This three-article format dissertation presents a comprehensive examination of the 2017 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), focusing on its measurement properties across diverse community college student populations. Study 1 centered on the validity of the internal structure of CCSSE. Exploratory and confirmatory factor…

This study used responses from 17,354 student veterans on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) to investigate the relationship between student engagement and likelihood of withdrawal. Student veterans who utilized campus services more often, and those who perceived campus services as important, reported a higher likelihood of…

"How Clear Is Their Path? Guided Career Pathways and Community College Students" explores how prepared community college students are to meet their career goals. Over 90 percent of students responding to the 2023 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) indicated they had chosen a career path. But many of those respondents…

Adult students constitute a large and increasing proportion of community college enrollment across the United States. For personal, economic, and sociological reasons, the success of these students is vital to the students themselves, the institutions they attend, and society as a whole. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine results from…

College athletes at the community college level, specifically athletes of color, may experience unique threats to their belonging along multiple dimensions, including but not limited to academic spaces of learning, assessing their athletic merit by comparing themselves to Division I athletes, and racialized tensions within white-centric campuses.…

Veterans and students who are currently members of the U.S. Armed Forces have a long and rich history with higher education. Despite this, little quantitative research exists that examines factors that influence academic outcomes and provide results that can be acted upon by institutions, such as community colleges, to improve the academic…

Teen pregnancy has been an issue in the United States for many years, and the rate of teenage births is substantially higher in the United States than in other Western countries. Although the national teen pregnancy rate has declined over the last two decades, it is still a relevant issue. According to the Centers for Disease Control and…

Student retention and graduation in higher education are important goals for institutions across the U.S., yet improving rates of first-year retention and graduation has proven challenging. One strategy promoted for improving these rates of student success is increasing levels of student engagement in the classroom and within the larger academic…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced most community colleges across the country to radically shift the ways in which they provided instruction to a majority of their students. Over the last three years, these institutions have learned how to better support students who take online courses. However they are continuing to investigate and understand how…

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how triangulating responses from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) with information from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) exposes data incongruency, specifically when considering the population of students with disabilities at 2-year…

To understand how to best support Latino male community college students, we used the Socio-Ecological Outcomes (SEO) model to examine factors associated with their achievement and college satisfaction. Specifically, we leveraged data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and situated our study in developmental…

Retaining students through degree completion is a challenge for community colleges, with nontraditional, adult students being retained at a lower rate than their traditional counterparts. Though student engagement is recognized as an effective strategy for retaining students, there is a gap in research on how effective these strategies are for…

African American women make up an increasing percentage of all the students attending higher education institutions (Jones-DeWeever, 2014). African American women are enrolling in community college at an alarming rate; however, there is little research about their success at community colleges. This quantitative study used Kuh's theory of student…

The Hispanic community within the U.S. has steadily grown over the last few decades. People identifying as Latina/o/x are already the largest minority population and are projected to become 29% of the U.S. population by the year 2050 (Salinas, 2015). Since 1980, the number of school age children within the Latina/o/x community increased from 8.1%…

Understanding the college experiences of Indigenous students in the United States is critical to enhance their goals of educational attainment. Indigenous college students have been historically underserved by institutions they attend, which are often fraught with the uncertainty of belonging and feelings of isolation. A driving force behind this…