The Impact Of Campus Environment Perceptions And Sense Of Belonging On The Persistence Decisions Of Students At A Rural Community College

Community college students are often excluded from persistence studies due to the unique characteristics of community colleges and its students. Recent studies have heavily relied on retention models that do not adequately account for the role individual and campus culture plays in students’ persistence decisions. Using Museus’ (2014) Culturally Engaging Campus Environment (CECE) model, this cross-sectional, correlational study examined the impact of campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging on the persistence decisions of students at a rural community college in the southeastern part of the U.S. Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate the relationships between two independent variables, campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging, and one dependent variable, students’ persistence decisions. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if differences in campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging existed between racial and gender identity groups. Lastly, a t-test was conducted to examine differences between residential and commuter students. Utilizing the CECE Survey for Community Colleges (Museus et al., 2017), a total of 234 responses were analyzed. The results revealed that students are more likely to persist when they have a positive perception of the campus environment. It also revealed that students were more likely to persist when they possessed a strong sense of belonging. Upon examining differences of campus environment perceptions, the results showed that gender identity influenced campus environment perceptions and race influenced sense of belonging among students. There was insufficient evidence to establish differences of campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging among residential and commuter students. Limitations regarding this study included its generalizability due to the low number of survey responses and the physical aspect of campus environment and campus culture. Recommendations for policymakers and practitioners include consideration for community memberships, increase campus support for underrepresented groups, and cultural competency for training. Recommendations for future research include the use of different theoretical frameworks to understand student persistence, continued studies involving community colleges, inclusive campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging studies, and qualitative studies on campus environment perceptions and sense of belong of community college students.

"Over the last 10 years, colleges and universities have started grappling with the notion that their approaches to maintaining and increasing student retention, persistence, and graduation rates were no longer working. As focus shifted to uncovering barriers to student success while concurrently recognizing student success as more than solely academic factors, the term "student sense of belonging" gained traction in both academic and co-curricular settings. The editors brought this book into being to serve as a single point of reference in an emerging and promising field of study"--

This book explores how belonging differs based on students’ social identities, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or the conditions they encounter on campus. Belonging—with peers, in the classroom, or on campus—is a critical dimension of success at college. It can affect a student’s degree of academic adjustment, achievement, aspirations, or even whether a student stays in school. The 2nd Edition of College Students’ Sense of Belonging explores student sub-populations and campus environments, offering readers updated information about sense of belonging, how it develops for students, and a conceptual model for helping students belong and thrive. Underpinned by theory and research and offering practical guidelines for improving educational environments and policies, this book is an important resource for higher education and student affairs professionals, scholars, and graduate students interested in students’ success. New to this second edition: A refined theory of college students’ sense of belonging and review of current literature in light of new and emerging theories; Expanded best practices related to fostering sense of belonging in classrooms, clubs, residence halls, and other contexts; Updated research and insights for new student populations such as youth formerly in foster care, formerly incarcerated adults, and homeless students; Coverage on a broad range of topics since the first edition of this book, including cultural navigation, academic spotting, and the "shared faith" element of belonging.

Community colleges continue to experience high levels of student attrition and low degree/certificate completion rates. Given extant literature, there appears to be a need to reexamine how interactions between students and the institution, and students and institutional agents are taking place, with the aim of identifying institutional practices that deleteriously or positively impact degree completion and thus guide colleges to develop action plans to improve conditions for student success. This study examined how factors such as institutional commitment to students, mattering, sense of belonging, interactions with diverse peers, perceptions of the campus climate, engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, and goal commitment collectively affected community college students' intent to persist to degree completion. The proposed model tested the tenability of seven propositions examining how the above constructs interact to influence intent to persist. The sample consisted of 2,088 multiply diverse community college students. The conceptual model was grounded on Astin's (1991) Input-Environment-Outcome model and was tested in the context of structual equation modeling. Multiple group invariance analyses for race/ethnicity were conducted. The conceptual model explained 28% of the variance on intent to persist for Asian students, 21% for White students, and 19% for Latino/a students. Results indicated that transition support from family/friends exerted the highest effect on intent to persist across all racial/ethnic groups, followed by engagement/involvement, perceptions of mattering, interactions with diverse peers, GPA, goal commitment, and socio-academic integrative experiences, albeit varying by group. This study was the first in the literature to empirically demonstrate a causal effect between institutional commitment to students and perceptions of mattering. Mattering, in turn, exerted a moderate to strong influence on engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, sense of belonging, and indirectly on intent to persist. Evidence in support of an omnibus "student development and success" construct, as alluded to by Wolf-Wendel, et al. (2009) is also presented. Of import to these findings is that while this construct explained a significant proportion of the variance for engagement/involvement, belonging, mattering, and interactions with diverse peers, the individual factors exerted an independent effect on intent to persist. Implications for theory, research, and practice are also discussed.

