A Midwest community college's culinary arts program is experiencing a trending decline in student persistence to degree completion rates year after year. Low persistence to degree completion rates impacts post-traditional students, this community college, and employers. This research is needed, as this and other community colleges could inform their practices regarding post-traditional students if they had more concrete data regarding the factors that influence persistence. Additionally, this research was necessary as limited information existed on this niche topic that could inform and aid this community college's path to degree completion. This study looked to explore the experiences of culinary arts post-traditional students in an unbiased format to best enable administrators and educators to strengthen persistence to degree completion. To evaluate the relationships of empirical factors impacting post-traditional student persistence, the Theory of Adult Learner Persistence in Degree Completion Programs framed this research. The theory examines the relationships of student entry characteristic variables, the internal campus/academic environment variables, and the external environment variables on persistence. This research is a non-experimental, cross-sectional survey method study. Post-traditional students completed a modified version of the Adult Learner Persistence Survey. Results found that the student entry characteristic variables, income/(SES); the internal campus/academic environment variables cumulative GPA, prior learning assessment, financial aid, institutional support, academic advising, faculty support, and active learning; and the external environment variables hours of employment, family influences, and community influences significantly impacted persistence. [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.]