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Too many students who begin college do not earn a baccalaureate degree. One promising line of inquiry is research showing links between student engagement in educationally purposeful activities, achievement, persistence and graduation. Student engagement represents both the time and energy students invest in educationally purposeful activities and the effort institutions devote to using effective educational practices. Additional evidence confirming these positive relationships with the current cohort of undergraduate students would give institutional leaders, faculty and staff members, and policy makers more confidence in urging intentional, widespread use of effective educational practices in postsecondary education. The purpose of the Connecting the Dots (CTD) project is to determine the relationships between student engagement as measured by the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and selected measures of success in college for students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds attending different types of four-year colleges and universities.

First, we examined the relationships between NSSE results, pre-college experiences, college grades, and persistence to the second year of study for about 11,000 first-year and senior students at 18 baccalaureate-granting institutions including four Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and three Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Student-level data from NSSE responses, academic transcripts and financial aid information, and ACT/SAT score reports were analyzed to determine the effects of engagement on grades and persistence, controlling for a variety of pre …