Date of Award

Spring 5-1-2002

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Leadership

First Advisor

Gregory Ulm

Second Advisor

Eugene Spiess

Third Advisor

Dale Findley

Abstract

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the effects of a mentoring intervention program on retention and grade point average of students at a two-year community college. A specific goal was to determine the group of at-risk students, identified by the College Student Inventory's Dropout Proneness Score, that would benefit the most from a mentoring intervention. The mentoring intervention was part of a retention management system called New Dimensions on the Ivy Tech State CollegeCentral Indiana Region campus. Incoming students take the Assessment of Student for Successful Entry and Transfer test and are placed in developmental courses if needed. The college through New Dimensions gives these incoming students the College Student Inventory. The students' results are analyzed by Noel-Levitz and are returned with a number of scales indicating if students have a high potential to dropout of the institution. One scale that indicates the potential of students to leave is the Dropout Proneness Score and that was the scale used in this study. This study looked at the effects of mentoring and the demographic variables of gender, ethnicity, marital status, and age group on student retention and grade point average. The results indicated that the interaction effect of gender member and mentoring treatment were significant on grade point average. Age group had a significant effect on retention and age group had a significant effect on grade point average. The researcher took these significant effects and then controlled with an Analysis of Covariance for the Dropout Proneness Score. The only significant effects were age group on retention and age group on GPA. In this study Dropout Proneness Score cou]d not predict either retention or grade point average.

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