Undergraduate research experiences offer a range of positive academic and affective student outcomes. However, these benefits often do not reach all students, as research experiences are often selective, favor high-achieving students, focus on STEM fields, and typically target students in their third or fourth year of undergraduate studies. To…

Higher education institutions continue to place a strong emphasis on helping students successfully complete college. Currently, a limited amount of research supports teaching academic resilience as a skill in the higher education setting. In addition, little is known about using first-year experience (FYE) courses as a platform for teaching…

Freshman seminars are a ubiquitous offering in higher education, but they have not been evaluated using matched comparisons with data at scale. In this work, we use transcript data on over 76,000 students to examine the impact of first-year interest groups (FIGs) on student graduation and retention. We first apply propensity score matching on…

This study examines the basic communication course (BCC) as it relates to students' first academic year at a university. Specifically, we compared students completing both a first-year experience (FYE) course and BCC against students completing only an FYE course. Data was collected over two cohorts of students and after analytical procedures, we…

Although higher education leaders have established goals to increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, first-generation female college students remain underrepresented in STEM majors. Astin's (1970) inputs-environment-outputs (I-E-O) theory of student development provided a framework to examine how…

The purpose of this single phenomenological case study was to examine the importance of an FYE or College 101 seminar and why this topic matters to Latinx students' success. The research took place in a two-year Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) located in the Southwest part of the United States. The overarching question was: "How can…

This article reports on an exploratory study that investigated the use of student drawings as a visual research method to understand the first-year experience. A total of 31 undeclared students enrolled in a first-year seminar participated in the study. Data generated from pre- and postdrawings of students' first semester paths were analyzed to…

A majority of the research on the impact of learning communities has focused on the positive outcomes for students in their first year of study (Andrade, 2007; Goldman, 2012; Laverick, 2018; Wathington, Pretlow, & Mitchell, 2010). Less is known about the impact of learning community involvement as students complete their enrollment and persist…

Student engagement is shown to condition a student for increased academic persistence leading to increased institutional retention. Engagement builds passion for academic and non-academic factors which lead to successful student and institutional outcomes. Without passion and value for investing one's quality time and effort in their learning…

This study evaluated the impact of a First-Year Experience (FYE) program on student success at a small, private, faith-based distance learning university serving a predominantly nontraditional student population. Student data (N = 399) from two groups were compared to determine if the FYE made a difference in student success as measured by…

First-Year Experience (FYE) programs have become a focal point for efforts to transition and retain all students, as numerous studies suggest that such initiatives deepen students' academic preparation for college and support their emotional investments in the campus community. Using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from 842 students in…

Students with disabilities are enrolling in colleges and universities at increasing rates, but not completing degrees with comparable success as their peers. First Year Seminars (FYS) are commonly employed by colleges and universities to address retention, strengthen connections between the student and the institution, and enhance the likelihood…

For more than 30 years, John Gardner has elevated the discussion about the importance of student success in the first-year of college, with a heightened emphasis on first-year seminar courses and their value. Many colleges and universities offer some version of a first-year experience seminar, which is true for the Midwestern MAC School discussed…

University efforts in the first year of college promote freshman student engagement in learning with the objective of improving retention and persistence, and are likely to ultimately lead to college success with timely graduation. This paper reports on an exploratory study of a first-year seminar designed to include three types of instruction:…

Scholars maintain that when race and racism are addressed as factors that continue to shape inequality in the classroom, white students often deny the validity of these claims, while Students of Color tend to feel empowered by them. However, drawing on open-ended interviews, focus group discussions, and survey data, we argue that some Students of…