A number of studies have focused on the identification of factors impacting minority students persistence at four-year colleges and universities. Most of these studies focus on what the students or institutions have done wrong, with fewer studies focusing on the specific factors that successful students, those who have persisted to graduation, have done right to overcome barriers to graduation.
The main objectives of the study are to: a) identify resources utilized by minority students leading to academic success as identified by general and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) discipline retention experts; b) identify the knowledge acquired to access available resources and actions employed to utilize resources by minority students studying in STEM disciplines; c) analyze the associations between resources utilized by graduates of the Hewlett Packard (HP) Scholars Program and the academic majors selected; and d) analyze the associations between resources utilized by HP Scholars and the institutions attended. This study utilized the Padilla Expertise Model of Student Success (1991), with slight modifications, as the theoretical framework.
It is hoped that further research using this framework as a foundation will result in an instrument that is reflective of the needs of minority students studying STEM field disciplines to persist to graduation and will also equip institutions of higher education with the tools to facilitate this success.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04072008-093433 |
| Date | 27 June 2008 |
| Creators | Galloway, Renee Michelle |
| Contributors | Dr. Thomas Zullo, Dr. Charlene Trovato, Dr. John Weidman, Dr. John Yeager |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04072008-093433/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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