Program to help transfer students become engineers

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by margaret reist/Lincoln Journal Star

In 1991, Pam Dingman was the only woman to earn an undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Engineering.

Fifteen years later, she’s the only woman in Nebraska who owns a civil engineering firm.

And she’ll tell you that the United States is churning out fewer engineering graduates than other countries.

“There’s not enough engineering students, and there’s not enough experienced professionals,” she said.

 All of which is why she’s pleased to hear about a project designed to encourage community college students — especially women and minorities — to pursue a four-year engineering degree.

With the help of a $1.99 million National Science Foundation grant, UNL and the state’s six community colleges will create a partnership to make it easier for students to transfer to the university’s engineering college from the community colleges.

“I really feel that getting a base program at a technical community college could really help out  a lot of students,” said Dingman, who owns Design Engineering Consultants. “I believe it would be a huge advantage.”

Now, community college students who transfer to UNL’s engineering college are at a disadvantage, said Stephanie G. Adams, assistant dean for research at the college and a lead investigator for the grant proposal.

 Despite two years’ worth of credit hours at a community college — which give most transfer students junior standing at UNL — they need to start at the beginning in the engineering college, taking freshman-level courses. That means it could take them longer to graduate, Adams said.

The project — called Strengthening Transitions into Engineering Programs (STEP) — will develop four engineering courses that will be offered at community colleges.

Those freshman- and sophomore-level courses will apply toward an engineering degree at UNL, Adams said. They’ll be offered beginning in fall 2007.

“The reason this is so big for us is we’re the only engineering school in the state and our infrastructure is not making it attractive to study engineering,” Adams said.

Although 14 percent of UNL’s undergraduate students are enrolled in the engineering college, only 10 percent of transfer students choose engineering, according to the grant proposal.

Over the past five years, an average of 884 students have transferred each year from community colleges to UNL, including 72 into the engineering college.

While the partnership hopes to increase the annual number of transfers into engineering over the next five years to 216, it also hopes to double the number of women and minority students.

Over the past five years, 359 students transferred from community colleges to UNL’s engineering college. Of those, 22 were minorities and 41 were women, according to the grant proposal.

That’s an average of about eight female students a year and four minorities a year.

The program will help encourage and guide students, many of whom are low-income or first-generation college students in their families, said Jose J. Soto, vice president for affirmative action, equity and diversity at Southeast Community College.

The grant will allow UNL and the community colleges to work with state organizations to help community college students get engineering-related internships in their communities.

That way, Adams said, they’ll be on equal footing with other engineering students when they get to UNL.

“They’ll have all the experiences that traditional students would have,” she said.

Soto said the project also helps  legitimize the academic excellence at community colleges.

The perception that the education offered at community colleges is somehow inferior to four-year institutions is changing, he said. And programs such as this help.

“(The engineering partnership) reflects the change and is an acknowledgement by four-year universities that there’s a quality education and academic rigor that happens at community colleges,” he said.

In the end, officials hope to give Dingman some company.

“I do think it will be very good for our community,” she said.

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.