Integrated and Comprehensive Student Support Programs Aimed at Historically Underserved Students: Creating a Unified Community of Support

Abstract

While numerous support programs have evolved to support underrepresented students in higher education, these programs are often disconnected from the curriculum and only target one area of student need. Emerging research indicates that integrated programs which combine multiple curricular and co-curricular supports may be a more effective way to support historically underserved students. In this article, we report on one such integrated program in the United States, CSU STEM Collaboratives. We describe how integrated programs benefit students as well as the broader campus community by creating a unified community of support that fosters collaboration and connection.

1 Introduction

One of the most significant challenges facing higher education worldwide is how to increase success of the more diverse and historically underserved students now matriculating to colleges and universities. In some countries this is low-income students, in others ethnic minorities, and others women, yet institutions around the world struggle with determining the best methods to support these students so that they graduate. More so than any time in the past, first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented minority students are entering higher education worldwide (Aud, Fox, and Kewal Ramani 2010; Chesters and Watson 2013; Pascarella et al. 2004; Renn and Reason 2013; Seidman 2005; Zhu 2010). Students coming to campuses now have very different needs than the more privileged students of the past. For example, first-generation or low-income students often need support to navigate college policies and bureaucracies, study effectively, make sense of financial aid and gain general financial literacy, and build relationships with faculty. Despite a recognition of their different needs, the completion rates of these underrepresented populations remain significantly behind majority and traditionally served student populations (Aud, Fox, and Kewal Ramani 2010; Cahalan and Perna, 2015; Chesters and Watson 2013; DeAngelo et al. 2011; Seidman 2005; Zhu 2010). The first year of college is where the most attrition occurs, and creating college transition programs to boost success has been a major effort in the last few decades (Engle and Tinto 2008; Goodman and Pascarella 2006; King 2009; Perna et al. 2008).

Governments, policymakers, foundations, not-for -profit organizations (e.g. Education Trust), and colleges and universities themselves have experimented with a plethora of interventions to improve success for underrepresented and underserved students (Douglas and Attewell 2014; Engle and Tinto 2008; Kezar 2000; Purdie and Rosser 2011; Sablan 2014; Swanson, Vaughan, and Wilkinson, 2017; U.S. Department of Education 2015). Most interventions focus on a single issue or a single area of students’ needs. For example, in the Unites States first-year experience courses focus on providing college knowledge; undergraduate research programs aim to provide students with more direct contact with faculty and mentoring; and Supplemental Instruction (SI) supports student academic progress in individual courses (Tsui 2007). In China, the Preparatory Education for Ethnic Minorities (PEEM) program offers specific courses and curricula for ethnic and linguistic minorities designed to improve academic performance (Hu and Liu 2017). These programs all offer a single solution to what is a complex, multi-faceted problem. Even though these and other similar efforts have been in place for several decades, colleges and universities have made little progress in improving the transition to college, and retention rates for these at-risk populations remains low (Aud, Fox, and Kewal Ramani 2010; Cahalan and Perna 2015; Chesters and Watson 2013; DeAngelo et al. 2011; Mayhew et al. 2016; Seidman 2005; Zhu 2010).

While there have been numerous interventions designed to support underrepresented student populations, few programs are comprehensive or connect existing interventions in an integrated approach, incorporating both curricular innovation and out-of-class support for first-year students. Such a comprehensive or integrated program approach has potentially synergistic effects for student success. Recent research in the United States has demonstrated the value of comprehensive and integrated programs that combine several interventions to create a seamless learning environment for supporting students academically, socially, and personally (Maton, et al. 2009; Maton, Hrabowski, and Schmitt 2000; Naylor, Baik, and James 2013; Nelson et al. 2012; Perna and Jones, 2013). Additionally, studies of first-year transition programs in Australia that have adopted a more holistic approach to student support, providing academic, social and emotional support for students as they enter and begin college, demonstrate improved success rates for students (Nelson et al. 2012; Naylor, Baik, and James 2013).

