– The findings highlight the importance of positive student-faculty interactions and positive and supportive classroom environments and the effect that the above factors have on female students’ self-efficacy and their view of their capabilities and abilities to successfully perform in STEM majors.
– The voices of the female transfer students are highlighted in three themes, which are guided by the notion of theTransfer Student Capital: early social influences (precollegiate), community college environments and influences, and university environments and influences.
– Early social influences included parents and friends and work/job opportunities and experiences. Individuals with whom females engage early in life can greatly affect how these females view STEM areas of study.
– Students in this study chose to utilize the community college as a pathway for reaching their educational goals. The resources at community colleges are designed to respond to the needs of the students, more specifically female students, in a variety of ways.
– Individuals within the community college environment assisted the students with identifying specific areas in STEM and educating the students on the many careers they could persue with a STEM degree.
– After transferring to the university, the female transfer students had various adjustment experiences, and they found different individuals and resources to be essential components in the adjustment process. Continuing to be involved and engaged through different clubs and organization was common in the voices of the female transfer students.
– It is very clear that the successful female STEM transfer students in this study possess some degreeof transfer student capital.
2016 - Deconstructing the Transfer Student Capital: Intersect between Cultural and Social Capital among Female Transfer Students in STEM Fields
The sociological concepts of cultural capital and social capital are used as theoretical lenses to understand the experiences of female transfer students pursuing STEM degrees.
The study uses face-to-face semi structured interviews with each of the volunteer participants. The participants were prompted with interview questions, which allowed the interviewees to talk freely for approximately an hour and a half. The interview protocol consisted of questions that were geared toward the individual’s position at the institution. As the participants described their experiences, the research team posed follow-up inquiries that stemmed from the participants’ previous statements. After the interviews, the research team transcribed the audio-taped interviews verbatim into written protocols.
The participants for this qualitative study consisted of 15 female students who are currently STEM majors.These students were former community college students who transferred to MSU.
The data analysis was conducted using a version of Creswell’s (2007) Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design. Each of the transcripts was reviewed once without taking notes to provide an understanding of the contents of each interview. The second reviewing of the transcripts consisted of highlighting significant statements and quotes in each of the transcripts. The statements and quotes were then clustered into groups according to meaning derived from the significant statements (Creswell, p. 61). Themes began to emerge from the clusters. The team met frequently to discuss the themes.