Objective: This study examined how community college transfer students in computing develop their identification with their major alongside their social identities and experiences as transfer students. Methods: We used a sequential-exploratory mixed methods research design, leveraging existing data from community college transfer students majoring in computer science at five research-intensive universities, including interviews with 40 students and longitudinal survey data from 246 students. Results: Qualitative findings reveal how transfer students sometimes distance themselves from their transfer status to avoid stigma, and at other times, develop an identity in computing by merging their transfer and computing selves. Key quantitative findings document variation by race/ethnicity, revealing that transfer Students of Color tend to have lower computer science (CS) identity scores when their peers are aware that they are transfer students, suggesting that transfer stigma may manifest in unique ways for Students of Color. Conclusion: How computing transfer students identify with their discipline can intersect with how they understand themselves in relation to their transfer experience, potentially leading to identity conflicts. Fostering transfer communities within and across STEM majors may help create more transfer-receptive campuses, in which students’ transfer and computing identities are not in conflict.
Objective: Over one-third of community college students are aged 25 years or older (e.g., commonly categorized as “adult learners”), and there is a growing body of scholarship that makes sense of their college and career decisions through an individual as well as an institutional lens. Using asset-based frameworks, this research project examines how community college adult learners’ college and career decisions are informed by their unique set of lived experiences and social contexts, accumulated life and labor experiences, and the institutional precarities experienced within the community college system. Methods: Applying a qualitative research design, the research team conducted 31 one-on-one interviews with Community College Adult Learners (CCALs) at a community college in a large metropolitan city in Southern California. We implemented a semi-structured interview protocol organized into three parts: (a) introductions, background, education, and labor histories, (b) educational and occupational goals; sources of support and information, and (c) the role of the community college. Results: We generated three broad findings as they related to (a) individual precarity in CCALs’ lives, (b) CCALs’ Funds of Knowledge (FK) from labor histories, and (c) institutional precarity in community college experiences for adult learners. Conclusion: Practitioners, policymakers, and researchers can support community college adult learners by applying more asset-based frameworks to understand community college adult learners’ experiences, identify and reduce institutional precarity imposed upon adult learners, and provide more comprehensive and holistic support structures that are designed with community college adult learners in mind.
Objective/Research Question: This study explores how trauma exposure impacts academic performance among community college students, specifically examining whether mental health wellbeing and resilience mediate this relationship. The study was guided by the following research question: How do mental health wellbeing and resilience mediate the relationship between trauma and academic outcomes?Methods: Using a cross-sectional survey design, we collected data from 674 students across four community colleges. The survey measured Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), College Trauma Exposure (CTE), mental health wellbeing, resilience, and self-reported GPA. Two serial mediation models were tested using hierarchical regression and Sobel tests.Results: Both ACEs and CTEs predicted lower GPA through indirect pathways. In the ACE model, the relationship with GPA was fully mediated by mental health and resilience. In contrast, the CTE model showed both direct and indirect effects on GPA. Additionally, ACEs significantly predicted CTEs, supporting a developmental cascade. Across models, mental health was a strong predictor of resilience, emphasizing that resilience is not a static trait but a developmental process influenced by psychological wellbeing.Conclusions/Contributions: Findings underscore the need for trauma-informed practices in community colleges, shifting to institutional responsibility for supporting mental health and fostering resilience. This study contributes a novel mediation model to the literature and calls for systemic strategies that recognize resilience as an outcome of supportive, psychologically safe educational environments. Future research should use longitudinal methods and explore moderating effects of identity and institutional context.
Objective: This study investigates the perspectives of faculty, administrators, and counselors on a mathematics reform that eliminated most remedial mathematics classes at a Hispanic-serving community college in California.Methods: This study uses qualitative analytical methods to examine interviews with nine mathematics faculty and 10 administrators, counselors, and professional development leaders at the college. Institutional statistics showed that overall mathematics enrollment fell, and course failure rates remained consistent before and after the reform. Interviews were analyzed using an iterative qualitative method to generate themes organized by participants' institutional roles.Results: The stakeholders' experience of the reform differed by role. Non-instructional staff highlighted the reform's success, focusing on the metric of throughput. Instructional faculty expressed frustration with the reform and primarily focused on course pass rates and students' level of preparation. Throughput, a metric the state used to assess the reform, improved.Conclusion/Contribution: We discuss implications in relation to how the reform effort shifted the institutional mission, and how this Hispanic-serving community college serves its students.
Objective: This study examines whether New Jersey’s state-funded merit-aid program, which was designed to benefit community college students, including first-time full-time student enrollment, associate degree completion, and transferring out. We compared STARS to programs in other states by applying a typology that categorizes state-funded merit-aid programs by whether they are designed to be inclusive of community college students. Methods: Using institution-level data between 2001 and 2021, we used propensity score matching to select comparable community colleges to be included in the untreated group, as well as difference-in-differences and event study approaches to test our hypotheses about the relationship between STARS program adoption and community college outcomes. Results: We found that New Jersey’s STARS programs increased White students’ enrollment and associate degree completion in community colleges relative to community colleges in states with merit-aid programs that disproportionately favor 4-year students. However, we did not find the same relationship for non-White students. It was unlikely that the enrollment increase was the result of community colleges siphoning off enrollments from other higher education sectors. Additionally, we did not find any evidence that STARS reduced students transferring out before completing credentials. Conclusions/Contributions: By examining a unique merit-aid program focused on community college students, we discuss implications to adopt and design more equitable financial aid policies to support community college enrollment, completion, and transfer. Our results help advance current scholarship by considering tensions among access, social mobility, and merit, while studying whether merit-aid programs can serve as an equitable mechanism for improving community college outcomes.
