Faculty are the academic heart of colleges and universities. They guide learning and facilitate student academic and social integration in the campus community. As described by Tinto, student integration is an important component to success in college. Out-of-class and in-class faculty-student interaction supports student integration and may lead to improved college completion. Students enter college with expectations for what they are about to experience, including expectations for faculty interaction. Smart adapted Holland's vocational choice theory to study college disciplines and found that faculty in six broad categories of disciplines displayed specific environmental and personality traits and interacted differently with students. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine relationships between first-time-in-college (FTIC), prior-to-matriculation student expectations of faculty-student interaction and two dependent variables: four-year degree completion and FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student's major, as categorized in one of Holland's categories. High school GPA, ethnicity, and gender were controlled in the study. The sample consisted of 3,144 FTIC, prior-to-matriculation students enrolled at the University of South Florida, a large, metropolitan public university in the South during the summer or fall of 2008. Students completed the College Student Expectations Questionnaire (CSXQ) as part of a mandatory university orientation program. Seven items on the CSXQ's "Experiences with Faculty" section were summed and used to assess a FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student's level of expected faculty-student interaction. Students' prior-to-matriculation majors were assigned to one of seven Holland major categories --investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, realistic, conventional, and not in Holland. However, only five categories; investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and not in Holland were used because no FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student majors were assigned to the realistic and conventional Holland categories. A binary logistic regression was used to investigate the potential relationship between (FTIC), prior-to-matriculation student expectations of faculty-student interaction score and four-year degree completion. A statistically significant relationship (p<.05) was not observed between a FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student's expectation level for faculty-student interaction score and four-year degree completion. A statistically significant relationship (p<.05) was observed between the independent variables of high school GPA and gender and the dependent variable of four-year college completion. A one-point increase in the student's high school GPA showed an increase of the odds of four-year graduation by a factor of 2.96. The study also found the odds of a female graduating in four years is increased by about 1.3 times over a male four-year graduation. A multinomial logistic regressions were used to evaluate the relationship between (FTIC), prior-to-matriculation student expectations of faculty-student interaction score and Holland's categories. A statistically significant relationship (<.05) was found between a FTIC student's expectation level for faculty-student interaction and a student's FTIC Holland classification. As the level of the faculty-student expectation score increased by one point, the odds of being a member of the investigative category over the artistic, social, or enterprising category increased by 1.05 times, 1.03 times, or 1.04 times, respectively. The results must be interpreted with caution, given the small effect sizes, as exhibited by a Cox and Snell's value of .005 and a Nagelkerke value of .006.

Student persistence and achievement are areas of significant concern for institutions of higher education. With national college graduation rates hovering in the 50% range, it is important for colleges and universities to understand which student characteristics and campus environments lead to greater success, as well as the expectations students have of the college experience. Research on undeclared students is vast and dates back more than 70 years, and many of the seminal studies and respected research data have led to the perception that they are at higher risk of attrition and have lower levels of academic achievement than their declared peers. Research also shows that the two most important ways to help students connect to institutions is through faculty interactions and involvement in clubs and organizations. A new and growing body of research on student expectations posits that students who have unmet expectations of the college experience are also at higher risk of attrition. This study sought to integrate those three research concepts and analyze the expectations of undeclared students to determine if undeclared students had lower expectations of the college experience than their declared peers, specifically as those expectations relate to interactions with faculty and involvement in clubs and organizations. This study also sought to determine if undeclared students had lower levels of academic achievement or persistence than their declared peers. Using the College Student Expectations Questionnaire (CSXQ), this research analyzed the expectations of 3,219 first time in college (FTIC) students at a large, metropolitan, public university in the South who responded to the CSXQ during summer 2008 orientation. Results indicated that although differences were discovered between undeclared and declared students for expectations of student-faculty interaction and for expectations of involvement in clubs and organizations, the low effect sizes indicated that the differences could not be attributed directly to declaration of major. Results also indicated that undeclared students did not persist at rates statistically significantly different than their declared peers, nor did they achieve lower GPAs or fewer credit hours. While this study did not reveal statistically significant differences for any of the dependent variables, this research is beneficial in that these results contribute to the research findings that undeclared students are not attrition prone or less likely to achieve. More current research is needed on the population of undeclared students to determine if the perceptions are outdated and no longer generalizable to today's generation of students. Additionally, more research is needed on the expectations of students, in general, to determine what impact, if any, those expectations have on student interactions with the college environment and on the outcomes of persistence, achievement, and graduation.

One of the major priorities for community colleges is to focus on the pedagogical tools that will allow students to achieve excellence and quality in curriculum and instruction to meet the changing societal needs (Shearon & Tollefson, 1989). Rapid demographic, social, and technological changes demand that community colleges produce self-directed lifelong learners (Closson, 1996). The study of student learning preferences for more teacher-directed or more self-directed learning is one of the concepts that is important in enhancing teaching and learning practices. The purpose of this study was to examine students' teacher-directed versus self-directed learning preferences in specific courses. The possible relationships among age, gender, and academic majors and the learning preferences (teacher-directed or self-directed) were also explored. The revised version of Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (LSPQ) originally designed by Hinkle (1990) was administered to 563 students at five selected community colleges in the southeast. The majority of the participants were female traditional students majoring in the natural sciences. The sample showed a preference for teacher-directed orientation in specific courses. Statistically significant differences were observed in the magnitude of the teacher-directed orientation between the mean scores of male and female students with male students scoring significantly higher than the female students. Traditional students obtained significantly higher mean scores on the items addressing the delivery of instruction than the nontraditional students. Nontraditional students obtained significantly higher mean scores on the items addressing the testing of learning. Gender had an impact on the magnitude of the teacher-directed learning preferences for evaluation and testing of learning. Academic majors had an impact on the magnitude of the teacher-directed learning preferences for evaluation of learning. Students in this study preferred a teacher-directed approach to learning. Follow-up research using a variety of instruments may investigate how this preference contributes to or affects academic achievement. It is recommended that the methods and procedures adopted in this study be replicated in other community colleges across the nation. Learning preference concepts and methods should be developed at the community college level to include professional development of instructors so that they may better provide learning opportunities for their students. Such studies may also be conducted in other parts of the world to determine how cultural differences may impact on learning preferences.