University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Program customization in a comprehensive college transition program for low-income students

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Program customization in a comprehensive college transition program for low-income students

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PROGRAM CUSTOMIZATION IN A COMPREHENSIVE COLLEGE TRANSITION

PROGRAM FOR LOW-INCOME STUDENTS

by

Hilary Estes

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Hilary Estes
ii

Acknowledgements
As I completed my doctoral classes and wrote this dissertation over the last few years, I
have faced numerous challenges- personal and professional as well as academic. Without the
help of an incredibly supportive community, this time would have been both much less
productive and much less joyful. First, I’d like to thank my husband, Peter. He truly is my rock,
the sweetest and most supportive person I know, the shoulder I cry on, the giver of excellent pep-
talks and the editor extraordinaire. I’d also like to thank my family for giving me a base of love
and support and making me believe that I could do anything, even when obstacles seemed
insurmountable. The wider family of the friends, educators and students I have been fortunate to
work with throughout my educational and professional careers continue to inspire my, challenge
me and make me laugh, even in the midst of a pandemic. The wise, humble scholar-practitioners
in my cohort and dissertation group have been a pleasure to work with and a source of strength in
trying times. Finally, my dissertation committee: Adrianna Kezar, Ronald Hallett and Pat Tobey
have been supportive, insightful and kind. Each and every one of these folks has helped me
immeasurably and I extend my deepest thanks to all of them.

iii

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... ii
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. v
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi
Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii
Chapter One: Overview of the Study .............................................................................................. 1
Introduction and Context for This Study ................................................................ 3
Background of the Problem: Complex Identities and Complex Needs .................. 7
Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................ 8
Focus of the Study: TSLC Staff’s Customization Strategies .................................. 9
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions ...................................................... 10
Significance of the Study ...................................................................................... 11
Organization of the Study ..................................................................................... 11
Chapter Two: Literature Review .................................................................................................. 13
Research Questions ............................................................................................... 13
Existing Support Programs for Low-Income College Students ............................ 14
Cognitive Load Theory ......................................................................................... 20
Supporting Low-Income College Students in Accessing Services ....................... 29
Case Management and Wraparound Services....................................................... 33
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 46
Chapter Three: Research Methods ................................................................................................ 48
Overall Design ...................................................................................................... 48
Site Selection ........................................................................................................ 51
Overview of TSLC Program ................................................................................. 52
Participants ............................................................................................................ 55
Data Collection and Sources ................................................................................. 56
Trustworthiness and Role of the Researcher ........................................................ 58
Limitations ............................................................................................................ 59
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 60
Chapter Four: Findings ................................................................................................................. 60
Summary of Findings ............................................................................................ 62
Emerging Framework for Customization Activities ............................................. 64
Detailed Findings and Application of Framework................................................ 73
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 125
Chapter Five: Discussion and Conclusions................................................................................. 126
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Summary of Findings .......................................................................................... 126
Discussion of the Findings in Relationship to the Literature .............................. 129
Customization ..................................................................................................... 133
Comparing TSLC Staff Members and Case Managers....................................... 137
Data Analysis Through Cognitive Load Theory ................................................. 138
Implications for Policy and Practice ................................................................... 141
Recommendations for Future Research .............................................................. 146
Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 149
References ................................................................................................................................... 151
Appendix A: Chapter 2 Coding List ........................................................................................... 173
Appendix B: Faculty and Staff Interview Protocol..................................................................... 176

v

List of Tables
Table 1: Participants and Interviews From the Three University of Nevada Campuses .............. 56
Table 2: Emerging Framework for Modes of Customization ....................................................... 72
Table 3: Comparing TSLC Staff Members and Case Managers ................................................ 138

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List of Figures
Figure 1: Complex Identities Make the Process of Accessing Services Complex ....................... 47
Figure 2: Cognitive Overload Among Low-income College Students ......................................... 47
Figure 3: Diagram of Comprehensive College Transition Program Components (Hallett, Kezar,
Perez & Kitchen, 2020) ................................................................................................. 54

vii

Abstract
While a college degree is increasingly necessary to access employment and other opportunities,
many students in the United States, especially first-generation college students and students from
low-income families, face significant obstacles to completing one. Numerous programs have
been created to support students with some success, however more needs to be done. The
William H. Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC) is a comprehensive college
transition program which combines financial support with several types of academic support,
advising, mentoring, and other services to low-income and first-generation students at three
University of Nebraska campuses.
This study examined how TSLC staff members customized students’ experiences in the
program. It showed that using strategies similar to those used within strengths-based case
management, including a holistic perspective toward students’ identities, combined with a
spectrum of approaches for program customization, could reduce students’ cognitive load. The
study introduced a framework for various degrees of customization. This study also revealed
that TSLC staff members mostly learned how to apply customization by experimentation, with
formal and informal learning opportunities playing a secondary role.
Colleges and universities should consider the customization strategies used by TSLC as
they design programs to support their own students, including the benefits of staff members
owning and driving program customization and applying a systematic approach enabled by the
framework introduced in this study.
Keywords: college transition programs, low-income students, first generation college
students, program customization, cognitive load
1

