Campus Location

Abilene Campus (Residential)

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Social Work

Degree Name

Master of Science

Committee Chair or Primary Advisor

Kyeonghee Jang

Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor

Stephanie Hamm

Third Committee Member or Committee Reader

Jordan Jones

Abstract

Challenges in bachelor’s degree attainment for disadvantaged students (e.g., low income, first generation and disabled) within higher education is a social problem. TRiO SSS, a federal program, has been implemented at a private university in Texas to meet the needs of disadvantaged students and positively influence good academic standing, which would lead to higher bachelor’s degree attainment. Intensive advising, which is holistic meetings conducted with participants to meet academic and personal needs, is one intervention utilized in the TRiO SSS program. The purpose of this study is to assess the role and influence of intensive advising by examining whether it has a positive association with historically disadvantaged students’ good academic standing. This mixed methods study used de-identified survey responses of a convenience sample of 41 students within the program during the fall 2021 semester and agency data that included both grade point averages and student eligibility of 127 students. The findings show student perception was generally positive while the number of students who were in good academic standing rates was relatively stagnant after implementation of the intervention. Further investigation is needed to validate these findings using a quantitative study with a specific sample (i.e., returning students).

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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