The Power of Partnership - Building Strong STEM Transfer Connections - Data Note 5 - November 2024

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum

The STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) initiative improves transfer and completion outcomes for STEM students from low-income backgrounds through nine partnership teams spanning 2-year and 4-year institutions. The initiative focuses on advising, recruitment and enrollment, and faculty and curriculum, while also advancing collaboration through financial aid and data sharing. Guided by shared relationship-building, student-centered design, data-driven decision making, and institutional leadership, the teams test innovations that strengthen transfer pathways, expand awareness of STEM opportunities, and provide targeted supports, offering replicable lessons for other institutions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Case Studies on Building Transfer Partnerships

Levels of Partnership

Case Studies | Advising

COMMUNITY COLLEGE RESEARCH INITIATIVES STEM TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP SERIES The Power of Partnership: Building Strong STEM Transfer Connections Lia Wetzstein, Jordan Reed, Katie Kovacich, and Mayra Nuñez Martinez DATA NOTE 5 | NOVEMBER 2024 The STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) initiative aims to improve transfer and completion rates for STEM students from low-income backgrounds. Nine partnership teams from 2-year and 4-year institutions focused on three key areas: advising, recruitment and enrollment, and faculty and curriculum. By collaborating on a variety of innovations and improvements, the teams created smoother transfer pathways, increased student awareness of STEM opportunities, and provided targeted support. Key drivers of success across all partnerships highlight the importance of building relationships, student-centered approach, data-driven decision making, institutional leadership and resource integration. These strategies can inspire other institutions to work together to enhance transfer and completion rates for STEM students. INTRODUCTION The need for STEM transfer students from low-income backgrounds to complete bachelor’s degrees is a pressing issue. A substantial portion of those students start their educational journey at 2-year colleges. The lack of transfer and completion of these STEM students is deeply rooted in systemic and structural barriers, which leads to many students not completing their degrees (Wang, 2021) . Given the multifaceted nature of this problem and how it spans across institutions, inter-institutional transfer partnerships are vital. The STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP), composed of teams of faculty, staff, and administrators, have been working collaboratively to identify and remove barriers at various stages of the transfer process (Cate et al., 2022). Their efforts create smoother pathways for students to earn baccalaureate degrees (Wetzstein et al., 2024) . This data note shares the varied efforts of the nine STEM Transfer Partnership teams working together to enhance their partnerships and student outcomes. These case studies exemplify what context-driven changes transfer partnerships can make to enhance transfer students’ knowledge, opportunities, experiences, and success. To limit the size of this brief, we are sharing one area of each team’s work rather than the entirety of their efforts. We also provide a sample of what partnerships can do to improve students’ experience, serving as exemplars for practitioners. We built into the STP structure leadership buy-in, the utilization of data and student input to understand barriersand how their changes affect students. We find these features critical in the work and will discuss their influence on the team’s accomplishments in the conclusion. CASE STUDIES ON BUILDING TRANSFER PARTNERSHIPS Levels of Partnership At the beginning of their work together, the STEM Transfer Partnership teams utilized a framework (Yeh & Wetzstein, 2020) to examine their degree of partnership along a continuum. [uw. edu/cc ri](uw. edu/cc ri) 1 STEM TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP SERIES | The Power of Partnership: Building Strong STEM Transfer Connections • Cooperation, not considered a partnership, is the passive sharing of information. • Coordination, where tasks are coordinated, and goals are compatible. • Collaboration, which involves shared purpose, strategies, procedures and goals. • Alliance, which is integrated policies, procedures, programs or structures. The teams analyzed five inter-institutional dimensions important for transfer: advising, recruitment and enrollment, faculty and curriculum, financial aid, and data sharing. The levels of partnership were defined and operationalized for each domain (see Yeh & Wetzstein, 2020, p.27-28) . This framework provided a common language across the community of practice for the teams to collectively understand and describe their current and intended level of partnership and practi

FAQs

What problem does the STEM Transfer Partnerships (STP) initiative address?

STP targets low-income STEM students who begin at 2-year colleges but face systemic and structural barriers that hinder transfer and bachelor’s-degree completion.

Which key areas do the nine STP partnership teams focus on?

Teams focus on advising, recruitment and enrollment, and faculty and curriculum, with additional work involving financial aid and data sharing.

What factors are described as key drivers of success across the partnerships?

The document highlights building relationships, using a student-centered approach, making data-driven decisions, and ensuring institutional leadership and resource integration.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Callum