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Subjects

Motivation in education, College students -- United States -- Psychological aspects, Teacher-student relationships, Community and school

Abstract

College enrollment in the United States is higher than it has ever been before. However, there is a strong delineation between students who feel supported and able to use education as a tool and students who do not. The present study aims to understand the impact of sense of community and faculty-student relationships on student success and engagement. This cross-sectional study used quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine sense of community and engagement in 210 undergraduate students. Sense of community, mentorship, university experiences, social intelligence, and demographic variables were analyzed using bivariate correlations, multiple linear regression, t-tests, and thematic content analysis. The research literature in this area supports the notion that higher social intelligence, sense of community and quality of mentoring relationships are all beneficial for long term success in academia and elsewhere; however, there is no published research to date that critically explores the relationship between these three phenomena. Results suggest that sense of community, mentorship, university experiences and social intelligence are important for academic success. Further, results highlight a difference in sense of community between transfer students and non-transfer students. This study suggests the need to examine these primary study variables in greater depth. These findings have ramifications throughout the fields of education and psychology because if we know what factors are needed to support students to use education as a tool, we can help others use this tool wisely to meet both professional and personal goals.

DOI

10.15760/mcnair.2016.3

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/17450

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