Improving Academic Success for Undecided Students: A First-Year Seminar/Learning Community Approach

Undecided undergraduate students are often considered to be at risk for lower academic performance and lower retention rates than students with declared majors. First-year seminars and learning communities are two interventions the retention literature suggests can enhance the success of at-risk students. This paper summarizes the development, implementation, and preliminary assessment of an intervention directed toward undecided first-time-in-college (FTIC) students at University of North Texas. The intervention consists of enrollment in a first-year seminar or in a first-year seminar which is part of a learning community. The paper has three sections. The first section briefly summarizes the literature on undecided students, first-year seminars, and learning communities. The second section outlines the intervention including development of the seminar and the course pairings. The paper concludes with a summary of the success outcomes—GPA, percentage in good academic standing, and retention to the subsequent academic semester—for the students involved in the two interventions and a comparison group of undecided students. Preliminary data suggest better outcomes for students participating in the interventions than in the control group, but the study raises important questions about further research. The third section also includes recommendations for research and practice. Dale R. Tampke is Dean of Undergraduate Studies and a Research Associate Professor-Counseling and Higher Education at University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Raifu Durodoye is currently a Ph.D. student at the Center for Public Administration & Policy at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA

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Retention and promotion of women and underrepresented minority faculty in science and engineering at four large land grant institutions.

In the most recent cohort, 2002-2015, the experiences of men and women differed substantially among STEM disciplines. Female assistant professors were more likely than men to leave the institution and to leave without tenure in engineering, but not in the agricultural, biological and biomedical sciences and natural resources or physical and mathematical sciences. In contrast, the median times to promotion from associate to full professor were similar for women and men in engineering and the physical and mathematical sciences, but one to two years longer for women than men in the agricultural, biological and biomedical sciences and natural resources.URM faculty hiring is increasing, but is well below the proportions earning doctoral degrees in STEM disciplines. The results are variable and because of the small numbers of URM faculty, the precision and power for comparing URM faculty to other faculty were low. In three of the four institutions, lower fractions of URM faculty than other faculty hired in the 2002-2006 time frame left without tenure. Also, in the biological and biomedical and physical and mathematical sciences no URM faculty left without tenure. On the other hand, at two of the institutions, significantly more URM faculty left before their tenth anniversary than other faculty and in engineering significantly more URM faculty than other faculty left before their tenth anniversary. We did not find significant differences in promotion patterns between URM and other faculty

Percentage of faculty who exited before their 10^th anniversary of hire, by URM status, estimated two ways.

<p>Percentage of faculty who exited before their 10^th anniversary of hire, by URM status, estimated two ways.</p

Probability of retention by institution and gender.

<p>Life table survival curves for tenure track assistant professors hired between 2002 and 2015. P-value indicates significance level of Wilcoxon test of equality of the life table estimates of survival for men and women.</p

Percentage of faculty who exited before their 10^th anniversary of hire, by URM status and discipline, estimated two ways.

<p>Percentage of faculty who exited before their 10^th anniversary of hire, by URM status and discipline, estimated two ways.</p

Estimated cumulative incidence of promotion to full professor, by discipline and gender^*.

<p>Estimated cumulative incidence of promotion to full professor, by discipline and gender^{<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0187285#t012fn001" target="_blank">*</a>}.</p

Probability of exiting without tenure, by gender^*.

<p>Probability of exiting without tenure, by gender^{<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0187285#t005fn001" target="_blank">*</a>}.</p

Cumulative incidence of exiting without tenure, by URM status and institution^*.

<p>Cumulative incidence of exiting without tenure, by URM status and institution^{<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0187285#t006fn001" target="_blank">*</a>}.</p

Number of faculty hired or promoted to associate professor in STEM disciplines by gender and by URM status for each institution.

<p>Number of faculty hired or promoted to associate professor in STEM disciplines by gender and by URM status for each institution.</p