On-campus engagement is one metric that can predict student success, but external factors including needing to work, caretaking responsibilities or living off campus can hinder students’ participation in activities.
At Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York system, institutional data showed retention rates lagged for students in the humanities and social science disciplines. In response, leaders created several programs to incentivize students in those majors to build relationships with others in their field and engage in hands-on work.
Three Stony Brook leaders—Tiana De Jesus, lead academic success advisor and retention specialist; Richard Tomczak, director of faculty engagement; and Jennifer Rodriguez, associate director of the student success and retention center—shared details of the program and initial results at NASPA’s Student Success in Higher Education conference in Denver last month.
The background: The Undergraduate Retention Initiatives and Success Engagement (U-RISE) office houses a variety of innovative retention supports, including a research lab, called SSTAR, and re-engagement advising.
One of the more recent projects the staff at SSTAR—short for Student Success Through Applied Research—have taken on is addressing gaps in retention for non-STEM students.
University data pointed to six majors in the humanities and social sciences with the lowest retention rates as well as relatively high admission rates of students with lower grade point averages from high school.
Research shows that students who are engaged on campus are more likely to feel a deep sense of belonging and establish meaningful relationships with peers and faculty, as well as develop career skills. Students who have a strong sense of belonging in their major program are also more likely to have higher retention rates and levels of faculty connection.
SSTAR team members sought to foster relationships between students and their instructors, improve students’ academic readiness and provide financial support to ensure equitable retention for students across socioeconomic groups.
A National Picture
Research from the Student Experience in the Research University Consortium at the University of California, Berkeley, found fewer students participating in faculty-led research post-pandemic compared to their peers enrolled in 2019, showing a gap in experiential learning opportunities.
One of the more common reasons why students are unable to take on research roles is a lack of pay or needing to work for pay. A significant number of colleges have established financial aid for students to receive a stipend for participating in unpaid or underpaid experiential learning opportunities, ensuring the inability to pay does not prevent participation.
To accomplish these goals, campus leaders created three interventions: research assistantship positions in faculty-led research, a first-year seminar for academic preparation and paid on-campus jobs for humanities students.
In focus: This past spring, Stony Brook hired 12 first-year students out of an application pool of over 100 to serve as research assistants. Each student was matched with a faculty member from one of a variety of departments, including English, art, history, linguistics and Asian and Asian American studies. Research assistants committed to eight to 10 hours of work per week and were paid a stipend. Funding came from the provost’s office.
The projects varied; one English and sociology student analyzed TikTok videos of social activists to challenge stereotypes, while an English and psychology student trained artificial intelligence on European literature from the 1700s, according to a university press release.
The impact: Across interventions, students who participated in the programs were more likely to say they feel connected to their peers, see the value of their degree and intend to persist, according to pre- and post-survey data.
Many students said the experiences helped open their eyes to the career and research opportunities available to them in their field and made them feel faculty were more accessible to them. Of the students who participated in the three interventions, 92.8 percent enrolled as a sophomore the following year, compared to 91.8 percent of their peers who didn’t participate, surpassing the university’s 92 percent retention goal. Students also had higher cumulative GPAs, showing a correlation between engagement and academic achievement.
An unexpected finding was that before participating in the program, many students said they felt stigmatized for their major choice (Stony Brook is a majority of STEM learners), but afterward they felt more connected to those in similar fields, even if not in their exact major.
In the future, researchers hope to recruit a larger number of students and expand their work to other humanities and social sciences majors.