Chapter One: Overview of the Study
Today is move-in day at a large, Midwestern university and Marley is nervously heading
to her dorm room to meet her roommates. Her parents, an electrician and a physician’s assistant,
have worried about how their family will be able to afford college tuition, but Marley’s school
counselor helped them apply for financial aid. Last year, when she was a senior in high school,
Marley’s English teacher spent several weeks helping his students write personal statements and
apply for scholarships. Marley won three of the seven she applied for and will use the extra
money to help her pay for books and living expenses. Marley remembers struggling in
kindergarten and first grade, but since she was diagnosed with a learning disability in second
grade, she has been receiving support at school and earning As and Bs. Before her parents drop
her off, they walk her by the campus disability support center, the health center, and the writing
center and make sure she introduces herself to the staff. Marley isn’t sure what she wants to
major in, but she is excited to start college and particularly for the opportunities to meet a more
diverse group of peers than were available in her suburban high school and to study abroad in
Vietnam, the country in which she was born before being adopted as an infant. Though she feels
sad about leaving her girlfriend back in her hometown and a little nervous about being away
from home for the first time, she feels confident and excited about starting this new chapter in
her life.
Across campus, Charlie is making his way from the bus stop to his dorm, carrying a large
suitcase. Though his scholarship covers tuition, room and board there isn’t much left over for
other expenses. His grandmother, who has raised Charlie and his three siblings since his mother
went to jail five years ago, couldn’t afford to pay for a bus ticket to come with him. Charlie is,
however, no stranger to navigating life on his own. Despite having to work almost forty hours a
2

week during his senior year of high school to help support his family, he was the valedictorian of
his inner-city high school and won several academic and athletic awards. He would have started
at this university last year, but his grandmother was hospitalized three weeks before his high
school graduation and he needed to continue working full time and take care of his siblings until
her health improved. He completed a short training course at his local community college so that
he could work as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) and has gained experience working in
hospital settings as well as in the homes of wealthy clients. His time as a CNA combined with
the experience of a childhood friend who bled to death while waiting for an ambulance cemented
Charlie’s commitment to becoming a doctor. Despite his excellent grades and brief experience
with post-secondary training, Charlie is concerned about how he will manage his college
courses, particularly as he continues to work numerous hours per week. Though the trauma of
losing his friend and worries about his family back home hang over him, Charlie is eager to meet
new people and take his first college classes.
In the next town over, twenty-eight-year-old Carmen is visiting the childcare center at
another large university that serves mostly commuter students like herself. She wants to make
sure that there will be a safe place for her three-year-old daughter, Annabelle, to play when she
begins attending nursing classes next week. As she plans for her first semester, she hopes that
the childcare voucher she has applied for through a local nonprofit will come through. She is
worried that her car might break down because she can’t afford repairs and needs the car to get to
school and work. Since coming to the United States twelve years ago, Carmen has been living in
a small, rural community and working in agriculture and meatpacking. On her days off, she
operates a small business cooking food from her home country and selling it to other immigrant
families. Annabelle’s father left them shortly after Annabelle was born and Carmen suffered
3

from severe postpartum depression and struggled with food and housing insecurity for a while.
Though Carmen was initially very reluctant to seek help from the government because of her
immigration status, a concerned neighbor called a social worker when Annabelle was about six
months old. The social worker helped Carmen get treatment for her depression and complete a
high school equivalency program. She also helped her apply to a local college which she will be
attending while continuing to work full time and caring for her daughter. She was inspired by
the health and social service professionals who helped her and wants to be able to help others in
a similar way. She is highly motivated to complete her studies so she can be a better academic
role model for her daughter and better provide for her financially.
Each of these students, like all students, is embarking on their college journey with a
unique set of goals, challenges and life experiences which will affect many aspects of their
academic and social lives. While each of them may qualify as a low-income student, a person of
color and a first-generation college student, each of them is many other things as well.
Numerous aspects of their identities as well as their family situations, jobs, personality, health,
life experiences, aspirations, and many other factors will influence the opportunities they find,
the challenges they face, and the resources they have available to them as they enter the college
environment and make their way toward graduation. Whether they are able to succeed in
reaching their academic goals may be heavily influenced by the extent to which the college staff
are able to help them overcome the specific challenges that their unique situations present.
Introduction and Context for This Study
Despite having one of the highest college participation rates in the world, the United
States has a relatively low rate of post-secondary graduation compared to other wealthy countries
(OECD, 2018). In fact, only about half of students who enroll in college with the goal of
4

