Community colleges provide students with a lower cost educational foundation, which provides more job opportunities. Retention rates of students in rural Missouri community colleges are low (MDHE, 2016). This research study focused in on faculty perceptions of student retention in Missouri rural community colleges. With a push for identifying retention variables, such as academic advising, faculty interaction, new student orientation and the implementation of retention programs increasing, results of this study could provide a new perspective on these variables that have been lacking in past research. Research indicates that faculty have a strong influence on student outcomes, such as retention and student satisfaction, based on their actions in and outside of the classroom (Farrell, 2009; Langley, 2017; Romsa, Bremer, & Lewis, 2017; Scarboro, 2016). Surveys were sent to four Missouri community colleges and a total of 284 nonadvising full-time faculty members. Data was collected from the 51 returned surveys. Through the survey process faculty revealed their perceptions of factors contributing to student retention, effectiveness of institutional processes to combat student retention and their role in student retention. With the data collected from the survey and the application of the Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA the researcher failed to reject the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis predicted that faculty perception would be insignificant across years of teaching. While this research study revealed insignificant findings, results could be used to expand research on faculty perception of student retention and the role they play through a more concise survey or a more in-depth qualitative study. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]