While quantitative research has determined that first-generation college students (FGS) are less likely to interact with faculty than are their non-FGS peers, this qualitative study examines how incoming first-year college students, both FGS and non-FGS, perceive faculty-student interaction and whether they consider it important. Addressing different types of interaction with college instructors, both in-class and out-of-class, participants across a range of FGS status shared their views through surveys, individual interviews, and focus groups. Focusing specifically on incoming first year students, this study also explores the motives for, impediments to, and encouragements to faculty-student interaction that students identify. Finally, the study examines the origins of students’ perceptions of such interactions. It finds that FGS and non-FGS come to college with different cultural and social capital pertaining to this, and that non-FGS have a greater familiarity with the field and expected habitus of college. However, FGS demonstrate an ability to access their social capital in order to obtain valuable knowledge that informs their perceptions of college and of faculty-student interaction. Further, in the focus groups, FGS described emerging comfort with faculty over the course of their first months of college. The origins of students’ perceptions often differed, as non-FGS were more likely to describe being influenced by family, while FGS more often explained how they accessed their social capital in order to obtain cultural capital and practical knowledge regarding college and faculty-student interaction. Meanwhile, FGS’ and non-FGS’ motives for interacting with faculty, and the impediments and encouragements they identified, were frequently similar. The motives included their desire to learn and share opinions, as well as their interest in obtaining letters of recommendation in the future, while comfort with classmates and faculty and interest in class were commonly named as encouragements to interact with faculty.

This project responds to increasing efforts in higher education to retain students, i.e., keep them enrolled until graduation, through various initiatives. Building upon the arguments of composition scholars Matthew McCurrie (2009), Sara Webb-Sunderhaus (2010), and Pegeen Reichert Powell (2013), who propose that retention efforts can overlook students’ needs, goals, and lived experiences, this study evaluates whether retention initiatives communicate a definition of success that ignores and/or aligns with how students value success. This project draws on an historical overview of US success ideology to contextualize a case study of Georgia State University, a leading institution in the country for raising its retention rates. Georgia State’s Strategic Plan and celebrated retention initiatives are then analyzed to determine how the institution defines success; that analysis is compared with data gathered from focus groups and interviews. Ultimately, this study suggests that the definition of success is not necessarily where students and universities diverge; rather, the data gathered has revealed that far more conflicting are the ideas students and universities possess for how to achieve success. This project argues that while historically success has been valued as the achievement of social and financial upward mobility, Georgia State’s framing of student success communicates, more narrowly, the value of efficient mobility. From the analysis of students’ perspectives, a framework is provided to show how a focus on efficiency provokes a shift in methods for how universities support students’ pursuit of success, a shift from what this author terms facilitative methods to methods that can be more dictative of students’ college experiences. This framework is used to argue that dictative methods of support risk removing agency from and present new challenges for students whose lifestyles and responsibilities conflict with their universities’ preferred path towards graduation; often these students are commuters, non-traditional and/or are students from low-income households. This dissertation concludes by providing a model for writing program administrators to consider how they can work toward promoting more facilitative, and thus more inclusive, retention practices.

Master of Science / Department of Counseling and Student Development / Doris Wright Carroll / Living-learning communities in higher education play a critical role in the success of our student population. Having the option of living-learning communities on campus is a sought after option for students and parents of students beginning college. For student retention efforts, it is important that our student affairs professionals understand the impact that living-learning communities have on the first-year student population. It is additionally important that professionals understand the different types of living-learning communities and determine which is best to implement on their campus. This report takes a deeper look into living-learning communities across the country and the impacts on living-learning communities have on campus. Taking into consideration the diversity of varying living-learning communities, three specific types were examined and their success was determined based on a national study called The National Study of Living-Learning Programs (2007). This report communicates the depth and necessity of living-learning communities in higher education for students, parents, and student affairs professionals.

D.Ed. (Teaching studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The aim of the research study is firstly to examine the relationship between self-esteem and learning strategies amongst first year university students. From this the investigator aimed to discern whether there is a link between cognitive and affective factors in student learning as has been widely accepted in pedagogical studies. Secondly, the difference in self-esteem levels in relation to gender and year of study were also examined. Thirdly, the differences in self-esteem and learning strategies in relation to year of study were investigated. The rationale for the investigations in this study stems from the fact that first year university students are seen to be at a major life transition that brings with it challenges on an affective (self-esteem) and cognitive (learning strategies) level. The sample of the study consisted of 197 participants gathered from the University of the Witwatersrand. The instruments utilised were the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (1965), the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory- LASSI (Weinstein, 1987) and a brief Student Demographic Survey to gain information such as the students gender and year of study. Findings indicated that there is a relationship between self-esteem and the motivation to learn- one of the components of the LASSI. However, contrary to many other findings, no cognitive-affective link was evident. Furthermore, males and females appeared to show difference in the study aids learning strategy as well as in self-esteem levels, where females proved to have more positive self-esteem levels than the males. Year of study lastly, also proved to have an influence in student self-esteem levels.

