Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Organizational Leadership

First Advisor

Cheryl-Marie Osborne

Second Advisor

Nick Arman

Third Advisor

Brad Tooker

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was to assess the perceived influence of first-year institutional support services on student retention from the first to the second year at regional public universities in the Northeastern United States.

Methodology: A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was used. In the quantitative phase, 437 retained second-year students completed the researcher-designed Retention Support Impact Survey to assess service utilization and perceived effectiveness. In the qualitative phase, 10 students participated in semi-structured interviews to provide deeper contextual insight into the numerical data.

Findings: The data indicated a disparity between service utilization rates and student-reported impact scores. High-utilization macro programs corresponded to lower average impact ratings. Conversely, targeted foundational services (e.g., mental health counseling, emergency financial aid, disability support) recorded higher impact scores, particularly among students managing external barriers. Furthermore, impact scores for faculty mentorship were higher than those for standard professional advising, and indicators of social integration were more strongly associated with specialized micro-communities than with broad institutional initiatives.

Conclusions: The study concludes that institutions should shift from scalable, transactional support models toward an actionable “Institutional Hierarchy of Needs.” Sustainable retention requires meeting students’ basic environmental and safety needs before expecting higher-order academic integration and providing genuine, anti-scalable relational validation.

Recommendations: The findings suggest that higher education administrators evaluate funding structures to prioritize essential support services over broad macro programs. Furthermore, institutions may benefit from transitioning first-year advising models to center on faculty mentorship and restructuring the first-year experience around cohort-based micro-communities.

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