University students who are placed on academic warning are often required to enroll in a course or program to support their return to good academic standing. This case study investigated the major issues that contributed to first-year students' academic struggles and how their participation in the Learning Contract course, guided by Appreciative…

Although there is a wealth of literature focused on how and why college students persist, less is known about a subpopulation of college students: students on academic probation and/or financial aid warning status, i.e., students who are potentially one semester away from academic suspension and/or lost financial aid eligibility. This study seeks…

Malleable, noncognitive psychological factors such as grit and resilience are seen as critical for academic success and have garnered significant attention from researchers and policymakers. However, there is nontrivial overlap between these two constructs, and it remains unclear whether grit, resilience, or both, constitute the optimal target(s)…

Objective: Superiority experiments supply a critical lens to probe higher education interventions because they can dismantle the collective effect of a program and identify the relative contribution of the core components. However, such lines of inquiry are generally absent in higher education literature. We draw on experimental data to probe the…

The reward systems typically found in colleges and universities often serve as a barrier rather than a catalyst for improving teaching. As such, an increasing number of university faculty members are using their own classrooms as a site of inquiry and reflective practice (e.g. self-study) to concurrently advance their own research and teaching.…

This study compares Kalamazoo Promise (KPromise) students to non-Promise, public high school graduating students at a 4-year institution. The final sample for this study was N=9,969; n = 310 (3%) were KPromise students. Descriptive analysis suggests that KPromise students were racially more diverse and less affluent than non-Promise students.…

This study offers the results of a Black feminist project in humanization designed to understand administrators' role in interrupting the over-disciplining of Black girls in urban public schools. Carried out with 5 Black girls on probation and 5 Black urban school leaders, the findings suggest that the approaches the administrators used to uplift…

To provide an example of outcomes assessment that aligns with student affairs standards (Finney & Horst, 2019a), we share our process of assessing a mandated eight-week program for students on academic probation. Furthermore, our process highlights the value of using existing theory and research to inform assessment and program redesign…

Though many colleges and universities claim to be driven by missions that highlight access, equity, and student success, academic policy and practice do not always mirror these claims. American higher education institutions are "obsessed with smartness" (Astin, 2017), yet fail to support educational attainment in an equitable manner.…

Studies of academic recovery courses (ARCs) focus almost exclusively on academic outcomes, such as postcourse grade point average (GPA) and academic standing. This study explores the role of noncognitive factors--specifically attribution perspective, shame resilience, and academic identity--for students engaged in ARCs. Pre- and postcourse data…

In seeking to close equity gaps within a first-year student seminar course, course designers leveraged emerging research on intrapersonal competency cultivation, known to significantly predict student success across diverse students (NAS, 2018). After re-designing the course to intentionally cultivate specific intrapersonal competencies,…

Undergraduate retention and persistence are richly discussed topics in higher education, and deservedly so. One specific area of study is how to increase four- and six-year graduation rates, and the usage of learning analytics to determine student pathways of success. At a flagship Midwestern US university, we studied at-risk populations…

Latinx undergraduate students on academic probation after their first semester of community college risk further course failure and dropping out. As the largest minority on college campuses, it is important to understand Latinx college students' experiences with academic probation during freshman year to develop strategies that can support them in…

First-year students often struggle with self-regulated learning, particularly in monitoring and accurately assessing their level of understanding and translating that into appropriate preparation for rigorous post-secondary coursework. When their academic struggles become extreme, they can be placed in probationary programs. An intervention…

Since its inclusion as a qualitative research approach in 1993, self-study has offered an opportunity for faculty members to merge two components of their position involved in tenure and promotion decisions: scholarship and teaching. This paper portrays a yearlong self-study of four probationary faculty members, in the same college of education…