Improving a university/community college partnership program having a reduced budget

In fall 2003, collaboration was begun between the Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University and five community colleges belonging to the Maricopa County Community College District. Funded by a joint grant from the National Science Foundation, each with their own budget, the collaborators set out to develop a program that would interest and support community college students in engineering, ease their transition to a large university, and continue to support them after the transfer, especially for the first year. The program also was designed to especially encourage and support women and underrepresented minority students. The program is called METS: Maricopa Engineering Transition Scholars. Most of the plans for the project as proposed have been successful, including a METS Center in the Fulton School. In addition, one of the research areas was to develop a model administration for such collaboration. The administration of the grant, however, has proved to be a challenge. The five community colleges each have their own administration and way of doing things, so the METS administration was much more complicated than just a collaboration of a university and one community college. After a two-year pilot, the major grant ended and the program was continued on an extension, but with a much reduced budget. To continue the program administrative support had to be reduced. This paper will describe how the program is now functioning on a reduced budget and the advantages of the new administrative model.