Transfer students play an increasingly vital role in broadening the engineering workforce, yet their pathways and successes are often obscured by conventional institutional indicators. Standard graduation metrics, such as those reported to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), primarily track first-time-in-college cohorts and therefore overlook most transfer and other non-linear educational trajectories.
Dr. Sindia M. Rivera-Jiménez,
University of Florida
This mixed-methods study draws on a larger longitudinal investigation of transfer student outcomes across engineering and computer science disciplines at a large public research university.
This presentation focuses on chemical engineering to examine how students experience and navigate transfer shock, defined as a short-term disruption in academic performance following matriculation. Guided by the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST) as an analytic and interpretive framework, we examine two decades of institutional records, along with in-depth qualitative interviews with vertical transfer students. Quantitative analyses reveal an initial post-transfer GPA dip followed by uneven recovery patterns across subsequent semesters, with differences associated with demographic characteristics and credit-transfer histories. Reflexive thematic analysis further illustrates how students’ stress responses, coping processes, and developing engineering identities shape these trajectories of recovery. The study’s central contribution is the articulation of self-adjustment as a theoretical construct that captures how students make sense of and respond to transfer-shock conditions. By reconceptualizing transfer shock as an adaptive process rather than an individual deficit, the findings demonstrate how student-level meaning-making interacts with institutional environments to influence persistence. This perspective offers institutions a transferable framework for interrogating their own data and designing context-responsive supports that promote adjustment and sustained success, with implications for a range of non-traditional learners, including veterans, adult students, and career changers.
Dr. Sindia M. Rivera-Jiménez is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education at the University of Florida, with affiliate appointments in Chemical Engineering, the Institute of Higher Education, and the Florida Semiconductor Institute. She directs the Engineering Communities and Participatory Change (ECoPaC) Lab, where her research examines persistence and adjustment across engineering education. Her scholarship spans transfer students’ self-adjustment, undergraduates’ emotional experiences in authentic design tasks, graduate students’ emotional journeys navigating institutional expectations, and faculty agency within Communities of Practice. Using qualitative and mixed-methods approaches grounded in ecological, developmental, and transformational frameworks, she investigates how institutional contexts, professional cultures, and workforce ecosystems shape learning, identity development, and change.
Dr. Rivera-Jiménez leads multi-institutional, NSF-funded projects on transfer student pathways, graduate competence ecosystems, faculty professional development, and workforce-aligned experiential learning. An award-winning educator and mentor, she has received national recognition for her contributions to engineering education research and leadership and serves in leadership roles within ASEE and AIChE.