Disturbingly, despite all this supporting research, the frequency of faculty-student contact outside the classroom is decreasing nationally in higher education because faculty are spending more of their non-teaching time in the pursuit of research and publication, leaving out-of-class contact with undergraduates to student affairs? staff.
Attached below is a document which contains a synthesis of empirical evidence supporting the aforementioned positive outcomes of student-factuly contact, plus a short series of institutional self-assessment questions designed to evaluate campus commitment to promoting faculty interaction with students outside the classroom.
THE CASE FOR FACULTY-STUDENT CONTACT OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM
Joe Cuseo
Research has revealed that students' collegiate success is influenced heavily by the quality and quantity of student-faculty interaction outside the classroom. Alexander Astin gathered longitudinal data on 200,000 students in 300 institutions of all types and found that:
Student-faculty interaction has a stronger relationship to student satisfaction with the college experience than any other variable . . . [and] any student characteristic or institutional characteristic. Students who interact frequently with faculty are more satisfied with all aspects of their institutional experience, including student friendships, variety of courses, intellectual environment, and even administration of the institution" (1977, pp. 223 & 233).
Student-faculty contact outside the classroom has also been found to be positively associated with (a) academic achievement (Astin & Panos, 1969; Centra & Rock, 1970; Pascarella, 1980) (b) personal and intellectual development (Endo & Harpel, 1982; Lacy, 1978; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1978), and (c) critical thinking (Wilson, 1975). Similar positive correlations between frequency of student-faculty contact and cognitive growth have been reported for transfer students (Volkwein, King and Terenzini, 1986).
In addition, there is abundant evidence that informal student-faculty contact outside the classroom correlates positively with student retention (Bean, 1981; Pascarella 1980; Pascarella & Terenzini 1979, Terenzini & Pascarella, 1977, 1978).
On the basis of his extensive consulting experiences with colleges interested in promoting student retention, Lee Noel (1978) reports the following observation:
It is increasingly apparent that the most important features of a "staying" environment relate to the instructional faculty. Students make judgments about their academic experience on the basis of such factors as quality of instruction, freedom to contact faculty for consultation, availability of faculty for consultation, and faculty involvement outside the classroom (pp. 96-97).
In a comprehensive review of the research literature, Vince Tinto reached a similar conclusion: "Institutions with low rates of student retention are those in which students generally report low rates of student-faculty contact. Conversely, institutions with high rates of retention are most frequently those which are marked by relatively high rates of such interactions" (1987, p. 66).
Informal out-of-class contacts between faculty and students have been found to have a particularly powerful impact on the persistence of students who are "withdrawal prone," such as disadvantaged minority students (Tinto, 1975). Pascarella and Terenzini (1979) also found that the frequency of non-classroom contact between students and faculty to discuss academic issues had its most positive influence on the persistence of students with low initial commitment to college, and students whose parents had relatively low levels of formal education. More recently, Vince Tinto conducted interviews with especially high-risk students who beat the odds and succeeded in college. He found that, "In every case, the students cited one or two events, when someone on the faculty or--less commonly--the staff had made personal contact with them outside the classroom. That's what made the difference" (Levitz, 1990).
Student-faculty interaction outside the classroom has also been found to have a positive impact on the intellectual self-image of African-American students (Gurin & Epps, 1975) and female students (Komarovsky, 1985).
Lastly, student-faculty contact outside the classroom has been found to have a positive impact on the level of students' educational aspirations (Astin & Panos, 1969), such as their decision to pursue advanced (graduate) degrees (Kocher & Pascarella, 1987; Pascarella, 1980; Stocker, Pascarella & Wolfle, 1988). Findings such as these led the Education Commission of the States to include out-of-class contact with faculty as one of the 12 essential attributes of good practice in its national report on higher education, claiming that: "Through such contact, students are able to see faculty members less as experts than as role models for ongoing learning" (1995, p. 8).
The contemporary significance of all these positive outcomes associated with informal out-of-class contact between students and faculty is magnified further by the disturbing finding that the frequency of such contact is decreasing in higher education; faculty are now spending more of their non-teaching time in the pursuit of research and publication, leaving out-of-class contact with undergraduates to student affairs' staff (Kuh, Schuh, & Whitt, 1991).