In the United States, Tinto (2012) has been one of the most vocal proponents of such holistic or integrated programs; he calls for campuses to halt the creation of myriad disconnected programs, to reevaluate their support programs, and to create a more connected and aligned environment of student support. These integrated programs developed from research on existing uncoordinated student support efforts. Tinto (2012, 5) notes, “too often, institutions invest in a laundry list of actions, one disconnected from another. The result is an uncoordinated patchwork of actions whose impact on student retention is less than it could or should be.” As Tinto suggests, students receive many un-coordinated interventions and research is demonstrating that these disconnected programs are not improving retention, success, or graduation in meaningful ways (Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins 2015; Tinto 2012). These insights are particularly important for other countries that have not yet created a series of disconnected support programs as is the case in the United States; higher education stakeholders in these countries can use these lessons to be planful and approach college transition programs from the start in an integrated and comprehensive manner.

In this article, we review research on integrated and comprehensive college transition programs for underserved students, demonstrating how these programs are making progress to improve retention rates and develop important psychosocial outcomes associated with persistence. Comprehensive programs offer a broad range of supports within a single program, and integrated programs link several existing supports on campus so that they essentially become a comprehensive support program. We also distill findings from a research study on a new integrated, comprehensive program in the United States that we evaluated over the last 3 years: the CSU Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Collaboratives program at the California State University system. The value of this specific study is that it examined integrated programs that had been scaled to thousands of students across many different typical university campuses. Because much of prior research had focused on smaller and specialized programs and atypical campuses the generalizability of findings from existing literature was less clear. Our study helps to fill this gap by demonstrating that these findings of positive impact can be found at scale with typical universities. We describe how integration benefits both students and organizations and share lessons that higher education stakeholders across the world can use to rethink the ways in which they support underrepresented students as they transition to college.

2 Literature on Integrated Programs: Benefits of Integrated and Comprehensive Programs

There is a growing body of evaluative work that demonstrates the efficacy of integrated and comprehensive programs. In the United States, these programs include TRIO/Student Support Services (SSS), Accelerated Study in Associate Program (ASAP) at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), as well as many smaller boutique programs (Kolenovic, Linderman, and Karp 2013; Maton, Hrabowski, and Schmidt 2000; Myers 2003; Nava 2010; Tsui 2007). They include such interventions as tutoring, bridge programs, intensive advising, mentoring, cohort models, enrichment activities, and undergraduate research opportunities, connected and integrated so that participating students have exposure to multiple touch points of support. Many of these programs specifically target low-income, first-generation, or underrepresented minority students.

Students who participated in TRIO/SSS, CUNY ASAP, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, and other smaller boutique programs had higher retention and graduation rates than their peers (Chaney 2010; Chaney et al. 1998; Hrabowski and Maton 1995; Kolenovic, Linderman, and Karp 2013; Maton et al. 2009; Maton, Hrabowski, and Schmidt 2000; Muraskin 1997; Nava 2010; Ting, Grant, and Plenert 2000; Toven-Lindsey et al. 2015; Tsui 2007). In addition to higher retention and graduation rates, students who participated in integrated programs also experienced higher levels of academic and social integration (Nava 2010), higher first-year Grade Point Averages (GPA), and higher grades in STEM courses than their non-participating peers (Hrabowski and Maton 1995; Maton, Hrabowski, and Schmidt 2000). Next we detail several of these programs and their specific findings.

The Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) for community college students at the City University of New York (CUNY) is designed to link key interventions such as intensive academic advising, consolidated course scheduling, tutoring and support services, and required full-time enrollment in a cohort model (Kolenovic, Linderman, and Karp, 2013). A primary goal of ASAP is to move students quickly toward a degree. Studies of the program utilizing longitudinal data demonstrate that after 2 years, 30% of ASAP students had earned a degree, while only 11% of comparison-group students had done so (Kolenovic, Linderman, and Karp 2013). Three years after enrollment, this difference in graduation rates remained, with 55% of ASAP students having earned an associate’s degree as compared with 25% of comparison-group students. ASAP’s use of a control group and experimental design are an exception in the few existing studies of integrated programs. Further, Kolenvic and colleagues (2013) studied ASAP when it was serving over 1100 students at six CUNY institutions, making it one of the largest scaled integrated programs studied to date. Kolenovic and colleagues’ (2013) study of CUNY ASAP had a particularly strong experimental design and used a randomized control group, so their findings of increased retention and graduation rates are especially compelling. The positive results from studies of ASAP have led to the emergence of the structured pathways direction supported by organizations like the Bill & Melinda Gates and Lumina Foundations, aimed at creating the alignment and structured experience Bailey and colleagues (2015) and Tinto (2012) suggest.

There are also an increasing number of programs specifically targeting STEM students, with studies demonstrating a positive impact of such interventions (Ting, Grant, and Plenert, 2000; Toven-Lindsey et al. 2015). STEM programs are unique in that they may include attention to math, undergraduate research, and making science more relevant to first-generation students that may have had less exposure to science (PCAST 2012; Tsui 2007). Studies of smaller boutique programs in STEM are the most prevalent studies available and show promising results, despite their small sample sizes (Ting, Grant, and Plenart 2000; Toven-Lindsey et al. 2015). For example, Reyes, Anderson-Rowland, and McCartney’s (1998) study showed that students who participated in engineering course improvements linked to a summer bridge program were retained more than the control group.

The best-documented integrated program in STEM is the Meyerhoff Scholars Program that provides a summer bridge program, study groups, faculty and peer mentoring, advising support, and undergraduate research (Maton et al. 2009). The Meyerhoff Scholars Program has been found to have a positive impact on students on measures ranging from higher overall first-year GPAs to higher grades in STEM courses and higher degree completion rates (Hrabowski and Maton 1995; Maton, Hrabowski, and Schmitt 2000). Additionally, Meyerhoff students were more likely to attend STEM PhD programs than comparison group students. The Meyerhoff students did not have higher SAT scores or high school GPAs than comparison students, suggesting that their higher level of STEM PhD pursuit was not due to greater pre-college preparation or capability (Maton et al. 2009). It has been noted as a unique case, however, as the college president developed it and is actively involved in the program.

Despite these promising results, many of the programs studied are often very small in scale or in special settings, such as the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, in which the college president developed and is actively involved in the program, or CUNY ASAP, which is specific to community college settings. While several of the studies have strong research designs, their findings may not be as transferable to other institutional settings due to their special circumstances. Thus, while evaluations of integrated programs in higher education show promising results, our knowledge base remains limited. Our study of the CSU STEM Collaboratives examined integrated programs at scale among thousands of students at large, typical university campuses without any special resources or support outside of the initial start-up grant. Further, no published studies have yet investigated whether there are additional benefits that might accrue to the broader campus community as a result of working in these new ways.

3 CSU STEM Collaboratives: An Exploration of a Comprehensive, Integrated Program

In this section, we review emerging findings from our study of a comprehensive college transition program in the United States—the California State University (CSU) STEM Collaboratives Initiative—that is much larger scale and in more typical university settings. As we described in the literature review, one of the challenges with existing research is that it profiles programs that were unique due to extraordinary leadership e.g., the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, or small boutique programs that have not been developed to scale and are thus less transferable for a typical institution aiming to make significant changes to the ways in which it supports students. The STEM Collaboratives program is large in scale (serving thousands of students at eight institutions) and was implemented at institutions without any unique mission, history or background, making the findings much more transferable than those of previous studies. We discuss the benefits of the program for both students and broader campus communities.