completing a degree actually complete a degree of any kind within six years (Page & Scott-
Clayton, 2016). Researchers have found numerous factors that influence students’ persistence in
college including academic preparation, educational aspirations, financial resources, academic
and social integration, psychological characteristics, mental health, and living situation (Engle &
Tinto, 2008; Eisenberg, Golberstein & Hunt, 2009; Lohfink & Paulsen, 2005). Each individual
student brings a unique constellation of strengths and challenges with them into the college
experience based on their particular identities, life experiences, and the interactions between
them (Clark, 2005; Duggan & Pickering, 2008; Rios-Aguilar & Kiyama, 2012). Some of these
constellations are more aligned with the demands and expectations of typical college
environments and the degree of alignment can have a significant impact on the students’
experience.
While each student is a unique individual, students from traditionally marginalized
backgrounds, including low-income students, students of color, and students who are the first in
their families to attend college, often face specific challenges in their transitions to and
persistence through college, above and beyond those faced by other undergraduates (Cataldi,
Bennett & Chen, 2018; Whitley, Benson & Wesaw, 2018). These challenges are often
compounded by institutional cultures which ignore or deemphasize the kind of knowledge, skills,
and experience they bring with them (Rios-Aguilar & Kiyama, 2012). While the challenges
related to students’ membership in a traditionally marginalized group do not determine their
experiences, they do affect them in significant ways, as is evidenced by data on several measures
of college success. Though students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds have begun to
enroll in college at higher rates in recent years as the overall undergraduate population has
grown, they still graduate from college at lower rates than their peers (Engle & Tinto, 2008;
5

Krogstad & Fry, 2014; Shapiro et al., 2014). For example, about 25% of undergraduates in the
United States are both low-income and first-generation college students and their six-year
graduation rate is only 11% compared to 55% for students who are neither low-income nor first
generation (Engle & Tinto, 2008). The gap between students from the highest and lowest
income quartiles has increased substantially since the 1990s (Cox, 2016). Additionally, the
current 17 percentage point gap in college degree attainment rates between black and white
students is about the same as it was in 1990, while the gap between Latino and white students
has increased, even as the number of black and Latino matriculants has grown (Cox, 2016; Fry,
2011). Students who belong to any one of these traditionally marginalized groups are more
likely to belong to others as well. They face challenges such as lower levels of academic
preparation, multiple obligations outside of school, parenting, attending part time, and working
full time that put them at risk of leaving postsecondary education without a diploma (Engle &
Tinto, 2008). Being part of one or more traditionally marginalized groups often has a significant
impact on students’ individual college experiences.
In response to inequitable rates of college success, numerous programs have been created
to support students in gaining access to and persisting in college through the provision of
services such as advising, social and academic support, and financial aid (Inkelas, Daver, Vogt &
Leonard, 2007; King, 2009). Typically, each of these programs provides access to a defined set
of interventions, though some are customized at the program level to meet the needs of a specific
subgroup of students (Arendale & Lee, 2018). While students from different traditionally
marginalized groups sometimes face similar obstacles to college success, the way that these
obstacles play out in the lives of individual students differs based on their intersecting group
memberships as well as other factors (Katz & Somers, 2017; Núñez, 2014; Strayhorn, 2010;
6

Yeh, 2004). Furthermore, students’ complex individual identities and life circumstances, which
are influenced by intersecting group memberships, personal histories, personalities, mental and
physical health, living situation, relationships, work and family obligations, goals, and other
factors, can influence their college experiences in many ways (Boyraz, Horne, Owen &
Armstrong, 2015; Hartley, 2011; Lundberg, 2013; Newbold, Mehta & Forbus, 2011; Tate et al.,
2015). Students’ identities and life circumstances, in turn, interact with various aspects of their
experiences in college in ways that can help or hinder their paths to college success (Wardell &
McGuire, 2011; Wilkins, 2015). The challenges that college students face are, therefore, neither
unidimensional nor completely predictable from the groups to which students belong.
Because college students are complex individuals, each of whom faces a unique set of
challenges and opportunities, it is reasonable to hypothesize that customizing support services to
the unique needs of each student may make them more effective. Research on case management
and wraparound services in social work, healthcare, education, and other fields has found that
when people face multiple, overlapping challenges, it is often more effective to adapt supportive
programming to their individual needs. This is accomplished through coordinating and curating
existing programming and/or creating new programming to fit a specific need (Day & Roberts,
1991; Eber, Sugai, Smith & Scott, 2002; Tuma 1989). Recently, some universities have started
to use customized approaches adapted from these fields to meet the complex needs of students.
The University of South Florida, for example, has implemented a customized case management
model for supporting students who are at risk of dropping out which has led to improvements in
graduation rates (“Applying a Healthcare Model,” 2019). In the University of South Florida
program, university staff who work as case managers reach out to the students and connect them
with other campus departments and programs but do not customize the actual programs to which
7

