RESETTING THE COURSE FOR PROBATIONARY STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY OF THE ACCESS PROGRAM AT FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

Institutions of higher education have increased their efforts to improve retention and graduation rates by developing support services and programs targeted at specific student populations. The purpose of this descriptive case study was to describe and further understand the perspectives of students and academic coaches/administrators associated with the Academic Coaching and Career Enhancement for Student Success (ACCESS) Program at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton, Florida. The program targets students who earned below a 2.0 grade point average (GPA) and were placed on academic probation. Data was collected through one-on-one interviews with previous ACCESS Program students and current ACCESS academic coaches/administrators. A document analysis was also conducted. The guiding research question for this study was: How useful, if at all, did participating students perceive the interventions of the ACCESS Program (e.g., meetings with an academic coach, tutoring, life skills workshops, meeting with a career advisor) in improving their academic performance (e.g., GPA) and why? The study also compared the perceptions of students to those of the ACCESS academic coaches/administrators about the interventions of the program and their usefulness. This study found that students and ACCESS academic coaches/administrators were most likely to find the academic coaching sessions to be the most useful intervention in helping students improve their academic performance and the academic workshops were found to be the least useful. Additionally, while there are elements of the program that can be improved, findings also suggest that those who had a positive overall experience in the program were more likely to perceive the program as useful because of the partnerships formed with their assigned academic coach/administrator/tutor/career counselor; the self-management skills they developed, such as accountability; and the academic and non-academic skills developed, such as improved writing and time management skills.