Conference: TRACK 1 - Strengthening the Community College Pathway to Baccalaureate Engineering

As partnership between community college leaders and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), this project aims to broaden the participation and increase the success of diverse students, particularly under-represented minorities. This project will convene a conference for community college administrators, engineering faculty and engineering technology faculty with the following goals: 1) identify the obstacles which prevent and best practices that promote diverse community college students to successfully navigate pathways to degree attainment; 2) establish working groups of community college professionals to continue to work on specific engineering education challenges that surface during this conference; 3) better integrate community college leadership and educators into ASEE’s extensive network of members and resources; and 4) expand ASEE’s Diversity Recognition Program (ADRP) to include community colleges recognizing their unique strengths and needs. This convening is the precursor for additional future meetings to be held virtually and at ASEE national conferences. As partnership between community college leaders and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), this project aims to broaden the participation and increase the success of diverse students, particularly under-represented minorities. This project will convene a conference for community college administrators, engineering faculty and engineering technology faculty with the following goals: 1) identify the obstacles which prevent and best practices that promote diverse community college students to successfully navigate pathways to degree attainment; 2) establish working groups of community college professionals to continue to work on specific engineering education challenges that surface during this conference; 3) better integrate community college leadership and educators into ASEE’s extensive network of members and resources; and 4) expand ASEE’s Diversity Recognition Program (ADRP) to include community colleges recognizing their unique strengths and needs. This convening is the precursor for additional future meetings to be held virtually and at ASEE national conferences. The conference will be held in the fall of 2023 on Ivy Tech Community College’s campus in Indianapolis. To maximize scale and impact, the focus of this effort is on the larger community college systems or multi-campus colleges with multiple faculty and at least one hundred students in pre-engineering, engineering, or engineering technology programs. This conference will produce the following products: 1) a plan for a physical and an electronic community linking engineering and engineering technology community college faculty in support of enhanced student learning and transfer success with particular attention to populations underrepresented in engineering and engineering technology; 2) a plan for a physical and an electronic community linking community college administrators in support of more effective teaching by engineering and engineering technology faculty as well as recruitment/retainment of more diverse faculty; 3) a plan for incentivizing and recognizing community college commitment to and success at diversifying their student and faculty populations including participation in the ADRP program; and 4) a plan for continuing conversations towards the reimagining of engineering and engineering technology at a national level. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.