Examining the association between therapeutic factors and outcomes of academic enhancement seminars

Abstract

To those who have shared their stories with mefriends, students, clients, and anonymous voices at the other end of the line. I hope to never forget the privilege of listening.iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my co-chairs, Drs. Megan Foley Nicpon and Martin Kivlighan, thank you for your wisdom, guidance, and patience throughout this process. Megan, you have supported and empowered me since I first stepped foot in your office. Thank you for believing in me, advocating for me, and being a role model for me in more ways than one. Martin, your enthusiasm for research is contagious. I am grateful for your optimism and methodological savviness. To all the Counseling Psychology faculty, thank you for lessons that have shaped me personally as well as professionally. My thanks also go to my clinical supervisors over the past six years, particularly Drs. Julie Corkery and Paula Keeton who were so encouraging as I came to the final stages of internship and my dissertation. These past years have been made immeasurably lighter by the support and encouragement of many dear ones, including my cohort, former colleagues who became friends, and friends who have become family. I am deeply grateful to have such kind, thoughtful, funny, tenacious people cheering me on. Thank you to my parents and siblings for your love and seemingly unshakeable belief in my abilities, and to my nieces and nephews -I strive every day to be the person you think I am. My deepest gratitude to Mike, my brilliant, compassionate partner in life, love, and parenting. You've been my ballast through these years, unflinching in your support while also pursuing your own academic goals. It has been a blur of sleepless nights and coffee, yet I would choose it again and again with you. To my little force, Ellen, and my sweet babe, Teddy, nothinginspires productivity like the prospect of more time with you. You are my greatest joy and motivation. iv ABSTRACT Many colleges have devoted institutional resources to retention initiatives, particularly those targeting students who have been placed on academic probation, but assessment of academic enhancement courses for students on academic probation has generally been limited to correlational studies in which the entire intervention serves as the independent variable. This study, guided by that of Kivlighan et al. (2018), applied knowledge of therapeutic factors related to positive outcomes in group psychotherapy to academic enhancement seminars in order to determine whether the same factors might also be associated with positive outcomes, as measured by semester grade point average (GPA) and participants' reported college self-efficacy and perception of the college environment. Ratings of therapeutic factors from 145 first-year college students enrolled in 11 sections of an academic enhancement seminar were modeled as predictors of change in participants' grade-point average (GPA), college self-efficacy, and perception of the college environment. We did not find an association between any of the therapeutic factors and the outcom...