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Although the topic of student participation in mathematics has received attention in the higher education literature [for example, 1, 4, 14, 36], most such studies involve the analysis of trends and national data sets. Despite calls for a higher education research agenda that places greater emphasis on learning in college classrooms [5, 29, 30], few studies examine the phenomenon from the perspective of a specific campus or course setting. In particular, few analyses exist of factors that relate to student success in remedial collegelevel mathematics courses. Such courses, intended to prepare students with weak mathematics backgrounds for more advanced mathematics courses, are common on university campuses. Unfortunately, fewer than half the students who take these courses are successful on their first attempt [13], and a disproportionately high percentage of those who fail are women and minorities [28 …