This study investigated the impact that co-curricular programming delivered by the University Honors Program (UHP) at North Carolina State University through the Honors Forum course had on first-year students' self-reported knowledge of civil discourse, their assessment of its importance and impact, and their evaluation of their commitment to the…

Outdoor orientation programs (OOPs) use wilderness or adventure experiences as a transition of incoming first-year students to college and university settings. We explored resilience and flourishing outcomes from two OOP trips in Virginia and North Carolina using the Brief Resilience Scale, the Mental Health Continuum Short Form, and a thematic…

A series of courses on the Evolution of Ideas introduces interdisciplinary study, develops collaborative discourse, and promotes a sense of community among first-year honors students. The curriculum encourages faculty to use a range of strategies to help students understand an idea and its history while also fostering awareness as to its social,…

Background: In response to the effort to increase minority enrollment in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, STEM summer bridge programs were created to help minorities with the transition from high school to college with the long-term goal of increasing the diversity of professionals in STEM. The goal of this…

Given the prevalence of sexual assault and intimate partner violence in adolescence and young adulthood, it is critical to understand how content on these topics is integrated into school-based sex education as a potential intervention point. However, little research has evaluated how formal sex education on sexual assault and intimate partner…

High school dual-enrollment and early college models are seeing a surge in popularity, though neither is new. Both early college and dual-enrollment programs were designed to speed up the pathway to any postsecondary education while also saving students money. Previous literature does not argue that early college and high school dual-enrollment…

Authors describe course-embedded research experiences at a diverse, rural, regional university. Emphasizing the capacity for conventional teaching and learning in first-year honors composition, these experiences provide relationship-rich education through faculty and peer mentorships. Positing that first-year honors composition is undervalued as a…

The North Carolina Promise is a state-level policy that reduced the cost of tuition for all students who attended one of three campuses in the University of North Carolina System starting in fall of 2018. We use IPEDS data and a synthetic control approach to examine how this tuition reduction affected enrollment and persistence at these campuses.…

Western Carolina University (WCU) enrolls students from many different backgrounds and demographic categories. While access to the institution has expanded over the years, equity gaps still exist relative to retention and graduation outcomes for students in different demographic groups. Several offices at the University offer programing and…

Spring admission is an undergraduate admissions strategy for traditional incoming freshmen. "Spring admission is a strategy to fill spots that empty in the spring when students graduate early or study abroad" (Hussain 2017). Admitting spring students is also a way to replace tuition dollars lost due to fall-admitted students'…

While plenty of literature exists that explores faculty-to-student mentorship in higher education, the bulk of this scholarship focuses on graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students, not first-year undergraduates. This is problematic as the first year of college is the one in which mentorship has the largest impact on student…

When academic success professionals work collaboratively with faculty, we can better connect the dots between how students present in the classroom and what services are most needed to support student success. If high school students believe academic records are irrelevant, it undermines the need (incentive) to exert effort in studies and academic…

While the coronavirus crisis altered all facets of life across the globe, its impact on American higher education posed immediate challenges to students and faculty alike. Disruptions in normal, in-person instruction affected all students' abilities to connect and create, but first-year students and their professors were particularly restricted in…

The brilliance of Black men and the strengths of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been understudied and invisibilized. This focus group study examines the skills, habits, characteristics, and relationships to learning and achievement of 26 high-achieving, first-year Black male students at five HBCUs in North Carolina. This…

Student engagement is shown to condition a student for increased academic persistence leading to increased institutional retention. Engagement builds passion for academic and non-academic factors which lead to successful student and institutional outcomes. Without passion and value for investing one's quality time and effort in their learning…