Education Commons^™

The Structure Of Student Engagement In Community College Student Success Programs: A Quantitative Activity Systems Analysis, Deryl K. Hatch

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

Community colleges increasingly implement various student success programs, including 1st-year seminars, college skills courses, learning communities, and orientation, in an effort to boost degree completion. However, it is unclear how success programs’ curricular designs may contribute to these and associated student outcomes. Such inquiry is limited, in part, by the lack of methodological frameworks for program impact heterogeneity research. This study proposes a new conceptualization of nominally different student success programs as instances of a broader activity, which also provides a way to operationalize their curricular structures in comparable ways. Second, to briefly illustrate this approach, the study leverages matched …

An Instrumental Case Study Of Administrative Smart Practices For Fully Online Programs And Degrees, Charles V. Gregory

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this instrumental case study was to explore administrators’ responses to significant administrative challenges of fully online programs and degrees. The case was a single public community college located in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Plains Region. In this study Bardach’s (1994) method to identify and extrapolate smart practices used to resolve administrative challenges arising from an institution’s online and distance education programming. The concept of smart practice aims to exploit or take advantage of some latent opportunity for creating value. Organizational culture was identified to be of significant influence in identifying the value the institution placed …

An Empirical Typology Of The Latent Programmatic Structure Of Community College Student Success Programs, Deryl K. Hatch, E. Michael Bohlig

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

The definition and description of student success programs in the literature (e.g., orientation, first-year seminars, learning communities, etc.) suggest underlying programmatic similarities. Yet researchers to date typically depend on ambiguous labels to delimit studies, resulting in loosely related but separate research lines and few generalizable findings. To demonstrate whether or how certain programs are effective there is need for more coherent conceptualizations to identify and describe programs. This is particularly problematic for community colleges where success programs are uniquely tailored relative to other sectors. The study’s purpose is to derive an empirical typology of community college student success programs based …

Experiences Of Community College Vocational Students Who Were Required To Begin Their Studies By Taking Remedial Courses And Successfully Attained Their Associate’S Degrees: A Phenomenological Study, Amy Margaret Morrison Goings

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Great Recession and national skills gap crisis have reframed community college efforts to shift from access-based institutions to that of persistence and completion-focused colleges. Within the post-recession context, this research examines what success looks like for today’s vocational community college student, as well as the current research on the barriers to completion. This qualitative, phenomenological study will explore the experiences of community college students who are graduating with vocational degrees and how they overcame known barriers to complete their degrees. In addition to summarizing the responses to each of the sub-questions, three primary themes emerged from the research that …

Exploring The Construct Of Social Integration In A Community College Environment, Scott Mertes

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Among current retention models, Tinto’s Interactionalist Model has reached near paradigmatic status. When his model has been applied to two-year college settings, the social integration results have been inconsistent. This has led Maxwell (2000) and Deil-Amen (2011) to suggest that a different construct of social integration exists in community colleges, and that this construct may not be related to the traditional construct of social integration in four-year university settings. The current study sought to ascertain whether these two constructs of social integration were related. A random sample of two-year college students were asked to complete a survey consisting of questions …

The Role Of The Community College President In Fundraising: Perceptions Of Selected Michigan Community College Presidents, Matthew W. Miller

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This multiple case study examines the role of the community college president in fundraising as perceived by selected Michigan community college presidents. Over the past few decades, fundraising from private sources has become increasingly important in the fiscal landscape of community colleges. Pfeffer and Salancik’s (1978) work in resource dependence theory provides a theoretical framework for this study. In a resource dependent environment, community colleges are changing their activities in an effort to pursue alternative revenue sources. Using a qualitative approach, data from interviews were analyzed to examine the perspectives of four presidents regarding their overall leadership role in fundraising …

Developmental/Remedial Sciences At Community Colleges In Five States In The Central Part Of The United States, Tricia L. Paramore

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

DEVELOPMENTAL/REMEDIAL SCIENCES AT COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN FIVE STATES IN THE CENTRAL PART OF THE UNITED STATES

Tricia L. Paramore, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2007 Adviser: Alan T. Seagren

Phipps (1998) emphasized interinstitutional collaboration among colleges to share and replicate best practices and ideas as a strategy to improve the effectiveness of developmental/remedial education, but Johnson (2001) noted a lack of communication between science educators and developmental educators. The purposes of this mixed methods study were (a) to identify and examine the characteristics of developmental/remedial sciences as it existed in the 2006-2007 academic year in terms of organization, structure, instructional practices, …