students are referred. Similarly, Amarillo College in the Texas Panhandle has raised
achievement and reduced disparities after creating a program that flexibly meets the needs of
low-income students from food, housing, medical care, and utilities to mentoring and academic
support (Mangan & Schmalz, 2019). The early success of these programs suggests that
customizing support for the individual needs of college students has the potential to move the
needle on college success, particularly for students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds.
The William H. Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC) is a comprehensive
college transition program which combines generous financial support with several types of
academic support, advising, mentoring, and other services to low-income and first-generation
students in their first two years at three University of Nebraska campuses. This study will
examine the ways in which TSLC staff members customize students’ experiences in the
program, not only by referring them to program and university resources, but also by
customizing elements of the program itself.
Background of the Problem: Complex Identities and Complex Needs
The undergraduate population in the United States is growing and becoming more diverse
(Hurtado, Alvarado & Guillermo-Wann, 2015; NCES, 2014). At the same time, many students
who enter post-secondary education leave without earning a degree (Page & Scott-Clayton,
2016). While support programs for undergraduates that focus on specific aspects of students’
identities have made a difference in student outcomes, there is still much to be done to ensure an
effective and equitable educational experience for all students (Cowen Pitre & Pitre, 2009).
Research on college students’ complex individuality (Harper, Wardell & McGuire, 2011)
and from the case management traditions in fields like social work, health and special education
(Zander, 1988) suggests that student support might be more effective when it is customized to
8

students’ unique profiles. For example, in their study of college men, Harper, Wardell, and
McGuire (2011) assert that in order to be educationally effective and produce positive change in
students, it is essential that undergraduate programs consider the complex individuality of
students. Brown, Stevens, Troiano, and Schneider (2002) also point out the complexity of many
parts of the college experience as they argue for research methods that can more effectively
capture that complexity. Recognizing students’ unique identities does not mean that student
support professionals can or should ignore trends or patterns in student experiences. Rather, they
should recognize that students inhabit many identities at any given time and that each of these
identities interacts with the others in ways that can create both risk factors (Corrigan, 2003;
Engle & Tinto, 2008; Horn & Premo, 1995) and protective factors (Hartley, 2011) as students
move through college.
Work in the case management tradition suggests that complex individuals with complex
needs can be best served when support providers are able to both effectively direct them to
resources for which they qualify based on some part of their identities and flexibly create
customized solutions for specific issues as they arise (Dietrich, Irving, Park & Marshall, 2011;
Goering et al., 1988; VanDenBerg & Grealish, 1996).
Statement of the Problem
As a baccalaureate degree increasingly becomes a prerequisite for obtaining a middle
class lifestyle, or even a living wage, finding ways to support a large proportion of our
increasingly diverse student population towards obtaining this degree is both a moral imperative
and a practical necessity (Gandara & Contreras, 2009; Hurtado, Alvarado & Guillermo-Wann,
2015; Torche, 2011). Recent statistics regarding college persistence and graduation in the
United States, however, show not only unusually low graduation rates given our rates of college
9

participation but also large and expanding gaps in these outcomes based on race/ethnicity,
income and first generation status (OECD, 2018; Page & Scott-Clayton, 2016). Support
programs for undergraduates that focus on specific identity categories have been effective for
some students, but the overall data around college persistence and graduation reveals that there is
still room for improvement, especially around meeting the needs of today’s increasingly diverse
student population (Arendale & Lee, 2018; Bailey & Dynarski, 2011; Clotfelter, Hemelty &
Ladd, 2017; Redford & Mulvaney Hoyer, 2017; Scrivener et al., 2015). Though many support
programs target a single aspect of identity, college students are, in fact, complex individuals with
multifaceted identities (Harper, Wardell & McGuire, 2011). Students bring gender, income
level, relationships, sexual orientation, personality, health status, and a lifetime of diverse
experiences to their college experiences. When support services target a single aspect of
identity, students may have to spend considerable time and energy traveling from place to place
on campus to access support related to various aspects of their identities. Otherwise they risk
failing to gain access to the support services they need to cope with the specific challenges that
they face. Although a few postsecondary institutions have implemented more customized
support programs and have seen some success in improving outcomes, customized support
programs remain unavailable to the majority of students on college campuses (Mangan &
Schmalz, 2019).
Focus of the Study: TSLC Staff’s Customization Strategies
Developing an understanding of how professionals can customize programming to meet
the needs of individuals has helped other fields develop practices for doing this systematically
and thus improved their outcomes (Norris et al., 2002). Similarly, expanding our understanding
of how staff customize the support they give students in higher education could inform the
10

