his research addressed educational persistence among first-generation, low-income college students. The educational paths of 22 first-generation, low-income undergraduate students attending a large, urban university in the Northwest region of the United States were examined through a narrative framework. Half of the participants had persisted from year one to year two, and the other half left the university after their first year. Analytic procedures consisted of thematic qualitative coding, an analysis of student trajectories over educational histories, and the reconstruction of narrative stories. Data were used to examine: (1) How first-generation, low-income students understood and described their journey through their first year, (2) Reasons some students gave for leaving the university, (3) Meanings students gave to their experiences in college and how those meanings influenced future decisions, and (4) Differences between the stories of students who persisted versus those who left. The first-generation, low-income students who participated in this study were individually diverse and took various paths through college. After prolonged contact, evidence of interrupted enrollment and transfer among colleges was shown for approximately half of the participants. The descriptive codes most frequently discussed were financial issues, aspects of self, and family. Students described motivations for college in terms of themes related to family, gaining practical skills, existential discovery, desire for the college adventure, and affirmation of personal attributes. Students left the institution as a result of academic challenges, external life events, financial difficulties, dissatisfaction with the college process, unclear goals or reasons for continuation, and a need to stay near family. Students who persisted in college indicated adequate pre-college academic preparation, social connection to the university, family support for continuation, adequate financial resources, and support from social and cultural brokers that helped them navigate college. Findings from this study suggest social class, financial, individual and family contextual variables be added to Tinto's (1975, 1993) classic model of student departure. Higher education policies suggested by data include partnering with families, reducing social class barriers and providing better information to students about the hidden costs of transfer and interrupted enrollment.

A theoretical argument is presented to suggest that engineering curriculum be designed to develop social capital. Additionally, the value of social capital in the retention of students in the College of Engineering, and the development, role, and value of social capital in an electrical engineering laboratory is evaluated. Data collected includes participant observations, informal and formal student interviews, and a researcher-designed survey. Social capital consists of interaction among individuals (networks), social rules that encourage interactions such as trust and reciprocity (norms), and the value of these networks and norms to the individual and the group. A large body of evidence suggests that social capital is valuable in terms of retention and multiple measures of academic achievement. The importance of social capital in retention was verified by students that have left engineering and those that remain, in terms of interactions with peers, teaching assistants, and engineering faculty; and a lack of sense of community in freshman engineering courses. Students that have left engineering differed in their perceptions of social capital from those that remain in their frustrations with teaching methods that encourage little discussion or opportunities to ask questions about assumptions or approaches. The open-ended nature of laboratory assignments, extensive required troubleshooting, and lack of specific directions from the teaching assistants were found to encourage the development of social capital in the laboratory setting. Degree centrality, a network measure of social capital as the number of ties an individual has within a social network, was found to be positively correlated with laboratory grade. Student perceptions of the importance of interactions with other students on success in the laboratory setting has a negative model effect on academic achievement in the laboratory. In contrast, student perceptions of the quality of interactions with teaching assistants has a positive effect on measures of academic achievement. The results suggest that social capital is more important to some students than others in terms of retention and academic achievement. Recommendations are made to identify students requiring social capital to be successful, and to provide opportunities for these students to develop social capital. / Graduation date: 2005

Graduation date: 2003

This case study describes and analyzes the experiences of Mt. Hood Community College (MHCC) in its implementation of four retention interventions. Each of the four interventions are described in detail. Discussion is framed within the context that retention is a by-product of institutional renewal brought about by implementing interventions that have campus-wide impacts. Discussion and analysis probe the interventions to reveal their benefits to the college, addressing the question as to whether MHCC is being effective in its retention planning. Discussion and recommendations are framed around three insights discovered in the course of the case study. These three insights are seen as key factors in retention intervention. Each of the insights is followed by recommendations intended to mitigate gaps in retention planning that the insights discovered. The insights and recommendations are: 1. Intervention needs to be holistic. Two recommendations were suggested to strengthen the holistic approach. The first of these is a mentoring program, both peer and faculty. The second recommendation is to strengthen faculty-student-staff relationships outside the classroom by an intervention such as the establishment of learning communities. 2. Intervention needs to use high quality information. Recommendations were to pay more attention to less than full-time students, to develop a formal withdrawal policy and process, and to collect additional student intention data. 3. Intervention needs to track points of student economic impact. The single recommendation for insight three is to thoroughly track and analyze the points where students interact economically with the college. This is thought to be crucial as the areas of economic contact play an active not passive role in enrollment and retention. The case study found that MHCC's experiences with intervention are consistent with literature findings, have been effective for MHCC, and the insights and recommendations may be helpful to other community colleges in retention planning. / Graduation date: 1998

Persistence has been identified as an issue at all levels of higher education, and numerous strategies have been attempted to stem the flow of students who leave an institution before completing their programs of study. Persistence research abounds at the community college, four-year college and university levels, but little research on the subject is available at the postsecondary proprietary level. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to research and describe the developmental program recently undertaken at The Art Institute of Dallas (AID), and to compare the findings to the literature on community colleges. Objectives were to 1) examine the forces which caused AID to implement a developmental program; 2) examine how the program was perceived to be working; 3) compare the description of the program at AID to descriptions of those in community colleges, as described in the literature; 4) examine individual perceptions of benefits or drawbacks to the school as a direct result of the new program; and 5) determine if the key informants saw the developmental program as a vehicle to raise persistence and enhance student success. Originally, AID was an open admissions school, offering basic skills help only in tutorial situations. With the addition of General Education courses to the various curricula, the need for an Academic Improvement Center was discerned. Eventually, the school also saw the need to establish admissions standards, coupled with placement testing, to identify and serve underprepared students. Persistence became an issue, along with the state mandate of The Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP), and both contributed to the establishment of a comprehensive developmental education program. Results indicated the need for a student better prepared in numeracy and literacy skills, reflected in the requirements of employers needing employees with abilities to read technical documents, to write reports, to work in teams, and to solve problems. The findings of this study suggest the addition of a comprehensive developmental education program at AID positively affected student persistence. Just as the research on community college developmental studies history, development, and progress unfolded, so also went this postsecondary proprietary school. / Graduation date: 1998

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-134).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 67-72.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-141). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-267). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 134-141). Also available on the Internet.