3.1 CSU STEM Collaboratives

The CSU STEM Collaboratives initiative combines summer bridge programs, first-year experience courses, and revised introductory STEM courses into an integrated programmatic effort to support several thousand underrepresented, low-income and first-generation students in the California State University (CSU) system. The CSU study involved evaluation on each of eight (Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Humboldt, Los Angeles, Pomona) participating campuses of outcomes for two cohorts of students, following them each for two years. Qualitative data were collected on implementation of programs, including focus groups, interviews, and written quarterly reports.

The project’s aims were to encourage campuses to rethink the ways in which they were supporting their first-year students in STEM, with an emphasis on supporting students from underrepresented backgrounds by integrating interventions for greater impact. The idea was to create a comprehensive program that would support students inside the classroom (through pedagogical reform of introductory/gateway STEM courses) and outside of the classroom (through mentoring, advising, tutoring, or other support programs); these supports would begin in the summer and continue throughout students’ freshman year. The first year was targeted because many students leave STEM in the first year and few STEM interventions have previously been aimed at the first year. While these individual reforms (course redesign, mentoring/advising/tutoring programs, summer experiences) existed in various iterations and pockets at the CSU campuses, they had not been intentionally linked or integrated on multiple campuses (outside of small boutique programs) to create a comprehensive environment of support for STEM students in their first year. Also, existing support programs often had a general student success aim and were not targeted to the specific needs of STEM students. Through linking several high-impact practices aimed at supporting students’ growth and development, the STEM Collaboratives program could target the complex array of factors pushing students, particularly underrepresented students, out of STEM fields.

4 Value of the Intervention for Students

CSU campuses that successfully integrated their programs saw numerous positive outcomes for students. These positive outcomes included higher persistence rates, increased retention in STEM, higher GPAs, higher grades and higher pass rates in STEM courses, improvements in sense of belonging and self-efficacy, and higher levels of engagement in campus activities and supports. 1 For example, overall persistence rates were higher for STEM Collaboratives students at Fresno, Fullerton, and Humboldt. These improvements ranged from modest (2-3 percentage points higher at Fresno) to substantial (12 percentage points higher at Humboldt). In addition to these three campuses, Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, and CSULA all saw increased retention in STEM for participating students. For example, participants at Channel Islands were 7% more likely to be retained in STEM than non-participants and Dominguez Hills saw STEM retention rates that were 4 percentage points higher for participants. Fullerton, Fresno, East Bay, Humboldt, and CSULA saw double-digit percentage point increases in STEM retention for participants. Humboldt and CSULA both had higher overall GPAs for their participating students when compared to non-participants. Participants at East Bay and CSULA had higher STEM GPAs than non-participants. And pass rates in STEM courses were markedly higher for participants at Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, and Humboldt. Participants at Humboldt experienced a greater sense of belonging on campus than non-participants as a result of their experiences in the program. Students at Pomona noted higher levels of self-efficacy as a result of participating in the program. Engagement with campus activities or resources was higher for participating students at Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, Fresno, Fullerton, Humboldt, and CSULA. At East Bay, biology content knowledge increased for participants over the course of the year. At Fresno, students attained proficiency in key critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills. More participants at Fullerton earned 24 credits in their first year than non-participants. And at CSULA, participating students took more math and science courses in their first year than non-participants, putting them on track for an on-time graduation.

In investigating the reasons why these integrated programs were beneficial for students, we found that the specific interventions themselves matter less than the integration of multiple support programs. Various types of interventions or high-impact practices (HIPs) 2 could be effective for students. For example, at a primarily commuter campus, a full-time, traditional summer bridge program may not be the most effective intervention, as their students are more likely to have to work over the summer and may not be able to commit to the time required for a traditional summer bridge program. These students may benefit more from a shorter summer program or from more interventions in their classes. But having multiple, connected HIPs is beneficial, regardless of the type.

The value of integrated programs arises from creating a unified community of support that is able to break the typically negative climate that many first-generation, low-income, and URM students face in higher education. In this section, we first describe the ways in which the STEM Collaboratives programs were able to improve that climate for first-year students. We then describe the value of cohorting, in that students had a community of peers going through similar experiences together and supporting one another. And third, we discuss the more cohesive, holistic academic experience that students had as a result of participating in the program.

