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EPACT RED aims to support transfer students

The opportunity begins this fall: northern Nevada community college students planning to transfer to the ҹɫÊÓƵ to study engineering will be able to take an online statics course that will count toward their bachelor’s degree. Courses in dynamics and circuits are planned for future semesters.

Sounds simple, except it’s not. The program that enables this opportunity, Engineering Pathways for Access, Community and Transfer (EPACT), funded through the National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program, seeks to address several broad challenges facing higher education. Those are the documented struggles of community college students to successfully transfer to four-year institutions; the scarcity of resources for engineering instructors at the community colleges; and the need to pool resources among higher education institutions to best serve the region.

EPACT RED is an ambitious project, and a long time coming, according to Anne Flesher, Truckee Meadows Community College (TMCC) dean of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Flesher is the principal investigator on the $1.7 million, five-year NSF grant that funds EPACT RED. University College of Engineering Interim Dean Indira Chatterjee and Teaching Associate Professor Ann-Marie Vollstedt are co-principal investigators, along with TMCC Physics and Engineering Professor Daniel Loranz and Great Basin College (GBC) Physics Instructor Milinda Wasala. In addition, Professor Jaspreet Gill from Western Nevada College (WNC) serves as senior personnel.

Flesher credits University Vice Provost Dave Shintani for suggesting a course-sharing program between the College of Engineering and its regional community colleges several years ago.

“Indira and I continued that conversation,” Flesher said.

The conversation turned into the EPACT program, which got legs in August 2023 when RED grant funding was awarded. It was the first time a community college has been awarded an NSF RED grant, Flesher noted.

Saving students time and money

This fall, students at TMCC, GBC and WNC all may enroll in the EPACT online statics class. The class, taught by community college instructors with curriculum support from the University, offers students the chance to take an engineering course that will count toward their bachelor’s degree.

Typically, there are not enough students in any one community college to offer this class, according to Flesher, so people had to wait until transferring to the University to take it.

With this course, and hopefully others like it, Flesher said, “we hope to save them time and money. Without (EPACT RED), it takes them longer to complete their (BS) degree.”

Another issue EPACT RED seeks to address is the lack of resources for community college engineering programs.

“Engineering programs (at community colleges) are programs of one,” Flesher said, emphasizing the limited staffing available. “And yet, (engineering) is a huge program at every college.”

Through EPACT RED, community college engineering instructors are paired with University staff to develop curriculum that will transfer seamlessly to the College of Engineering.

EPACT RED investigators also will be watching for something else: improved outcomes for transfer students. According to the grant proposal, engineering students who transfer from community colleges to the University have low graduation rates due to structural, cultural and organizational challenges that community college students face that affect their graduation and post-graduation success.

EPACT RED seeks to address some of those challenges, improving the odds for success, according to co-principal investigator Ann-Marie Vollstedt. Two University graduate students will be conducting research in this area through the grant period with Chatterjee and Vollstedt.

“We’re looking to see if we can make these big changes — structural, cultural, and organizational,” Vollstedt said.