Student Success Factors: Self-reported Indicators of Success for Minority Students on the VPAA List and President’s List

Sharon Squires and Bertha Thomas

Contemporary research on retention has found that students’ self-perceptions of the campus environment, social integration, residency and self-motivation are all important factors in students’ academic success.  This project proposes to examine these factors and others in academically successful minority students on campus.  Retention research on minorities often focuses on failure factors, such as prior preparation, low test scores, and family disadvantage to understand the mechanisms that encourage dropping out.  Often successful students are ignored.  In our effort to focus on the causes of dropping out, we often neglect the causes of retention and ultimately graduation.  Although contemporary work provides valuable information, it doesn’t present the entire picture of minority experiences on university campuses.  This project intends to address the issue of retention from a success mode.  Bourne-Bow (2000) notes that for Black students, strong academic backgrounds are not a guarantee of university completion.  According to Bourne-Bowe, “African heritage students with strong academic backgrounds drop out at rates higher than those of their less prepared European heritage counterparts.”  These findings indicate that there may be several success variables for minority students, which transcends simple academic performance.  Understanding the multitude of factors that characterize successful minority students who choose to complete the educational process is an important first step in deciphering this problem.