This book highlights the exciting work of two-year colleges to prepare students for their future careers through engagement in undergraduate research. It emerged from work in five community college systems thanks to two National Science Foundation grants the Council for Undergraduate Research received to support community colleges' efforts to…

Community colleges have a long history of being the first college that low-income students attend. These colleges have a lower cost of tuition and accept students who are not prepared to attend a four-year college or who do not meet the admission requirements. Since the creation of The Tennessee Promise the number of middle-class students…

This article provides the first causal evidence of a system-wide corequisite reform in Tennessee, which mainstreams underprepared students into college-level courses with concurrent support. Using regression discontinuity and difference-in-regression-discontinuity designs, we find that, for those on the margin of college level, students placed…

The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) is recognized as a leader in Basic Writing reform for community colleges due to their Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). The features Adams et al. adapted from various programs to better support CCBC students, particularly the central features of mainstreaming and acceleration, have helped reinvent…

In contrast to simple feedback, which provides students with the correct answer, elaborated feedback provides an explanation of the correct answer with respect to the student's error. Elaborated feedback is thus a challenge for AI in education systems because it requires dynamic explanations, which traditionally require logical reasoning and…

We investigate whether student participation in undergraduate research--a high impact practice at TBR community colleges--has an effect on (1) academic performance; (2) probability of graduation, university transfer, and student departure; and (3) time to completion, transfer, and departure. Using enrollment, graduation, and course-taking data on…

With the increased numbers of dual enrollment students across the country as well as various state initiatives to increase retention among the student population at large, institutions face great challenges when balancing the many initiatives incumbent upon them. However, Tennessee, a state leader in both the free community college and dual…

In a corequisite approach to developmental education, students enroll in a college-level course paired concurrently with a support course designed to address student learning needs in a given subject. This report, sponsored by Strong Start to Finish, examines early college outcomes of students placed into corequisite reading courses at the 13…

The purpose of this survey research was to identify spending, purchase behaviors, and points of impact for course material costs on academic decisions and the ability of students at Tennessee community colleges to progress to graduation. The survey also addressed the extent to which required materials were being used in the classroom. 1,912…

Motivation for the study: The Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) is implementing and expanding a suite of high impact practices (HIP) in its community colleges. Service learning, one of such HIPs, is incorporated into general education or degree programs' requirements via credit-bearing service learning components of different durations. While…

Based on 12 in-depth interviews with Latino college graduates in West Tennessee, this study explores the effects of college experiences and cultural factors on Latino persistence. The study highlights on-campus and off-campus influences important to matriculation of the student toward graduation. Findings highlight how acquiring familial support,…

The purpose of this non-experimental, quantitative case study was to compare the academic success of community college students over three academic years (2016-17 through 2018-19) before the onset of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) based on final grades and the influence of student factors, class size, and faculty characteristics using archival…

Affordability is considered a key predictor of college enrollment and academic success, yet higher education costs continue to rise. Over the past three decades, textbooks and course materials alone have increased almost three times the rate of inflation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). To identify the extent to which course material costs…

The article describes enrollment, retention, and institutional expenditures on instruction, academic support, and student services at community colleges in Tennessee and Oregon after these states implemented Promise scholarship programs. This article highlights that college attendance and choice among recent high school graduates changed after the…

Many states are redesigning their college remediation policies to increase postsecondary degree completion. In 2012, Tennessee began waiving college math remediation for high school students who completed a computer-based remedial math course (SAILS) during their senior year. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the high school…