Community College Research Initiatives

How rural community college students say mentorship shapes their academic and career experiences

Data Note 4 in the Rural Learners Success Series

When one rural community college student joined a mentoring program, transferring to a four-year university was not part of their original plan. But with steady encouragement and support from mentors, that path began to feel possible. Reflecting back, the student said they might not have made it through community college, let alone transferring to a four-year university, without the support of their mentors.

For many rural community college students, pursuing a postsecondary education often means having to navigate an unfamiliar system, balancing work, academic, and familial responsibilities, and figuring out their next academic and career steps along the way. In our most recent data note from the Rural Learner Success project, we draw on students’ experiences to better understand how mentorship shapes their academic and career experiences and outcomes.

What students told us

When we asked students whether and how mentorship had influenced their academic and career experiences, we learned that:

Mentorship helped students move forward during moments of uncertainty, especially when they were unsure about their academic direction. Encouragement from mentors helped students stay enrolled, clarify their roles, and feel more confident about their academic and career choices.
Mentorship introduced students to new academic and career possibilities. Students shared that throughout their conversations with their mentors, they were able to explore career options they had not considered before. For some, these conversations expanded what was possible, while for others, they confirmed they were on the right path.
Mentorship provided someone to turn to. For students, it was very important to have someone who listened, checked in, and helped them navigate the challenges they faced, which was critical, especially for first-generation college students.

What this means for rural-serving community colleges

Students’ reflections underscore the importance of mentorship being more than just providing information. It is about building relationships that help students navigate academic and career decisions, access resources, and feel supported as they navigate their college journey. At the same time, there were a few student recommendations that rural-serving community colleges should consider to further support their students: 1) more opportunities for one-on-one conversations with mentors, 2) increased visibility, access, and support for mentorship opportunities, and 3) more opportunities to connect with mentors who share or more strongly align with students’ diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Interested in learning more?

We invite you to read the full Data Note to learn more about how students at rural-serving community colleges describe mentorship shaping their academic and career pathways.

Staff Updates

CCRI is growing! We are thrilled to welcome two new members to our research efforts. Larissa Carter, an Industrial Engineering student and former transfer student, joins as Student Cohort Coordinator, leveraging her background in physics education research to empower our STEM cohorts. Research Scientist Susannah Davis, PhD, brings expertise as an NAEd/Spencer Fellow, investigating how educational leaders navigate systemic change to build more equitable and inclusive campus climates. Learn more about Larissa and Susannah on our staff page.

Expanding Change Teams Without Losing Momentum: Lessons from the STEM Transfer Partnership

STEM Transfer Partnerships, Data Note 7

Scaling organizational change in higher education is hard. Scaling it across institutions while staying focused on equity, student outcomes, and shared purpose is even harder.

That challenge sits at the heart of the STEM Transfer Partnership (STP), a multi-year, research-informed initiative led by Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) at the University of Washington. STP brings together faculty, staff, administrators, and undergraduate transfer students from community colleges and universities across Washington State to improve STEM transfer and degree completion for students from low-income backgrounds.

As STP entered a new phase known as STP 2.0, teams were asked to do something ambitious: expand. Institutions added new partners, disciplines, departments, and, critically, undergraduate transfer students as full team members. With growth came opportunity, but also real questions:

How do teams expand without losing clarity or momentum?
What structures and practices help new members engage meaningfully?
How can student voices be centered in this process?
And what does it take to sustain collaboration as complexity increases?

Our newest data note, Expanding Organizational Change Teams: Insights from the STEM Transfer Partnership, explores these questions using survey data collected from STP community of practice members during the early stages of STP 2.0.

Why this data note matters

Research on organizational change often emphasizes the difficulty of moving beyond small pilot teams. Yet many initiatives stall not because the ideas are flawed, but because growth isn’t intentionally designed. This data note offers practice-grounded insight into what team expansion actually feels like from the inside across 19 institutions and an approximately 160-member community of practice.

Rather than focusing on outcomes alone, the data note examines the conditions that support (or complicate) expansion, surfacing lessons that are relevant well beyond STP for anyone engaged in cross-institutional partnerships, transfer reform, or equity-centered change work.

