Isolating the Impact of Learning Communities and First-Year Residence Halls on First-Year Student Retention and Success

This paper showcases the success of Indiana State University’s Lilly Project to Transform the First-Year Experience in increasing first-year retention and GPA attainment and provides statistically sound and significant evidence that Learning Communities and First-Year Residence Halls played a substantial role in that success. By employing logistical and linear regression techniques, we know that one-quarter of the eightpercentage point increase in retention since 1994 is due to learning communities and that Learning Community participants achieve higher first-semester GPA’s. We know that one-fifth of the increase is due to participation in first-year residence halls and that such participation also increases first-semester GPA’s. Introduction Indiana State University’s Lilly Project to Transform the First-Year Experience began in 1997 with a 5-year $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment. The Endowment’s goal was to increase the educational attainment of Indiana adults and to accomplish this it funded a variety of efforts in the state’s public and private universities. ISU’s strategy to raise graduation rates was to increase first-year retention rates by employing first-year Learning Communities. Simultaneously, ISU’s Residential Life division of its Office of Student Affairs was reforming the housing arrangements for first-year students. Starting from the point in 1994 when the grant application was made, first-year retention rates at ISU have risen from 64% to 72%. This paper reports the results of statistical analysis that isolates the marginal contribution of these reforms to that eight-point increase. Using data from 1999 through 2001 and employing linear and logistic regression techniques it was determined that much of the eight-percentage point increase can be attributed directly to these programmatic endeavors. Specifically, using logistical regression, it was shown that one-quarter of the increase is due to Learning Communities (LCs) alone. Similarly, those same logistical regressions indicated that the creation of special first-year residence halls (FYRH) accounted for one-fifth of the increase. It was also determined using linear regression that these programs increased first semester GPA’s in a statistically and practically significant fashion. LC participants had GPA’s approximately .16 points higher than their equally situated non-LC colleagues and FYRH program participants had GPA’s .11 points higher. Finally to gauge the financial impact of these reforms we noted that the eight-percentage point increase in first-year retention not only translated into additional sophomores, but more juniors and seniors as well. Accounting for the increases in the numbers of students at all levels that result from these retention increases it was determined tha t ISU, with nearly 12,000 students, bills $2.1 million more in tuition annually than it otherwise would have. Considering that these programs cost less than a fifth of that, these reforms are obviously working quite well from a financial standpoint as well.