Answering the Call for Title V Data: A Success Skills Intervention to Increase Retention at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

Research has yielded much evidence that investing in postsecondary interventions increases retention and success for Hispanic/Latinx undergraduates. This study examines one such intervention, funded by Title V and implemented at a large public Hispanic-Serving Institution, developed to improve semester-to-semester retention. Faculty and peer mentors facilitated a set of workshops for probationary students and students in a core university course that connected self-regulatory skills for college success to those for career success. Students participating in the workshop intervention were compared to a control group of students who did not participate. Findings showed that in comparison to the control group, students in the intervention had higher retention rates, regardless of probationary status or student classification, along with higher rates among students with lower GPAs. Implications of the study are discussed in relation to “servingness” at HSIs.

Exploring the Effects of Hope on GPA and Retention among College Undergraduate Students on Academic Probation

This study analyzed the impact of hope on the academic achievement and retention of 235 students on academic probation at a private Northeastern university. Probationary students were enrolled in a mandatory online course designed to facilitate academic and nonacademic skills, to improve student GPAs and overall retention. The Hope Scale (Snyder et al. (1991)) was administered to identify whether students with greater levels of hope would experience an increase in academic success upon completion of the course. Students were broken down into groups of high, medium, and low hope based on their scores on the instrument. Results showed students who completed the course were more likely to be retained than those who did not complete the course, had a slight increase in GPA by the end of the semester, and high-hope students showed the greatest overall gain in GPAs.

Efficacy of Intrusively Advising First-Year Students via Frequent Reminders for Advising Appointments

Intrusive advising has been frequently used to encourage or require at-risk or probationary students to attend advising sessions. The efficacy of intrusive advising targeted to all students has received little attention. We implemented a case-control experiment with 501 first-year students at a large, urban, state university to test the efficacy of nonmandated intrusive advising designed to encourage advising session attendance. Students in three academic units were randomly assigned to outreach or no outreach conditions. Those in the outreach group received a series of reminders to schedule advising appointments. Results suggest intrusive advising was successful in increasing the probability students would schedule and keep an advising appointment during their first semester of college enrollment and in shortening the time until that appointment was held. Implications for broad implementation of intrusive advising are discussed.

Project Success: Helping Probationary Students Achieve Academic Success

Project Success is designed to help students on academic probation improve their performance so that they can return to good academic standing at their university. This article describes the program so institutions can consider its use in their efforts to address retention issues on their campus. Research that studies the program's effectiveness is included.

Style Over Substance Reconsidered: Intrusive Intervention and At-Risk Students with Learning Disabilities

In two recent publications, we reported that the academic intervention process, not the specific intervention content, was responsible for a short-and long-term influx in at-risk student performance (grade-point average) and persistence (retention). All at-risk students who participated in the most intrusive of three interventions had higher cumulative grade-point averages and retention rates than those who received less intrusive interventions. In this post hoc analysis, we looked at probationary students with learning disabilities and found that they are only responsive to the individual attention and personalized accommodation provided under a highly intrusive model, and the impact is temporary.

The Forum: Intrusive Group Advising for the Probationary Student

“The Forum” is a group advising effort initiated to provide a more intrusive advising format for freshmen and sophomores who were on probation and reluctant to meet with their advisors. The Forum helped probationary students better understand the skills needed to maintain academic excellence. The results of the group activity suggest that it has been a significant retention tool.

Creativity, Satisfaction, and Orientation of College Freshmen

This study investigated differences in creativity among the following groups of college students: probationary, average, distinguished, and undecided as to college major. Also, the relationship of creativity to college satisfaction and student orientation to college was examined. Differences in creative ability among the groups were found. Probationary students earned the highest group mean on the creativity measure and their mean was significantly greater than for the undecided group. Differences and correlations among the variables of creativity, college satisfaction, and student orientation were presented and discussed.