Demonstrating the value of a first-year leadership experience

Strategic question: Does participation align with stronger academic progress, continued enrollment, graduation, and later campus engagement?

• Partners | Leadership and Service, research and assessment, data owners, and institutional partners worked together to define the population, connect evidence, and interpret the findings.
• Evidence Connected | Emerging Leaders participation records were connected to term GPA, retention, graduation, demographic characteristics, and later involvement data from Fall 2012 through Spring 2024.
• Validation | The team confirmed participant identification, cohort timing, the first-year comparison group, outcome windows, and how later engagement was defined.
• Analysis | Longitudinal descriptive analysis and group comparisons were used, with disaggregated and matched comparisons where appropriate.
• What We Learned | Participants had a 0.39-point higher average term GPA and a 9-point higher one-year retention rate than first-year peers. They also demonstrated significantly higher 4-, 5-, and 6-year graduation rates. All told, 85% of Emerging Leaders went on to participate in another program, organization, or initiative, compared with 47% of peers.
• Action Informed | The findings created evidence for decisions about sustaining, strengthening, and potentially scaling first-year leadership development, while providing a stronger way to communicate value beyond participation counts.

Replication Lesson | Define the participant population, comparison group, outcome windows, and post-program engagement period before analysis. Use a stronger comparison strategy when the question calls for it.

Examining the relationship between on-campus employment and student success

Strategic Question: Is on-campus employment associated with retention, persistence, and graduation, and does the duration of employment matter?

• Partners | Student employment stakeholders, HR and payroll data owners, Student Affairs, institutional research, IT, and research and assessment worked together to define employment, connect student and employment records, and interpret the findings.
• Evidence Connected | Employment terms and division were connected to enrollment, persistence, graduation, GPA, first-generation status, and student characteristics for more than 88,000 undergraduates from Spring 2018 through Fall 2025.
• Validation | The team confirmed employee identity, job and term logic, multiple positions, timing relative to enrollment and outcomes, division assignment, and how employment duration was counted.
• Analysis | Population comparisons, logistic regression, matched comparisons, duration analysis, subgroup review, and focus groups were used to examine both outcomes and the student experience.
• What We Learned | Student employees had 90% versus 71% retention, 93% versus 75% persistence, and 82% versus 59% four-year graduation compared with non-employees. Even one term of employment was associated with higher odds of persistence, with stronger associations among students employed for four or more terms.
• Action | The findings provided evidence to support an institutional initiative to expand on-campus employment opportunities and strengthen compensation.
• Limitation | Odds ratios describe differences in odds, not differences in probability. Because students were not randomly assigned to employment, selection and unmeasured differences may also contribute to the observed relationships.

Replication Lesson | Pair outcome analysis with qualitative evidence about job quality, supervision, flexibility, connection, and compensation to understand not only whether employment is associated with student success, but what aspects of the experience may matter.

Finding actionable pathways to strengthen connection and student success

Strategic Question: Where should leaders focus to strengthen persistence, graduation, and sense of community for first-generation students?

• Partners | Transition and belonging, program partners, Student Affairs leadership, data owners, and research and assessment worked together to connect student experiences and outcomes and identify areas for strategic focus.
• Evidence Connected | More than a decade of first-generation status, GPA, persistence, graduation, sense of community, and Student Affairs engagement data were connected to examine patterns across student experiences and outcomes.
• Validation | The team confirmed how first-generation status was defined over time, cohort eligibility, engagement counting, outcome windows, and source coverage.
• Analysis | Trend and subgroup comparisons were used alongside analyses examining the relationship between engagement level, persistence, and graduation.
• What We Learned | First-generation students reported a similar sense of community to peers (76% versus 78%). At the same time, highly engaged students had more than four times the odds of persisting and nearly three times the odds of graduating within four years compared with non-engaged peers.
• Action | The findings supported expanding first-generation programming and focusing strategy on meaningful connection through leadership, mentoring, recreation, and student organizations.
• Limitation | Engagement may reflect motivation, opportunity, or other differences that were not measured. The observed relationship should not be interpreted as evidence that engagement caused the differences in outcomes.

Replication Lesson | Move beyond identifying population-level gaps. Look for actionable institutional levers, then use connected evidence to identify which experiences, pathways, or student groups warrant deeper attention.