Supporting First-Generation,Low-Income,and Underrepresented Students’ Transitions to College Through Comprehensive and Integrated Programs

One of the most significant challenges facing higher education is determining how best to promote the success of the diverse students matriculating to colleges and universities. More first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented racially minoritized students are entering the nation’s colleges than any time in the past (Aud, Fox, & KewalRamani, 2010; Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004; Renn & Reason, 2013; Seidman, 2005). Despite advancements in access, completion rates among these student populations remain significantly lower than their traditional student counterparts (Aud et al., 2010; DeAngelo et al., 2011; The Pell Institute, 2015; Seidman, 2005). Most attrition occurs early in college, and creating college transition programs to boost retention and success has been a major effort in the past few decades (Goodman & Pascarella, 2006; King, 2009; The Pell Institute, 2008; Perna, Rowan-Kenyon, Bell, Thomas, & Li, 2008).

Colleges, universities, foundations, and national organizations have experimented with a plethora of interventions to improve the success for underrepresented and underserved students (Douglas & Attewell, 2014; Kezar, 2000; The Pell Institute, 2009; Purdie & Rosser, 2011; Sablan, 2014; Swanson, Vaughan, & Wilkinson, 2017; TRIO Programs, 2017). Most of these interventions focus on a single issue—for example, building college knowledge through a first-year experience course. Undergraduate research programs are implemented in order to provide students with more direct contact with faculty and mentoring opportunities. The federally funded TRIO programs, developed to support low-income students, are perhaps the anomaly among these interventions in that they provide several forms of support including advising, financial literacy, mentoring, and emotional support. However, TRIO programs are afforded to only a small number of students due to limited funding. Interventions like these have been in place for several decades, and yet colleges and universities have made little progress in improving college transition, success, and retention of marginalized student populations (Aud et al., 2010; DeAngelo et al., 2011; Mayhew, Rockenbach, Bowman, Seifert, & Wolniak, 2016; The Pell Institute, 2015; Seidman, 2005).

While there have been numerous interventions designed to support these marginalized student populations and increase their completion rates, few programs have employed a comprehensive approach, and few programs connect multiple existing interventions in an integrated approach, incorporating both curricular innovation and out-of-class support for students transitioning into college. Using a comprehensive or integrated approach to college transition programming has potential synergistic effects for student success—addressing factors that affect retention and success from multiple angles. Recent research has demonstrated the value of comprehensive and integrated programs that combine several interventions to create a seamless learning environment for supporting students academically, socially, and personally (Maton, Domingo, Stolle-McAllister, Zimmerman, & Hrabowski, 2009; Maton, Hrabowski, & Schmitt, 2000; Perna & Jones, 2013). Tinto (2012) has been one of the most vocal proponents of such integrated programs; he calls for campuses to halt the creation of myriad disconnected programs, to reevaluate their support programs, and to create a more intentionally connected and aligned environment of student support. Even the federal TRIO programs, the one more comprehensive program that does exist, typically does not involve classroom or curricular support or aligned programming.

This special issue of American Behavioral Scientist focuses on college transition programs that have either comprehensive or integrated designs, exploring whether, how, and why these programs are making progress toward improving success among marginalized student populations to address long-standing retention and completion gaps that have troubled higher education for decades. Comprehensive programs offer a broad range of supports coordinated within a single program. Integrated programs link students to several existing supports on campus so that they essentially become a comprehensive support program.

There are multiple institutional and structural factors that can thwart the success and development of underrepresented and marginalized students. Comprehensive and integrated programs represent an opportunity to structure or coordinate an environment within the larger university community that is explicitly oriented toward the particular needs and success of these student populations. The overarching conceptual frameworks undergirding our understanding of how comprehensive and integrated programs operate to support these students is informed by two complementary theories: Bronfenbrenner’s (1994) ecological systems theory and Rendon’s (1994) validation theory. Ecological systems theory contends that student experiences in multiple contexts within and beyond college (e.g., classroom, family, living spaces, college events) shape their learning, development, and outcomes and that student development is best understood holistically. Interactions between students and individuals/groups within these contexts (i.e., “proximal processes”) are the primary drivers of student development and success (Bronfenbrenner, 1994). Validation theory posits that institutional agents (e.g., faculty, staff) are central actors in students’ postsecondary lives, and they can provide messages and cues that affirm students’ capabilities for college success—both social/personal and academic—that encourage student success. Taken together, we argue that there are opportunities embedded in integrated and comprehensive programs to structure support across multiple contexts within which institutional agents can proactively promote student success. Building on these frameworks, the California State University (CSU) study was also guided by theories of aligning structures—so not just multiple—but aligned structures that support students. Tinto’s (2012) and Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins’s (2015) research support that multiple and aligned touchpoints that coordinate the work of different institutional actors are even more beneficial for student success. The CSU research demonstrates that aligned structures have the additional benefit of promoting greater reinforcement of validation through connected systems of support, as well as leading to innovation as institutional agents interact in ways not generated through current organizational structures.

