Concluding Thoughts

This issue has explored the efficacy of two comprehensive college transition programs: California State University (CSU) STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) Collaboratives and the Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC). Both studies identify similar issues that merit further exploration and point to key findings that practitioners should consider to guide their future work with first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students.

First, both programs identify the value and role of a broader environment or community of support and multiple touch points over time in shaping postsecondary outcomes and improving student success. Both studies indicate that the specific elements of programs are less important than structuring opportunities within the environment/community for institutional agents to have ongoing interaction with students to provide advice, resources, support, and validation. With the CSU STEM Collaboratives, this environment is epitomized by the notion of a unified community of support. A unified community of support is the result of a program that links staff and faculty across departments to work on promoting student success in collaborative and connected ways that they had not in the past. The eight campus sites developed mechanisms to structure this interaction such as e-portfolios, electronic advising, themed projects that cut across cocurriculum and curriculum, and other mechanisms that created linked activities, communication, and work across the institution in support of students.

In the TSLC program, researchers identified an ecology of support and validation as an important mechanism that promoted student outcomes associated with college success. The ecology is a system of support across students’ interactions with program faculty and staff that functioned as a way to promote student success because of the validating practices employed by these institutional agents across contexts. This system cultivates positive outcomes for students when the supports across the ecology are aligned, and work in service of one another. This ecology of validation and support could be developed through many different types of programs and through training institutional agents (e.g., faculty, staff) to engage in validating practices. The TSLC study identified that it is the how of validation that is more important than the what (what specific program is developed to promote validation and create multiple, reinforcing supportive contexts).

Second, already alluded to is the importance of aligning or integrating support for students. Studies in this issue suggest that it is more important to align supports that exist than to simply develop more and more comprehensive programs—creating ever more supports for students. The studies showed that purely having more interventions is not what is impactful or shaped student outcomes and development, but rather, it was when the program features were aligned and worked to support each other and reinforced support across multiple contexts for students that appeared to be the key. Thus, creating many separate and disconnected programs, services, support, and experiences for students is not recommended. Instead, it is better to implement fewer well-developed services and programs that are intentionally designed and connected.

Third, both programs customize and tailor the support they offer to students, providing more personalized experiences. In the CSU STEM Collaboratives, the customization occurred in response to the special challenges that STEM students face and the need to ensure that interventions address these unique issues. In the TSLC program, the support was more tailored to the individual background of students’ assets they had as well as challenges they faced. For instance, Kezar et al.’s article demonstrated that the tailored major and career support students received from program staff based on their individual needs and challenges made the support relevant and meaningful to students, and facilitated greater confidence in their respective abilities to meet their major and career goals. In Hallett et al.’s validation study, the targeted, personally relevant, validating practices contributed to students feeling affirmed and capable of success. The importance of customized support targeted to the specific needs of students based on their interests and background is underscored in both studies.

Fourth, studies in this issue suggest the importance of psychosocial factors in the success of first-generation, low-income, and underserved minority student success. Sense of belonging has long been explored and been deemed a factor important to student retention and success, and the link between program support and belonging was similarly identified in this issue by Cole et al. Studies in this issue also reinforce the importance of mattering and validation. Crucially, the studies support the notion that it is the responsibility of the institution and institutional agents to assist students in acclimating to and succeeding in environments that were not created for their success. Cole et al.’s article underscores the significance of staff support through advising and faculty and staff proactive advising and mid-term meetings in promoting belonging and mattering. Hallett et al.’s article on the process of validation explores the validating interactions with staff and instructors that led to students feeling much more efficacious about their journey in college and ability to be successful. Kezar et al.’s article on career self-efficacy suggested that the program staff care, support, and advising was one of the decisive reasons that students felt more confident in their major and career path. In each of these articles, the onus is on campuses to make up for historic structures that make it more challenging for certain students to succeed in college. Moreover, both studies assume a nondeficit approach to intervening in students’ success which is critical in terms of supporting and encouraging student development.

Fifth, faculty and staff are both needed to support students and most interventions are built primarily with faculty or staff. Learning communities and undergraduate research primarily rely on faculty, whereas advising programs and TRIO primarily rely on staff. Yet both studies covered by articles in this issue found that both faculty and staff provide important, and still different support for students that the other group may not as easily provide (see CSU STEM Collaboratives final report for a fuller discussion: https://pullias.usc.edu/csustemcollab/). The studies found that collaboration between the two groups was instrumental in supporting student success across learning contexts. The studies emphasize the necessity of both groups for student success as well as the value added when staff and faculty collaboratively work together to support students.

Sixth, the study findings suggest revisiting of the programs explored in the typology presented in Hallet, Kezar, Perez, and Kitchen’s article on situating comprehensive college transition programs within college access—with more attention to the issue of time. The two studies reported on in this issue both suggest the importance of multiple touchpoints over time. This approach was built into early TRIO programs with some offering support throughout a student’s education. When programs focus on promoting success among underserved students, such as those from first-generation and low-income backgrounds, they may need to take a more longitudinal approach, recognizing that more time than is often assumed may be needed, and the full college model might be considered a more desirable option where possible to see students through from transition to successful college completion. The study findings also suggest the need to consider customization as a facet of any program type. How might a typology build in such customization? The importance of faculty and staff suggest that any program should include both groups in planning the development and implementation of support programs.

Finally, the studies also challenge a program typology and the importance of programmatic efforts in general. The studies in this issue suggest that the creation of a culture or environment is what is needed to support students, rather than refining programs as is suggested in the typology. Yet programs may play a key role in creating the environment or culture. Perhaps consideration of the way that programs can be used to leverage, create, or transform a culture or environment oriented toward the success of first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students is the best future direction given they make up an increasingly large proportion of students enrolling in colleges and university. This seems to be an area ripe for future research.