Building a More Transfer Receptive Culture through Relationship Centered Research

How do we make physics and STEM a place where students thrive instead of simply survive? For the past decade I have been a part of a team of researchers who has been interrogating this question from multiple angles. We have explored how to better design introductory physics courses for students who are fearful (e.g. Sawtelle & Turpen, 2016), how to develop curricula that center students’ identities as part of learning physics (e.g. Nair & Sawtelle, 2019), and most recently how to support two-year college (also known as community or technical college) through transfer to bachelor’s degree programs (e.g. Wood & Sawtelle, 2022). Throughout all of that work we have continually put relationships and partnerships at the center of our research program. In this posterI will share an overview of this work, and how relationships have played a central role in pushing our research forward. Then I will describe a project that aims to build relationships in order to make institutional change. This project addresses the need to support two-year college transfer students of color in STEM fields by transforming the receiving baccalaureate granting institutions. This NSF-funded project is a collaboration of two institutions, San Jose State University and Michigan State University. We have created Transfer Advocacy Groups (TAGs) which are collaborations of faculty, students, and advisors working to implement interventions to support transfer students of color in STEM and promote a transfer receptive culture at the receiving baccalaureate granting institutions.