Despite efforts to attract and maintain diverse students in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) pipeline, issues with attrition from undergraduate STEM majors persist. The aim of this study was to examine how undergraduate science students' competence beliefs, task values, and perceived costs in science combine into motivational…

The current study utilized the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, from the National Center for Education Statistics, to conduct a longitudinal investigation into how access to school counseling impacts postsecondary outcomes. Findings indicate that school counselor time spent college readiness counseling, in addition to lower student…

Developmental or remedial education is a strategy that assists underprepared or unprepared students. Though prominent in the higher education remedial education landscape, low course and degree completion rates plague developmental mathematics courses. Research is replete with studies addressing students' underpreparedness for college-level…

Using student-level data, this study explores the relationship between Latinx student representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and student retention. Results revealed that a 1% increase in cohort-level Latinx student representation in STEM subfields is associated with a decrease in student departures from the…

Since 2015, the City University of New York (CUNY), serving over 250,000 students through 25 two- and four-year colleges, and high schools in the New York Standards Performance Consortium (the Consortium), which use performance-based assessments to assess student progress, have collaborated to add authentic evidence of student learning to the…

Research has shown that academic momentum is a key factor in degree completion for students attending 4-year institutions. The characteristics of 2-year students (also called community college students) often lead them to engage in behaviors contrary to the theory of academic momentum, and these behaviors theoretically reduce their likelihood of…

Over the past decade, the college enrollment rate for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduates has steadily increased, but the college completion rate has remained relatively flat. At the same time, practitioners have realized that the "traditional" path through college--enrolling in one institution and remaining enrolled through…

The purpose of this ex post facto correlational study was to determine if the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS) examination successfully identified nursing students capable of completing a nursing program. The study was based on correlational analysis that established the relationship between the TEAS V score, completion of the program, and…

Recent data from Chicago Public Schools (CPS) show that active English Learners were less likely to graduate from high school (77% did so in 2023) than their peers (85%) and less likely to enroll in college (56% of 2022 English Learners high school graduates enrolled in college compared to 66 percent of their non-English Learners high school…

This study investigated grit, a non-cognitive trait, and its relationship to the student success of college sophomores at a STEM institution. Researchers have suggested that what students do matters most (Astin 2003; Pascarella and Terenzini 2005). This research explores the importance of co-curricular involvement in developing and fostering grit,…

The purpose of this study is to explore the role that academic hope has in an appreciative advising setting and how it relates to GPA and student internal assets (commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity) in a population of undergraduate students who received appreciative advising services. Additionally,…

This study investigates undergraduate STEM persistence through two-factor theory. Using nationally representative data and multinomial regression, we conceptualize known determinants of persistence as hygiene and motivator factors to test the persistence outcomes among college students who majored in STEM: earning a STEM degree, non-STEM degree,…

This paper reports two related studies on the role of student work, university connectedness, and taking online courses on college student academic success. In study 1, it was found that differences in GPA between students taking varying numbers of courses online is predicted by the number of hours students are working and not course format. It…

This study concerns students in an internationally accredited undergraduate mechanical engineering program who due to consistent poor grades are academically dismissed and, by existing policy, required to take a 1-year leave of absence. The purpose was to determine whether the policy could be improved to offer more proactive solutions to address…

To support efforts to improve students' college readiness and success, leaders at the Palau Ministry of Education and Palau Community College want to understand the experiences and background of Palau High School graduates who are better prepared for Palau Community College. This study identified the Palau High School academic preparation…