At many institutions of higher education, first-year seminars are meant to help students transition to college life and to provide them with resources and skills to develop socially and academically, supporting persistence (Jamelske, 2009; Janz, 2004). Since their inception, researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of these seminars and their…

College writing center practices differ greatly from the types of conventional writing instruction students and faculty are used to in classrooms. While conventional college lectures typically lead to a summative assessment in the form of grades based on students' performance on high-stakes assignments, writing centers are seen as tutoring centers…

Great Expectations is a Virginia Community College System program for youth who were in foster care after the age of 13. Foster youth enter college with multiple disadvantages, including being less academically prepared compared to their peers and often lacking social support for their education. A program evaluation was conducted at a specific…

Students who have dropped out of high school--and those at risk of doing so--are at greater risk of lifelong poverty, involvement with the criminal justice system, dependence on government welfare programs, and even premature death. In the last few years, however, the problems at high schools have compounded, as pandemic-era school closures led to…

The problem addressed in this study is the high dropout and poor graduation rates among at-risk students attending Title I high schools in Virginia. The purpose of this causal comparative study was to (a) assess current levels of school connectedness, achievement focus, student persistence, grades, and attendance of at-risk high school students in…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) areas are one of the fastest-growing majors in the nation, engineering, is projected to add the second largest number of new jobs from 2016 to 2026 with 140,000 new jobs (Torpey, 2018). Unfortunately, there is a disparity between enrollment and graduation rates (Chen, 2015; Lucas &…

Many institutions of higher education struggle with low retention rates. One state liberal arts college addressed this concern by assigning an academic case manager to higher risk students. This project evaluated the effectiveness of the case manager on student credit hours and retention using a randomized control trial. The case manager contacted…

The study below outlines the impact of an Early Alert Program at a Southeastern HBCU, examining this system's impact both between two cohort years, 2022 and 2023 respectively, and within the 2023 cohort. Further factors analyzed include the impact of gender, living on or off-campus, and the student's participation in tutorial services on campus.…

Early intervention is a method institutions use to identify and support students who are having academic difficulty and might be designated as "at-risk", or more likely to leave an institution (Villano et al., 2018). Institutions often adopt early alert systems to support early intervention efforts and student retention (Barefoot et al.,…

The purpose of this study was to assess differences in four-year persistence and graduation rates between students who participated in a research-based academic first-year seminar (n = 385) and a matched quasi-control group who did not (n = 385). Although research has consistently identified positive outcomes for students who participate in these…

This research explores who is at risk of dropping out of high school and how collaborative Student Support Teams can contribute to students staying on track to graduate high school. The issue of student success is important because graduation is positively correlated with important life outcomes and ability to earn an adequate income in the labor…

Each year from 2018 to 2020, roughly 16,000 students participated in Tennessee Reconnect at community colleges across the state. However, fewer than half of those Reconnect students persisted to the following year as grant participants. To promote Reconnect students' reapplication and persistence, Nashville State and Southwest Tennessee Community…

Objective: Examine uptake (e.g., initial session participation) and retention (e.g., booster session participation) in an intervention about responding to sexual assault and partner abuse disclosures. Participants: Participants were 836 students (primarily White; upper-middle class) at a medium-sized university. Method: Participants completed…

Low persistence and high attrition rates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are major challenges in higher education, particularly among underrepresented students. Therefore, it is important to identify barriers and examine strategies aimed at improving persistence, retention, and student completion in STEM courses and…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact a Summer Bridge Program had on academically at-risk students who entered their first year of college. Additionally, this study looked at participants' and non-participants' involvement in extracurricular activities, students' sense of belonging to the college, and retention of first-year…