development of more effective ways to support students, particularly as colleges and universities
continue to develop case management type supports on their campuses.
This study will focus on how the staff at TSLC, a well-developed comprehensive
transition program, customize the program to meet students’ individual needs not only by
directing students to particular services offered by the program and the larger campus
community, but also by customizing programmatic offerings and requirements to fit students’
individual needs. TSLC is a rich environment in which to study customization strategies because
it is a comprehensive program with many elements of its own as well as strong partnerships
across the campuses on which it is located and, unlike in most other college support programs,
TSLC staff are empowered to change elements of the program to fit students’ individual needs.
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
While a few colleges and universities have begun to introduce elements of customization
into some of their support services, the processes through which they carry out this
customization have not been well researched. The purpose of the current study is to examine the
ways in which TSLC staff at three University of Nebraska campuses customize the program to
meet individual students’ needs. TSLC is a comprehensive college transition program that
includes a variety of academic, social and financial supports. TSLC staff also cultivate
relationships with other programs across the campuses on which they are located, thus expanding
the array of services to which they can direct students. Additionally, TSLC staff are empowered
to modify elements of the program in order to better meet the specific needs of individual
students. These elements empower TSLC staff to customize the program in a variety of ways.
I hypothesize that they may use case management strategies similar to those used in social work,
11

health care and other fields. In order to develop a better understanding of how they do this, this
study will center around the following research questions:
1. How do TSLC staff customize the program to meet individual students’ needs?
2. What student characteristics do TSLC staff consider when they are customizing the
program for students?
3. How do TSLC staff learn to customize the program for students?
Significance of the Study
This study may prove valuable to practitioners and scholars for many reasons.
Developing a more robust understanding of how staff customize a support program to meet the
needs of students has the potential to inform efforts that are underway across the country to more
effectively support diverse student populations. This approach may move the needle on college
transition, success, and retention by uncovering successful strategies for meeting the needs of
students that may be applicable in a wider context. Additionally, uncovering the mechanisms
through which staff customize the TSLC program can add to our understanding of how this
program has been successful in supporting desirable student outcomes. Finally, there has been
limited empirical research on customization in college support programs and this study can thus
contribute to addressing this gap in the literature.
Organization of the Study
This study will focus on the ways in which TSLC staff members customize the program
to meet the complex individual needs of the low-income and first-generation students in the
program. Chapter 2 reviews key ideas from previous literature including ideas around complex
individuality and intersectionality that can help conceptualize the multifaceted identities which
contribute to students’ strengths and needs, as well as ideas from the case management tradition
12

around effectively supporting people with complex needs. Chapter 3 describes the methodology
used in this study. Specifically, Chapter 3 presents sample selection and interview procedures
used by the team as well as the data analysis methods used and steps that were taken to ensure
reliability and validity. Chapter 4 presents the results of my analysis of the data and introduces a
framework for various types of customization. Chapter 5 presents recommendations for future
research and implications for policy and practice.

13

Chapter Two: Literature Review
While a few colleges and universities have begun to introduce elements of customization
into some of their support services, the processes through which they carry out this
customization have not been well researched. The purpose of the current study is to examine the
ways in which TSLC staff at three University of Nebraska campuses customize the program to
meet students’ needs. TSLC is a comprehensive college transition program that includes a
variety of academic, social and financial supports. TSLC staff also cultivate relationships with
other programs across the campuses on which they are located, thus expanding the array of
services to which they can direct students. Additionally, TSLC are empowered to modify
elements of the program in order to better meet the specific needs of individual students. These
elements empower TSLC staff to customize the program in a variety of ways. I hypothesize that
they may use case management strategies similar to those used in social work, health care, and
other fields. In order to develop a better understanding of how they do this, this study will center
around the following research questions.
Research Questions
1. How do TSLC staff customize the program to meet individual students’ needs?
2. What student characteristics do TSLC staff consider when they are customizing the
program for students?
3. How do TSLC staff learn to customize the program for students?
In order to address these questions, the literature review for this study will cover three
primary areas: existing support programs for college students, cognitive load theory, and case
management. This chapter will begin with a review of effective practices in existing programs
that are designed to address college students’ complex needs with a focus on how these practices
14

