Community college students represent a large and often overlooked pool who have the potential to work in engineering careers. More attention must be focused on the community college pathway to engineering careers for underrepresented minority students. As of January 2008, 47 percent of the nation’s African American undergraduates, 55 percent of Latino undergraduates, and 57 percent of American Indian undergraduates are enrolled in community colleges. Additionally, 50 percent of African American, 55 percent of Latino, and 64 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native science and engineering bachelor’s and master’s degree recipients in 2004 and 2005 started their higher education careers at community colleges.

NACME is working with high schools, community colleges, and four-year institutions to support underrepresented minority students on the pathway to a bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline, and to ensure the seamless transfer of community college credits to four-year colleges and universities.

• NACME has facilitated partnerships between public school districts and local community colleges to better prepare underrepresented minority students to succeed in engineering disciplines. The program is called the Pipeline Partnership for the Advancement of Engineering Education (PPAEE). The partnership enables high school juniors and seniors to take advanced mathematics, science and Introduction to Engineering courses on a nearby community college campus. These students are dually enrolled at their high school and at the community college, and the tuition costs are covered through NACME funding. Three pilot programs are currently underway at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland, Howard Community College in Maryland, and Contra Costa College in California.

• In this initiative, University of California San Diego (UCSD) implemented activities in line with exemplary approaches that contribute to the successful transfer of students from 2-year to 4-year institutions as identified by the National Academy of Engineering. The lessons learned from the outcomes of this program may be utilized to inform and improve other existing and new community college to four-year university transfer and articulation programs and policies. This program, funded by the Qualcomm telecommunications company, aimed to increase the awareness of underrepresented minority community college students in San Diego County, CA about pathways to engineering study at the UCSD, and increase the enrollment of community college transfer students at the university.

• NACME has been awarded a planning grant from the Lumina Foundation For Education to convene a roundtable of experts in developmental mathematics and engineering education in order to identify best practices and develop a comprehensive intervention plan that integrates engineering-focused, activities-based, project-based and problem-solving based learning strategies into developmental mathematics coursework. The goal of this initiative is to facilitate the successful transition of students who begin in developmental mathematics at an Achieving the Dream (AtD) community college into higher level mathematics courses, successful completion of the A.S. degree program in Engineering Science at the community college, and successful completion of the B.S. degree in Engineering at one of our NACME Partner Universities. NACME believes that among those students who begin their community college careers in developmental mathematics are the future engineers needed to provide the scientific and engineering skills to solve the problems of energy independence, environmental sustainability, infrastructure replacement and many other pressing national issues.

• Media materials specifically targeted to community college students, faculty, and academic advisors are widely disseminated. NACME makes a special effort to reach students pursing associate of applied science (A.A.S.) degrees in engineering technology programs, and inform them about bachelor’s degree programs and career options in traditional engineering disciplines.

• NACME Partner Universities award approximately $150,000 in scholarship funds for students transferring from community colleges with an associate’s degree in engineering science.