Creating an Environment for Transfer Student Success

Agnieszka Miguel; Shiny Abraham

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Electrical and Computer Division Technical Session 4
Tagged Division: Electrical and Computer
Page Count: 11
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--28081
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/28081
Download Count: 575

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Paper Authors

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Agnieszka Miguel Seattle University

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Agnieszka Miguel received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2001 from the University of Washington, and MSEE and BSEE from Florida Atlantic University in 1996 and 1994. Dr. Miguel's professional interests involve image processing, machine learning, and engineering education especially active learning, diversity, retention, and recruitment. Her teaching interests include MATLAB, circuits, linear systems, and digital image processing. She is a member of the IEEE, ASEE, SWE, and Tau Beta Pi.
Currently, Dr. Miguel is the Chair of the ASEE Professional Interest Council I, a position that gives her a seat on the ASEE Board of Directors. She is also the ASEE Pacific Northwest (PNW) Section Chair (2015 - 2017). Dr. Miguel has held several other officer positions across the ASEE including: Division Chair and Program Chair of the ECE and New Engineering Educators Divisions, and ASEE Campus Representative. Dr. Miguel is also a member-at-large of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) Board of Directors. She has been a member of the ECEDHA Annual Conference Program Committee since 2013 and is serving on the Editorial Board for the ECEDHA Source monthly newsletter.

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Shiny Abraham Seattle University

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Shiny Abraham is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University. She received the B.E. degree in Telecommunication Engineering from Visveswaraiah Technological University (VTU), India in 2007 and Ph.D. from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA in 2012. Her research interests span the areas of Wireless Communication, Internet of Things (IoT), Optimization using Game Theory, and Engineering Education Research. She is a member of the IEEE and ASEE, a technical program committee member for IEEE Globecom, ICC, ICCCN and VTC conferences, and a reviewer for several international journals and conferences.

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Abstract

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University offers an undergraduate-only program focused on professional formation of each student. Small class sizes provide opportunities for individualized instruction and personal attention, while faculty-led advising helps students navigate the many options of our programs and encourage them to think about their future beyond the time spent at the university. 50% of our current students are transfers from 2- or 4-year institutions. Formal agreements between community colleges and universities in our state inform the transfer process and ensure that potential transfer students are aware of which courses they should be taking at the community college-level.

In this paper, we investigate the success of our transfer students as compared to freshmen. The hypothesis we test is: "When studying at an institution with high levels of support services, transfer students are no less academically successful than freshmen." We track students who majored in our program between years 2000 and 2015, and provide data about their successes as measured by the time to graduate, their major and cumulative GPAs, and their employment status after they graduate (if known). We contrast the success of transfer students with that of freshmen, and compare students across the 10 local community colleges. We also study the students’ preparation for the transfer process and how it differs depending on which 2-year institution they are coming from. We compare our findings to nationally available data.

It has been our experience that, typically, transfer students are more mature than first-year students and therefore more motivated. However, research also shows that many transfer students face academic, social, and/or psychological challenges leading to low GPAs in their first year of transferring. We believe that any recruitment strategy should start with analyzing the success and motivation of current students. Our exploration provided us with several approaches, which, we hope, should yield increased enrollment and improve the overall process of recruitment, admission, and first quarter advising. Finally, as expected, support services have a tremendous role in helping students be successful. We discuss some of the most common student support services and provide recommendations for optimizing their effectiveness.

Citation
Format

Miguel, A., & Abraham, S. (2017, June), Creating an Environment for Transfer Student Success Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28081

TY - CPAPER
AB -
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University offers an undergraduate-only program focused on professional formation of each student. Small class sizes provide opportunities for individualized instruction and personal attention, while faculty-led advising helps students navigate the many options of our programs and encourage them to think about their future beyond the time spent at the university. 50% of our current students are transfers from 2- or 4-year institutions. Formal agreements between community colleges and universities in our state inform the transfer process and ensure that potential transfer students are aware of which courses they should be taking at the community college-level.

In this paper, we investigate the success of our transfer students as compared to freshmen. The hypothesis we test is: &quot;When studying at an institution with high levels of support services, transfer students are no less academically successful than freshmen.&quot; We track students who majored in our program between years 2000 and 2015, and provide data about their successes as measured by the time to graduate, their major and cumulative GPAs, and their employment status after they graduate (if known). We contrast the success of transfer students with that of freshmen, and compare students across the 10 local community colleges. We also study the students’ preparation for the transfer process and how it differs depending on which 2-year institution they are coming from. We compare our findings to nationally available data.

It has been our experience that, typically, transfer students are more mature than first-year students and therefore more motivated. However, research also shows that many transfer students face academic, social, and/or psychological challenges leading to low GPAs in their first year of transferring. We believe that any recruitment strategy should start with analyzing the success and motivation of current students. Our exploration provided us with several approaches, which, we hope, should yield increased enrollment and improve the overall process of recruitment, admission, and first quarter advising. Finally, as expected, support services have a tremendous role in helping students be successful. We discuss some of the most common student support services and provide recommendations for optimizing their effectiveness.

AU - Agnieszka Miguel
AU - Shiny Abraham
CY - Columbus, Ohio
DA - 2017/06/24
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Creating an Environment for Transfer Student Success
UR - https://strategy.asee.org/28081
DO - 10.18260/1-2--28081
ER -