can facilitate support customization. Next, it will review the literature on cognitive load, with an
emphasis on how the task of finding and accessing support services related to various aspects of
identity can present an overwhelming cognitive load for people with complex needs, including
college students. Then, it will present strategies that colleges have used to help students navigate
the sometimes-overwhelming process of accessing services. Finally, it will present case
management as a practice that has been effectively used to address the problem of cognitive load
for individuals with complex needs in the fields of social work, mental health, and health care by
facilitating the customization of service provision to the needs of individuals.
Existing Support Programs for Low-Income College Students
A wide range of services have been shown to be effective in supporting low-income
college students. Additionally, some types of services have been shown to be more or less
effective for students based on a number of different aspects of their identities (Strayhorn, 2010).
Because many low-income college students are also first-generation college students, they often
do not have family members who can support them in navigating the complexity of accessing
and coordinating the array of services that may be available to them. In this section, I will
briefly review some of the types of services that have been shown to be effective in supporting
low-income college students.
A wide range of strategies have been shown to be effective in meeting the needs of low-
income college students. Engle and Lynch (2011) identify strategies that have been associated
with student success and group them into five main categories, in addition to financial aid.
These categories include a programmatic focus on the first year, monitoring student progress,
improving instruction in gatekeeping courses, special programs for underserved populations, and
creating a culture of success (Engle & Lynch, 2011). Some of the many other strategies that
15

have been shown to be successful in supporting low-income students include academic guidance
and counseling, academic supports, personal guidance and counseling, career counseling,
grouping students into cohorts, providing mentoring, combining financial aid with targeted, non-
financial supports, and supplemental supports such as assistance with housing, transportation and
other tangible needs that may arise for students (Angrist, Lang & Oreopoulos, 2009; Bettinger &
Baker, 2014; Page, Kehoe, Castleman & Sahadewo, 2017; Purnell & Blank, 2004; Sprandlin,
Rutowski & Burrough, 2010; Walsh, 2000; Xu, Solanki, McPartlan & Sato, 2018). While there
are numerous strategies that have been used to support low-income students, a comprehensive
review of all the strategies and programs that have been tried is not the purview of this section.
Below, I will review the five categories of strategies identified by Engle & Lynch (2011) as well
as the use of supplemental services or tangible, non-financial supports.
Focus on the First Year
A focus on the first year includes well-developed first year programs such as freshman
orientation, freshman success courses, freshman interest groups, or first year learning
communities that support students in developing relationships on campus as well as building
academic skills and college knowledge as they adjust to the university context (Engle & Lynch,
2008). There is substantial evidence that these programs can help low-income students persist
through the first year of college, a time when many students leave postsecondary education
(Lotkowski, Robbins & Noeth, 2004; Tinto, 2003). It is particularly important that participation
in these programs is high or mandatory because the students who benefit most from these
programs are least likely to access them when barriers such as high fees or inconvenient
schedules exist (Engle & Lynch, 2011; Engle & Tinto, 2008). These effective programs
16

