This article focuses on the role of theory and assessment in shaping student services and support through collaboration between student and academic affairs. Specifically, this paper highlights the use of a first-year student assessment tool that informs student support practices in the College of Agriculture at Louisiana State University (LSU).…

Background/purpose: Cocurricular offerings should appropriately align with academic learning goals to ensure undergraduate students' development of professional dispositions that lead to civic and career success. This study provides a framework for implementing high impact practices into cocurricular instruction, as well as steps on how to align…

This study examined retention and First-Year GPA for all FTIC students, Black students, and Black Pell-eligible students at the UOTSE as a function of participation in a First-Year Seminar Course. A statistically significant relationship was determined to exist between First-year GPA and participation in the FYS course. For retention, participants…

This nonexperimental, longitudinal panel study was designed to test the predictive capacity of a grit intervention within a first-year seminar course that targeted academically underprepared students at a Mississippi community college. Extant pre- and post-grit scores for developmental students enrolled in the first-year seminar were analyzed for…

Persistence of first-year, full-time students toward graduation at U.S. community colleges poses concerns for administrators, faculty, and policymakers. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of faculty members teaching a college success seminar at an urban multicampus community college on what impedes or supports the persistence…

Appalachian State University's First Year Seminar Online Library Component is a set of information literacy modules designed to introduce students to university-level research. Originally deployed in 2015, this is a requirement for the University's First Year Seminar Program. It is composed of original and OER content, delivered through AppState's…

Student retention is a major concern for many universities. We use observational data from a regional university located in Alabama to test whether taking a first-year seminar improves student retention rates. Using a linear probit model, we find that taking a first-year seminar course is negatively correlated with retention rates, after…

This study examines the basic communication course (BCC) as it relates to students' first academic year at a university. Specifically, we compared students completing both a first-year experience (FYE) course and BCC against students completing only an FYE course. Data was collected over two cohorts of students and after analytical procedures, we…

The first year of a student's college education commonly presents new and challenging demands, which requires concentrated institutional support. The diverse population of community college students in particular, typically face increased obstacles on the journey to degree completion. First-year Experience courses have been established as a…

There are more STEM jobs than there are qualified graduates to fill these positions, and recruiting students into STEM majors is insufficient. Of students who enter college intending to pursue STEM, nearly half do not finish their STEM degrees. In this article, we focus on retaining students who enter college with a declared biology major. This…

In this study, I examined ways in which Black undergraduate students perceive student success and how those perceptions are influenced by institutional power structures. In historically and predominantly white institutions, the structural conditions of anti-Blackness are endemic to the college experience and can influence how students perceive…

The first-year seminar (FYS) has been widely implemented at colleges and universities as a strategy for facilitating student success. However, empirical evidence indicates that the observed effects of FYS on retention and academic performance are mixed. Drawing on data from first-time full-time degree-seeking cohorts from Fall 2010 through Fall…

Retention rates have been an ongoing concern for higher education institutions for the last few decades, and there has been extensive research conducted to determine the root cause of this decline especially among underserved student populations. Black and Hispanic communities are rapidly growing and are expected to be the majority races within…

Concern about graduation rates in higher education has led universities to offer courses that help students develop success skills. Scientist Life Skills, a new course for freshman at Florida A&M University, focuses on helping students matriculate into majors via development of growth mindset, grit, and critical thinking. Here, we assessed the…

Across the nation, troves of college students disenroll prior to graduation; students who do graduate often leave campus still searching as if something is missing, inadequate, and deficient. Indeed, something is missing and unsustainable in this malaise. Drawing on Tia Brown McNair, "et al." (2016), who call for student-ready campus…