African American, female, first-generation students face unique social and academic challenges due to their triple minority status of being Black, female, and first-generation and often perceiving low social support. The problem this study addressed is the role that self-efficacy and social support play for this group of students is insufficiently…

Marketing strategy involves selecting a target market and determining the desired product positioning to attract the desired customers (Silk, 2006). Recently, community colleges have seen a decrease in student enrollment. In some cases, this was brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic; in other cases budget constraints have posed challenges to…

The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) is a psychological construct that causes high-achieving individuals to doubt their competence, intelligence, and sense of belonging. IP has only recently been examined among people in the music education community. The student teaching experience is a time of transition and professional identity development for…

Background/Context: Sometimes students with the academic credentials to attend more selective colleges enroll in a less selective institution or do not enroll at all, a phenomenon known as undermatching (Bowen et al., 2009; Roderick et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2013; Rodriguez, 2015). Undermatching is associated with lower graduation rates and…

This study focuses on the mother's experience when her first-generation college student attends college and the mother-daughter relationship. The goal is to understand further the mother's perspective and the relationship between mother and daughter. At the same time, the study aims to add to the literature about the parental college experience…

This study reported the effects of a research-based laboratory module on students' scientific research, green chemistry, and research skills self-efficacy in a second-semester general chemistry laboratory course. The research-based laboratory module was designed based on the course-based research experience (CURE) model, which features materials…

The overall goal of this dissertation, comprised of three empirical studies, was to examine the role of social support as a source of resilience in the face of two chronic stressors: low socioeconomic status and first-generation college student status. Study 1 of this dissertation sought to examine neighborhood support from members of one's…

An increasing portion of the U.S. population is interested in and enrolling in higher education, and colleges and universities across the country are responding and actively recruiting a wider variety of students than in the past to maintain if not increase enrollment (Holland 2015; Irlbeck et al. 2014). Many of these students are considered…

The purpose of this qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis study was to examine the perspectives and lived experiences of six persisting first-generation, low-income Black students involved with Student Support Services while enrolled at a predominantly White community college. Three superordinate themes emerged, each with two to…

Recent literature and think tank organizations alike point to the notion that the master's degree is the new bachelor's degree. Additionally, universities are experiencing an increase in first-generation college student enrollment as well as graduate student enrollment. This growth in both student populations raises the question: What happens when…

The number of first-generation college students has steadily increased, with 56% of college students identifying as first-generation college students (Center for First-Generation Success, n.d.). First-generation college students are a unique subgroup of students who often face unique stressors, including being of underrepresented status and coming…

This research project explored how leaders and mentors can influence the development of a sense of belonging in first-generation students in the United States. My first-generation experience led me to explore the influence belonging has on the retention and completion of first-generation students. I also considered if education leaders and mentors…

The transition to a four-year university may be a particularly stressful time for first-year college students as students balance greater academic responsibilities while trying to navigate the unique social expectations of the collegiate environment. These challenges may be especially poignant for first-generation college students who are the…

The current dissertation is made up of four parts. Parts I and II are based on a single one year, three-wave longitudinal study, but data was separated into two data sets. Students who completed only one or two of the three-wave study (i.e. "non-completes) were analyzed in Part I, whereas students who completed all three waves of the study…

Appalachia has low rates of college attendance and graduation, but relevant data investigating student attrition from physiology majors in this region are lacking. This exploratory study examined freshman attrition from an undergraduate exercise physiology program in Appalachia with the goal of identifying potential strategies for improving…