Beginning with the graduating high school class of 2015, the Tennessee Promise program provides “last dollar†scholarships and mentoring programs focused on increasing the number of students at any of the state’s 13 community colleges, 27 colleges of applied technology, or other eligible institution offering an associate’s degree. In its inaugural class, about 58,000 students (90% of Tennessee’s senior class) applied for Tennessee Promise. Thus, the faculty and administration at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) anticipate that transfer students are likely an increasingly important fraction of the student body. In the Tickle College of Engineering (TCE), transfer student enrollment has increased at an average rate of 10% per year over the last several years. Transfer students face a unique set of challenges, which differ from those who begin their first year at a university as freshmen. The challenges are both academic--adapting to the reduction in individual attention with university coursework--and social--lacking a well-defined peer-cohort with whom the adjustment to university life can be shared. In engineering, transfer students also statistically represent a different demographic population than the student body of entering freshmen (the fraction of first-generation college students is double (32% compared to 15%) among transfer students, which can potentially bring cultural challenges as well. These challenges manifest in an unfortunate fact: the fraction of engineering transfer students who do not graduate within 5 years is nearly double (29% to 15%) that of traditional engineering students who have an analogous two years of college behind them. Finally, existing programs for financial aid are disproportionately distributed to students who enter the university system as freshmen relative to transfer students; the unmet annual financial need of engineering transfer students is more than double that of traditional engineering students at UTK (>$6,000 to ~$3,000).
The TranSCEnD: (Transfer Success Co-Design in Engineering Disciplines) program is in its third year at the University of Tennessee. It is funded by an NSF S-STEM grant with an objective to increase the retention of engineering transfer students to a level comparable to engineering students, who entered the TCE as freshmen. To achieve this task, a multidisciplinary leadership team has been assembled, which includes UTK tenured professors, lecturers, staff, and administration from TCE, staff from the UTK admissions office, shared faculty from Pellissippi State Community College (PSCC), the single largest source of engineering transfer students (nearly half) to the TCE, and an external assessor. The principle of codesign, namely the explicit inclusion of input from all constituents, has been invoked in the creation of the TranSCEnD program. The program spans a five-year process--two years at the community college, a summer bridge program, and three years at UTK. The individual elements of the program as well as the synergistic integration of elements have been chosen to balance two influences: (1) a theoretical framework of best practices and (2) a practical acknowledgment of demonstrated success at UTK. The program offers financial, academic and social support for transfer students in the TCE. Program elements include a summer transition research experience, a student success skills seminar and intra-cohort and inter-cohort peer interactions. Reflections on the program success and challenges to date will be shared.
