Motivated Engineering Transfer Students (METS)

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This exploratory project will form a partnership between Arizona State University?s (ASU?s) Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and three community colleges (CCs) across the state of Arizona. The program is designed to significantly increase the number of community college transfer students, especially women and underrepresented minority students, who graduate with B.S. degrees in engineering and computer science. Student populations to be targeted are high school and community college students enrolled in pre-calculus/calculus, engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, and geology courses at Arizona CCs and their local high schools. The partners, Arizona Western, Central Arizona, and Cochise CCs have been selected because they possess a significant pool of untapped engineering talent, a high percentage of women and underrepresented minorities, and they have enthusiastically embraced the vision to reach out to students in an effort to attract them to exciting engineering careers. It is important to our future competitiveness to help stem the decrease of U.S. and permanent resident students earning engineering degrees. This project will impact university-CC interactions across the nation. It will also significantly improve our understanding of which interventions are most effective in encouraging CC students, including women and minority students, into engineering and transitioning them to a four-year engineering programs. Another result will be an exploration of how and to what extent university-CC-high school-parents collaborations impact these interventions. The outreach efforts will inform and encourage more undecided students to consider engineering. Moreover, the METS program, with its emphasis on research, will produce more engineers with a broadened view of engineering opportunities, including graduate school.