Key insights from STP 2.0

Across four surveys administered in 2025, several consistent themes emerged:

Start with relationships. Expansion was smoothest when teams built on existing professional relationships. New partnerships were possible, but required more intentional structure and relationship-building.
Use data to anchor shared purpose. Shared data helped teams align priorities, move beyond anecdote, and focus conversations, especially as new institutions and disciplines joined the work.
Document direction through action planning. Clear, written action plans were essential for helping new members understand goals, roles, and how their contributions fit into the larger effort.
Collaborative culture matters as much as tools. Trust, mutual respect, and inclusive decision-making allowed teams to use data and planning tools productively, even as teams grew.
Communication infrastructure is not optional. Shared documents, centralized repositories, and tools like AI-supported meeting notes helped teams stay connected across schedules and institutions.
Onboarding is essential infrastructure. Informal onboarding quickly breaks down at scale. Teams benefited from written materials, timelines, and documented decisions to reduce confusion and reliance on institutional memory.
Smaller subgroups support engagement and sustainability. Creating working groups with clear leads and co-leads helped distribute leadership and prevent burnout.
Student voice requires intentional role design. Undergraduate transfer students were widely viewed as a strength of STP 2.0, but teams needed clearer structures to support meaningful participation.
Flexibility supports equity. Offering multiple ways to participate—synchronous, asynchronous, large-group, and task-based—made engagement more feasible amid heavy workloads and with existing incentive systems.

Together, these findings reinforce a core takeaway: expanding change teams isn’t just about adding people. It’s about designing the conditions that allow growth to strengthen collective capacity for change.

Join the conversation

The full data note goes deeper into each of these insights, drawing directly from participant voices and connecting them to broader research on organizational change.

If you’re working to expand a cross-institutional partnership, integrate student voices, or sustain momentum in complex change efforts, we invite you to read the full data note and reflect on how these lessons resonate with your own context.

👉 Read the full data note: Expanding Organizational Change Teams: Insights from the STEM Transfer Partnership

We also invite you to continue the conversation:

Which of these lessons feels most relevant to your work right now?
Where has expansion strengthened your efforts, and where has it created new challenges?

Change at scale is a design challenge. We hope these insights help inform how you design for growth, collaboration, and equity in your own initiatives.

Rooted in Community: Four Elements of Effective Rural-Responsive Mentorship

Data Note 3 in the Rural Learners Success Series

Mentoring is a high-impact practice that strengthens student persistence—especially for learners navigating systemic inequities—yet rural community college students often face compounded barriers (distance, fewer services, and the time pressures of work and caregiving) that make sustained mentoring harder to access. Because many mentoring frameworks were designed outside rural and community college contexts, adapting them to these settings by leveraging rural strengths—tight-knit relationships, reciprocity, and community networks—can surface otherwise untapped supports in places where staffing and funding are limited.

In our third data note of the Mapping Effective Mentorship for Rural Community College Students project, we present a working model of Adaptive Rural-Responsive Mentorship, to serve as something colleges can adapt, question, and build upon as they deepen their own approaches to rural-responsive mentorship, and the Data Note includes a worksheet to facilitate this process.

This rural-responsive model was derived by adapting general mentoring practices that were most salient to themes from interviews with 25 mentees, and 27 mentors and mentor programming staff across seven rural-serving community colleges and refined through dialogue with rural college leaders at the Rural Community College Alliance Conference. Together, these perspectives ground the model in the lived experiences of rural students and the practitioners who support them.

Across interviews, effective rural mentorship consistently reflected four elements that will feel familiar to many practitioners—while also showing how rural context gives each one a distinct “shape.”:

Relational trust through tight-knit interrelationships and reciprocity, often built through consistency, shared community ties, and personal connection
Holistic support through personal and responsive care attuned to rural material realities, including attention to basic needs like transportation, childcare, and food security
Engaging and supporting identity and belonging shaped by place and culture, by affirming students’ languages, role of family, and community knowledge
Cultivating resource connection through bridging rural community networks, by helping students access opportunities beyond the campus

While these four elements resonated strongly, college leaders also emphasized that their application is shaped by the daily institutional conditions that determine what’s possible. Three themes stood out:

Mentorship must evolve with students and context, as rural student experiences, responsibilities, and needs continue to change
Sustaining trust through collaboration and continuity, particularly amid staff transitions, shifting roles, and limited institutional capacity
Centering culture, belonging, and resource connection, as core conditions for persistence rather than add-ons to mentoring work

We invite you to reflect on these findings by considering which elements already show up in your mentoring work and which feel hardest to sustain. We also encourage teams to consider how these mentee, mentor, and practitioner insights might inform more impactful mentorship experiences for your students, and how the model may continue to be adapted to rural contexts. The worksheet included in Data Note 3 offers a starting point for this kind of reflection and discussion.

Read the full publication!

