Student Engagement: The Key to Retention
As Steven C. Howey (2012) pointed out years ago, educators across the US are “frustrated with the challenge of how to motivate the ever increasing number of freshmen students entering college who are psychologically, socially, and academically unprepared for the demands of college life.” For the past 40-plus years, the...
Partnering with Student Organizations to Build First-Year Student Engagement: Special Olympics Young Athletes and Merrimack College
Every day, academic leaders make decisions about what kinds of programming college first-year students will find attractive and engaging. Many colleges’ ideas, however, fail to connect to student interest and experience. Part of the reason for this disconnect is generational. The staff and administrators planning these programs are at least...
Lessons for Engaging and Retaining BIPOC Students
How do we attract historically underrepresented groups of students to our institutions—that is, first-generation college students; Black, Indigenous, and other students of color; and students from low-income backgrounds? How do we best serve them at our institutions? How do we retain them and support them to persist and graduate? Academia,...