Using Nsse Data To Evaluate The Association Between Student Engagement And Retention At A Maryland Hbcu

Undergraduate retention and student engagement are two problems faced by most colleges and universities. Amid a more than adequate body of research into these phenomena, the possible relationship between student engagement and first-year retention at HBCUs appears to be an understudied phenomenon. The researcher used ex post facto data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to isolate three of the five NSSE benchmarks as independent variables: Level of Academic Challenge (LAC), Active and Collaborative Learning (ACL), and Student-faculty Interaction (SFI), to determine if they had any influence on the dependent variable of retention to Year Two at Mid-Atlantic State University. Kuh's Theory of Student Engagement (2001) provided the theoretical framework for the study. Data from Cohorts 2007, 2009, and 2011 (N = 474) at Mid-Atlantic University, a public HBCU, were analyzed inferentially using the binary logistic regression function in the SPSS statistical software package. The results were that statistically significant relationships existed between LAC and retention and between SFI and retention. The full statistical model of LAC, ACL, and SFI was also statistically significant in predicting retention for the 2007 cohort. This study adds to the body of literature concerning student engagement at HBCUs, with recommendations for future research and professional practice provided.