Institutional self-assessment questions relevant to faculty-student contact outside the classroom:
1. How many office hours do faculty make available to students per week? (Does the college have a stated policy about the minimum number of weekly office hours?)
2. Is it common for faculty to give their home phone number or home e-mail address to students?
3. Are college faculty involved in providing academic advising to first-year students on a one- to-one basis outside the classroom?
4. Does the college have intentionally planned programs, structures, or procedures that are explicitly designed to promote student-faculty interaction outside the classroom?
5. Does the college offer a faculty-student mentoring program?
6. Are there faculty-student research teams or teaching teams at the college, and are qualified first-year students eligible to participate?
7. How many faculty-sponsored student clubs and organizations exist at the college?
8. Does the college actively encourage, recognize, and reward faculty for out-of-class involvement with students in general, and first-year students in particular?
9. What is the full-time to part-time faculty ratio at the college? (Note: This question is included because research indicates that part-time faculty spend less time on campus than full-time faculty—due to other work commitments—and, as a result, are usually less available to students for out-of-class interaction.)
References
Astin, A. W. (1977). Four critical years: Effect of college on beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass.
Astin, A., & Panos, R. (1969). The educational and vocational development of college students. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education.
Bean, J. P. (1981). The synthesis of a theoretical model of student attrition. Paper presented at the 1981 meeting of the American Educational Research Association. Los Angeles, California.
Centra, J. A., & Rock, D. (1970). College environment and student academic achievement. Research Bulletin, Educational Testing Service. Princeton, New Jersey. (Eric Reproduction Document No. 053 205)
Education Commission of the States (1995). Making quality count in undergraduate education. Denver, CO: ECS Distribution Center.
Endo, J., & Harpel, R. (1982). The effects of student-faculty interaction on students' educational outcomes. Research in Higher Education, 16, 115-138.
Gurin, P., & Epps, E. (1975). Black consciousness, identity and achievement: A study of students in historically black colleges. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Kocher, E., & Pascarella, E. (1988). The effects of institutional transfer on status attainment. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.
Kormovsky, M. (1985). Women in college: Shaping new feminine identities. New York: Basic Books.
Kuh, G., Schuh, J., Whitt, E., & Associates (1991). Involving colleges. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lacy, W. (1978). Interpersonal relationships as mediators of structural effects: College student socialization in a traditional and an experimental university environment. Sociology of Education, 51, 201-211.
Levitz, R. (1990). Sizing up retention programs. Recruitment and Retention in Higher Education, 4(9), pp. 4-5.
Noel, L. (1978). First steps in starting a campus retention program. In L. Noel (Ed.), Reducing the dropout rate (pp. 87- 98). New Directions for Student Services, No. 3. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Pantages, T. J., & Creedan, C. F. (1978). Studies of college attrition: 1950-1975. Review of Educational Research, 48, 49- 101.
Pascarella, E. T. (1980). Student-faculty informal contact and college outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 50, 545- 595.
Pascarella, E. & Terenzini, P. (1978). Student-faculty informal relationships and freshman-year educational outcomes. Journal of Educational Research, 71, 183-189.
Pascarella, E. & Terenzini, P. (1979). Interaction effects in Spady's and Tinto's conceptual models of college drop out. Sociology of Education, 52, 197-210.
Stoecker, J., Pascarella, E. T., & Wolfle, L. M. (1988). Persistence in higher education: A 9-year test of a theoretical model. Journal of College Student Development, 29, 196-209.
Terenzini, P., & Pascarella, E. (1977). Voluntary freshman attrition and patterns of social and academic integration in a university: A test of a conceptual model. Research in Higher Education, 6, 25-44.
Terenzini, P., & Pascarella, E. (1978). The relation of students' precollege characteristics and freshman year experience to voluntary attrition. Research in Higher Education, 9, 347-366.
The College Board (1988). College bound seniors national report: 1988 profile of SAT and achievement test takers. New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
Tinto, V. (1975). Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research. Review of Educational Research, 45(1), 89-125.
Volkwein, J., King, M. C., & Terenzini, P. T. (1986). Student- faculty relationships and intellectual growth among transfer students. Journal of Higher Education, 57, 413-430.
Wilson, R. C. (1975). College professors and their impact on students. New York: Wiley and Sons.
© 1999 thomas.kesterson@kctcs.net