Browsing by Subject "student success"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    BIPOC Leaders Reimagining Change to Advance Diversity, Equity, and Student Success
    (2024-08-26) Oates, Evangela Q.; Gong, Regina H.
    Critical to the work of academic libraries is their role in ensuring student success. Student success often consists of metrics such as self-efficacy, academic achievement, completion, retention, and persistence (Soika, 2021), which may be profoundly different for racially minoritized students as they often navigate under-resources, racialized, and gendered environments (Anyon et al., 2016; Solorazano et al., 2000). At the heart of student success is how well universities provide opportunities for student engagement that reflect their lived experiences as citizens and students. As a programmatic imperative, student success is becoming increasingly prevalent in academic libraries. This is a multifaceted effort involving not just the library but various areas of student, academic, and co-curricular engagement on campus. Recent efforts are underway in academic libraries that allow for the creation of new positions specifically geared toward student success. More importantly, we see an increasing number of administrator-level positions such as associate deans/assistant dean, being created to ensure the consolidation of student success programs and services. This presentation will explore these new roles through the experiences of two BIPOC associate deans across different institutions. We will discuss stepping into these new roles, re-imagining possibilities, and working towards empowerment and institutional transformation.
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    Breaking down barriers: Academic obstacles of first-generation students at research universities
    (The Learning Assistance Review, 2013-06-03) Stebleton, Michael; Soria, Krista
    The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived academic obstacles of first-generation students in comparison to non-first-generation students. Using the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) completed by approximately 58,000 students from six research universities, the researchers used nonparametric bootstrapping to analyze differences between first-generation and non-first-generation students’ obstacles to academic success. The results suggest that first-generation students more frequently encounter obstacles that compromise their academic success as compared to non-first-generation students, such as job responsibilities, family responsibilities, perceived weak English and math skills, inadequate study skills, and feelings of depression. Implications for learning assistance professionals are outlined.
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    Diversity sieves: Cultural centers as sites of successful subject production in higher education
    (2017-07) Hoffman, Garrett
    Higher education yields individual and collective benefits, to include higher earnings, increased civic engagement, and national economic growth. While social and democratic benefits are included in the expansive lists of positive outcomes, economic benefits, both for the individual as well as for society, remain at the forefront of national conversations about higher education’s importance. However, gaps in postsecondary degree attainment and, therefore, related benefits between various demographic groups persist. This dissertation explores how the privileging of neoliberal constructions of success impacts minoritized students’ lives and subjectivities. Specifically, I examined how neoliberal discourses of successful college students work through one institution’s cultural center to shape the subjectivities of minoritized students. Using a qualitative case study design, and textual, observational, and interview data collected from one institution, I conducted a discourse analysis to understand how one institution constructed successful students. Second, I conducted a narrative analysis to understand how minoritized students negotiated these constructions of success. I show how neoliberal constructions of success produce norms to which minoritized students measure themselves and how these norms support institutional assertions of a multicultural, inclusive campus community while maintaining existing hierarchies of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. The cultural center and diversity programming, then, become in service of the institution, which eschews attention to social justice and minoritized students’ own goals and constructions of success for themselves and their communities.
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    Library Use and Undergraduate Student Outcomes: New Evidence for Students’ Retention and Academic Success
    (2013-01-24) Soria, Krista; Fransen, Jan; Nackerud, Shane
    Academic libraries, like other university departments, are being asked to demonstrate their value to the institution. This study discusses the impact library usage has on the retention and academic success of first-time, first year undergraduate students at a large, public research university. Usage statistics were gathered at the University of Minnesota during the Fall 2011 semester for thirteen library access points. Analysis of the data suggests first-time, first-year undergraduate students who use the library have a higher GPA for their first semester and higher retention from fall to spring than non-library users.
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    “Shared Determination”: How People and Context Drive the Establishment of First-Gen Student Support Centers in Higher Education
    (2023) Molengraff, Terra
    As colleges and universities focus on admitting and supporting more first-generation college students (FGCS), there is a need to examine ongoing and structural support for students after matriculation. Research has focused on how higher education supports FGCS individually. However, colleges and universities play a role in facilitating support for FGCS. First-generation student support centers (FGSSC) are a new resource on campus. There is limited research on how these centers are created and the people who drive this organizational change. This multi-site case study provides insight into how colleges and universities change to address the needs of FGCS and their multiple intersecting identities. From this study, I propose a model for how colleges and universities can establish their own FGSSCs through a four-phase process that emphasizes the importance of context and relationship-building throughout the investigation, ideation, and creation of these spaces.