typically require a significant investment of time and mental energy from students, either through
an intensive orientation program or over the course of a semester (Engle & Lynch, 2011).
Monitoring Student Progress
A proactive and intensive approach to monitoring student progress has also been shown
to be associated with higher rates of success for low-income students (Engle & Lynch, 2011;
Purnell & Blank, 2004; Sprandlin, Rutowski & Burrough, 2010; Walsh, 2000). In proactive
advising, staff are able to identify academic problems such as low grades or course plans that are
not well aligned with the students’ goals and work with students to correct them while there is
still time to fix them and thus avoid negative consequences for the student (Engle & Lynch,
2011). For example, a check-in around midterms can alert staff to students who may not be on
track to pass a class and staff can institute performance contracts that oblige students to access
needed supports in the form of advising, counseling, study skills workshops, tutoring, or other
supports (Engle & Tinto, 2008). This approach to monitoring and intervening with students has
been shown to be helpful for all students with a greater impact for low-income students, first
generation students, and other students who face significant obstacles to college success (Engle
& Tinto, 2008; Heisserer & Parette, 2002). While this approach can provide significant benefits
for students, it does require substantial effort in the form of collaboration and information
sharing between faculty, staff and students (Engle & Tinto, 2008; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh & Witt,
2011). Additionally, it requires students to invest time and energy into taking advantage of the
supports.
Improving Instruction in Gatekeeping Courses
Another effective approach to supporting low-income college students is improving
instruction, especially in introductory gatekeeping courses which often have low attendance and
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high failure rates (Engle & Lynch, 2011; Engle & O’Brien, 2007; Lotkowski et al., 2004).
A major way that colleges have improved instruction in these classes is through ensuring that
they are offered as smaller classes taught by full time faculty members (Engle & Lynch, 2011).
Some colleges have supplemented large courses taught by faculty members with smaller peer-
assisted support sections (Engle & Lynch, 2011). Other colleges have had success in improving
instruction through pairing introductory and remedial courses with each other and with first year
experience courses, revising curricula, and encouraging faculty to implement more collaborative
and student-centered teaching methods (Engle & Lynch, 2011; Engle & Tinto, 2008; Engstrom
& Tinto, 2008). While these interventions may require additional time and resources from
faculty and staff as well as increased cognitive engagement from students, they are associated
with improved student outcomes.
Targeted Comprehensive Programs for Underserved Populations
Targeted comprehensive programs for low-income students and other underserved
students have also been associated with indicators of postsecondary success such as increased
persistence. The targeted nature of these programs is important because some studies have found
that the effectiveness of some supports differs across populations. The combination of multiple
supports within these programs is particularly important because there is evidence that some
supports are only effective or are more effective when combined with others. For example, in
their study of an academic support program for bio-science majors with math SAT scores below
600, Xu, Solanki, McPartlan, and Sato (2018) found that freshman students who attended major-
related classes in cohorts and met with a mentor had higher grades and a higher sense of
belonging to their major than control students, while students who only received academic
support did not. Similarly, Page, Kehoe, Castleman, and Sahadewo (2017) found that combined
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financial support and individualized virtual advising provided through the Dell Scholars program
were associated with a 25% increase in graduation rates. Angrisit, Lang, and Oreopoulos, (2009)
found neither financial nor nonfinancial supports for low-income students in one program were
effective on their own, but they were effective together and that this effect was driven entirely by
women.
A number of comprehensive programs exist that either specifically target low-income
students or serve a large number of low-income students while specifically targeting another
group such as first-generation students or students of color, though only a small percentage of
students who could qualify for these programs are actually served by them (Mortenson, 2011;
Perna, 2015). A few examples can provide a sense of some of the programs that exist. Student
Support Services, one of the TRIO programs financed by the federal government, provides an
array of services to low-income students, first generation students, and students with disabilities
across the country and has been associated with increased persistence and success in college for
students who participate (Chaney, Muraskin, Cahalan & Rak, 1997; Engle & Lynch, 2011).
Other programs are specific to a particular campus or university system. For example, the City
University of New York’s (CUNY) ASAP program was designed to address the specific
challenges of community college students through an intensive program that requires full time
enrollment, covers all fees and provides transportation, intensive advising, and special seminars
(Scrivener et al., 2015). This program is so effective in increasing student graduation rates that
even though it costs 60% more per student than business as usual, the university’s cost per
graduate is actually less than business as usual (Levin & Garcia, 2013). The Covenant Scholars
program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill has evolved over time from just
providing financial aid to combining financial aid with peer mentoring, academic and socio-
19

