Transfer Success Co-Design in Engineering Disciplines (TranSCEnD)

This project, 'Transfer Success Co-Design in Engineering Disciplines,' or TranSCEnD, aims at increasing retention and degree completion of community college students transferring to the Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) at the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK). Pellissippi State Community College (PSCC) is the single largest source of engineering transfer students to UTK. TranSCEnD will recruit and support with scholarships at least 36 academically talented, low-income (i.e. Pell Grant eligible) transfer students for a total of at least 104 annual scholarships over the life of the award. TranSCEnD scholars will also participate in a comprehensive program encompassing a series of activities which span a five-year process (two years at PSCC, a summer bridge program, and three years at UTK). At UTK, engineering transfer students statistically represent a different demographic population than the student body entering the university as freshmen (i.e., transfer students are more likely to be first generation college students). Currently the fraction of engineering transfer students who do not graduate within 5 years at TCE is nearly double that of traditional engineering students. At the same time, the average unmet annual financial need of engineering transfer students is more than double that of TCE students who enter UTK as freshmen. Thus, TranSCEnD will focus on the development and leveraging of financial and socio-academic support services offered at both the PSCC and UTK campuses. This program is timely in the state of Tennessee as the Tennessee Promise program has become a nationwide model for providing two years of free community college education. In its inaugural 2015 class, about 90% of Tennessee's senior class applied for Tennessee Promise. Transfer students' applications to engineering alone have greatly increased in the last few years. Thus the faculty and administration at UTK's TCE anticipate that transfer students will become an increasingly important fraction of the student body in the years to come, and increasing the success of low-income talented transfer students is of great significance.

TranSCEnD builds on evidence-based strategies for mitigating many of the pre-transfer and post-transfer barriers faced by transfer students. These challenges are both academic (adapting to university coursework and culture) and social (lacking a well-defined peer-cohort with whom the adjustment to university life can be shared). The UTK's Materials Science and Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering departments are the main engineering partners in TranSCEnD. To execute the project, a multidisciplinary leadership team has been assembled, which includes faculty, staff and administration from UTK, and faculty from PSCC. The TranSCEnD research team will investigate the impact of multiple retention strategies including early academic and social integration on pre-transfer retention, post-transfer retention, and graduation rate for transfer students interested in engineering. The principle of co-design, namely the explicit inclusion of input from all constituents, has been invoked in the creation of the TranSCEnD program. The individual elements of the program have been chosen to balance two influences: (1) a theoretical framework of best pedagogy practices and (2) a practical acknowledgment of demonstrated success at UTK. One novel element is the proposed summer research experience for TranSCEnD students. The summer projects aim to explore fundamental engineering concepts, build a cohort of students with similar academic preparation, and provide them with hands-on engineering design experience while they investigate alternative energy systems. The outcomes of TranSCEnD will be widely disseminated to other institutions of higher learning and in academic publications.