Student Cohort Coordinator Internship

Internship Description

About CCRI

CCRI conducts research on equitable college access, progression and transfer, degree completion, and employment in living-wage careers for underserved students and diverse learner populations throughout the United States. This position will primarily focus on the STEM Transfer Partnerships initiative, which fosters collaboration between 2-year and 4-year institutions to improve STEM transfer student success, particularly for low-income students. By creating strategic partnerships and a community of practice (CoP) for members of partnership teams supported by CCRI’s research and expert coaching, the project aims to identify and dismantle institutional barriers, ultimately driving systemic change and sharing effective practices statewide.

Position Summary

This internship offers a unique opportunity for a highly motivated and organized college student to join a higher education research team focused on educational equity and to serve as a Student Cohort Coordinator for a STEM Transfer Partnership CoP that includes undergraduate student participants across multiple institutions. The position provides hands-on experience in leadership, event coordination, and community building within a STEM context. The intern will have the opportunity to develop crucial professional skills in communication, project management, and organization. The person in this position will gain experience with virtual teamwork, a student success program and building professional networks, maintaining outreach and communications platforms, and administrative support while contributing to a vital initiative supporting STEM transfer students.

Responsibilities:

Student Cohort Coordination:
- Serve as the primary point of contact for student participants from roughly sixteen 2-year and 4-year institutions in Washington in the STEM Transfer Partnership cohort.
- Develop and disseminate communication materials, including newsletter stories, emails, and social media posts.
- Foster a sense of community and collaboration among student cohort members.
- Collect and track student feedback to improve cohort activities.
- Assist with the planning and execution of cohort-related projects and initiatives.
- Maintain attendance and participant records.
Workflow Management & Website Maintenance:
- Support project efficiency and communication by assisting with the maintenance of workflow management tools (e.g., ClickUp) and the tracking of project tasks and timelines.
- Contribute to the program’s online presence by updating and maintaining the CoP’s communications and document repository platform and the website (WordPress) with accurate and engaging content.
Research assistance:
- Assist with research processes as requested.

Essential Skills:

Currently enrolled as a student at University of Washington Seattle.
Strong organizational and time-management skills.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Proficiency with Canva and creating short videos.
Proficiency in Google Suite and Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
Familiarity with social media platforms.
Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Interest in STEM education and student success.
Interest in event planning.

Desired Qualifications:

Experience working with diverse student populations.
Experience with workflow management system ClickUp.
Experience with website content management system, WordPress.
Experience planning events or assisting with event coordination.
Experience being part of a community of practice or leading a group.
Transfer student knowledge or experience
Interested in educational research or educational equity

Important Position Information

Position Details

Job title: Student Cohort Coordinator

Position type: Internship

Work-Study program: No

Location requirements

Location type: Remote

Remote work requirements: Remote employees must be based within the US

Time Requirements

Application open and close dates: 7/1/25 – 9/30/25

Schedule: Part time

Hours: 10 hours per week

Employment duration: Temporary

Estimated start & end dates: 8/11/2025 (or when filled) – 6/15/2026

Compensation

Pay range: $20-$30/hr, DOE

Qualifications

Requirements: (1) This job requires US work authorization and (2) to be enrolled as a UW Seattle campus student

Desired school year: Junior, Senior or graduate student

UW Seattle campus transfer students are encouraged to apply

To Apply

Email a resume and cover letter to kk57 @ uw . edu

Welcoming new research scientist Jordan Reed!

We are thrilled to welcome and introduce our newest team member, Jordan Reed, whose research and action primarily addresses the systematic role of education in status reproduction for historically underrepresented, subaltern, low-income, and first-generation college students. Grounded in community psychology, Jordan uses critical and postcolonial frameworks to work alongside students and their communities, fostering systemic changes that reflect collective aspirations and support student self-empowerment. In addition to research, Jordan has over 10 years of experience in program design, evaluation, capacity building, and in mutual aid efforts. Learn more about Jordan and other CCRI staff here.

Charting Practices and Critical Mentorship Strategies for Rural Community College Students

Mentoring is a powerful tool for enhancing student persistence and success, especially for students who face greater entrenched systematic injustice in higher education. This is particularly important for rural students, who combined with the challenges faced by community college students, represent a group often underserved by traditional mentorship programs. In our second data note of the Mapping Effective Mentorship for Rural Community College Students project, we highlight mentorship programs and practices at rural-serving community colleges (RSCCs) that can support student success and address the systemic inequities they face in achieving their goals. We invite you to reflect on these findings and how your institution can apply these insights to create more impactful mentorship experiences for your students. Read Data Note 2 and join the conversation on how we can strengthen mentorship for rural community college students.

