Understanding Diverse and Atypical Engineering Students: Lessons Learned From Community College Transfer Scholarship Recipients

摘要

With funding from the National Science Foundation's S-STEM grant program, the ECASE (Engaging the Community to Achieve Success in Engineering) Scholarship at Seattle Pacific University (SPU) has targeted transfer students from urban and rural community colleges in the region. For the past nine years, this program has provided scholarship and other support funds to assist these transfer students in obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. The goal of the ECASE Scholarship is to provide pathways for financially needy, academically talented transfer students to thrive in the university environment, enter the workforce as well-trained engineers, and engage the community as service-minded leaders. Generally, these students came to SPU from low-income households, underrepresented populations, and atypical backgrounds. By examining our body of ECASE scholars in this paper, we aim to expand perceptions about who could, who would, and who does succeed in earning the rigorous undergraduate electrical engineering degree. This paper includes a discussion of the lessons learned from interacting closely with 49 ECASE scholarship recipients and supporting them in an adaptive manner to address their individual needs. The paper provides composite illustrations of the range of their backgrounds and unique situations. It highlights the challenges faced by these students during matriculation at SPU and details the interventions and support provided to these students, according to their distinct needs as engineering students from diverse and non-traditional backgrounds. Specifically, this paper includes examples of such supports, including: individual tutoring, individual mentoring, advising by an assigned faculty member, and delayed due dates when necessary, among others. While some students have personal obstacles or lack preparation for university education that prevented them from continuing even with extensive support, most (89%) recipients of the ECASE scholarship have succeeded with the appropriate academic, social, emotional, and professional supports. This paper will present composite narratives representing student uniquenesses, challenges, commonalities and supports. It will discuss the scenarios in which supports have facilitated the successful matriculation and graduation of diverse, underrepresented, and atypical engineering students, as well as when the supports have fallen short. Finally, it will describe the challenges for providing such supports, such as faculty time, student availability, community acceptance/integration, and student preparedness. This paper will also include suggested strategies for overcoming these challenges.