Campus Location

Dallas Campus (Online)

Date of Award

8-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Department

Organizational Leadership

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Myron Pope

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Timothy Atkinson

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Jerrel Moore

Abstract

First-Year Seminar (FYS) courses have been the foundational building blocks for academic and nonacademic success for first-year college freshman since the late 1970s. With the focus on improving retention and persistence, FYS courses have been viewed as the resource that connects freshmen to the faculty, staff, student, and campus environment. Therefore, it is vital to see the impact that it has had on students and how it can further develop persistence through graduation. The researcher conducted this basic qualitative study to look for emerging themes of sophomore experience in the FYS courses and how that impacted their persistence and retention at the host institution. Data collected were in the form of one-on-one interviews with 20 student participants and a focus group with five student participants. The findings highlighted each participant’s experience at the host institution. The findings suggest that FYS supports student persistence and retention in the form of several different functional areas on campus.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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