Examining Gaps in Supporting Underserved Community College Students

Within CCRI’s research, we recognize the unique challenges faced by students from marginalized backgrounds, particularly those belonging to communities of color, who form a significant portion of our community college demographic. Our exploration of data and historical trends reveals that due to a persistent lack of clarity in transfer pathways in STEM majors, these students may not be prepared to apply for their preferred university or major.

Given the ever-expanding nature of STEM disciplines and the increasing competitiveness among students, it is imperative that we develop a strategic plan of action. Our focus is on establishing and enhancing partnerships specifically tailored to address the needs of disproportionately marginalized students. Throughout our research, we emphasize resource equity and access to fortify our support framework for these students. As we diversify the conversations of how to approach providing these resources and support systems, we encourage you to read our findings which may be accessed here.

Prioritizing Racial Equity in Research

CCRI’s work in transfer is guided by our commitment to center racial equity and anti-racist strategies to support and transform policies and systems that historically and presently oppress our student population into ones that equitably enhance their growth and development in our institutions. Our transfer research presents evidence that such problems continue to persist within higher institutions to this day, despite ongoing efforts and progress towards education reform.

Ongoing studies on transfer students consistently reveal a higher influence of demographic factors impacting their experience compared to other institutional aspects.In our research, we focus on examining the specific challenges faced by students of color, seeking to understand why they disproportionately encounter adversity in their postsecondary journey. Our goal is to develop solutions that extend beyond college, addressing the issue of limited access to higher education. The onus is on institutions to actively dismantle these barriers and delve deeper into understanding the various impacts on students throughout the transfer process. CCRI remains committed to generating actionable research that contributes to leveling the educational playing field for all students of color.

Learn more about our research in this area:

Read Transfer Data Note 2: Including Racial Equity as an Outcome Measure in Transfer Research

This brief finds that higher-performing transfer partnerships were almost exclusively institutional pairs with high percentages of White students, none of the institutional pairs revealed equitable outcomes for transfer students of color compared to White transfer students.

Read Transfer Data Note 10: Identifying Effective and Equitable Institutions for Transfer Students: Exploring the Contribution of the Pair in Multilevel Models

Using multilevel modeling, in this brief we examine how two- and four-year institutions working in relationship with each other reveal outcomes for African American and Latinx students within the transfer process.

Bridging the Rural Mentorship Gap: A Data Note on Mentorship Programs in Rural Community Colleges

A recent data note, the first in a series, published by the Community College Research Initiatives and generously funded by the Ascendium Education Group as part of its Building Evidence to Increase Rural Learner Success initiative, examines mentorship programs at public 2-year rural-serving institutions (RSIs). Using institutional website data, it explores the prevalence, distribution, and focus of mentorship programs, shedding light on who these programs serve and the variations across states.

The findings highlight an asymmetry in the distribution and location of mentorship programs across 444 public 2-year RSIs. While 301 of the 444 RSIs had at least one mentorship program, the number of programs ranged from one to eight per institution. A large proportion of mentorship programs lacked an explicit focus on underrepresented student groups. Approximately 3 out of 10 programs (29%) explicitly targeted low-income students, and 10 percent of programs targeted specific racial/ethnic student groups in their program descriptions. The analysis also found that many website descriptions did not provide clear information on who was providing the mentoring and how mentorship was defined.

These findings inform our future questions:

Mentorship: How is mentorship defined, and who is providing the mentoring? What structures are embedded within mentorship programs that support the success of rural community college students?
Rural Student Experience: How do mentorship programs impact the academic and career outcomes of rural community college students?
Intersectionality: How do mentorship experiences align with rural students’ evolving needs and intersectional identities, including low-income and racially minoritized students?
Best Practices: What best practices can be identified to inform mentoring models that are adaptable and tailored across institutions to support the success of rural community college students? How can programs better cater to the unique needs of students residing in rural communities? How does rurality play a role in program design and implementation?

