This article presents seven guidelines to direct professional practice aimed toward the improvement of institutional student retention rates. For each of the seven guidelines, specific recommendations to provide direction to the enactment of the focal guideline are described. These seven guidelines spring from empirical studies of campus-based interventions and from recommendations for policy and practice advanced in empirical studies of college student retention.In 2006, The American College Testing Program reported that approximately 48% of students enrolled in two-year colleges departed during their first year and that more than one out of every four students departed during the first year from a four-year college or university. Moreover, these rates varied little between 1983 and 2006. Despite the long history of research on student departure that spans over 75 years (Braxton, 2000), these rates of departure continue to persist. Although the body of research on student departure has greatly increased our understanding of the college student departure process, much work remains to be 377 Ó 2007, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

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