Despite more women and underrepresented students entering engineering, there are still gaps in achievement. A potential remedy is to establish equitable team dynamics during groupwork. Groupware systems have been implemented in the workforce and, recently, piloted in undergraduate lowerdivision education to establish team norms. Our prior work…

The university is a highly politicized and fractious realm for students and academics. Amidst trade-offs between the processes of massification, democratization, commodification, and globalization, the question of transformation "for" sustainability has become crucial to the social good(s) of higher education. This paper considers…

This qualitative case study identifies the systemic and explicit barriers that impede the progression from high school to college for first-generation college students (FGCS) at a Small Catholic Secondary School in Cincinnati, Ohio. Evidence indicates that FGCS experience more barriers in progressing from high school to college than their non-FGCS…

This dissertation investigates whether dual credit students' academic performance in subsequent university courses is comparable to that of non-dual-credit students. The study uses data from a Midwest regional public university over a ten-year period and employs propensity score matching and proportional odds ordinal logistic regression to create…

Numerous research studies have investigated the mental health concerns and needs of college students. However, there is a need for additional research to understand the unique presenting mental health concerns of first-generation college students at university counseling centers in the US. The current study was a non-experimental exploratory…

We analyze eight letters of recommendation written by high school teachers for first-generation college students, so as to illustrate narrative strategies that can make letters more effective in providing support for students' college applications. Amidst recent criticisms of the limited utility of letters in college admissions, we argue that they…

Our constructivist qualitative case study of first-generation college students at Research University analyzed 13 focus groups with 54 students. Our analysis revealed five identities and experiences that specifically shaped the salience of first-gen status for our participants. For participants with a sibling or from low-income families, first-gen…

Many existing student persistence and retention studies overlooked the different types of departure (e.g., dropout, transfer) and aggregate them into a single departure variable, as a result, the estimates from these studies are spurious when one is interested in what student characteristics prompt dropout but not transfer. This can be especially…

This book focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on Latino/a/e/x students, families, and communities across the educational continuum to better understand the challenges faced by them. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the gross inequities that exist for Latino students with respect to access to quality technology, highly qualified and culturally…

The agenda for widening participation in higher education has led to increasing numbers of students with a broader range of education and family backgrounds. However, transitioning to the university landscape remains a highly complex negotiation process, especially for first-in-family students, who cannot draw on previous experience from higher…

Background: Stress is commonly experienced by college students, especially engineering students. However, the role of stress within engineering culture and its implications for engineering programs have not been fully explored in the literature. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to measure and examine the relationships among…

Evaluation must occur at the university level to understand the full impact of undergraduate research (UR). UR assessment is often only completed at the individual program level because of limited technology, time, and/or resources. At our large research institution, we have been documenting a wide variety of research experiences annually since…

This study explores the associations among community college student perceptions and short-term success in college. Guiding the study are two research questions: (1) what is the association between participation in dual enrollment and subsequent college success for CTE students formerly enrolled in dual credit secondary programs and those who were…

Nontraditional college student enrollment in the United States is rapidly growing and is predicted to continue to increase. Similarly, female students are currently the majority student population on college campuses. Although numerous studies document college student experiences, few focus on first-generation Latinas who are student-mothers at…

Part of the higher education structure is the co-curricular experience, and is a way for students to develop a sense of belonging on campus, which leads to positive outcomes, like self-actualization and persistence (Strayhorn, 2012, 2018). This study is to better understand the lived experiences through narrative inquiry of fraternity men's sense…