The existing research on community college faculty attrition has focused on such internal institutional factors as faculty work life and morale. Few studies have examined factors outside of an institution's control that may influence faculty attrition and no studies to date have examined such factors in a sample of rural-serving community college…

Objective/Research Question: Research indicates that work-life integration is linked with career satisfaction for women administrators in higher education. This study focused on midlevel women leaders who are an essential component of higher education organizations and asked the question: how do mid-level women leaders in rural community colleges…

Colleges implement success courses to improve student outcomes. Since expanding its curriculum to include nine success courses, Illinois Eastern Community Colleges (IECC)--a multi-college community college district in rural, southeastern Illinois--has not determined the efficacy of these courses on student success. The purpose of this study was to…

This qualitative phenomenological study aimed to explore community college graduate lived experience as it relates to retention and persistence. Data was collected from 15 California community college graduates from multiple community colleges who earned an associate's degree and were 18 years of age or older. Collecting participant data provided…

Objectives: Responding to Tinto's call for studies of retention that center on "the students' view of their experience" (p. 11), this research project reports findings from telephone interviews of 131 students who stopped out at our home institution, a large open admissions community college in the northeast. Our objective was to find…

A "critical access point in the STEM pipeline for Latinx students and other students of color" (Herrera et al., 2018), community colleges provide a seminal breeding ground for academic pursuits (Bahr et al., 2017). However, how personal networks influence STEM pathways of two-year college students remains largely unexplored. This mixed…

Objective: The study aimed to understand how Latinx immigrant-origin community college students draw upon their funds of identity to persist and transfer. Methods: Utilizing a multimethodological qualitative approach, self-portraits and testimonios were collected from 20 Latinx immigrant-origin California community college students in spring 2022.…

The problem investigated in this study was the lack of persistence of 1st-year African American male students at a community college in a southeastern state. In the fall of 2018, only 55% of African American male students progressed through their 1st year compared to 70% of White male students. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore…

Community colleges serve as critical access points to higher education for Black students. However, current outcomes suggest that Black students are not being properly served in America's community colleges. Although well-meaning institutional leaders often create policies and programs aimed at improving success rates for students from…

As community college students often come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, report greater financial challenges, and experience higher cohort default rates on student loans compared to peers attending four-year institutions, it is important to understand how community college students develop a sense of financial wellness. Moreover, research…

For students with disabilities, the process for requesting and receiving accommodations, accompanying rules and requirements, and eligible accommodations differ significantly at the college level as compared to K-12 settings. Considering the differences in regulations governing accommodations and learning supports for students with learning…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how high-achieving African American males attending community college describe how social support contributed to their academic experience in the United States. The theoretical foundations included The Self-Efficacy Theory and The Scholar Identity Model. There were three research…

This dissertation examined how adult learners who took developmental mathematics in a community college and passed the courses, viewed their self-efficacy and the roles they felt self-efficacy had on their successful completion of mathematics. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 adult learners in two U.S. community colleges.…

"My Progress is Our Progress" is a qualitative study that examines how first-generation Latinx students navigate their experiences at three North Carolina community colleges. The Latinx population has significantly increased in North Carolina but that has not translated into an increase in Latinx student enrollment in higher education.…

Completion rates for first-generation community college students continue to be of concern for higher education leaders. Only one out of five students at community colleges obtain their desired degree in three years or less and first-generation students persist less than non-first-generation students. This qualitative descriptive study explored…