Transfer Students: Tailoring A Freshman Program To Their Needs

At a large public university, the class entering the College of Engineering comprises freshmen and transfer students, and the latter are predicted to increase in number in the coming years. When transfer students move to a university engineering program, they often encounter a “Freshman Program” that impedes full articulation in transfer to the university. Freshman programs that are designed to inform traditional freshmen of the available engineering majors, and to prepare them for academic success within those majors, usually have a full year of required “Introduction to Engineering” type courses. These courses are usually prerequisites either for entry to the degree-granting programs or for subsequent required courses in any engineering path. Transfer students who cannot cover these introductory freshman engineering courses with transferred credits are often essentially relegated back to freshman status and to taking the freshman program courses—and this is not a good situation. At Virginia Tech, about 150 transfer students on average enter the College of Engineering (CoE) each fall, and anywhere from about one quarter to one third of them require the freshman program courses. In past years, we sprinkled these transfer students among the traditional freshmen in the many sections (~40) of the first engineering course. In fall 2006, however, at the prompting of the CoE Academic Affairs office, a new course was offered to replace both semesters of the freshman program for transfer students. This new course, along with a peer-mentoring program for transfer students that had been initiated the prior year, seemed to offer a much needed support system for the transfer students. The synergistic impact of the fall 2006 course and the concurrent mentoring program led to slating the course for transfers as a summer 2007 offering with the mentoring effort integrated into the course. This paper provides details on course design and administration, and on the integration of the peer-mentoring program. Student evaluations of the course and the mentoring are provided, as are insights from the summer mentors. This program, tailored for transfer students, is also suitable for true freshmen who enter with substantial advanced placement (AP) or dual enrollment credit.