The research aims to establish the perceived impact of relocation on first year student’s ability to cope with academic demands at University. The research intends to answer the following questions: How do first year students perceive their adjustment at University? Has the relocation impacted on the students functioning on any level? For example: -Academically, Emotionally, Physically and Socially. A large number of young adults relocate due to the need to pursue their chosen careers at the University. However, this happens at a time in their life when there is a lot of turmoil around social and individual identity and the pressures from society to achieve, including pressures to secure their future. This happens independently from parents and relevant social ties when students study away from home. A qualitative methodology was used for the research. The sample consisted of 10 Black female post matric first year students at University. The age range of participants was between 17 and 20. Data was collected through the use of semi structured interviews. Gathered data was analyzed using thematic content analysis. This involves organizing the data into categories on the bases of the themes and concepts. The concepts were then linked up in the form of a sequence. Eight steps were then followed when analyzing the data, which forms part of the criteria for thematic content analysis. Results obtained indicate that students find relocation to be a perturbing experience which pushes one out of their comfort zone into the unknown. This experience forces one to make numerous adjustments. The move taps into one's ability to deal with ambiguities, function independently and implement a task to deal with unanticipated challenges. Thus students are expected to take on the role of young adulthood. This brings with it the reality that they now have to be independent. As a result of this, most students get involved in what is called goal modification, namely focusing on what they would like instead of focusing on what their parents would want. The process is challenging as one is going through a process of loss and, in other ways, gain. The loss of social capital is felt as having a negative impact on academic performance. This is because students loose their source of motivation, support and reliable company. They now have to source it within themselves, an attribute which has proven to be difficult. Relocation is viewed as a compounding variable to other challenging factors to students. Hence the students’ relocation is perceived to be a variable which tends to have a negative affect on students’ academic performance. This is due to the fact that relocation tends to create a sense of discontinuity from known academic structures, social support ties and familiar surroundings. The loss of the above mentioned factors tends to aggravate the process of academic adjustment.

Thesis advisor: Karen D. Arnold / "Parental involvement," a term long part of the K-12 lexicon is now included in the higher education vocabulary. Many college administrators today associate "parental involvement" with a certain pattern of behavior and describe the contemporary traditional-aged student-parent relationship with negative examples. Dubbed by the media as "helicopter parents," this sub-population of overly involved mothers and fathers has come to represent all parents of college students, even though these examples are largely socioeconomic class-based. This qualitative phenomenological study considered the lived experience of the relationship between working class and low-income students and their parents during the first semester of college. All students in the sample were enrolled at four-year colleges and had attended an alternative high school where parental involvement was supported and encouraged. Students (n=6) participated in three open-ended, qualitative interviews and their parents (n=7) participated in two. What constitutes "parental involvement" for working class and low-income students and parents in the context of higher education? This study found that the parents had positive, emotionally supportive relationships with their students. Students were autonomous and functionally independent, but emotionally interdependent with parents. Parents in the study did not have a direct connection to their child's college or university; students served as intermediaries in this parent-institution relationship. Therefore, this sample did not fit the current definition of parental involvement in higher education. As colleges and universities implement parent services as a reaction to the phenomenon of parental involvement, they need to consider alternative pathways for communicating with parents from lower socioeconomic groups, many of whom have not attended college. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education.

This research identifies and classifies incoming learning behaviours found amongst a sample of English second language first year engineering students. During the research process, it was discovered that students entering university for an engineering/science based degree tend to struggle with the English lecture style and the pace of work at a first year level due to their having been taught in their mother tongue or through the use of code switching in their school years. It was further identified that the students who took part in the sample were highly reliant on notes and lecturers for ‘obtaining knowledge’ that could be utilized in the answering of problems. The findings indicate that English second language students who had been taught in Black schools had a limited view of knowledge that was dependant on received knowledge. It was further found that with the exception of students who had been taught in English only schools, there appeared little correlation between the matriculation aggregates of the students and their first year engineering marks. Where English second language first year engineering students exhibited some learning behaviours that suggest an aptitude for success in higher education, the findings suggest that the students who took part in the study do not feel supported at university. The findings, while complicated in nature, also suggest that university structures and procedures are not responsive to the specific needs of the sample group. It is the recommendation of this study that further research be undertaken amongst a larger sample group if curricular changes amongst first year engineering courses are to be considered.

This qualitative dissertation explored the professional learning experiences and perceived needs of four beginning high school English teachers in two NYC schools and the ways and means those needs were being addressed or not addressed. Through in-depth interviews with the teachers, my renderings from the interviews focused on how discourse shapes an understanding of the professional learning opportunities that operate as openings and constraints for teachers’ professional growth. I drew on the work of historian Michel Foucault as a theoretical framework to examine the production of a teacher’s sense of “self” as an effect of power/knowledge relations circulating within the dominant school discourses in which they are situated and the larger educational context at this historic moment.

The purpose of this project is to argue the effectiveness of utilizing comics as a learning tool in the first-year composition classroom to help students better understand synthesis. The two main features of comics that help teach synthesis are comic panels and comic closure. Library research was conducted to give insight into the history and terminology of comics, the value of comics in the classroom and in the field of rhetoric and composition, the practicality of using visual rhetoric and literacy in the classroom, and synthesis in the first-year composition classroom. I furthered my research by conducting a retrospective account of my own synthesis comic that I created during my graduate program. I analyzed how creating the synthesis comic helped me to better understand synthesis. I also analyzed how I was better able to effectively execute synthesis specifically through the genre conventions of panels and comic closure. Based on insights from my retrospective account, I will illustrate how the scaffolding exercise of creating a synthesis comic can be an effective tool in the first-year composition classroom. Additionally, I will offer suggestions for further research on the significance of this scaffolding exercise. Comics are becoming more widely valued in academia at large, as well as valued specifically in the field of rhetoric and composition. It is my hope that this thesis will contribute positively to this trend.