Performance and retention of transfer engineering students

The College of Engineering at the University of Arizona (UA) and The Engineering Program at Pima Community College (PCC) have a long history of partnership. In a typical year, nearly 100 engineering students formally transfer from PCC to UA. These students have at least 24 transfer credits. Also, UA students take single classes at PCC as the schedule may be more flexible, class sizes are smaller, and instructors have a reputation for effective instruction. In a given academic year, students who originally transferred from PCC can account for 15% of the UA engineering graduate BS degrees. This paper makes two contributions. First we describe survey results that compare key differences in PCC and UA students. Differences in age, hours working and classroom experience are clear. Also, the survey suggests key reasons why students select PCC over the UA when they actually have a choice. The second contribution is an analysis of PCC student success after transferring to the UA. We consider both graduation rates and grades in follow-on classes. This analysis is interesting since there is a UA faculty perception that students from PCC are weaker and less prepared than UA lower division students. Specifically we examine the graduation rates of the fall 1999 and fall 2000 transfer cohorts and the grades in some key junior level classes in civil and electrical engineering.