Promoting Transfer Students’ Success through Articulation Agreements: An Empirical Case Study in Mechanical Engineering

Anna-Lena Dicke; Kameryn Denaro; David A. Copp

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: MECH - Technical Session 12: Promoting Student Success and Motivation
Tagged Division: Mechanical Engineering Division (MECH)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47898

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Paper Authors

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Anna-Lena Dicke University of California, Irvine orcid.org/0000-0001-8816-455X

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Dr. Dicke is an Associate Project Scientist within the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine. In her research, she aims to understand how students’ motivation and interest in the STEM fields can be fostered to secure their educational persistence and long-term career success. Trying to bridge the gap between theory and practice, she is currently involved in an NSF-funded project aimed at fostering the persistence and retention of low-income engineering transfer students.

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Kameryn Denaro orcid.org/0000-0001-9175-1640

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David A. Copp University of California, Irvine orcid.org/0000-0002-5206-5223

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David A. Copp received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Prior to joining UCI, he was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories and an adjunct faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico. His broad research interests include engineering education, as well as control and optimization of nonlinear and hybrid systems with applications to power and energy systems, multi-agent systems, robotics, and biomedicine. He is a recipient of UCSB's Center for Control, Dynamical Systems, and Computation Best PhD Thesis award and a UCI Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentorship.

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Abstract

The desired diversification of the engineering workforce would benefit strongly from an inclusion of the diverse group of students served by community colleges (Fay, 2022). However, community college students transfer to four-year-institutions to complete their four-year degrees can be daunting for students. Articulation agreements are one tool that appears to be successful in ensuring transfer students’ bachelor’s degree attainment rates (Stern, 2016). Articulation agreements establish course equivalencies and transferability of academic credit within specific engineering major programs to facilitate seamless transfer of students’ credit across post-secondary institutions (Crisp, 2021). In this paper, we are investigating how historic changes in the articulation agreement for the mechanical engineering major impacted the 4-year university’s success in supporting students’ successful graduation using institutional data on student course-taking behavior after transfer. To investigate the impact of modifications made to the articulation agreement, course enrollment patterns of 453 mechanical engineering transfer students that transferred either before and after the modification of the articulation agreement were compared. Results revealed that, while the socio-demographic diversity of the transfer students did not increase, more transfer students were able to graduate within two years after the change in articulation agreement than before the change. An investigation of the course-taking patterns of transfer students before and after the change in the articulation agreement suggested several mechanisms that might have impacted this finding. Strategies such as the reclassification of articulated courses that were not offered sufficiently in community colleges as well as the addition of non-gateway courses to the agreement likely support transfer students’ success. In addition to the actual changes made to the articulation agreement, transfer students’ success after the change in articulation agreement was likely also dependent on the support provided by the 4-year university. In particular, course offerings at the appropriate terms throughout the academic year and guidance for on-time course-taking for key engineering courses at the 4-year university likely improved transfer students’ on-time degree completion. Findings provide important insights for mechanical engineering administrators to help them improve transfer articulation agreements and course scheduling to better cater to the needs of transfer students.

Citation
Format

Dicke, A., & Denaro, K., & Copp, D. A. (2024, June), Promoting Transfer Students’ Success through Articulation Agreements: An Empirical Case Study in Mechanical Engineering Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47898

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The desired diversification of the engineering workforce would benefit strongly from an inclusion of the diverse group of students served by community colleges (Fay, 2022). However, community college students transfer to four-year-institutions to complete their four-year degrees can be daunting for students. Articulation agreements are one tool that appears to be successful in ensuring  transfer students’ bachelor’s degree attainment rates (Stern, 2016). Articulation agreements establish course equivalencies and transferability of academic credit within specific engineering major programs to facilitate seamless transfer of students’ credit across post-secondary institutions (Crisp, 2021). In this paper, we are investigating how historic changes in the articulation agreement for the mechanical engineering major impacted the 4-year university’s success in supporting students’ successful graduation using institutional data on student course-taking behavior after transfer. To investigate the impact of modifications made to the articulation agreement, course enrollment patterns of 453 mechanical engineering transfer students that transferred either before and after the modification of the articulation agreement were compared. Results revealed that, while the socio-demographic diversity of the transfer students did not increase, more transfer students were able to graduate within two years after the change in articulation agreement than before the change. An investigation of the course-taking patterns of transfer students before and after the change in the articulation agreement suggested several mechanisms that might have impacted this finding. Strategies such as the reclassification of articulated courses that were not offered sufficiently in community colleges as well as the addition of non-gateway courses to the agreement likely support transfer students’ success. In addition to the actual changes made to the articulation agreement, transfer students’ success after the change in articulation agreement was likely also dependent on the support provided by the 4-year university. In particular, course offerings at the appropriate terms throughout the academic year and guidance for on-time course-taking for key engineering courses at the 4-year university likely improved transfer students’ on-time degree completion. Findings provide important insights for mechanical engineering administrators to help them improve transfer articulation agreements and course scheduling to better cater to the needs of transfer students.
AU  - Anna-Lena Dicke
AU  - Kameryn Denaro
AU  - David A. Copp
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Promoting Transfer Students’ Success through Articulation Agreements: An Empirical Case Study in Mechanical Engineering
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/47898
ER  -