In the next phase of this research, CCRI is exploring these questions through in-depth interviews with staff and student support practitioners, focus groups with students, and a national student survey. The “Landscape of Mentorship Programs at Rural Serving Community Colleges” data note serves as a starting point for understanding the availability of mentorship programs across public 2-year RSIs. As this research progresses, the insights this work provides will contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of mentorship in rural settings, guide the development of inclusive and effective mentorship programs for rural students, and work towards bridging critical gaps in serving historically underserved students at RSIs.

NTSW: Overcoming the Turbulent Period of COVID-19 Through CCRI Student Support

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With Transfer being one of the most understudied yet most frequently occuring phenomena in higher education, it is important to recognize the functions at play involving societal inequities that continually contribute to adversities transfer students face. Considering transfer students already deal with intense adjustments depending on the institutions they come from (i.e. new requirements, new social communities, and completely readjusting their own approach to participation in contrasting cultural even linguistic circumstances), providing students with adequate connections, staffing support, and guidance becomes a much-needed tool in their tool kit for success.

Attending to student needs, overall, has taken a massive shift since the pandemic. Being a transfer student during this time poses a unique challenge of navigating two big transitions as they adapt to a new institution. One is the online learning environment and adjusting to regulations and rules that continue to change, and one is related to returning to the “normal” standards of the school (something students are unaccustomed to because of the pandemic’s influence).

The CCRI team sought to raise awareness on transfer student needs during this time. Our researchers, Debra Bragg, Lia Wetzstein, Elizabeth Apple Meza, & Theresa (Ling) Yeh analyzed different methodologies to support students and bolster their success during this unstable period. Read more about this in Data Note 11 of the Transfer Partnership Series.

Listening to Students: New Data Note on Getting Student Input

As STP teams have been working on action plans to expand STEM equity at their institutions, CCRI has documented the process of their efforts through a variety of data collection efforts, including participant observation in coaching sessions and convenings, surveys, and interviews. Analysis of this data reveals the challenges and creative innovations embedded in the process of developing a plan for student input and turning that input into student-centered programs and process improvements. The most recent data note shares findings about the iterative process of developing these plans, as teams use both formal and informal learning from students to inform and refine subsequent efforts. We find that teams are thinking creatively not only about how to get student input but also what defines input and how to interpret and apply what they learn from students.

A common experience for STP teams in the initial period of the program was grappling with how to define student input. Many of the STP participants have years, if not decades, of experience working with students in the STEM pathway, but does that experiential knowledge constitute data? Similarly, many participants were learning from students informally at events and in classroom settings but wondered how to synthesize and interpret those informal interactions. One of the key lessons of the first half of the program was that experiential knowledge and informal feedback from students matter a great deal in the action research process. Teams tuned into this information and used it as the basis for initial student engagement events as well as to inform more systematic data collection efforts for student input.

Teams are also thinking outside the box about collecting student input, often combining student engagement with gathering input. Teams hosted hands-on events like building rockets and soldering hearts while also cultivating feedback through conversation, focus groups, and/or exit surveys. Most importantly, teams are not relying exclusively on one stream of student feedback or input but, rather, combining multiple methodologies, both formal and informal, to develop a robust understanding of the student experience and to inform improvements in STEM education and transfer.

Overall, what we learned in this analysis is that STP teams are thinking creatively to develop new strategies for student input, focusing on student engagement in combination with data collection efforts. Each step of the process informs the next, working holistically with both formal and informal information sources. Ultimately, this approach results in interventions and process improvements that are sensitive to the students in a particular context, providing students with the resources and supports they need.

Transformative partnership praxis for equitable STEM transfer

As the STEM Transfer Partnership (STP) program approaches the one-year mark, we are able to reflect on the strategies for success that our two-year and four-year institutional partners have developed in their work to advance their partnerships and increase STEM transfer success for low income students. In our second data note on the STP program, we describe the ways STP partnership teams are dismantling barriers through networks of transformative partnership praxis, building multi-layered and flexibly structured communities.

