Faculty Mentoring and Community College Student Success in an Introductory Biology Course: A Relational Study

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

Department

Higher Edu and Learning Technology

Date of Award

Spring 2020

Abstract

Mentoring has been proven to be successful for increasing student retention and graduation rates among Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors and in community colleges. This study was conducted to discover the nature of the relationship between a faculty mentoring program and academic success among students who completed a community college' s introductory biology for science majors (IBSM) course. The randomly selected sample included only students who enrolled in IBSM at the 2-year Urban Community College (UCC, a pseudonym) and whether or not they participated in the IBSM faculty mentor program. The dependent variable was dichotomous and measured students' performance as successful (i.e., A, B, or C grade) and not successful (i.e., D or F grade). The statistics applied to the relational analysis included chi-square and logistic regression. The analysis of UCC' s extant data regarding the IBSM course and its faculty mentoring program suggested that there is no relationship between student race/ethnicity and participation in the STEM faculty mentoring program. Also, the gender and race/ethnicity variables were found to be significant predictors for student success, but the mentoring variable did not provide a statistically significant contribution to predicting students' success in IBSM. Several implications and recommendations for future research are explicated in-depth in the final chapter.

Advisor

Dimitra Smith

Subject Categories

Education | Higher Education

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