Description
A program at Oakton Community College, the Persistence Project, creates intentional
student-faculty interactions during the critical first six weeks of college and has demonstrated
increased student within-year and year-to-year retention since its inception in spring 2016.
Faculty Project participants commit to holding 15-minute meetings with each student in a
Persistence Project class, learning students’ names as soon as possible, engaging students in a
get-to-know-you peer activity, administering an early student assessment, and providing
constructive feedback. This dissertation is a quasi-experimental study of observational data
from two Oakton cohorts of first-time in-college, traditional-aged students. The study
determined if participation in a Persistence Project class influences retention when using
propensity score analysis to control for student characteristics that are linked to student
retention. The study, framed in Astin’s input-environment-outcome impact model, included 28
covariates and 1,142 students in the fall 2018 cohort and 1,174 in the fall 2019 cohort.
This first statistical analysis of the Persistence Project did not demonstrate that the
Project had a statistically significant influence on within-year or year-to-year retention of firsttime in-college, traditional-aged students at Oakton Community College after using propensity
score matching.
This study adds to the literature of how student-faculty interactions at community
colleges influence student retention. It also provides a foundation for additional statistical studies of the Persistence Project that can continue to evaluate the treatment effects
of the Project on student outcomes.
