Document Type
Report
Publication Date
9-2005
Department
Social Science and Humanities
Abstract
As a product of the community college myself, I have long been interested in the factors that effect student persistence - in what helps a community college student stay in college. As a Parkland faculty member, I have been interested in developing programs and activities that would improve student persistence. Out of this interest, ORN 101 was created and implemented at Parkland in 1992. ORN 101 (renamed PSY 109 in 2004) is an orientation to college course which includes topics such as goal setting, educational planning, and career and personal development. In the fall of 1993, I began my doctoral dissertation researching the possible impact that ORN 101 might have on student persistence. The results of that research indicated that students who successfully completed ORN 101 had modestly higher persistence rates than similar students who did not enroll in ORN 101. In other words, students who completed ORN 101 were more likely to return to college in the subsequent semester than those who didn't take ORN 101. (Walls dissertation on file in the Parkland library.) Ever since the dissertation was completed in 1996, I wanted to return to my research on student persistence at the community college, but other responsibilities took precedence. My sabbatical leave was a useful and profitable experience; it allowed me time to take the research on ORN 101/PSY 109 further and renewed my commitment to the community college student. I would like to thank Parkland for making both the research and the renewal possible.
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Walls, Gina, "Sabbatical Summary Statement" (2005). Sabbaticals. 33.
https://spark.parkland.edu/sabbaticals/33
