Going Beyond Giving: A Qualitative Case Study of Scholarship Donor’s Involvement with their Recipients and the Impact on Student Retention and Completion at a Mid-Sized Community College

Abstract

With community colleges struggling with the completion rates of their students, it is important to understand the social and academic integration of community college students and their relationships to retention and completion. Research focuses on the critical role of internal college actors such as faculty, staff, and students in these integrations, but a gap in the literature exists as to the role of external stakeholders, particularly scholarship donors, in these integrations. This research will use a single qualitative case study design to explore the impact of donor involvement with the students they support with scholarships in the Achieving Collegiate Excellence and Success (ACES) program at Montgomery College. The purpose of the study is to assess how and why this donor engagement with students influences their integrations and motivates them to achieve their academic goals at rates higher than other students in the program who have not received donor-given scholarships or whose donors are not engaged. The case study design will incorporate three components: interviews and focus groups with ACES students, alumni, donors, and staff, as well as document analysis of thank you letters from scholarship recipients to the donors. The research will examine this question through the theoretical framework of Tinto’s Theory of Student Persistence (1993). This theory focuses on faculty, staff, and student interactions impacting academic and social integration. This research looks to expand upon the theory that external stakeholders, such as engaged scholarship donors, play critical roles in social and academic integration of community college students. The donors do not supplant the critical role of faculty, staff, and students in the integrations, as Tinto notes, but rather complement the role in various ways to enhance student academic and social integration leading to retention and college completion. If students cite the importance of donor involvement in their integrations to college life, leading to retention and completion, more programs with greater donor involvement with need-based scholarship recipients may be implemented by community colleges to increase student completion. Community colleges may be more intentional in their approach to philanthropy for scholarships, the role of donors with students, and how they complement the role of faculty, staff, and other students in the scholarship recipients’ social and academic integrations.