Faculty Perspectives on How Cohorted Learning Communities Can Support Persistence of Engineering Students in Community Colleges

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Supporting Pathways to the Professions (Table 21)

Abstract

More students than ever are beginning their journey to engineering careers at community colleges. These students are more likely than students at four-year institutions to be lower-income and the first in their families to go to college. Because community colleges are open access institutions, students pursuing STEM programs at these institutions are also likely to arrive with less academic preparation than their counterparts matriculating into engineering programs at four-year colleges. Cohorted learning communities have shown positive impacts on student persistence, but little is known about how and why they are successful. Following Tinto’s (1993) integration framework, we employ in-depth interviews to investigate faculty perspectives on how cohorts help students become more socially and academically connected to their college.

Authors

• Carol Tate, SRI Education

• Andrea D. Beesley, HMH