Over the course of 12 months, CCRI has supported the progress of STP teams and their plans of action aimed at improving STEM transfer for students at their institutions. Teams have engaged in two full-community gatherings as well as monthly coaching sessions. Throughout, CCRI has collected data on their experiences through participant observation, survey, and document analysis. Examining this data, we find that teams often experience similar barriers in their efforts to implement systemic change in STEM transfer processes, most notably low-income student recruitment and long term program sustainability. In our recent data note, we look at how partnering institutions respond to these challenges. We find that taking steps toward institutional transformation requires participants to build flexible and multi-layered communities, networks that draw upon resources and expertise from beyond the team membership.

At this intermediate stage of the program, many STP teams are working on the big problems that make the work of expanding STEM access and supporting transfer students so challenging. One central challenge is the question of how to recruit students from low-income backgrounds to STEM fields and how best to support them through transfer and degree completion. What are the best ways to reach out to these students in the early years of their college education? How can support programs engage these students as they juggle the competing priorities of school, family, and work schedules? In tackling these questions, teams are often prompted to expand the boundaries of their networks of praxis, connecting with programs such as TRIO and MESA that have a well-established set of strategies for engaging and supporting low-income students. Rather than trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’ as several participants phrased it, teams are joining forces with partners across their institutions in collaborations that benefit low-income students in many ways. Teams are also extending their networks to engage institutional leaders, finding ways to engage college and university administrators in ways that broaden the impact of their work.

STP teams are not limiting their outreach to their respective institutions but, rather, reaching beyond the college and university of their partnership to include not only other institutions but also policymakers, students and families, and professional networks. The STP program is designed to embed the work of partnerships within a community of practice, invested professionals committed to interventions to improve STEM transfer. The purpose of the biannual convenings is to foster cross-community collaboration and learning. The most recent data note describes how these kinds of connections are helping teams identify resources and solve complex problems. As they look to the future to map out a plan for long term sustainability, they draw upon ideas from other teams, using those ideas to connect with policymakers, industry partners, and others in ways that support programs and interventions that will continue to improve STEM transfer success beyond the life of the STP grant.

Each reconfiguration and expansion of community creates new opportunities for equitable STEM access. While the data reported here demonstrate how networks of praxis support problem solving for STP teams, the impact of expanding the community goes beyond finding solutions to specific problems. Teams are learning new skills, developing new partnerships, and incorporating new resources into their work in ways that create benefits for the college and university beyond STEM programs.

Structuring STEM Transfer Partnership Success

CCRI’s STEM Transfer Partnership (STP) program has been working with colleges and universities across Washington state to tackle one of the key barriers to low-income student STEM degree attainment: transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions in the STEM fields. Though numerous interventions for transfer pathways have been designed and implemented, there remains a need for effective and sustainable models of transfer partnership that address the specific needs of STEM transfer students. In our first data note of this new series, Structuring STEM Transfer Partnership Success, we address this problem by drawing upon data from the first six months of the STP program.

Programs to expand access to STEM education and support low-income students have proliferated in the last twenty years, funded and motivated by federal and state interest in diversifying the STEM workforce and expanding educational equity. However, these interventions are often difficult to sustain and limited to a relatively small number of students. How can we create lasting change in the STEM transfer process that supports student success? How can we expand the impact of STEM interventions beyond an individual college or university or a select cohort of students? In our most recent data note we address these questions by closely examining the initial steps of the STP program. Drawing upon data from a variety of sources, including surveys, researcher observation, and document analysis, we highlight effective strategies and describe key challenges. We identify three key strategies for addressing the fault lines of previous interventions: engaging institutional participants as architects in their own institutional transformations, structuring partnerships through flexible protocols, and overcoming silos through community.

One key finding in our analysis of the initial stages of STP is the importance of engaging faculty, staff, and administration as problem solvers in their own transfer partnerships. Rather than imposing a predetermined plan for STEM transfer improvement upon the diverse range of colleges and universities in the program, STP invites participants to draw upon their institutional knowledge and contextually specific strategies to draft their own plan for transformation. Beginning with the application process and continuing throughout the program, participants were able to tailor interventions to the resources and student body at their institutions. Participants responded with energy to this approach, reflecting critically on past collaborations and future potential for partnership. After engaging in this series of self-led reflections and analyses, participants expressed optimism for positive change. Despite differences in location and institutional culture, they embraced the idea of taking concrete steps to solidify connections and build durable transfer pathways.

