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Introduction: While a considerable amount of extant scholarship describes the importance of and strategies for improving the postsecondary pathways of Black engineering students, most literature is contextualized within 4-year institutions. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to illuminate Black engineering students' experiences at community colleges in order to understand ways in which they engage different types of 2-year institutional support. Methods: We draw from data obtained through a series of focus groups and interviews facilitated between fall 2018 and fall 2019 with 13 engineering undergraduates.

Results: Findings include evidence of important connections with faculty at 2-year colleges, such as positive engagement with them inside the classroom, as well as during office hours and general advising. In addition, we describe support from academic advisors regarding transfer pathways, as well as from campus staff who helped identify scholarships or other valuable resources on campus. Conclusion: We offer implications and conclusions that highlight the tremendous capacity of community colleges to support and educate future Black engineers. We also discuss the significance of underrepresented students of color working closely with faculty, adding that research to date notes that these interactions [are] often tenuous for underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities. Finally, we discuss ways in which our results can inform the broader landscape of undergraduate engineering education, which - like other STEM fields - has often created unwelcoming and competitive environments that lead to student attrition for students from all demographic backgrounds.

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This qualitative study compares high-performing Black male transfer students' social groupings. Black American men in the study engaged with a heterogeneous set of peers in community college. By contrast, Black African men most often worked alongside their peers from African countries. Results also indicate that the participants' community college acknowledged within-group diversity and created an ethos that supported their transfer aspirations. Implications include a call to expand research on successful Black male STEM experiences in community colleges, and to develop a greater awareness of intra-racial dynamics at both two- and four-year institutions.

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