Jennifer Freeman, a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, has been was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) in the spring of 2019. Freeman’s project will investigate the associations between participation in undergraduate research and the attainment of STEM degrees and entrance to STEM careers for community college transfer students. The academic and social benefits of research participation have been well studied in traditional, non-transfer students. However, given the unique challenges in the educational experiences of transfer students, the results of previous studies may not be applicable to this group of students.
Community colleges act as an entry point for diverse populations to higher education, and the outcomes of this study could provide underrepresented groups a pathway into STEM fields. The results of this study could help understand the factors related to retention, graduation, and career pathways of transfer students. Additionally, this study could lead to changes in UC policy related to the inclusion of transfer students in research, and provide more student support services directed towards transfer students in STEM majors.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.
As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. The reputation of the GRFP follows recipients and often helps them become life-long leaders that contribute significantly to both scientific innovation and teaching.
Freeman is a first year Ph.D. student in the Department of Education with research interests in education policy and the economics of education. Her advisor is Michael Gottfried in the Policy, Leadership, and Research Methods focus area. She transferred from Santa Barbara City College to UC Santa Barbara and graduated in 2018 with a B.S. in zoology. Given the opportunity to be an undergraduate co-teacher for a class geared towards transfer students, she began to build a narrative of the common issues that transfer students were facing while trying to acclimate socially and academically to the UCSB community, which laid the foundation for her research project. Currently, she is working on research projects related to career and technical education course-taking, the effects of increased immigration enforcement on student outcomes, and the evaluation of student services on campus.