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Dissertation
Enhancing Community College Retention: A Performance Improvement Study of Support Services
University of West Florida Libraries
Doctor of Education (EDD), University of West Florida
2025
Abstract
Open enrollment and low tuition at community colleges, like Suburban Community College (SCC), which is a pseudonym, expand access to higher education. However, open enrollment and low tuition contribute to creating a community college student population that is more vulnerable to leaving college without a degree or certification than their more advantaged peers (Margarit & Kennedy, 2019). Researchers have studied this complex problem of retention in higher education for over 8 decades (Manyanga et al., 2017), and this study added to that extensive research with an examination of how SCC can improve student retention rates with a focus on out-of-classroom support services and activities. The focus on out-of-classroom support services emerged from my experience with various support services and activities that SCC provides, at no cost, to students. I observed that students were hesitant to use and did not take full advantage of these services. Research has shown that a student’s academic and social integration (Tinto, 1993) and a student’s environmental needs (Bean & Metzner, 1985) affect their decision to persist in the institution.
The site for this study was SCC, a public 2-year community college in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Per the institution’s website, SCC’s mission is to facilitate success for diverse learners by providing accessible, quality education and personal connections. If students leave the college before achieving their educational goal or attaining success—as students define it—this mission is not fulfilled. Although SCC’s recent student retention rates for the entire student population exceeded those of comparable 2-year institutions, SCC is committed to continuous improvement, and raising student retention rates presents a performance improvement opportunity.
The field of performance improvement is a science that uses analytical processes and methods as the basis for choosing and implementing solutions (Van Tiem et al., 2012). I chose to use the International Society of Performance Improvement’s human performance technology (HPT) model as the conceptual framework for this study. The HPT model is a systems-based model that emphasizes change management throughout each of its four phases: (a) performance analysis; (b) intervention selection, design, and development; (c) intervention implementation and maintenance; and (d) evaluation (Van Tiem et al., 2012). My work aligned with each phase of the HPT model.
I used both qualitative and quantitative data for the performance analysis phase to determine SCC’s desired and actual performance states. I completed a gap analysis by comparing the desired state to the actual state and then analyzed those gaps to determine root causes. During this phase, I worked closely with stakeholders from across the college who assisted in developing survey and interview questions, provided data, served as study participants, reviewed my work, and provided critical feedback that improved the outcome of the performance analysis.
With root causes identified, the focus of my work turned to selecting, designing, and developing interventions. Once again, I worked with a group of stakeholders whose expertise on retention, support services, SCC’s history, and SCC’s culture was crucial to the selection, design, and development of a sustainable intervention that aligned with SCC’s strategic initiatives that could serve as the foundation for more extensive student retention initiatives at the college.
The intervention, a faculty professional development session titled Driving Student Success: Faculty as Retention Champions, introduced a retention resources SharePoint page and was implemented as part of SCC’s Fall 2025 faculty in-service program. Although it is too soon to measure the impact of this intervention formally, the feedback at the end of the session indicated that the session had the intended effects. I will continue to monitor the impact and seek the resources and support of SCC leadership to sustain the effect of the intervention.
Furthermore, my work in this area is not complete; rather, it is in its infancy. Given that persistence research at 2-year institutions is less developed than retention research at 4-year institutions (Davidson & Wilson, 2017), and the fact that the traditional retention protocols have not kept pace with the changing nature of attending college and complex needs of community college students (Sullivan et al., 2023), challenges exist when developing persistence models that accurately predict attrition among nontraditional student populations, which leads to difficulties developing corresponding retention programs (Davidson & Wilson, 2017). Acknowledging these difficulties, I am confident that, with a continued focus on performance improvement, SCC can increase its student retention rates by continuing the exceptional retention-related work currently underway and expanding that work to create a collaborative campus-wide retention program that reflects the findings of this study.
Details
- Title
- Enhancing Community College Retention
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Contributors
- Abigail Aldrich (Committee Member)Dekia Smith Gray (Committee Member)Holley L Handley (Committee Chair)
- Publisher
- University of West Florida Libraries; Argo Scholar Commons
- Format
- pdf
- Number of pages
- 214
- Copyright
- Unpublished work © Diane Darling
- Identifiers
- 99381559333206600
- Academic Unit
- School of Education
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Doctor of Education (EDD)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Education (EDD), University of West Florida