Two-Year Follow-Up of the Community College to PhD Scholars Program: Impact on Alumni’s Research and PhD Preparation

Building on the prior short-term outcome evaluation, we conducted a mid-term outcome evaluation of the Community College to PhD (CC2PhD) Scholars Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. This novel undergraduate research and PhD preparation program intentionally prepared community college sophomores for future engagement in upper-division research and PhD preparation at their forthcoming transfer university. We conducted semi-structured interviews and surveys with seven CC2PhD alumni 2 years after they completed the program. At the time of the 2-year follow-up, CC2PhD alumni were generally undergraduate seniors. We conducted a thematic analysis of interview data and examined descriptive statistics of survey data. We identified six themes. The first through fifth themes were that CC2PhD helped program alumni (a) make informed decisions about continuing or ending their pursuit of academia as a prospective career, (b) apply for upper-division research opportunities, (c) conduct upper-division research, (d) engage in PhD preparation, and (e) start research and PhD preparation earlier as a transfer student. The sixth theme was that some of our alumni still struggled with transfer-student-specific institutional barriers to upper-division research and PhD preparation despite being relatively prepared. While it might not entirely nullify institutional barriers, our results suggest that assisting community college students with applying for research opportunities, conducting research, and engaging in PhD preparation can positively impact their community-college-to-PhD journey.