Five Years In: Reflections on Studying a Comprehensive College Transition Program

For the past five years, a team of Pullias Center researchers have been engaged in the Promoting At-Promise Student Success (PASS) project, a large mixed methods study of the Thompson Scholar Learning Community (TSLC) program at three of the University of Nebraska campuses. In addition to a five-year scholarship, the TSLC program provided two years of comprehensive support for approximately 200-600 students from low-income backgrounds at each of the campuses.

The comprehensive college transition program improves retention and graduation rates as well as psychosocial outcomes, including belonging, mattering and academic, social and career self-efficacies. Its value for underserved communities cannot be overstated, so it certainly warrants concerted attention and being studied to the degree we have been for the last half a decade.  The PASS team continues to examine the role of validation in framing how programs and institutions serve students. While just one piece of a larger puzzle, our team did find the program very validating. Although not originally part of our research design, validation emerged as an important lever the TSLC programs use to achieve other psychosocial outcomes. TSLC creates a validating environment that provides students with consistent reassurance that they belong in the program and on campus. In addition, the program staff assist students with building relationships with other offices and support services across campus.  However, there was much more to look at.

More recently, we have been investigating the relationship between psychosocial and academic outcomes in higher education.  This has been important as states are increasingly tying postsecondary funding to easily quantifiable outcomes such as retention and graduation rates even as employers emphasize the importance of psychosocial skills.   Having the lens of the TSLC program to look at this, the PASS researchers are finding significant, but small-to-moderate, positive correlations.  We are learning that certain psychosocial outcomes may indeed relate to students’ postsecondary academic achievement.  For example, the program includes a proactive advising process that occurs mid-semester. The students report how these meetings are structured to be affirm and positively influence their academic self-efficacy.  Our work may help institutions refine early warning systems that typically only focus on academic indicators.

Given the program we are studying and populations, our study was an opportunity to look at a long-established construct of student engagement, but among low-income, first-generation and racially minoritized students who have not been explored as deeply.  We are examining engagement based on a range of factors in order to investigate how students’ experiences may explain their engagement.  Another extension of the PASS project is examining engagement by looking at shared academic courses (SACs) that include only students from a CCTP.

In many ways, the Promoting At-Promise Student Success project continues to be a tree that yields a seemingly endless harvest of fruits of knowledge.  As researchers, we are only limited by the size of the basket we have and how quickly we can gather that fruit.  With a year to go on the countdown clock for this project, we are feeling the urgency that comes when such an enriching and encompassing project starts to draw to a close.  Five years is a long time, but can seem like the blink of an eye when fascinated with what you are doing.

During the final year of the program, we will be focused on dissemination of findings to researchers, policymakers, foundations, and practitioners.   It is our hope that our work does not go unnoticed, and we look forward to sharing with the community about what we have learned, and will continue to learn, from this study.

– The PASS Team

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