Employing Rendón’s theory of validation, the validating elements in Community College Puente are identified. Implications for promoting access, use of involvement and validation theory, and employment of learning theory for nontraditional student populations are presented.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify those factors that contribute to the forward transfer of Latino community college students. This purpose was accomplished by using qualitative methods to better understand what factors students, counselors, and administrators believed contributed favorably to the forward transfer of Latino students from a public community college to […]

The concept of fitting in at a particular college has been linked to student persistence. Studies have identified habitus and cultural capital, psychosocial factors associated with a student’s fit at a particular institution. This study examined the dimensions of precollege psychosocial factors, determined the extent to which those factors were reflected in students’ college choices, […]

This study reported in this article examined the transfer process for Latina/o students at Esperanza Community College. Esperanza is one of the 108 community colleges in California with one of the largest concentrations of Latina/o students. In California, 42 out of every 100 Latina/o public high school graduates pursue some form of higher education. For […]

This article reports the special efforts of the largest community college district in the country to assist its largest ethnic group to succeed. The Los Angeles Community College District consists of nine campuses; the Latino student population ranges from 22–75 percent of the total number of students. In this article, using questionnaire data from the […]

The community college has historically functioned as a primary access point to postsecondary education for Latino students. This study, an investigation conducted through an analysis of the Transfer and Retention of Urban Community College Students (TRUCCS) project, focuses on Latino students enrolled in urban “minority-majority” community colleges, where Latino students have a high representation. The […]

This article reports barriers to transfer from the community college to bachelor’s degree—granting institutions encountered by Hispanic students in the Dallas County Community College District. These Hispanic students were enrolled in a cultural studies course preparing them to transfer. Ethnographic methods—principally participant observation of the students and their families, interviews, and case studies—were used to […]

The objective of this study is to determine whether Hispanic students have a lower chance of earning a bachelor’s degree (B.A.) if they transfer from a community college.

This study examined the impact of a set of theoretically-derived predictor variables on the persistence and transfer of Hispanic community college students. Early models of student persistence have been validated primarily among 4-year college students. While the constructs have been well-established, the relationships of those relevant factors remain unexamined among community college transfer students, and […]

This study examines the influence of a conceptually valid mentoring experience on community college students’ persistence decisions. Participants were selected from a random sample of core courses offered in the fall of 2006 at a community college in the south-central area of the United States (n = 320). Results of the structural equation modeling analysis […]

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In most Western countries where English is the medium of instruction, there is a substantial gap in student success between immigrant English as a second language (ESL) students and non‐ESL students. In the United States, this situation has been observed in particular with Latino ESL students. This article describes a longitudinal study of two cohorts […]

This article examines the factors that affect Latinos’ enrollment in community colleges that are Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs). Compared with community colleges that are not HSIs, HSI community colleges are serving students at greater risk for not completing college. Latinos who are enrolled in community college HSIs, compared with their counterparts not in HSIs, are more […]

The purpose of this correlational research was to examine the extent to which community college students’ experiences with validation by faculty (Rendon, 1994, 2002) predicted: (a) their sense of integration, and (b) their intent to persist. The research was designed as an elaboration of constructs within Tinto’s (1993) Longitudinal Model of Institutional Departure. Four sub-constructs […]

This case study examines why 2-year colleges struggle to increase the racial diversity of their faculty. Through interrogating hiring procedures and identifying reasonable expectations for diversity within a college faculty, ethical dilemmas and practical implications of efforts to increase the hiring of faculty members of color emerge.

This study examines how interactions with institutional agents (faculty and academic counselors) and select student support programs influence success (i.e., grade point average) and intentions to persist to degree completion for Latino/a community college students. Using social capital theory and college impact models, the study controls for the effects of select pre-college student characteristics, transition-to-college […]

The purpose of this study is to understand how different kinds of advising activities during the first three weeks for community college students who enroll for the first time relate to their intentions to re-enroll.

In this study we investigated the extent to which faculty interaction contributed to Latina/o student perceptions of their learning, using a sample of 10,071 Latina/o students who took the Community College Survey of Student Engagement. Findings were disaggregated for men and women, but results were quite similar between the 2 groups. Frequent high-quality interaction with […]

Grounded in the academic momentum framework, this study explores course-completion patterns across the first two semesters of college among 1668 first-time students beginning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs or courses at public 2-year colleges in a Midwestern state, as well as factors predicting the persistence or changes in these patterns. We use […]