The recent complexity of the university system, with diverse academic trajectories and varying socio-demographic characteristics of students, has led to increased access for historically underrepresented students. This has resulted in a rising number of adult learners, students with external responsibilities and individuals returning to education.…

This dissertation is composed of three studies linking general education astronomy to student performance, course-taking, graduation, and identity. The first study examined demographic and academic predictors of astronomy performance among a cohort of N=1,909 community college students enrolled in astronomy courses in a large suburban community…

Completion of remedial mathematics has been identified as one of the keys to college success. However, completion rates in remedial mathematics have been low and are of much debate across America. This study leverages machine learning techniques in trying to predict and understand completion rates in remedial mathematics. The purpose of this study…

Working from the notion that the goal of middle school is to prepare students to successfully transition to high school, Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) researchers investigated a range of outcomes consistent with this aim, such as performance in ninth grade, promotion to tenth grade, and course grades or test scores in middle…

STEM preparation--especially high school math course-taking--is a key predictor of college entrance. Previous research suggests that high school English learners (ELs) not only take fewer advanced math courses but also enroll in college at much lower rates than non-ELs--a group that includes former ELs. In the present study, we alter the analytic…

The interest and participation in dual credit programs and courses has grown over the past several decades, especially within Texas; however, there is a lack of research that shows how the participation in dual credit programs and courses has impacted leading and lagging student success metrics once they enroll at a post-secondary institution. The…

Physics education research to date has predominantly focused on the undergraduate level. This has left critical avenues of research in graduate education relatively understudied and has motivated much of my research. Numerous studies across the education research landscape have analyzed undergraduate admissions practices, but few have critically…

This study highlights the role and importance of advanced, machine learning-driven predictive models in enhancing the accuracy and timeliness of identifying students at-risk of negative academic outcomes in data-driven Early Warning Systems (EWS). K-12 school districts have, at best, 13 years to prepare students for adulthood and success. They…

Objective/Research Question: Community college graduation rates are typically quite low, and developmental mathematics enrollment and coursetaking patterns may constrain academic outcomes. To identify ways in which community college graduation rates may be improved, decision trees were utilized to examine the STEM coursetaking patterns of N =…

The decline in doctoral program completion has become one of the main challenges in doctoral education worldwide. As concern about this issue grows, the number of studies examining the topic has also increased. Many of these studies, which aim to identify the factors that contribute to high attrition rates, rely on cross-sectional data and often…

We conducted a study of predictive analytics (PA) applied to state data on post-school outcomes (PSO) of exited high-school students with disabilities (SWD). Data analyses with machine learning Random Forest algorithm and multilevel Bayesian ordered logistic regression produced two key findings. One, Random Forest models were accurate in…

Prior research has explored how international students' interactions with domestic students and with other international students predict their self-reported short-term outcomes, particularly in the context of the environmental challenges that international students may encounter. The present study builds upon this earlier work by using…

The COVID-19 pandemic decreased college enrollment and disrupted academic progress, particularly among disadvantaged students and institutions. Just before the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, 31,511 undergraduate students attending colleges of The City University of New York responded to a survey detailing their circumstances. Lasso…

Purpose: This research examine participation in a dual enrollment program and a student's race and socioeconomic status. In addition to examining the college retention and graduation rates (student success) of dual and non-dual enrolled students, this study looked at potential race and socioeconomic disparities. Design/methodology/approach: A…

Noncognitive constructs such as self-efficacy, social awareness, and academic engagement are widely acknowledged as critical components of human capital, but systematic data collection on such skills in school systems is complicated by conceptual ambiguities, measurement challenges and resource constraints. This study addresses this issue by…