Feeling a part of a university community is an important factor in college students' success, yet little is known about how transfer students construct a sense of community at their new institutions. Drawing from surveys and interviews of transfer students at a highly selective university, we used a multi-method approach to understand the elements…

For several decades, scholars have been exploring the factors that influence college students' persistence and retention. Several of the retention theories and models have emphasized the role of sense of purpose and degree commitment in contributing to college students' persistence. Students' sense of purpose regarding what motivates them, what…

University life can be stressful and students may struggle to adjust socially. We examined students' social achievement goals--their orientations towards their relationships with their peers--as one important factor underlying students' social and psychological adjustment in college. When investigating the direct and indirect effects of social…

Considering the continuous increase of international students, the main goal of this study was to examine how international students' proactive behaviors, particularly information seeking behaviors, would impact key emotional outcomes including communication satisfaction with instructors and school-life satisfaction. For this investigation, we…