Our blended conceptual framework sensitized the authors of this issue to the role of the multiple and/or aligned programmatic contexts and institutional agents in promoting student success through comprehensive and integrated program approaches. Each chapter by itself contributes to a deeper understanding of the comprehensive and integrated program approach and its link to student outcomes. However, a notable contribution of this overall issue taken together is that it also highlights the success of the same comprehensive or integrated programs from multiple angles. This is among the first compilations of research on college transition programs that are comprehensive or integrated and it will be an invaluable resource to a range of stakeholders in higher education and beyond.

This special issue focuses on two major programs: (1) the Thompson Scholars Learning Communities program and (b) the CSU STEM Collaboratives Initiative. The Thompson Scholars Learning Communities program is a comprehensive college transition program (CCTP) that includes financial support, mentoring, small shared academic courses with designated instructors, a first-year experience course, social and academic programming, residential or common spaces, and staff and peer support for a cohort of students. This program is offered at the three University of Nebraska campuses and serves several thousand low-income students, many of whom are first-generation and underrepresented racially minoritized students. The CSU STEM Collaboratives Initiative combines summer bridge programs, first-year experience, and revised introductory STEM courses into an integrated programmatic effort to support several thousand underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation students in the CSU System. Each of these programs was studied and evaluated over several years, and the results of these studies are reviewed in this special issue. For the CCTP studies, we focused on programmatic processes and outcomes related to student success, including academic validation, major and career self-efficacy, as well as sense of belonging and mattering. The CSU STEM Collaboratives study followed implementation of an integrated program and provides important information about the implementation of integrated and aligned student support programs—a programmatic approach which, to date, has gone unstudied. This special issue highlights important insights from these innovative program approaches for populations that have not been well served by higher education.

The first article explores the notion of what a comprehensive college transition program is and articulates a typology of programs ranging from precollege and first semester all the way through full and postcollege models. The second article focuses on academic validation, describing validating experiences of CCTP participants and presenting how the program provides multiple opportunities for academic validation. Academic validation was found to be a key underlying mechanism leading to first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented racially minoritized student success in the CCTP program. The third article explores programmatic elements that support sense of belonging and mattering. These two constructs are important intermediate outcomes linked to long-term success among these student populations; the article presents ways for CCTPs to develop these outcomes. The fourth article examines major and career self-efficacy, an important psychosocial outcome for underrepresented and marginalized students in light of its link to persistence and college completion—students are more likely to be retained and earn their credentials when they can see a connection between their educational goals and future careers and job prospects. This mixed-methods study explores the link between CCTP participation and three dimensions of career self-efficacy, and how the program promotes student career self-efficacy through staff support and by connecting students to an ecology of career activities. The fifth article focuses the CSU STEM Collaboratives. The CSU STEM Collaboratives is a more recent program, and its implementation was studied to identify facilitators and barriers related to implementation of these types of programs to help new programs adopting similar designs as they are developed in the future. This is among the first studies of the implementation of these types of integrated transition programs, and thus, it is instructive for designing or structuring future integrated programming. The sixth article described the creation of a unified community of support that appears to shape the positive outcomes in the CSU STEM Collaboratives study. The characteristics of a unified community of support are described at two very different campus environments—one a rural campus serving more residential first-generation, low-income, and minority students, and another, an urban and commuter campus with even higher concentrations of first-generation, low-income, and minority students, showing how such an environment can be created to serve very different students and on distinctive campuses with varying missions, resources, and institutional capacity.