Latina/o/x community college students pursuing stem degrees: an analysis of early momentum metrics at a southwestern community college

Richards Arellano, Vanessa Kelly (2021) Latina/o/x community college students pursuing stem degrees: an analysis of early momentum metrics at a southwestern community college. Doctoral thesis, Northern Arizona University.

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Abstract

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the job labor market and accelerating the need for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs. To meet the needs of the job labor market, the Latino population will be a critical component as it is growing in the United States overall and in the southwest. Community colleges are a stepping-stone and gateway to a bachelor’s degree with its inherent open-access and affordable mission. Community colleges serve a vast number of Latino students who intend to transfer to a university and earn a STEM degree. As community colleges embark in Guided Pathways, an institutional-wide reform, there is a strong emphasis on associate degree attainment and community college to university transfer as measurable outcomes. Associate degree attainment and community college to university transfer could take years to measure the effectiveness of guided pathways. Early momentum metrics are an avenue to measure first-year academic momentum that sets the trajectory for associate degree attainment and transfer. This study considered if there was a relationship between early momentum metrics for Latino transfer-oriented students pursuing a STEM Associate of Science degree attainment and community college to university transfer at Western Community College, a large, multi-campus Hispanic-serving institution in the southwest.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Keywords:	Academic momentum; Community colleges; Early momentum metrics; Latino students; STEM; Southwest (U.S>)
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Education > Educational Leadership
Date Deposited:	20 Jan 2022 19:27
Last Modified:	14 Feb 2022 18:20
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/5696

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