To improve low rates of credential attainment in community colleges, individual schools as well as a number of national organizations have developed a range of initiatives focused on increasing rates of college completion and student success. Although the importance of non-academic factors in college completion and student success has been well established, questions remain about the best ways to structure the community college environment to foster students' sense of belonging and promote behaviors that are associated with success. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by focusing on the academic confidence of students at the outset of their community college careers, the ways in which their confidence may impact student behaviors and persistence, and how student confidence is affected by students' experiences in college. Using data from nearly 100 community college student interviews, this paper examines students' descriptions of their confidence upon entering college and of the shifts in confidence they experienced early in their college careers. Our findings suggest that student confidence is shaped in part by past academic experiences and expectations of college upon entry. Using student descriptions of their perceptions of college and of themselves, we describe the characteristics of students who describe themselves as self-assured and those who identify as apprehensive. The interview data reveal that student confidence is continually shifting as a result of interactions with peers, faculty, and others. Our analysis also indicates that academic confidence can impact student motivation and academic behaviors that are associated with success. Importantly, this paper identifies the nature of those experiences that positively reinforce student confidence, events that we term "experiences of earned success." Finally, we describe ways to structure classroom and other on-campus environments to create opportunities for students to experience earned success and ultimately enhance their commitment to academic pursuits. (Contains 1 footnote.).

This book is designed to provide knowledge of sense of community among traditional and nontraditional age students enrolled in online and traditional land-based learning environments. There is a gap in the literature regarding sense of community for students in different learning environments of rural community colleges. The author established the process of examining a sense of community for students of rural colleges. After reading the book, you will be able to take away information to be used to encourage course developers and online instructors to create and promote course activities that foster sense of community among students in online courses. Key Book Words: academic institutions, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learners, alienation, amotivation, anonymity, ANOVA, attitudes, attrition, belonging, blended course, blended learning, brick-and-mortar, campus experience, causal relationship, cause-and-effect relationship, civic activities, classroom community, collaborative activities, collaborative learning, college, community college, students, community members, connectedness, construct validities, constructivist learning, conversations, correlational design, culturally diverse, demographics, dependent variables, distance education, distance learning, economics, educational institutions, educators, emotional connection, employment, enrollment, environment, ethnic backgrounds, family, feedback, finance, focus groups, global society, health behaviors, health risks, high achievement, higher education, homogeneity, human growth, income differential, independent variable, instructor, interaction, interpersonal relationships, intrinsic motivation, isolation, job constraints, lack of community, lack of interaction, learner-instructor, learner-learner, learner-system, learners, loneliness, low-income, management, marital resources, members of society, minority students, motivation, non-traditional students, occupations, on-campus, online classes, online educators, online environment, online experience, online instructors, online learners, online students, online learning environment, peers, perceived learning, perceptions, personal perspective, physical-social interaction, poverty, psychological development, psychological sense of community, quality learning, real experiences, recommendations, reflective journals, reputation, research instrument, retention, rural communities, school learning, self-directedness, sense of belonging, sense of community, sense of feeling alienated, social activities, social change, social community, social context, social creatures, social desirability, social interaction, social isolation, social networks, social norms, socialization, student learning, student motivation, student perception, student status, teacher, teacher presence, teaching experience, teaching philosophy, teaching style, technological challenges, traditional classroom, traditional courses, traditional students, traditional students, unemployed, video streaming, virtual classroom, virtual environment, volunteers, web-based courses, web-based students, sense of community, online instruction, learning community, traditional students, non-traditional students, Asynchronous learning, blended learning environment, community, hybrid model of instruction, learning community, nontraditional students, online instruction, sense of community, traditional students, and traditional face-to-face instruction

College unions have long been promoted as community builders and laboratories for learning. However, little research has been conducted to understand the relationship between college unions and community building. The purpose of this study was to identify if a relationship exists between college union involvement and student perceptions of sense of belonging and campus climate, and to explore how students make sense of their college union experiences. Correlation and regression techniques were applied to 478 college union student employee and volunteer survey responses at a large Midwestern university. The results suggest a statistically significant relationship between event attendance and a favorable view of campus climate. The analysis of ten student journals revealed a relationship between sense of belonging within the college union and perceptions of campus climate. Students developed sense of belonging by utilizing their voice, growing their leadership perspective, meaningfully interacting with diverse others, and participating in programming. This dissertation serves as the first mixed methods study to provide empirical evidence that there is a relationship between involvement in the college union and student perceptions of sense of belonging and campus climate. Study findings suggest that college union involvement plays an important role in community building and student learning.

Data analysis and interpretation was aided by a conceptual model that included Bronfenbrenner's (1977) ecological theory of human development, Strange and Banning's (2015) four models of educational environments, and Strayhorn's (2012) sense of belonging. Inductive and systematic first and second cycle coding with triangulation resulted in the emergence of three patterns regarding the intersection of rural life identity and college belonging: (1) rural students alienated by rural life embraced college life, (2) rural students that strongly identified with rural life were challenged to belong in college, (3) some students could identify with rural life and experience both positive and negative implications for belonging in college. Interpretation of the findings indicated the importance of rural students' individual alienation or identification with rural life, subsequent congruence with the educational environment, and their ability to replace support structures from their rural community with new sub-communities in college, as being highly influential to their sense of belonging in college. Based on these findings, this study suggests implications for theory, practice, and research.