Community colleges enroll over 40% of all undergraduates in the United States, and their student populations are disproportionately first-generation, low-income, and racially underrepresented, the very students STEM fields most urgently need to recruit and retain (Ma & Baum, 2016; National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2023). These students arrive at their transfer institution with hard-won credits, deep determination, and a unique set of challenges: unfamiliar institutional cultures, financial disruption, credit loss, and advisory systems not designed with them in mind (Laanan et al., 2010; Bahr et al., 2023). For many, the bridge from community college to baccalaureate STEM does not hold.
Transfer Students & the S-STEM Mission
The NSF S-STEM program exists, in part, because financial need alone does not explain who persists in STEM. Transfer students sit at a particularly sharp intersection of financial, structural, and social barriers. Nationally, approximately 80% of community college students report intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, yet transfer rates and STEM degree completion rates remain significantly lower than for students who enter four-year institutions directly (Jenkins & Fink, 2016).
Low-income students are disproportionately represented in community colleges (Ma & Baum, 2016). How institutions handle the transfer pathway is not a peripheral equity issue; it is central to whether STEM becomes a genuinely inclusive field. S-STEM programs that serve transfer students, or that have community college articulation partners, are positioned to address this gap.
Peer Mentoring as a Keystone Mechanism
Research consistently identifies social integration as a predictor of college persistence (Tinto, 1987). Studies on transfer student adjustment describe a “transfer shock” phenomenon in which students experience a temporary but significant GPA dip and social disorientation in their first semester at a new institution (Laanan et al., 2010; Lukszo & Hayes, 2020). They may feel like outsiders in classrooms populated by students who have been together for two years, navigating campus resources, and academic and social norms that transfer students are still learning.
The evidence base for peer mentoring as a retention tool is substantial and growing. A meta-analysis by Bettinger and Baker (2014) found that structured coaching and near-peer support significantly improved persistence rates, with effect sizes particularly pronounced for first-generation and low-income students. In STEM specifically, Stephens et al. (2014) demonstrated that social-belonging interventions reduced the achievement gap between first-generation and continuing-generation college students, increasing resource-seeking and improving end-of-year GPA. Peer mentoring is one of the most consistently supported mechanisms for delivering that sense of belonging at scale.
The National Student Clearinghouse (2023) reported that only 16% of students who began at community colleges had earned a bachelor’s degree within six years, compared with 63% of students who began at four-year institutions. Among STEM transfer students, attrition tends to cluster in the first two semesters after transfer, a period when peer networks are thinnest and institutional navigation demands are highest (Crisp et al., 2017). A recent study of the PRIMER program, which combined peer mentoring with academic skills support for biology transfer students, found that participants showed significantly greater gains in sense of community and use of academic resources than non-program peers (Rockinson-Szapkiw et al., 2024). Peer mentoring programs that begin before or immediately at the point of transfer have shown particular promise in addressing this critical window.
Michael Brown’s work at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (Marsal Family School of Education), examines how peer mentoring relationships in the community college context support Biology students’ vertical transfer. His research uses the concept of “keystone agents”: individuals within a peer network whose relationships and actions have outsized effects on the stability and function of the broader group. Just as removing the keystone from an arch causes collapse, the absence of a well-connected, supportive peer within a transfer cohort can leave students without the informal knowledge, encouragement, and belonging that formal advising alone cannot provide.
This framing aligns with broader ecological models of student success, including Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth framework, which holds that students from underrepresented communities bring navigational, social, and familial capital that peer mentoring structures can activate rather than ignore. Programs that train mentors to recognize and leverage these forms of capital report stronger engagement and persistence outcomes (Crisp & Cruz, 2009).
The practical implication for S-STEM programs is clear. Structured peer mentoring, whether through formal programs or intentionally designed cohort experiences, is not a supplement to academic support. It is itself an evidence-based intervention. Programs that assign mentors, facilitate study groups, and create ongoing opportunities for near-peer connection are doing more than building community. They are constructing the social infrastructure that transfer students need to persist through the most vulnerable period of their STEM trajectory.
Getting In the Door: Students Not Directly Admitted to STEM
Peer mentoring can only help students who are already enrolled in a STEM program. But what about the students who aspire to STEM and do not get direct admission? This is the question Pauline Entin at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth takes on.
Students who are denied direct admission to STEM programs but who enroll in a related or general pathway face a specific form of institutional ambiguity. They are neither fully inside nor fully outside the STEM community. Their aspirations remain intact, but their institutional footing is uncertain. Zhang (2022) analyzed six-year degree attainment data for STEM-aspiring community college transfer students and found that those who experienced early academic setbacks, particularly in gateway courses, were significantly more likely to switch out of STEM or leave altogether. Without deliberate outreach, advising, and programmatic on-ramps, these students’ STEM trajectories can stall before they truly begin.
Gray et al. (2022) found a stark qualitative divide: some community college transfer students were thriving, while others were simply surviving. The difference was largely structural; students who thrived had more academic and social supports in place early in their transition. The implication is not that aspiring STEM students lack capability; it is that institutions are inconsistent in providing the scaffolding that converts aspiration into completion.
Entin and her colleagues’ work (2016) examines how institutions can nurture the STEM aspirations of students in precisely this situation. Holland Zahner and Harper (2025) found that transfer students experienced validation of their belonging in STEM at lower rates than direct-entry students, and invalidation at higher rates, a gap that widened for underrepresented students. For S-STEM programs, this raises an important design question: are program eligibility criteria and outreach structures reaching students who are on the edge of STEM entry?
The Institutional Side of the Equation
A recurring theme in recent literature is that the transfer challenge is an institutional design problem. Thiry et al. (2023), drawing on a multi-institution study of universities with strong transfer outcomes, proposed an evidence-based framework that identified five institutional practices associated with transfer student success in STEM: proactive outreach before transfer, structured orientation and onboarding, sustained faculty and advisor relationships, cohort-based peer communities, and intentional connection to undergraduate research.
The burden of navigating the transfer process continues to fall disproportionately on students. Bahr et al. (2023) found that community college students with genuine STEM potential are being lost at multiple points along the pathway because the systems designed to support them did not activate in time. S-STEM programs are positioned to change this dynamic for their scholars. Is program design keeping pace with what the evidence now tells us about transfer student needs?
What the Evidence Asks of Us
Taken together, the literature on transfer student success in STEM points to several practices:
- Proactive pre-transfer outreach and structured onboarding, including orientation programs that address academic, financial, and social navigation before students arrive at the receiving institution (Thiry et al., 2023; Laanan et al., 2010).
- Structured peer mentoring cohorts that are designed, resourced, and assessed from the point of transfer (Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Rockinson-Szapkiw et al., 2024).
- Proactive on-ramps for STEM-aspiring students who enter through alternative pathways (Holland Zahner & Harper, 2025; Gray et al., 2022).
- Sustained advisor and faculty relationships; students who had meaningful ongoing connections to institutional agents were more likely to persist and thrive post-transfer (Thiry et al., 2023; Lukszo & Hayes, 2020).
- Data that specifically tracks transfer student outcomes as a central equity indicator, disaggregated by race, gender, and first-generation status (Jenkins & Fink, 2016; Bahr et al., 2023).
References
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