Though participant leadership in transformation was key, we also found balance between flexibility and structure was essential. In order to break down the enormous task of changing well-established transfer processes at their institutions, participants completed a series of self-assessments, beginning with less structured brainstorming and moving into more specific reflection and planning with structured protocols that took big problems apart into actionable steps. Survey participants overwhelmingly reported these protocols as key in moving their partnership forward.

Finally, we found that community-building was the foundation from which participants were empowered to dismantle disciplinary and institutional silos. In both observation and survey data, we found evidence that coming together in conversation with others that shared their commitment to equity in STEM pathways was beneficial. The shared community helps participants see the broader landscape, establish cross-institutional connections, and reframe their own experiences in terms of systemic patterns instead of isolated barriers.

This data note describes the hopeful first steps toward a cultural shift in how we think about STEM fields and student transfer. Creating more equitable pathways for STEM degree attainment is a formidable task. We hope the data and analysis reported here will open up a conversation for researchers and practitioners for further action for STEM equity.

New publication on community college baccalaureate student experience

We are excited to publish Data Note 10 in the New Baccalaureate series, titled Washington State Community College Baccalaureate Students: How Life Experiences Shape Baccalaureate Education, Employment and Economic Security and authored by Lia Wetzstein, Elizabeth Apple Meza and Debra Bragg. It presents results from qualitative interviews with community college baccalaureate (CCB) students in Washington state. We use in-depth, longitudinal interview data to describe three CCB students’ experiences prior to CCB-program enrollment and through their programs to graduation and employment. The three students we profile credit community colleges by giving them an option to complete a baccalaureate degree that was previously unavailable to them. They perceive that their CCB degrees contribute to improved employment and career opportunities that then lead to greater economic and personal stability. This reality is particularly relevant as many workers face long-term unemployment and financial insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Download Data Note 10

Growth in Enrollment and Completion of STEM Community College Baccalaureate Degrees in Washington State

Washington State is experiencing substantial growth in the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) Community College Baccalaureate (CCB)1 programs. Student enrollments in STEM CCB programs are also growing, providing an opportune time to study these students and their enrollment in and completion of STEM CCB programs. This research on STEM CCB programs shows women complete degrees at nearly the same rate as men but female enrollments lag behind state and national statistics for STEM education. More closely reflecting national trends, the research shows disparities in enrollment by and completion of students of color compared to white and Asian students, though STEM CCB enrollees are more diverse than STEM enrollees in universities. Understanding these student demographics is important to informing state and institutional policy on STEM education where demand for STEM workers continues to grow in the state.

Read Data Note 6

Our Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) group at the University of Washington has partnered with New America’s Center on Education and Skills (CESNA) to refresh and expand understanding of AB and CCB degrees nationally, looking again at state adoption and implementation of these degrees in the two- and four-year institutional contexts. With generous support from the Joyce Foundation and Lumina Foundation, our two-year project documents policies and processes; develops a set of consensus design principles and frameworks featuring evidence-based and equity-focused promising policies and practices on state adoption and institutional implementation; and disseminates lessons from past successes and failures.

Community College Baccalaureate Degree Completion in Washington

Complimenting an earlier data note on enrollment by Meza (2019), results of this data note examine the completion rates of students in Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) programs in Washington state by program area and student demographics. We find CCB degree completion rates are rising and now approach the baccalaureate completion rates for students transferring from a community college to a public four-year university in Washington state. This is notable as the CCB student population includes students who are older and more likely to be underserved by higher education than the transfer student group. Our results also show CCB degree completion rates vary by program area and student demographics, with completion rates for Latinx students of 66 percent and rivaling the completion rates of White and Asian students in the Business program area. However, equity gaps exist in degree completion in other CCB program areas that need to be addressed.

Read Data Note 4