Mindset interventions, which shift students' beliefs about classroom experiences, have shown promise for promoting diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Psychologists have emphasized the importance of customizing these interventions to specific courses, but there is not yet a protocol for doing so. We developed a…

Credit momentum policies, or performance-based financial aid policies, have become increasingly popular among policymakers seeking to improve degree completion rates. This paper examines Indiana's 30-credit-hour completion policy on first-time, full-time students who receive the Twenty-First Century Scholars (TFCS) Promise Program. Using…

Student self-perception is related to persistence in science. Yet how self-perception develops over time is less clear. We examined student self-perception trajectories and their relationship with gender, persons excluded due to ethnicity or race (PEER) status, and first-generation college student (FGCS) status across a yearlong introductory…

"Social Belonging" interventions for college students aim to reduce the impacts of negative stereotypes that may burden students in underrepresented groups and affect their persistence in college. There are different variations of "Social Belonging" interventions but they all have in common a goal of influencing students' sense…

First-generation, freshmen students struggle to complete the financial aid process at a 4-year private university in Louisiana, impacting their financial and academic well-being. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to explore first-generation, freshmen student perceptions of how they construct knowledge about the financial aid process…

In this paper we extend prior studies on alcohol beliefs among college undergraduates, which have focused primarily on their relationship to drinking, by assessing the extent to which the notion that alcohol use is integral to the student role impacts college undergraduates' academic and social experiences. An analysis of data from a survey…

First-generation college students are a population of students who are often under-served in higher education institutions. Previous research indicates their well-being is impacted by their experiences within the collegiate environment, which contributes to their lower retention and graduation rates. The purpose of this qualitative research study…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to explore the phenomenon of strategies college instructors enact that support the academic success of historically underrepresented students [HUS] (i.e., first-generation, low-income, and/or Students of Color) experiencing academic struggle. A critical-constructivist epistemology was…

Converting a first-term, accelerated summer organic chemistry course to a flipped format reduced the achievement gap in the flipped course and in the second-term traditional lecture course between Non-Repeaters taking an accelerated course to "get ahead" and Repeaters taking the course to "get back on track". The difference in…

This study examined person and environment contextual factors associated with career decision-making difficulties among Black first-generation students (FGSs) attending predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Using Lewin's field theory, we investigated the predictive value of person and environment factors on help-seeking behaviors for 63 Black…

Many first-generation college students -- whose parents have not obtained a four-year college degree -- experience a "cultural mismatch" due to a lack of alignment between the independent values of their university (consistent with the culture of higher education) and their own interdependent values (consistent with working-class…

Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS)is a multi-institutional project of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) initially funded and supported by a US Department of Education First in the World Grant to Georgia State, the lead UIA member on this project. MAAPS is a large-scale randomized-controlled trial designed to validate…

Prior research suggests that first-generation college students are less likely to succeed compared to their non-first-generation peers (Engle & Tinto, 2008; Gibbons et al., 2019; Pascarella et al., 2004; Spiegler & Bednarek, 2013). Further, when faced with crisis, students may experience psychological, financial, or other related distress…

Those from marginalized populations, many of whom are first-generation college students (FGCS), often face barriers to accessing secondary education (Pitre & Pitre, 2009). Additionally, when students from such groups do successfully enroll in post-secondary educational opportunities, their graduation rates remain low (DeAngelo, Franke,…

This study examined the lived experiences of first generation college students at a women's college and how their social identities contribute to their perceived sense of belonging on campus. Strayhorn's (2012) Model of a Sense of Belonging was used as a theoretical framework for the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven…