The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) at Cal Poly Pomona explored factors contributing to student enrollment and engagement, especially for MilleniGenZ students. The research was built on the latest evidence that college students who engaged in research along with faculty mentoring and team collaboration were more able to persist in their…

In this article, I ask to what extent first-generation college students experience statistics anxiety and what are effective pedagogical strategies for building student confidence and encouraging learning. To answer these questions, I draw on the wide-ranging and developing literature on blended teaching methods--most commonly defined as the…

This chapter presents an initial inquiry about students who take student success courses with a Latinx focus at two California community colleges, one with an HSI designation and one without.

Using a socio-ecological and an intersectionality framework, this cross-national study examined the perceived discrimination experiences of U.S.-based diasporic Yucatec-Maya Mexican students (n = 66), U.S.-based non-Yucatec-Maya (non-indigenous) Latinx students (n = 65), and Mexico-based Yucatec-Maya students (n = 70). U.S.-based Yucatec-Maya…

This report examines the success of students with lower levels of high school performance who began in transfer-level math as a result of Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin 2017). AB 705 is historic legislation that transformed placement and eventually ended developmental education in California's community colleges. Since community colleges are open access…

The California Community Colleges (CCC) began implementation of AB 705 in fall 2018, ensuring that most students started in transfer-level math rather than a developmental education sequence. The RP Group's Multiple Measures Assessment Project (MMAP) has found that for all student groups, dramatically increasing access to transfer-level math…

While scholars have noted the levels of educational attainment of Hmong Americans compared to East Asian Americans as well as the overall population, this focus has undermined the achievements of Hmong Americans. To shift the discourse on Hmong American students and provide a liberatory perspective, I examined the student-initiated organizing…

Intercultural competence--the ability to successfully interact and communicate sensitively with members of other cultural groups--is an essential skill in multicultural societies and an increasingly globalized world. A quasi-experimental study revealed that completing a cross-cultural international psychology course increased college students'…

We examined the correspondence between college students' (N = 192, 71% women) definitions of free-pours and their free-poured volumes of beer, wine, and liquor. Participants' mean beer definitions and free-pours were positively correlated; participants' mean wine and liquor definitions were larger than their free-pours, which were fairly accurate.…

The credibility of unsupervised exams, one of the biggest challenges of e-learning, is currently maintained by proctoring. However, little has been done to determine whether expensive and inconvenient proctoring is necessary. The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether the use of security mechanisms, based on the taxonomy of…

The introduction of SB-1440 in 2010, also known as the Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act, appeared to be an opportunity for California educators and policy makers to address the achievement gap among community college students with the introduction of the streamlined associate degree for transfer (ADT) (Padilla, 2010). If implemented…

Honors programs at two-year colleges vary substantially in scope, size, and structure depending on an individual college's mission, campus culture, and budget. One common curricular feature, however, is the honors seminar. However, little information is available on creating honors seminars at two-year schools. Our essay responds to this deficit…

Historically, community colleges have promoted social mobility by providing access to higher education, especially for underrepresented groups. Because of their geographic availability, open admissions policy, and low cost, these colleges have expanded educational opportunity to millions of Americans, young and old. Recently, however, the emphasis…

Countless mothers and fathers have left behind familiar landscapes, beloved family and friends, and the comfort of certainty to give their children lives better than their own. It is no coincidence that many of these parents chose as their new home the United States of America, a country founded on the promise of public education. The proud home…

This document includes two technical appendices that accompany the full report, "English as a Second Language in California's Community Colleges." The two appendixes include: (1) Key terms, data and methods; and (2) Figures and tables. [These appendices were written with research support from Sergio Sanchez and Stephanie Pulles. For the…