Why this Data Note Matters

Rural-community colleges are a key points of entry to paths toward greater economic security and choice for minoritized populations, yet high-impact mentoring programs informed by and specific to this unique role and their distinct rural contexts are sparse. This data note provides actionable strategies and considerations for practitioners to strengthen mentorship programs for rural community college students at their colleges.

Key Insights

Building Empowering and Inclusive Mentorship Spaces: Learn how mentorship programs at RSCCs strive to create a safe and inclusive environment that can foster student reflection, agency, and advocacy to challenge the power structures they encounter in higher education and beyond.
Cultural Identity and Community Engagement in Mentorship: Explore how mentorship programs are embracing students’ cultural identities. These protective practices can amplify students’ community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), which can buffer students from the exclusive power structures encountered in higher education and enhance persistence and overall goal attainment.

Additionally, we invite you to share our survey below with students who receive mentorship to help us further understand how we can enhance mentorship strategies and better support rural students. Please click here to learn more about our student survey.

Click here to read the full data note.

Rural Community College Mentees Wanted!

This is the third phase of a three-phase study. A description of the prior phases and what we learned can be found in our Data Note 2 for this project. We are gathering a nationwide sample, surveying students who are or have experienced mentoring at rural-serving institutions to learn about potential differences and commonalities in the needs, barriers, and mentoring best-practices they identify. Each respondent will receive $10 in the form of a gift card of their choice, and will be entered to win an Apple iPad. Respondents can also be someone who has left their community college but experienced mentoring there in the recent past.

Our three-phase study, Mapping Effective Mentorship for Rural Community College Students, seeks to provide a comprehensive assessment of the descriptions of mentoring programs at rural-serving community colleges in the United States, to understand these programs from the mentor and mentee perspective, to find practices that are especially responsive to students at these institutions, and to highlight and begin a dialogue with practitioners regarding how these practices can be applied and expanded in other mentoring programs.

Students at rural-serving community colleges often face greater systemic inequities, but extant mentoring models were not devised with this population in mind. Thus, we were particularly interested in programs that took these systematic factors into account, and that supported students to navigate and advocate for themselves within these contexts.

The 15-minute survey asks about these and other mentoring supports, what could be improved, and what impact the students felt their mentoring experiences had on their academic and career plans. Respondents who have recently departed community college are invited to share their retrospective experiences. Each respondent will receive $10 in the form of a gift card which they will choose from 100+ options via the Tango card system. Respondents who opt in will also be entered in a drawing to win an Apple iPad.

One reason mentoring for students at rural-serving community colleges is under-examined and underdeveloped is the inherent difficulty in directly collecting representative nationwide data with these students. Outreach through practitioners and institutional stakeholders is especially critical for this research. Thus, if you work with or are connected to someone who mentors these students, please pass the information about this survey along.

The leaderboard tracking the states from which the survey has thus far received the most responses, as well as a brief explanation of the survey, including a flyer for dissemination, can be found on our website here. Thank you for your help in uncovering the best ways to support rural community college students!

Unlocking STEM Potential: How Partnerships are Bridging the Transfer Gap

Imagine a future where talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students from low-income backgrounds have a clear and supported pathway from their community college to a 4-year university to complete their bachelor’s degree in their chosen major. This vision is becoming a reality thanks to innovative partnerships between 2-year and 4-year institutions.

The STEM Transfer Partnership began with nine teams composed of 2-year and 4-year institutional partners. These teams have been working collaboratively to increase access to and bachelor’s degree completion for STEM transfer students from low-income backgrounds. These partnerships were formed towards the end of the COVID pandemic, as institutions were readjusting to a new normal and returning to campus with fewer students and, thus, fewer resources. During this challenging time, faculty, staff and administrators faced many demands on their time and attention. We are grateful these teams chose to focus on improving their transfer students’ experiences by growing their partnerships, building relationships, and creating solutions.

Data Note 5 from the STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) initiative unveils the power of collaboration by sharing case studies of nine dedicated teams. The teams who collectively comprise the STP community of practice are composed of faculty, staff, and administrators working together to break down the barriers that often hinder the transfer and completion rates of STEM students from low-income backgrounds.

Discover how these partnerships are:

Improving advising: Streamlining guidance, fostering personalized support, and creating clear pathways to success.
Enhancing recruitment and enrollment: Inspiring student interest, increasing access to opportunities, and simplifying the transfer process.
Strengthening faculty and curriculum: Improving gateway course outcomes, promoting research experiences, and providing courses to be major ready to transfer.

This Data Note showcases examples from this community of practice’s partnerships. Some of the exciting things you will see in these case studies are the myriad ways teams changed practices and processes to improve transfer student experiences. All teams utilized student input in their change process.