First, the unified community of support appeared to break down the negative culture that students, especially those from historically underrepresented groups, experienced in their courses. Students in the STEM Collaboratives programs were able to develop more realistic expectations for their courses as a result of participating in summer programs and having exposure to older peers who had already taken these courses. Students got to know their older near peers (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) through peer mentoring programs, peer-led team-learning (PLTL), or Supplemental Instruction (SI). These mentors helped them better understand the differences between high school and college courses, as well as expectations from faculty for study time and classroom engagement and behavior. Students also remarked across nearly all the campuses on the value of getting to know their faculty members better. Outside-of-class experiences, such as summer programs or research trips, helped students get to know faculty as people rather than just as authority figures or gatekeepers to knowledge and success. These relationships with faculty members also motivated students to be more engaged in their classes and made them more comfortable asking questions or admitting when something confused them. Additionally, students had lower test anxiety and developed better study habits as a result of the connected interventions. All these experiences led to a more positive experience for students in the STEM Collaboratives programs.

Second, cohorting itself seemed to promote separate, additional positive outcomes for students. Cohorting students into the same shared experiences and courses developed a strong sense of belonging for students. Cohorting students into the same courses and co-curricular activities also led students to support each other academically by creating study groups. This cohort mentality continued even after the first year when formal STEM Collaboratives experiences had finished; students on residential campuses decided to live together in their second year, and students across many of the campuses tried to take classes together of their own accord.

Finally, in addition to benefitting from this unified community of support, students developed a broader view of education and of their future due to the holistic content and curricular connections that were a part of the STEM Collaboratives program. Rather than a typical freshman year experience in which course content is not thematically or intentionally connected, many STEM Collaboratives programs had a theme to connect courses and extra—and co-curricular experiences. What is important to note is the value that integration had in connecting typically disparate experiences and creating a cohesive experience for students. Students we interviewed reported that they were able to understand the connections between different courses or different disciplines as a result of the intentional integration of content. They also developed a better understanding of various majors and career options as a result of participating in the program. As a result of their participation, students experience a more cohesive, coherent educational program and build relationships with peers, faculty and staff. This study indicates that these new ways of organizing student support have positive impacts on students’ academic, social, and personal success.

5 Value of Programs for Campus Communities

In addition to creating benefits for students’ experience and performance, integrated programs have benefits for campus communities, as well. By breaking down the traditional silos that separate academic departments and that keep academic affairs and student support functions isolated from one another, integrated programs can benefit organizations and the faculty and staff who work within them (Jacoby and Dean 2010; Nairn 2013; Ozga 2007; Plank et al. 2011). In this section, we explore some of the organizational benefits of integrated programs, based on evidence from the CSU STEM Collaboratives project.

Four major organizational benefits resulted from the process of integrating across academic and student support functions: improved relationships, increased learning about the work of others on campus and about students, better experiences with teaching, and new types of joint work. Just as integration created a unified community of support for students, in which students felt that everyone on campus was working together to ensure their success, it also created such a community of support for faculty and staff. As a result of the organizational benefits of integration, faculty and staff created a community of support for students but also for one another, in which they reinforced each other’s work, collaborated, and created templates for new ways of working on campus.

First, as a result of building programs with multiple integrated components, campuses saw improved relationships across academic departments and with student affairs and other administrative units. These strengthened relationships laid the foundation for collaboration across campus. The connections that faculty members built helped create a more seamless academic experience for students, as faculty collaborated to help students who were struggling. At many campuses, professors we interviewed noted that this initiative was an opportunity to work closely together for the first time. The work of integrating courses and support programs, which required regular meetings and frequent communication, allowed faculty to build or strengthen relationships and start to collaborate to create change on campus. These improved relationships allowed faculty to better support students; for example, one faculty member noted:

It is nice when students come and they’re like … “I’m having these problems in math.” I can walk down and say, “Hey, math, can you talk to [this student].” Just being able to walk down and be like, “I can bring you to the person who can answer these questions”—that is really nice.

