Developing Supportive STEM Community College to Four-Year College and University Transfer Ecosystems

This paper, commissioned by the 2011 summit on Community Colleges in the Evolving STEM Education Landscape, describes the challenges to creating effective transfer pathways for students in STEM fields. Author and Associate Professor Alicia Dowd recommends the following approaches: 1) Create regional think tanks and research centers, called Evidence Based Inquiry Councils (EBICs), involving STEM faculty, deans, and department heads in geographic clusters of two-year and four-year colleges and universities to invent, experiment with, and evaluate innovative curricula, pedagogies, and assessments of student talents and learning. 2) Provide financial resources to transfer students by fully funding Pell grants, creating a STEM work-study program through the HEA Reauthorization, and establishing public and privately funded STEM transfer scholarships and Individual Development Accounts, giving EBICs oversight of the selection of students to benefit from these resources to engage them in rethinking admissions criteria and talent identification strategies.