Enhancing the Community College Pathway to Engineering Careers

Community colleges play an important role in starting students on the road toengineering careers, but students often face obstacles in transferring to four-yeareducational institutions to continue their education. Enhancing the CommunityCollege Pathway to Engineering Careers, a new book from the National Academy ofEngineering and the National Research Council, discusses ways to improve the transferexperience for students at community colleges and offers strategies to enhancepartnerships between those colleges and four-year engineering schools to help studentstransfer more smoothly. In particular, the book focuses on challenges andopportunities for improving transfer between community colleges and four-yeareducational institutions, recruitment and retention of students interested in engineering,the curricular content and quality of engineering programs, opportunitiesfor community colleges to increase diversity in the engineering workforce, and areview of sources of information on community college and transfer students. Itincludes a number of current policies, practices, and programs involving communitycollegefour-year institution partnerships.