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Improving retention by mentoring and tutoring freshmen students

In today's competitive global economy, six out of every ten jobs require some undergraduate college education and training. College retention therefore has long been the focus of research in education. The relationship between students and institutional characteristics, college graduation and retention rates has been a frequent topic in the academic literature. In order to increase the proportion of college graduates in the U.S., we must enable a greater percentage of our college-age population to enroll in bachelors or associates education (i.e. enrollment) and complete a degree in a timely fashion (i.e graduation and retention). Although we have made significant advances in our college graduation rates, improvement still is needed in our college retention rates. In this paper we address one cost-effective approach of improving retention in public four year colleges. This paper presents a successful practice at our college wherein senior students provide mentoring and tutoring for freshmen students. It has demonstrated improvement of retention as well as the performance of the freshmen. This work was funded by Perkins Grant.