ABSTRACT
After the initial studies, University 101 continued to be a laboratory for research on college students. In 1987, a doctoral student, Mark Shanley, who was a senior student affairs officer, proposed to me a dissertation topic that would attempt to measure whether the first-year retention rates in favor of University 101 students would hold up through graduation. Initially, I was very nervous about pursuing this as I did not want to be held accountable for first-year-through-graduation persistence. I was happy to have responsibility for first-to-second-year retention, but there were so many other factors, experiences, and individuals involved in student success after the first year that initially I did not want to pursue this question. However, I soon came to my senses, and I decided to support Shanley’s dissertation research. I concluded if we/I were really doing a good job of getting students started out well in college then we should expect higher graduation rates. And I definitely wanted to know the long-term reality of what we were or were not accomplishing. The findings over three consecutive entering student cohorts were that University 101 students had an overall aggregate higher graduation rate of about 5%. Now this was real confirmation of lasting impact from our efforts in helping students start out successfully in college. And I am proud to know and report that the higher graduation rates of the University 101 participants has been another consistent tradition of the course for 50 years.
