For the past several years, U.S. colleges and universities have faced increased pressure to improve retention and graduation rates. At the same time, educational institutions have placed a greater emphasis on the importance of enrolling more students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programs and producing more STEM graduates. The resulting problem faced by educators involves finding new ways to support the success of STEM majors, regardless of their pre-college academic preparation. The purpose of my research study involved utilizing first-year STEM majors’ math SAT scores, unweighted high school GPA, math placement test scores, and the highest level of math taken in high school to develop models for predicting those who were likely to pass their first math and science courses. In doing so, the study aimed to provide a strategy to address the challenge of improving the passing rates of those first-year students attempting STEM-related courses. The study sample included 1018 first-year STEM majors who had entered the same large, public, urban, Hispanic-serving, research university in the Southeastern U.S. between 2010 and 2012. The research design involved the use of hierarchical logistic regression to determine the significance of utilizing the four independent variables to develop models for predicting success in math and science. The resulting data indicated that the overall model of predictors (which included all four predictor variables) was statistically significant for predicting those students who passed their first math course and for predicting those students who passed their first science course. Individually, all four predictor variables were found to be statistically significant for predicting those who had passed math, with the unweighted high school GPA and the highest math taken in high school accounting for the largest amount of unique variance. Those two variables also improved the regression model’s percentage of correctly predicting that dependent variable. The only variable that was found to be statistically significant for predicting those who had passed science was the students’ unweighted high school GPA. Overall, the results of my study have been offered as my contribution to the literature on predicting first-year student success, especially within the STEM disciplines.

Student Success continues to be a topic of great interest in the Higher Education Literature. Fifty percent of those students who enter a four-year institution actually graduate and 25 % of first year students do not persist into their second year in college. First-year success courses and peer mentoring along with other programming strategies have been developed to improve retention and success for college students during their first-year of college. This study explored how college students from nine different institutions defined college student success. In addition, students from these institutions were surveyed to find out how and if first-year success courses and/or peer mentoring contribute to college student success. Follow-up interviews allowed for a deeper understanding of how first-year success courses and peer mentoring contribute to college student success. The study found a new comprehensive definition for college student success. Also, first-year success courses and peer mentoring do have positive relationships with college student success however, they also have some shortcomings that were identified in this study.

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As a growing number of higher education institutions commit to first-generation student success, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers should aim to better understand how to deliver on promises to first-generation students within institutions and across the higher education landscape. First-generation students are a particularly important population of study due to their heterogeneity and because they comprise a large and growing share of current college-going or college-ready students. It is also important to understand how different types of institutions are supporting first-generation students, as institutional diversity is a hallmark of American higher education. This qualitative multiple case study investigates three diverse institutions—a comprehensive regional public university, a moderately selective private liberal arts college, and an elite historically Black college—and their unique approaches to enacting a stated commitment to first-generation student success. Through document analysis, interviews, and site visits, this study explores how policies and practices relate to this commitment; which institutional stakeholders are engaged in promoting first-generation student success; how institutions define, support, and measure first-generation student success; and whether enacted commitments to first-generation student success inform a broader culture of student success. In addition to investigating institutional perspectives, this study considers how first-generation students experience and perceive their institution’s efforts and explores alignments or misalignments between these two perspectives. Findings offer new insights into how distinct types of institutions—types underrepresented in research on student success—approach first-generation student success and contribute to a growing literature that takes an asset-focused, intersectional approach to understanding the experiences of first-generation students. Findings suggest that the first-generation identity, when understood in concert with students’ other identities, helps students make meaning of their college experiences. Explicitly recognizing first-generation students as a population—including by disaggregating institutional data on first-generation students—helps to ensure that institutions design programs, supports and initiatives that meet the specific needs of this population. Additionally, findings suggest that constituents—including students—across institutional contexts play important roles as cultural navigators for first-generation students and may serve as change agents who can help identify and resolve disconnects between institutional decisions and students’ experiences. Finally, the analysis suggests that approaches to student success can be rooted in an institution’s distinct culture, but institutions must work toward a holistic understanding of students’ identities, needs, and goals and dismantle biased or hegemonic practices that obscure and reinforce inequitable outcomes. / Policy, Organizational and Leadership Studies

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In 2008, the excitement to teach the class, Introduction to College to new students who are beginning college, was greatly accepted with much reservation. Numerous memories reflected back to that special period when the writer was faced with those daunting decisions of where to attend college. Those memories of excitement and fear of being away from home the very first time, starting college life, meeting new friends, and what career path to choose, were difficult decisions during that transitional time. Orientation class back then consisted mainly of a half day spent touring the college campus and listening to various speakers; if you could stay awake. The scope of this study will be to assess the effectiveness of Introduction to College (GE-100), on student GPAs and “persistence-to-graduation” rates as measures of success. In the course, the student will learn about the variety of support services available at the college, the behaviors necessary to be successful in college, and issues that relate to choice of major and/or careers. This study used a quantitative approach utilizing an ex-post facto longitudinal design that measures student grade point averages (GPA) and persistence-to-graduation rates for the five- year period from the Fall Semester of 2003 through the Spring Semester of 2008. Overall, at the conclusion, the results indicated that GE-100 students had significantly higher GPAs and significantly greater persistence- to-graduation rates over a five year period when compared with student who did not take or complete (GE- 100).