Campuses also benefitted from stronger relationships that developed between faculty and student affairs staff, which led to more aligned support for students and greater collaboration across the academic affairs/student affairs divide.

All these relationships led to learning about the work of others on campus, generating a stronger sense of mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s work. This learning gave team members a better understanding of how the campus works and enabled them to better navigate many of the logistical challenges they faced in implementing their programs. Team members learned about the work of other faculty members and student affairs staff, the experiences of their students, and the policies and practices needed to best support students. First, STEM Collaboratives faculty learned about courses taught by other faculty, specifically about what was being taught and how. For example, in conversations about linking courses, faculty in math and computer science at one campus identified several important math concepts that were not being taught in either of their introductory classes. Campuses were able to make needed pedagogical changes as a result of what they learned, such as filling in these curricular gaps or adding additional review of some tricky concepts. Next, participating faculty members learned about the work that student affairs staff do, developing greater appreciation for their unique contribution and knowledge. Both faculty members and student affairs staff mentioned that they now better understand the pressures and demands that the other group faces in their role, as well as the importance and value of their work. One faculty member noted how his learning about student affairs work changed his perceptions:

I have a much greater respect for many of the student support services and the value and the importance of it in student success. Some of that comes from the data (on their programs increasing student success) … and … some is reflected anecdotally (through conversations about their value)—it’s been reflected in multiple ways by multiple individuals.

A student affairs staff member also described her learning about faculty work:

I think we all make assumptions about others’ roles and what we do and what our jobs are and I think being able to have conversations about those things and going, “Oh, wow, I had no idea faculty had to do all of those things or had all of those expectations … it’s really valuable.

Each group now has a stronger appreciation for the other’s work as a result. STEM Collaboratives faculty also learned a lot more about students—the complexity of their lives and the challenges they face—as a result of the relationships they built across campus. Additionally, teams learned about the types of institutional supports and practices needed to better support students in STEM.

The STEM Collaboratives program also facilitated better experiences for faculty in courses and with students. For example, at one campus faculty noted that it was more rewarding to teach first-semester courses because students were more engaged from the beginning as a result of the community they built in their summer experiences and the confidence they gained from having a supportive group of peers, faculty, and staff. To that end, because of the summer experiences, faculty were able to build connections with students earlier than usual, allowing them to jump right into learning new material in the fall semester rather than spending weeks building rapport. Getting this early exposure to more senior professors, which would not normally happen until much later in their college career, helped students and faculty feel more comfortable with one another. Participating in various aspects of the integrated program also led to higher morale among faculty; they got to know students better, teaching became more enjoyable, and at campuses with theme-based programs faculty were energized by the theme, as well.

As a result of stronger relationships, learning, and improved experiences, faculty and staff embarked upon new joint work that would not have happened before the program. First, teams across several campuses expressed more interest in undertaking professional development across STEM fields. Additionally, some teams are embarking upon additional joint work with colleagues outside of the STEM Collaboratives team, such as active learning or course redesign efforts. The project also led campus teams to rethink or re-examine broader campus policies related to student success, such as orientation. Finally, teams are collaborating with partners across their campuses to submit new grants or undertake additional work in STEM and in other disciplines. At one campus, for example, two new theme-based learning communities have evolved as a result of the success of the original STEM Collaboratives program. One faculty member described the new ways that she was working with colleagues in other departments:

I think seeing the … model of how faculty and university staff work together has been helpful in me thinking about who are the people on campus that I should be partnering with? And I’ve been doing a lot of things in one class with the academic career and advising center and I’m, like, thinking like, oh, maybe we should try to apply for funding together and just kind of shifting the framework of how I think about my work and how—like what it takes to move the needle if you’re trying to get something done with students.

