Abstract
Community college engineering transfer students are a critical student population of engineering degree recipients and technical workforce in the United States. Focusing on this group of students, we adopted Rendón’s (1994) validation theory to explore the students’ experiences in community colleges prior to transferring to a four-year comprehensive, aspiring research university. The findings of the study indicated that faculty of community colleges were the most important support for the participants’ academic validation experiences. They also played an important role in engineering transfers’ interpersonal validation experiences. The unique community college environment helped participants to gain confidence in their scholastic abilities, and family members were instrumental in supporting transfer students in their academic career. This study could help researchers, educators, and policy makers better understand engineering transfer students’ validation experiences in community colleges and, subsequently, offer programs, services, and policies to better support these students for their future study and career in engineering.
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