This basic qualitative study examines the parental investment strategies of first-generation African American rural college graduates in cultivating college student success. Extant literature has demonstrated that the role of the family is necessary to support the college student and that the investment of the parent is paramount to student college completion. Although educational attainment is an important goal for African American rural residents, research detailing strategies that cultivated student college completion among this population is needed to fill the gaps in the literature. The objectives were to discuss communication, involvement, and factors of influence to determine how these parents transferred their educational beliefs to their children and supported them through college graduation. These stories of success were told through the eyes of first-generation parents and their second-generation adult offspring. Research detailing the parental investment strategies toward college completion is necessary to inform parents, educational institutions, and rural college student completion in postsecondary institutions of the strategies necessary to ensure college success in this population. Lieberman’s transgenerational theory, along with concepts extracted from parental investment as it relates to education, provided the conceptual lens for the study. Data collected through interviews and documents were analyzed utilizing content analysis. Ten semistructured interviews were conducted with parents and their adult offspring. Interviews gleaned the lived experiences of the participants. Data analysis revealed six themes: (a) Catch Them Early, (b) Set the Tone, (c) Keep Them Busy, (d) Don’t Let Them “Break Rank,” (e) Encourage Advancement, and (f) Tell the Generations. The findings support the importance of developing a family investment team, how a return on parental investment occurs, making use of rural extracurricular programming, and transferring positive beliefs regarding higher education.

Hispanic Generation 1.5 students are foreign-born, U.S. high school graduates who are socialized in the English dominant K-12 school system while still maintaining the native language and culture at home (Allison, 2006; Blumenthal, 2002; Harklau, Siegal, & Losey, 1999; Rumbault & Ima, 1988). When transitioning from high school to college, these students sometimes assess into ESL courses based on their English language abilities, and because of this ESL placement, Hispanic Generation 1.5 students might have different engagement experiences than their mainstream peers. Engagement is a critical factor in student success and long-term retention because students’ positive and negative engagement experiences affect their membership and sense of belonging at the institution. The purpose of this study was to describe the engagement and membership experiences of Hispanic Generation 1.5 students’ at a Massachusetts community college. This study employed naturalistic inquiry within an embedded descriptive case study design that included three units of analysis: the students’ engagement experiences in (a) ESL courses, (b) developmental courses, and (c) mainstream courses. The main source of data was in-depth interviews with Hispanic Generation 1.5 students at Commonwealth of Massachusetts Community College. Criterion sampling was used to select the interview participants, ensuring that all participants were native Spanish speakers and were taking or had taken at least one ESL course at the institution. The study findings show that these Hispanic Generation 1.5 students at the college did not perceive peer engagement as critical to academic success. Most times the participants avoided peer engagement outside of the classroom, especially with fellow Hispanic students, who they felt would deter them from their English language development and general academic work. Engagement with ESL faculty and ESL academic support staff played the most critical role in the participants’ sense of belonging and success, and students who were required to engage with faculty and academic support staff outside of the classroom were the most satisfied with their educational experiences. While the participants were all disappointed with some aspect of their ESL placement, they valued the ESL engagement experiences more than the engagement experiences while completing developmental and credit coursework.

Despite decades of research and billions of dollars spent per annum to promote at-promise student—that is, low-income, first-generation, and/or racially/ethnically minoritized students—college success, at-promise students continue to be retained and graduate at lower rates than their traditionally college-going peers. The purpose of this study is to investigate how faculty coordinators in the Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC) facilitate and integrate instructors into the program’s ecological validation which has been found to promote at-promise student success. This study is framed by the ecological validation model of student success in conjunction with a systems theory perspective of faculty roles to investigate how TSLC’s faculty coordinators support instructors to engage in high-quality interactions with at-promise students. This qualitative multiple-case study utilizes 56 semi-structured interviews with faculty coordinators, TSLC program directors, and TSLC instructors, as well as observations and documents, from three University of Nebraska campuses to triangulate its findings. Results indicate the importance of the mesolevel role faculty coordinators play in both students and instructors’ ecologies. Three primary ideas emerged. First, faculty coordinators helped bridge instructors to campus and program resources which promoted attentiveness to student needs, the adoption of validating teaching practices, and grew instructor affinity with the program. Moreover, faculty coordinators helped departments understand the program and its students which empowered them to assign good instructors. Second, faculty coordinators helped align instructors’ personal, practitioner, and professional goals with their teaching in the program by working with instructors and departmental leadership to contextualize instructors’ work within TSLC as promoting student success, professionally developing, and beneficially for the department. Third, faculty coordinators influenced instructor pedagogy by encouraging validating teaching practices, demonstrating validating approaches, and serving as single points of contact for instructors. As single points of contacts for instructors, faculty coordinators were able to promote attentiveness to student issues by distributing the responsibility for supporting students across the students’ mesolevel—that is, throughout the program, their other instructors, and campus resources. Results also indicate potential avenues for how institutions can structure supports for instructors to scale TSLC’s ecological validation, including the creation of single points of contacts for instructors, the creation of validating incubators, and the importance of linking trainings with mesolevel supports.