Addressing Persistence of Community College Students to Increase Transfer and Graduation Rates Mary Beth Furst, Ed.D., M.B.A. Associate Professor, Business Howard Community College mbfurst@howardcc.edu 443-518-4929 Thank you for allowing me to present the defense of my dissertation, “A ddressing Persistence of Community College Students to Increase Transfer and Graduation Rates” and the results of the intervention study. Write these numbers on board: 82 and 76 (2014 and 2015 cohorts) ~80% (those who needed remediation in both cohorts) (college average 60%) 25% needed DevEd in math, reading and writing 60 (average number of faculty meetings with students—not just of cohort) 67.1% Dev Ed completion rate compared to 55.5% completion rate from the treatment naïve group 100% vs. 60% (successfully completed ACCT 111) 1
Agenda • Rationale for the Intervention • Methods • Findings • Conclusion and Implications for Practice 2
Rationale for the Intervention 3
• Faculty are a consistent presence • Faculty promote academic integration • Faculty want to help • LMS is widely used • Students expect technology The rational for the intervention is supported by a variety of literature. Work by Braxton, Hirschy, and McClendon (2004) built on Tinto’s model of persistence at commuter schools and community colleges and noted that institutional commitment to students and institutional integrity, both substantially involving faculty-student relationships, was predictive of student retention. The consistent presence of faculty (Capps, 2011) and their belief that all students can succeed supported academic integration that leads to persistence. Tatum, Hayward, and Monzon (2006) found that faculty wanted to help but that they didn’t engage in activities that were directly linked to supporting transfer and graduation. Similarly, I found in the needs assessment survey of faculty, that they were motivated to help—assisting students was seen as both a professional responsibility and it made faculty feel good—however they didn’t often engage in activities specifically directed to help students (i.e., sending them to the transfer office, reading resumes, or looking at transfer schools). Incorporating the LMS and technology into the method for disseminating information and reaching students has proven valuable (Miller et al., 2005; Ullmann, 2009). And students have an expectation that technology will be used. 4
Theoretical Perspective | Faculty Institutional Agents Institutional agents are individuals who have the authority and status to provide resources to students or connect students to resources. (Stanton-Salazar, 2011) Jobs & Transfer Career Financial Advising Schools Counselors Internships Aid The importance of faculty institutional agents were studied by Dowd, Pak, and Bensimon (2013) in a group of successful CC transfer students, and, by Nitecki (2011) in career oriented programs. In both cases, faculty provided support, inspiration, high expectations and clear goals. Faculty willing to take time and energy to work with students was motivational and the practical curricular support helped students navigate complexities of community college program pathways. An analogy may be helpful…unfamiliar grocery store, asking for raisins. The first stock clerk you ask doesn’t even stop what he is doing…just says isle 5. You think…I was just in isle 5, I didn’t see them. This is no help. You go home without raisins. Ask another stock clerk, and imagine the response is different…looks at you says, hmmm….I think the middle of isle 5 on the left. Okay, you think, I could swear I looked there…I’ll go back and look again. No raisins. Now imagine you go to the store and the clerk stops what he is doing, stands up and makes eye contact, you ask about raisins and he says, well, I think they’re in isle 5…you probably looked there already so lets go together and I’ll help you find them. Along the way, he asks you what you’re making and insures that you know where the other ingredients are for your oatmeal raisin cookies. You leave thinking— what a great experience, and, you are more prepared to make your cookies. 5
The goal of using faculty as institutional agents is to provide connections to resources— people, opportunities, ideas—that can help students meet their goals. Faculty don’t have to have all the answers, just know how/where to connect students to the right resources. And, to carry the analogy a little bit further, if you had an app for the grocery store that allowed you to type in raisins and told you the exact isle and location (and gave you a couple of recipes) you could get the information you needed when there were no store clerks around. 5
Method Minute 4 6
Method | Participants • Faculty Participants • Student Participants ( n = 6) May 2015 high schools graduates ( n = 76) • 68% Male • Accounting • 75% 18 or older • Business • 39% White • Entrepreneurship • 31% African American • 15% Asian • 78% Need Developmental Education • Most enrolled in Business (A.A. or A.A.S), Accounting, General Studies B-T 6 faculty (including me) 76 active treatment students Compared to 82 treatment-naïve students 25% needed DevEd in math, reading and writing Chi Square revealed no association between cohort and any demographic characteristics; therefore, the 2014 cohort of students who met the same entry criteria was a good comparison group. 7
Method | Procedure Program Pathways Transfer School LMS Introductory Requirements PD Packet Enrollment Workshop Mailed Faculty Contact Information Discussion Activities The Intervention Kicked Off in August and included both faculty and student components. In August, a PD workshop was held for the faculty. An introductory packet of materials was mailed to students. And, both faculty and students were enrolled in the LMS site. In addition to the program pathways and transfer school requirements, faculty were introduced to a transfer advisor who presented the ins/outs of top transfer targets. We role-played scenarios of typical students and the details of the intervention were discussed. The introductory packet and the LMS contained the same information (NEXT Slide). 8
Letter, introduction to faculty (pic is important), map, pathway, transfer requirements both hard copy and LMS site. 9
Method | Data Faculty Intervention Intervention 2015 Cohort- Qualitative College Database Qualitative 2014 Cohort- Interviews Interpretation Quantitative Quantitative Interpretation Student Focus Faculty-Student before after College Student based on premeasure postmeasure based on Group Intervention intervention intervention Database Interview Worksheet Quantitative Quantitative LMS Database Field Notes (Qualitative) (Qualitative) Qualitative results results Student during Interview intervention (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011) Qualitative and Quantitative –embedded design Qualitative before intervention—student focus group about what they need (ch 2 needs assessment) Quantitative premeasure—faculty survey (ch 2 needs assessment), 2014 cohort (82 students) Qualitative during intervention—difficulty getting students—interview only Quantitative postmeasure—2015 cohort Qualitative after intervention—faculty interviews Interpretation using Quantitative results primarily and fleshed out by qualitative results of interviews, field notes 10
Faculty| Experience & Engagement • Conversations begin with coursework Photo credit: dycu.edu • Average of nearly 60 per academic year • On-going conversations Photo credit: shsu.edu RQ1: What were the experiences and to what extent did the faculty and students engage with the intervention? Faculty reported meeting with nearly 60 students on average over the academic year ( M = 58.67; SD = 31.75) and the number of meetings ranged from 28 – 127 during the academic year, on-going conversations (several meetings with the same student) The study found that faculty leveraged the relationships they developed with students based on coursework to engage in advising conversations about transfer and career goals. Faculty used the knowledge provided about program pathways and transfer schools to act as institutional agents, connecting students to resources as necessary. 11
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