A Faculty and Staff Guide on Supporting Sophomore Student Success is part of a series of action-oriented guides intended to blend research and practice to enhance the professional development and capacity of faculty and staff toward the ultimate goal of increasing the learning, development, transition, and success of students during their time in college or university. More specifically, this guide uses Schaller’s (2005) psychosocial developmental model, beginning with random exploration and concluding at commitment, as a framework and organizing structure to help advisors to interpret the experiences of students and then link those experiences to related learning outcomes.

Throughout this guide, readers will find questions for reflection, specific strategies for advisors, and practical tools to use when working with students at the various developmental stages. These resources align with the developmental experiences for students at each psychosocial stage.

Research suggests that as many as a quarter of all undergraduate students may find themselves on academic probation during their collegiate years. If students on probation choose to return to their institutions the semester following notification, they find themselves in a unique transitional period between poor academic performance and either dismissal or recovery. Effectively supporting students through this transition may help to decrease equity gaps in higher education. As recent literature implies, the same demographic factors that affect students’ retention and persistence rates (e.g., gender, race and ethnicity, age) also affect the rate at which students find themselves on academic probation.

This book serves as a resource for practitioners and institutional leaders. The volume presents a variety of interventions and institutional strategies for supporting the developmental and emotional needs of students on probation in the first year and beyond. The chapters in this book are the result of years of dedication and passion for supporting students on probation by the individual chapter authors. While the chapters reflect a culmination of combined decades of personal experiences and education, collectively they amount to the beginning of a conversation long past due.

Scholarship on the impact of academic recovery models on student success and persistence is limited. Historically, attention and resources have been directed toward establishing and strengthening the first-year experience, sophomore programs, and student-success efforts to prevent students from ending up on academic probation. However, a focus on preventative measures without a consideration of academic recovery program design considering the successes of these programs is futile.

This volume should be of interest to academics and practitioners focused on creating or refining institutional policies and interventions for students on academic probation. The aim is to provide readers with the language, tools, and theoretical points of view to advocate for and to design, reform, and/or execute high-quality, integrated academic recovery programs on campus. Historically, students on probation have been an understudied and underserved population, and this volume serves as a call to action.

The sophomore year represents a critical transition for students. As institutions shift their attention from these students to the incoming class, sophomores can feel unsupported as they face increased academic challenges and explore major and career options. Sophomore dropout and disengagement has led administrators, faculty, and researchers to increase their attention to these students’ unique needs.

The 2019 National Survey of Sophomore-Year Initiatives sought to explore institutional responses to and support for sophomore students. This new report reviews these findings, including institutional practices related to academic advising for sophomores. Additionally, the report offers implications for research and practice by highlighting the ways in which institutional efforts and initiatives can be better designed for responsiveness based on differences in campus context, student backgrounds, and student needs.

When it was originally released, Thriving in Transitions: A Research-Based Approach to College Student Success represented a paradigm shift in the student success literature, moving the student success conversation beyond college completion to focus on student characteristics that promote high levels of academic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal performance in the college environment. The authors contend that a focus on remediating student characteristics or merely encouraging specific behaviors is inadequate to promote success in college and beyond. Drawing on research on college student thriving completed since 2012, the newly revised collection presents six research studies describing the characteristics that predict thriving in different groups of college students, including first-year students, transfer students, high-risk students, students of color, sophomores, and seniors, and offers recommendations for helping students thrive in college and life. New to this edition is a chapter focused on the role of faculty in supporting college student thriving.

Traditionally, institutional supports for college student success have been concentrated in the first and senior years, though attention to the sophomore year has increased over the last two decades. Paying attention to the second college year is vitally important, as some evidence suggests students are more likely to leave their institution during this time than they are in the first year. The case studies of sophomore initiatives featured in this volume describe programs that build on institutional objectives for the first college year and prepare students for the transition to the major and, ultimately, graduation. Rich program descriptions and discussions of assessment provide practitioners focused on designing a cohesive undergraduate experience excellent models to guide their work.

The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition has been studying the structure and administration of high-impact practices in the first college year for nearly three decades. 

This package offers the most comprehensive landscape study of these initiatives to date, drawing on analysis of the 2017 National Survey of the First-Year Experience. The survey includes sections on overall institutional attention to the first year, as well as common first-year programs including first-year seminars, academic advising, orientation, common-reading initiatives, early-alert programs, learning communities, and residential programs.

The package includes:

2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience: Creating and Coordinating Structures to Support Student Success, a paperback report of the major findings of the survey with analysis of specific first-year initiatives written by scholars and practitioners in the field.

Response Frequencies from the 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience, an eBook which contains comprehensive data tables including responses to all survey items disaggregated by institutional type, control, and first-year cohort size.

Buy separately or as a package with the eBook Response Frequencies from the 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience.

The first-year seminar continues to be a common structure for supporting student success in higher education, yet it represents only one of many first-year programs.

With this in mind, the 2017 National Survey on The First-Year Experience marks a change from previous surveys administered by The National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition by exploring a broad range of initiatives designed to support success in the first college year.

Recognizing that individual first-year programs are connected to extensive bodies of literature and practice, authors representing diverse professional networks focused on college student success contribute their voices to the analyses and presentation of results. The report includes an overview of institutional attention to the first year and the prevalence of and connections between first-year programs, a review of the results relating to selected first-year programs, and implications for practice and future research.

The 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience was designed to explore the structure and administration of a broad range of initiatives designed to support success in the first college year. Specific sections of the survey examine overall institutional attention to the first year, as well as common first-year programs including first-year seminars, academic advising, orientation, common-reading initiatives, early-alert programs, learning communities, and residential programs.

Response Frequencies from the 2017 National Survey on The First-Year Experience is a fixed-layout eBook which contains comprehensive data tables including responses to all survey items disaggregated by institutional type, control, and first-year cohort size.

Buy the eBook separately or as a package with the print version of the Research Report on College Transitions No. 9, 2017 National Survey on the First-Year Experience: Creating and Coordinating Structures to Support Student Success.