Existing research on students’ citation practices has tended to focus on the formal and linguistic characteristics of citation (Howard et al., 2010; Swales, 2014), without fully examining their underlying rhetorical functions or the influence of classroom genres on citation practices. Smaller-scale studies have yielded meaningful insights into the rhetorical dimensions of citation (Haller, 2010), but these have been challenging to scale up, and proposed coding schemes have had limited applicability to L1 first-year writing contexts (Petric, 2007; Lee, Hitchcock, and Casal, 2018; Zhang, 2023). This study responds to calls for a better understanding of the rhetorical strategies first-year writing students employ when citing sources, as well as improved program-level assessment methods to capture their citation practices across classrooms and courses. My dissertation study examines the rhetorical practices of citation employed by students within a foundational academic writing course, ENG 101: Introduction to Academic Discourse, at a large urban research university. Combining qualitative coding and computational text analysis, the study investigates three key research questions: 1) What rhetorical practices of citation do students learn to employ within a foundational academic writing course? 2) To what extent do different genres condition different practices of citation? and 3) To what extent do students' citation practices differ—within and across genres—in relation to the scores they receive? This study reveals that students primarily engage sources for three rhetorical purposes: to Report information from and about sources (without imposing an interpretive lens); to Transform source material through analysis, application, and synthesis; and to Evaluate a source’s content, argument, and/or rhetorical effectiveness. The study found that higher-scoring student papers demonstrated more frequent use of Evaluating sources while lower-scoring papers tended to rely more heavily on Reporting from sources. Additionally, the analysis uncovered distinct citation profiles across the key genres assigned in the course, with the Rhetorical Analysis paper requiring the highest levels of Evaluating and Transforming, the Brand Analysis emphasizing Transforming, and the Review Paper displaying lower overall source engagement. The dissertation contributes to the field's understanding of citation practices in first-year writing, offering a framework for assessing the rhetorical dimensions of student citation that can be adapted for use within the context of local writing programs to support outcomes assessment, curriculum design, and classroom pedagogy attuned to the rhetorical dimensions of source engagement. / English / Accompanied by one .zip file : 1) Kane_temple_0225E_171/Kane_Supplementary_Materials.zip