A group of former transfer students from Allan Hancock College and Cuesta College graduated from Cal Poly’s College of Engineering this spring with the help of scholarships and mentoring through the ENGAGE program.
ENGAGE, which stands for Engineering Neighbors Gaining Access Growing Engineers, is a National Science Foundation-funded program that provides scholarships and mentoring for well-qualified academic students from lower income backgrounds with the goal of increasing transfer student access to and success in engineering.
“We received the award from the National Science Foundation in 2018 and recruited our first cohort of ENGAGE students from Allan Hancock and Cuesta in 2019-20,” explained Dr. Jane Lehr, grant lead/principal investigator and professor in ethnic studies and women’s gender & queer studies with a focus on STEM education.
Lehr and collaborators at Allan Hancock, Cuesta College and Cal Poly applied for the National Science Foundation grant to open up the door for students to transfer to Cal Poly and create a more transfer-friendly institution. The program is shaped by a collaborative developed list of shared hopes and understanding of barriers that transfer students face, focusing on how to improve student success in Cal Poly Engineering and beyond.
One of the goals of ENGAGE is to create relationships between community college students and the university prior to transfer by creating faculty mentoring relationships while students are at the community college level. ENGAGE connects students to academic advisers and mentors, both at Cal Poly and at their community college. Throughout ENGAGE, both pre- and post-transfer, the program supports connections to Cal Poly resources, clubs and more in the hopes of creating a more seamless transition to the four-year university, including navigating the transition from semesters to quarters.
“A lot of transfer students kind of go in blind as they transfer,” said ENGAGE scholar Vanessa Ortiz. “I feel like people don’t realize this is a brand-new system, but the guidance of the ENGAGE mentors helped with club recommendations, graduate school advice and more.”
Ortiz transferred from Allan Hancock College to the Cal Poly College of Engineering and graduated with a bachelor’s in civil engineering in spring 2023. She will return to Cal Poly this fall to start the civil engineering graduate degree program.
ENGAGE provides funding for students who qualify for the program from their time at community college until they graduate Cal Poly.
“The model we proposed is two years of funding for students at Allan Hancock or Cuesta College and continued funding if students transfer to Cal Poly’s College of Engineering, College of Architectural Engineering or BioResource and Agricultural Engineering Department,” Lehr said.
In addition to mentorship and scholarship opportunities, ENGAGE utilizes tools like a culturally-informed approach to Gallup’s CliftonStrengths model – developed by Co-PI Daniel Almeida in the School of Education – to support students to identify and utilize their strengths.
Allan Hancock College transfer student Matt Depauw heard about the ENGAGE program from a friend.
“The camaraderie of the program helped me to feel at home quicker at Cal Poly,” computer science graduate Depauw said. “Knowing I wasn’t the only one going through the transition helped a lot!”
The Cal Poly mentors continue to share campus resources and scholarship opportunities with the students, even after they transferred to their new university.
“The mentorship portion of the program was one of the most awesome and beneficial parts of ENGAGE,” Depauw explained. “I ended up being paired with an amazing cybersecurity expert, Dr. Phoenix Fang. Phoenix has been one of the most kind and inspirational professors I’ve ever had. Dr. Jane Lehr was also the most amazing senior project adviser a student could ask for. Both professors helped me in my studies and in life, and I couldn’t have made it through college without them.”
Ortiz agreed with Depauw that the mentorship played a large role in the ENGAGE students’ success.
“Dr. Jane Lehr and Erica Garcia are super amazing,” she said. “They were helpful when it came to applying for scholarships and prepping for graduate school. If I hadn’t known about these opportunities, I’d be paying so much money for college.”
Applications for the fall 2023 ENGAGE cohort are due August 24, 2023. Apply here.
By Taylor Villanueva
