, a faculty advisor at one of our community colleges in VT‐NETS regularly hosted similar meetings and events and invited all students in engineering who were not in the VT‐NETS program and found participation to be substantially lower at such events. Certainly, when establishing these kinds of programs for prospective transfer students, there is a need for incentivizing participation while also providing support for students' needs outside of campus to remove barriers that may inhibit participation in these important integration initiatives pre‐transfer.</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-17">CONCLUSION</hd> <p>By exploring students' experiences with the course transfer process between 2‐year and 4‐year institutions, we identified low‐cost, key programmatic elements for early integration transfer advising that support students' navigation of coursework transfer that could be adopted by community colleges and their partner university transfer practitioners. Additionally, we advance prior research by focusing on a program that supports transfer in engineering, bringing to light the nuances of designing discipline‐specific early‐integration transfer programs. Our quasi‐experimental design allowed us to compare directly engineering vertical transfer students' experiences who had access to a pre‐transfer program that included intrusive advising with engineering vertical transfer students who did not. Based on our findings, we recommend several keys to successfully designing and implementing a pre‐transfer program. Investments in establishing, improving, or scaling up early‐integration programs like those we highlight in this article may pay large dividends in improving vertical transfer, within engineering and other STEM disciplines, fields characterized by full, highly sequenced curricula (Blash et al., 2012; Heileman et al., 2018).</p> <hd id="AN0156056613-18">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation, Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education under Grant Number DUE 1644138. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.</p> <ref id="AN0156056613-19"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Bahr, P. R., Toth, C., Thirolf, K., & Massé, J. C. (2013). A review and critique of the literature on community college students' transition processes and outcomes in four‐year institutions. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (pp. 459 – 511). Springer.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Blaney, J. M., Barrett, J., & Choi, Y. H. (2022). Diversifying STEM pathways: A look into upward transfer students' sense of belonging in computing. 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Transfer student pathways to engineering degrees: A multi‐institutional study based in Texas [Conference presentation abstract]. 2015 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), El Paso, TX, USA.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Roksa, J., & Keith, B. (2008). Credits, time, and attainment: Articulation policies and success after transfer. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 30 (3), 236 – 254. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0162373708321383</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Varney, J. (2007, September 1). Intrusive advising. Academic Advising Today, 30 (3). https://nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Academic‐Advising‐Today/View‐Articles/Intrusive‐Advising.aspx</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Virginia Tech & Virginia Community College System (2018). Guaranteed admission agreement between Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's College of Engineering and the Virginia Community College System. https://vt.edu/content/dam/vt_edu/admissions/forms/VT‐VCCS_2017‐2020_GE‐GAA.pdf</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> Wyner, J., Deane, K. C., Jenkins, D., & Fink, J. (2016). The transfer playbook: Essential practices for two‐and four‐year colleges. Aspen Institute. https://<ulink href="http://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/transfer‐playbook/">www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/transfer‐playbook/</ulink></bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Dustin M. Grote; Amy J. Richardson; Hannah E. Glisson; David B. Knight; Walter C. Lee and Bevlee A. Watford</p> <p>Reported by Author; Author; Author; Author; Author; Author</p> <p></p> <p>Dustin M. Grote is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Weber State University and a former Graduate Research Assistant for the VT‐NETS program.</p> <p>Amy J. Richardson is a Graduate Research Assistant at Virginia Tech and an engineering faculty member at Northern Virginia Community College.</p> <p>Hannah E. Glisson is a Graduate Assistant with the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech</p> <p>David B. Knight is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and serves as the Special Assistant to the Dean for Strategic Plan Implementation.</p> <p>Walter C. Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and the Director of Research for the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) at Virginia Tech.</p> <p>Bevlee A. Watford is the Associate Dean for Equity and Engagement and the Executive Director of the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity (CEED) at Virginia Tech.</p> </aug>
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  Data: Community college scholars and practitioners consistently seek ways to support vertical transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions. An emerging practice to streamline coursework transfer is the use of tailored, intrusive pre-transfer advising to increase information access for students still enrolled at the community college. In this article, we explore how one pre-transfer program--the Virginia Tech Network for Engineering Transfer Students (VT-NETS)--improved the transfer pathway in engineering through early integration programming and advising structures that help to streamline vertical transfer. Using a quasi-experimental design, we compare the experience of transfer students who participated in VT-NETS with transfer students that did not participate in the pre-transfer program. Based on our findings, we make practical recommendations that may be useful to community colleges and university partners seeking to establish, improve, or scale up early-integration programs for prospective transfer students.
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