Over a two-year period, six colleges involved in the Working Students Success Network (WSSN) initiative received financial support and technical assistance from ATD to identify key financial challenges their students face, develop specific strategies to address those challenges, and provide feedback on lessons learned from the work to be shared…

The first round of data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System's (IPEDS) newest survey component, Outcome Measures (OM), was released to the public in Fall 2017. Importantly, the IPEDS OM survey begins to address some of the limitations of the prevailing Graduation Rate (GR) component data. These rates have only included…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between when in the fall semester a first year experience (FYE) course was taken to fall-to-spring retention of first time students at a large, Chicago suburban community college. Since most of the students' attrition has been in the first year in college, FYE programs have been designed to…

Many college students struggle financially, and student debt continues to grow in the United States. Students that complete a degree can have high monthly student loan payments, and those that do not complete a degree can struggle financially even more. There is a growing amount of research examining methods to reduce these financial challenges.…

Over the course of several decades, a large body of research written with a focus on community colleges has accumulated based on the high need for remediation in mathematics, and has been associated with high attrition rates at that level. Reform efforts have been largely unsuccessful. This qualitative study was conducted so that the phenomenon of…

In California, Latinx now are the majority racial/ethnic group in the state but are less likely than all other racial/ethnic groups to have college degrees. Among Latinx undergraduates in the state, 65 percent attended a community college; however, the average completion rate-learning a certificate, degree or transfer within six years-for Latinx…

Asian Americans are generally considered an educationally and economically successful minority in the United States, a perception known as the model minority myth. These images can negatively impact Asian Americans, especially in higher education, by neglecting their challenges and limiting the research conducted related to their struggles and…

Pearson sought to explore whether the use of MyLab Foundational Skills, a mastery and competency-based online platform designed to assess and remediate a selection of skills to prepare students for college and careers, is related to students' course grades. This Research Report presents findings from two research studies: one comparative study…

In this exploratory study, we examined the effects of a quantitative reasoning instructional approach to linear equations in two variables on community college students' conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and reasoning ability. This was done in comparison to the use of a traditional procedural approach for instruction on the same topic.…

Given community colleges' open enrollment policies and their numerous instructional missions (A. M. Cohen & Brawer, 2008), students enter and re-enter with various and often multiple objectives but not always with clear knowledge of how to clarify and accomplish them. Among early intake activities, the role of academic advising in particular…

Science education reform documents call for students to learn science by engaging in inquiry and using science practices. One such science practice is constructing evidence-based explanations. Few students enter community college science classrooms having experience with, or being proficient in, using evidence to explain scientific phenomena.…

A community college's success hinges in large part on the effectiveness of its teaching faculty, no more so than in times of major organizational change. However, any large-scale foundational shift requires institutional buy-in, with the onus on leadership to create an environment where everyone is working together toward the same endpoint.…

The proximity effect--whether distance from an instructor correlates with grades--has been the topic of many articles dating back nearly 100 years. Despite this attention, a cleavage in the literature remains. Some authors argue that increased proximity to the instructor negatively relates with academic performance while others maintain no…

Service learning--sometimes known as community engagement--is a well-documented pedagogical approach with a long history, a strong theoretical basis, a specific ethos, and many passionate advocates. Yet it is conspicuously underused as a teaching method in the worldwide field of English language teaching. In this article, I argue that English…

With the rise in prominence of intercollegiate athletics, there has been an increase in interest in the success of student athletes. This interest has become common across all levels of intercollegiate athletic competition, and has increased dramatically in recent years to focus on the 75,000 community college student athletes who participate in…