A Learning Village: Utilizing a Holistic Approach to Create Connections between Community College Pre-Engineering Students and Iowa State’s College of Engineering

As part of a 5-year NSF grant, the partnership between Iowa State University (ISU) and Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) resulted in the Student Enrollment and Engagement through Connections (SEEC) project. This project is driven by five distinct Objective Teams (O-Teams) with each responsible for achieving specific objectives. These objectives are directly aligned with the project’s goal of increasing the number of students entering and earning an engineering degree at ISU. The SEEC project provided the opportunity to model and build a “learning village” based on ISU’s nationally recognized learning community foundation, and to increase student connections between these Iowa educational institutions. The intent of this paper is to chronicle the accomplishments of one of the O-Teams, the Learning Village Team, in the quest to achieve its overarching objective of “building a learning village that enhances student connections and creates ISU connections for community college pre-engineering transfer students.