The purpose of this explanatory sequential study was to identify factors associated with Pell grant recipients' persistence in a community college setting and to understand the influence of institutional actors on the formation of academic capital. Students completed a survey designed to measure the formation of students' academic capital (St.…

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…

Life roles of nontraditional college students impact their retention and degree completion. Based on the literature, it was not known how nontraditional students describe how their life roles influence their experiences while they complete a 2-year associate degree from a 2-year college in the southern United States. The purpose of this…

Objectives: Responding to Tinto's call for studies of retention that center on "the students' view of their experience" (p. 11), this research project reports findings from telephone interviews of 131 students who stopped out at our home institution, a large open admissions community college in the northeast. Our objective was to find…

This research shows that improved scientific reasoning and application of concepts occurred when creating and viewing student-crafted digital storytelling projects. By utilizing digital storytelling projects to showcase course competencies in an undergraduate biology course, students were able to apply subject matter outside the classroom. In this…

This dissertation describes a study that examined the experiences of community college leaders engaged in leading institutional change to improve student success. The study was conducted at a mid-size, public, 2-year institution in Southern California. Eight participants were chosen through purposeful snowball sampling of leaders from across the…

In 2022, a subset of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society (HAPS) Curriculum & Instruction Committee administered the third offering of the HAPS lab survey. This survey included a three-part framework of (1) demographics, (2) lab activities and learning outcomes, and, (3) the impact of a global pandemic on instruction. Here we report on…

Students determined to be underprepared for college-level mathematics would be enrolled in a sequence of developmental mathematics courses before taking their college-level mathematics course. Students who started in the lowest level of developmental mathematics had a twenty percent chance of completing their college-level mathematics credits…

The dominant educational paradigm is rooted in a Platonic, Cartesian, and Piagetian mind-supremacist epistemology that subordinates the body and experience to the mind, ideas, and objective concepts. This reduces students to cognitive receptors of information in a detached, decontextualized, and dehumanizing classroom, i.e., the banking…

This study investigates the impact of readiness programs on Early Admission (EA) students at a 2-year public college. EA programs allow high school seniors students to enroll full-time in college courses while earning both high school and college credits. However, these students often face challenges in academic success, social-emotional support,…

Objective: We wanted to identify factors associated with pre-nursing student retention and success at a small, rural two-year institution in South Carolina. Method: Transcript analysis generated a dataset for pre-nursing students (N = 125). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze high school and university data. Results:…

This study aims to better understand two primary factors associated with student retention, with a particular focus on transfer commuter students. The factors of focus for this study are student sense of connectedness and perceived support networks. Retention and graduation are an area of importance nationally for all student populations (Lumina…

Background: In North America, upwards of 59% of postsecondary students experience food insecurity and there has been little study of students attending community college. The goal of this was to find out the prevalence of food insecurity among a largely international cohort of students attending a community college in Toronto, Canada. Methods:…

There has been much written on the topic of higher education in America. All facets from formation to expansion to experimentation to controversial issues in institutions of higher education have been discussed and dissected. However, one of the most compelling higher educational topics is the emergence and development of the junior college. This…

Community colleges in the United States continue to face financial difficulties related to declining enrollment numbers and lower levels of public funding when compared to four-year institutions. Previous scholars have suggested that community colleges may respond to these financial challenges by increasing their commitment to online education. In…