Are You HIP?: How One Latinx Learning Community Integrates Ten High-Impact Practices to Foster Student Success

Abstract

This practice report shares practices from a successful Latinx Studies learning community model at an urban research-intensive university in the Midwestern United States. The learning community model offers a tiered developmental curriculum to support the three different stages of a student’s journey, from enrollment to graduation. The three distinct phases of the learning community model are: a pre-college summer enrichment program, a first- and second-year college scholars program and a third and fourth-year college-to-career component. The model also integrates 10 out of 11 of Kuh’s (2008) high impact practices demonstrated to support student engagement and success for students making a direct transition from high school to university. The authors share gains in student retention and five-year graduation rates as evidence of effectiveness.

Studying Away Post COVID-19 and Beyond: Making High Impact Learning Practices Equitable

“…Study aways promote active learning (Lane et al, 2017), incite cultural competency (Abe-Hiraishi et al, 2018), expose students to our multicultural country, and prepare students with the skills to be leaders in our ever-changing society (Chakraborty & Proctor, 2019). High-impact learning opportunities, such as study away courses, also encourage interpersonal and intrapersonal development and can aid in student retention (Gonzales et al, 2022), can facilitate service-learning components (Engberg et al, 2018), and can incorporate internships (deLusé & Thomas, 2022). Ultimately, study away programs have been proven high-impact learning practices that benefit students' personal, professional, and academic development.…”

Strengthening rural college student career development

“…Literature specifically on rural student participation in experiential learning is scant, however, internship participation rates among first-generation, low-income, and non-dominant student populations are well-researched and consistently lower than their peers in majority categories (Gonzales et al, 2022;Parks-Yancy, 2012;Zilvinskis, 2019). The lived experiences of the practitioners in Cycle 2 confirmed the extant research on lower participation rates for non-dominant populations, and further motivated them to be change agents at their institutions.…”

“…However, despite wide-spread awareness of the benefits of experiential learning, lower participation rates among first-generation, low-income, and non-dominant student populations are well-documented (Gonzales et al, 2022;Parks-Yancy, 2012;Zilvinskis, 2019). Thompson et al (2021) studied internship experiences at a rural historically black college and found that rural participants cited geographic restrictions as well as financial hardships in not being able to live and work in their home communities for the summer.…”