Key takeaways from across these case studies highlight the importance to:

- Build relationships
- Center transfer student input in the process
- Use data to monitor and improve outcomes
- Tie efforts to other institutional resources with similar goals
- Get leadership involved

This publication, co-created with our team leads, provides valuable insights for educators, administrators, and policymakers seeking to improve STEM transfer rates and empower the next generation of scientists and innovators.

Read the full brief to learn more about the strategies and successes of these impactful partnerships.

UW Community College Research Initiatives awarded $1.7 million grant from Ascendium Education Group to continue STEM Transfer Partnerships program

The University of Washington’s Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) has been awarded a $1.7 million grant from Ascendium Education Group to continue its STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) program, which aims to increase equity in STEM education for low-income learners across Washington state. This funding extension builds on an earlier $1.17 million grant, continuing the work to improve outcomes for underserved students in STEM fields.

CCRI conducts research to promote equity in higher education, with a focus on the experiences of underserved student populations. Ascendium supports initiatives aimed at helping students from low-income backgrounds achieve postsecondary degree completion. With aligned goals of enhancing access and success for low-income learners, Ascendium is a natural and valuable partner in advancing CCRI’s efforts.

Building on success and expanding opportunities

CCRI will build on the successes of the original initiative, adding key enhancements to further support low-income STEM transfer students in Washington state.

“We are deeply grateful to Ascendium Education Group for continuing to support the STEM Transfer Partnership project. This second grant provides an incredible opportunity to build on our successes and deepen our impact,” says Lia Wetzstein, director of CCRI and principal investigator on the grant.

“Thanks to our teams advancing their work to lower barriers to STEM transfer, together we are creating pathways for more low-income students to achieve living-wage careers and thrive in a rapidly changing economy. With this support, we will further cultivate a community of practice that strengthens transfer partnerships, drives innovation and creates equitable opportunities across institutions.”

The new grant will enable the STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) project to build on the successes of the original initiative while introducing key enhancements to further support low-income STEM transfer students in Washington state. In the first phase, the project focused on establishing partnerships between 2-year and 4-year institutions, providing $25,000 to each institutional partner. STP 2.0 will continue this funding model, offering $25,000 to each partner, while formalizing critical drivers of success. The new phase will emphasize a more inclusive, student-centered approach, incorporating paid student team members and expanding teams to include additional STEM disciplines. Faculty and staff are also being leveraged as mentors for returning team members. Other key enhancements include the introduction of standardized data reporting to track student-level outcomes and a focus on ensuring leadership buy-in at participating institutions.

Like in the STP 1.0, a critical component of STP 2.0 is the provision of financial and human resources to ensure the sustainability of partnerships. By continuing to address systemic barriers and strengthen transfer pathways, STP 2.0 will expand opportunities for low-income STEM students to achieve their academic and career goals while fostering innovations to improve transfer success and equity for all students across the state.

“CCRI’s impact on the transfer experience begins with deep research and continues with implementation and dissemination of best practices. This latest investment will allow partner institutions to extend and deepen their student success work. At the same time, CCRI and their partners will continue to tackle system barriers, making the transfer pathway smoother for many more students, particularly those who have been historically underserved in higher education,” says Michaelann Jundt, senior associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs and the UW’s representative to the state’s Joint Transfer Council.

“We are excited to continue leading this work, which holds immense potential to benefit students, institutions, and our state by fostering a culture of collaboration around transfer to elevate transfer student success—starting with STEM and expanding to all programs, “ says Wetzstein. “This work can also serve to empower students, staff and faculty to work together to lead transformative change across institutions while advancing our understanding of partnership strategies that drive measurable improvements in student outcomes.”

About the University of Washington’s Community College Research Initiatives

The University of Washington’s CCRI conducts research to generate actionable knowledge aimed at advancing equity in higher education. A program of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, CCRI focuses on studying the experiences of underserved student groups who enter higher education through community colleges and the role institutions play in supporting equitable educational and employment outcomes. By leveraging research findings, CCRI drives meaningful change in postsecondary education. To learn more, visit the CCRI website.

About Ascendium Education Group

Ascendium Education Group is a nonprofit organization committed to helping individuals achieve their education and career goals. Ascendium focuses on increasing the number of students from low-income backgrounds who complete postsecondary degrees, certificates, and workforce training programs. With a focus on first-generation students, incarcerated adults, rural community members, students of color, and veterans, Ascendium works to identify and scale best practices that drive large-scale change in education systems and promote opportunity for all. For more information, visit the Ascendium website.

For more information or to get involved, contact Lia Wetzstein at ccri@uw.edu.