Participants across all campuses remarked that these new initiatives would not have happened without their experiences creating and implementing an integrated program.

Finally, relationships, learning and mutual respect, better experiences for faculty, and joint work all facilitated the development of a unified community of support among faculty and staff on the CSU campuses. Unified communities of support brought faculty and staff together to pursue the same goal of supporting STEM student success both inside and outside the classroom. Unified communities of support incorporate knowledge from student affairs staff and STEM faculty, include multiple touch points of support for students both inside and outside the classroom, and are predicated on increased learning, strong relationships, and a sense of community. They are also characterized by a sense of shared responsibility for student success. One faculty member described the experience in this way:

The narrative becomes, this is not an EOP student….. this is not a Chemistry student. This is a [STEM Collaboratives] student. A [STEM Collaboratives] student is—it’s a whole bunch of majors….. that group of students, that cohort, now is not associated with an academic or a student support service unit. It spans multiple academic units and student support service units. So, it forces the leaders of all of those to have ownership for that community and then to speak to each other accordingly.

This shared sense of ownership was a critical facilitator that helped faculty and staff work together effectively and create a community of support. The unified community was felt and experienced by students (as we described above), who developed strong relationships with each other, older peers, faculty, and staff and built the sense of belonging and confidence necessary to succeed in their first year as STEM majors—see Figure 1.

6 Implications and Conclusion

As access to higher education expands around the world, colleges and universities are increasingly grappling with the best ways to support students from a broader variety of backgrounds as they transition to college. Evidence from the CSU STEM Collaboratives shows that integrated or comprehensive programs have strong potential for supporting underrepresented students; they benefit students themselves, as well as faculty, staff, and broader campus communities. Similar to previous research on integrated programs, this study found benefits for students in terms of: higher persistence rates; increased retention in STEM; higher grade point averages; higher pass rates in STEM courses; improvements in sense of belonging and self-efficacy; and higher levels of engagement in campus activities and supports. This study is the first to examine the impact of integrated programs on psychosocial outcomes such as sense of belonging and academic self-efficacy, which have been strongly linked to retention and graduation (Tinto, 2011). These findings are particularly important as this is one of the first studies to test these outcomes across a large-scale program across multiple institutions. Previous studies have been of smaller programs, pilot programs, or on campuses with unique structures, missions, or leadership.

FIGURE 1

Unified Community of Support

This study also identifies why such comprehensive programs support student success: they build a unified community of support across academic and student affairs that enhances students’ experience by providing connected support systems that integrate previously disparate areas of staff and faculty knowledge in service of student success. Previous research has focused exclusively on impacts of integrated programs using primarily quantitative methods but has not been able to demonstrate why programs obtain these positive outcomes; our mixed methods study allowed us to explore more deeply the mechanisms that contributed to positive outcomes for students, faculty, and staff. Understanding these underlying mechanisms provides better guidance for practitioners implementing such programs, for example in knowing that they should focus on building connections across units such as academic and student affairs, as it is these connections that are responsible for the organizational improvements that support student success.

Our larger study of the project also examined challenges in implementing these type of programs and identified many issues ranging from difficulty among different units collaborating, additional workload, needed policy changes to make integrated programs possible, and issues around poor program design that led to difficulties (see authors). 3 The advantages and benefits of such programs are important to document as campuses, particularly large institutions, often have difficulty in implementing such complex programs.

As higher education stakeholders around the world grapple with the best ways to support underrepresented students, integrated programs like the CSU STEM Collaboratives represent a promising approach. Our study identifies the benefits that accrue to students and the broader campus community as a result of undertaking this type of collaborative and integrative work, in which students are supported by multiple connected interventions. It also identifies specific features of such programs, as well as the planning and implementation processes, that facilitate success. Campus, system, and government leaders can use these findings to rethink the ways in which they are structuring and implementing support programs for underrepresented students.