STEP grant challenges and results: Motivated engineering transfer students from non-metropolitan community colleges

In Fall 2009, a National Science Foundation (NSF) STEP grant award (# 0856834) was made to support a collaboration between a Research I University and five rural (non-metropolitan) community colleges (CC). The grant followed a smaller NSF grant (# 0836050) which supported the exploration of a four-year school working with three rural CCs. This paper will first look at the enrollments of transfer students in engineering and computer science at the university for the past seven years. Large increases have occurred in the past two years. An analysis of the smaller transfer enrollment increases from the five non-metropolitan community colleges will then be discussed. This paper will describe the challenges, lessons learned, and results of the program for its first year and a half of existence. The primary challenge was known before the project began: only one school is within an hour's drive of the four-year institution. The other four schools are three to four hours distant. In spite of this, strong collaborations and interactions are occurring between the schools. The paper will describe participation in high school recruitment, presentations in classrooms, student feedback from class room visits, and the advantages of being available at a table in the student union so that students can come by and ask questions. The paper will also discuss the changes that have taken place in the community colleges to better support their programs in engineering and computer science.