Professional Development and Continuing Education Resources: RETENTION, GUIDED PATHWAYS, STUDENT SUCCESS

Teacher-student relationships (TSR) are an important influence on the student experience at university. Existing research, predominantly with lecturers, highlights that these relationships have academic and affective dimensions. Studies demonstrate good TSR increase student motivation, engagement, and learning. The current study adds a student voice to this topic, focussing on their views of tutoring staff, who undertake much of the face-to-face teaching in universities. The qualitative study followed 19 students through their first year at an Australian university. The students identified four characteristics of a ‘good’ tutor: helpful, caring, likeable, and hands-on. Students talked about multiple benefits of having a good tutor including increased help-seeking, studying harder, more interest in class, and improved well-being and belonging. The importance of the tutor role is underestimated and institutions would do well to better support these valuable staff.

At the heart of every higher education institution are the students, the faculty, and the staff. [...]every effort to improve students' experiences on campus and academic outcomes must include the voices of students, as well as leadership from and intensive engagement with faculty and staff. Some colleges are working to alleviate the resulting "initiative fatigue" by encouraging faculty and staff to lead change initiatives, maintaining clear and regular communication, and tying all strategies together into themes that relate to the colleges strategic goals. * Top-down leadership models can imply that faculty and staff input and expertise are not valued.

For decades researchers have observed the relationship between college students’ social integration, and college persistence and other student success outcomes. With social media having become such an important component of college students’ social lives, many new possibilities to engage students through these media have emerged in recent years.

Based on the presumptions that faculty are critical to student success and that faculty in the community college sector are largely underprepared to serve the diversity of students they encounter, this study sought to examine how community colleges create and sustain their faculty development programs.