The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to investigate how first-year college students describe their experiences with stress and coping. This study sought to understand what coping mechanisms first-year college students use when they experience stress. Prior to this dissertation, it was not known how first-year college students describe…

Purpose: Despite the increasing number of transnational universities around the world, little attention has been paid to students who attend foreign universities in their own countries and their adjustment to the new learning environment. This study aims to examine some of the adaptations freshmen students have to undergo while studying at an…

The social adjustment process is a prominent factor in the literature on the transition to higher education (HE). This vast body of research, however, has predominantly focussed on academically oriented first-year higher education (FYHE) contexts, leaving professionally oriented programs (providing vocational education that prepares students for a…

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine a college composition class where students are introduced to reading and writing genres representing various types along the lines of race, sex/gender, sexual orientation, class, education, etc. This study was sensitive to the identities of the student participants and the hegemonic narratives that…

While the coronavirus crisis altered all facets of life across the globe, its impact on American higher education posed immediate challenges to students and faculty alike. Disruptions in normal, in-person instruction affected all students' abilities to connect and create, but first-year students and their professors were particularly restricted in…

In this post the author reflects on their own experience alongside those of peer freshmen across U.S. college campuses. Data were collected through 10 focus groups conducted over two months in-person and via Zoom using a combination of purposeful and snowball sampling to identify diverse demographics. While this is a small data set for a large…

The transition from school to the institute of higher learning is a challenging phase that requires students to adapt to new environments and cultures. This study aimed to explore the adaptation experiences of first-year students at the Institute of Teacher Education by using storytelling through drawing. This study involved 18 students pursuing…

What does it mean to be "smart?" Being identified as intelligent, gifted, or high achieving affords students stimulating experiences, motivating social environments, and advanced educational and career opportunities. However, research has also identified potential negative psychological and social costs to being labeled smart. These are…

This exploratory study used grounded theory to understand the role of minority stress on the first-year experience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning emerging adults attending a university in the Northeastern part of the United States. Twenty-one lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning sophomores participated in focus groups…

The purpose of this study was to discover some of the difficulties that first-year students have when they begin university. It was important to get the students to articulate those difficulties, in their own words, so that a better understanding could be attained. As expected, most of the difficulties centred on the institution itself. Students…

Decades of student persistence and retention literature has brought to light factors of social, academic, and religious fit that influence a student's decision to remain at or depart from an institution. At Christian institutions, increasing student pluralism raises the likelihood that students will not fit religiously. This qualitative study of…

In the present study, we examined the experiences of students on a predominantly White college campus in relation to their involvement in a living and learning community (LLC) designed specifically for racial/ ethnic minority (REM) students. The campus on which the present study took place was a mid-sized public university located in the…

Gifted students in transition to college may be at risk for underachievement, difficult transition, or even attrition. Giftedness by itself is not always sufficient for academic success in college. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to construct a theory regarding the process of transition to college for high-achieving gifted high…

Utilizing longitudinal data of 3477 students from 28 institutions, we examine the effects of structural diversity and quality of interracial relation on students' persistence towards graduation within six years. We utilize multilevel discrete-time survival analysis to account for the longitudinal persistence patterns as well as the nested…

The retention of rates for freshmen students in Historically Black Colleges and Universities had been comparably low leading to low graduation rate. In order to understand this phenomenon, there was a need to investigate the factors that affected retention rates of freshmen students in HBCU Institutions. The retention of students in higher…