emotional support and other supports such as business clothing for internships and help with
transportation and orientation fees (Clotfelter, Hemelt & Ladd, 2017). Other programs have a
narrower focus. The Meyerhoff Scholars program at the University of Maryland, for example, is
specifically focused on supporting minority students in STEM fields through providing financial
aid, academic support, opportunities to build community, mentoring and a variety of other
supports (Maton, Hrabowski & Schmitt, 2000).
In general, comprehensive programs often include a variety of services including bridge
and orientation programs, intrusive advising, academic, personal, and career guidance,
mentoring, tutoring, and sometimes financial assistance or other supports and sometimes impose
requirements such as full-time enrollment, living on campus, and/or participating in student
organizations (Engle & Lynch, 2011; Purnell & Blank, 2004; Sprandlin, Rutowski & Burrough,
2010; Walsh, 2000). While these programs provide substantial benefits to students, they require
investment of time and other resources on the part of faculty, staff and students.
Organizational Culture of Success for All
Another effective practice for supporting low-income students is creating an
organizational culture of success throughout the institution (Engle & Lynch, 2011). This
requires strong leadership around prioritizing the success of all students that is woven into the
processes for collaboration, planning, communication, evaluation, and other aspects of the
organization (Engle & Lynch, 2011).
Supplemental Supports
Supplemental supports include a wide variety of supports that help address students’
tangible needs beyond tuition such as childcare, transportation, and access to books and school
supplies, among many other things (Sprandlin, Rutowski & Burrough, 2010). In recent years,
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many colleges have adapted policies or created new programs to meet the needs of low-income
students that are not always covered by financial aid (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016). Some of
these supports have included interest-free short term loans to cover students when financial aid
disbursement is delayed, book loan programs, shifting due dates for fees so that they don’t come
due at the beginning of the semester when students are facing numerous other expenses,
partnering with food banks and other community agencies to find services for students, and
assisting students through the process of applying for government and other benefits for which
they qualify (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016).
It is clear, then, that there are a number of services that have been shown to make a
difference for low-income college students. The value of each of these types of support is
especially pronounced in light of the evidence from several studies that, while financial aid for
tuition and fees in vital for many low-income college students, it is much more effective when
combined with other forms of support (Angrisit, Lang & Oreopoulos, 2009; Clotfelter, Hemelt &
Ladd, 2018; Chen & DesJardins, 2008; Page, Kehoe, Castleman & Sahadewo, 2017). The
implementation of these services does, however, necessitate the investment of time and other
resources by university staff, faculty, and students.
Cognitive Load Theory
While each of these types of support has been shown to effectively contribute to meeting
some of the needs of low-income college students, the process of accessing these supports can be
time consuming, overwhelming, and impose cognitive load on students, especially when
accessing different supports involves researching and coordinating services offered by various
offices and organizations. According to cognitive load theory, people’s mental bandwidth is
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limited and when it is overwhelmed by any combination of task demands, acute distractions, and
chronic distractions, people’s ability to perform cognitive tasks of all types suffers.
Cognitive load theory asserts that working memory, a person’s cognitive capacity to
control their attention and hold multiple things in mind at the same time, is limited and if a task
requires too much cognitive capacity, learning and other forms of reasoning suffer (Baddeley &
Hitch, 1974; Covre, Baddeley, Hitch & Bueno, 2019; De Jong, 2010; Engle, 2002; Sweller,
1988). Cognitive load theory posits three types of cognitive load or ways that cognitive capacity
can be used that can occur during learning: intrinsic, germane, and extraneous cognitive load.
Intrinsic cognitive load is the inherent cognitive load of the material being learned; more
complex material imposes a greater intrinsic cognitive load. Tasks in which a larger number of
interacting parts need to be learned have higher intrinsic cognitive load, as do tasks that require
learners to change the categories they use to think about a topic or conflicting information
sources, ambiguity and uncertain relationships between different elements (Campbell, 1988; Chi,
1992). Germane cognitive load is the cognitive load imposed by the learning process itself, such
as forming schemas and thinking critically about a topic (Paas, Renkl & Sweller, 2003).
Extraneous cognitive load is the cognitive load imposed by anything in the environment
or instructional materials that does not contribute to the performing of the task on which an
individual is trying to focus, such as learning new information or solving a problem (De Jong,
2010; Van Merrienboer & Sweller, 2005). There is evidence that extraneous cognitive load can
come from a number of sources and be related or unrelated to the given task.
One example of task-internal cognitive load, the split-attention effect, occurs when
elements of a task that need to be processed simultaneously are separated from each other, as
when a diagram and its explanation are located on different parts of a page and readers need to
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use cognitive resources holding one element in memory while searching for the other element
(Ayres & Sweller, 2005; Cierniak, Scheiter & Gerjets, 2009). Extraneous cognitive load due to
the split-attention effect is alleviated when information is presented in an integrated manner
(Chandler & Sweller, 1992).
Another situation which imposes a large amount of extraneous cognitive load is when
people have to solve problems for which they do not have relevant schemata or mental
categories, as they do when navigating unfamiliar situations or learning information in a new
field of study. While people may be able to solve problems in these scenarios using means-ends
analysis, their problem solving is less efficient and leads to less transferable learning (Sweller,
1993).
Extraneous cognitive load also occurs when only one modality rather than multiple
modalities is used for information delivery, for example when information is presented visually
rather than combining visual and auditory stimuli (Tindall-Ford, Chandler & Sweller, 1997).
Additionally, extraneous cognitive load is created when people have to coordinate information
from multiple materials that contain the same information. This is known as the redundancy
principle (Diao & Sweller, 2007; Sweller, van Merrienboer & Paas, 1998). These sources of
extraneous cognitive load can be addressed by curriculum developers and others who design
materials to communicate information.
Characteristics of the learning materials are not the only things that can impose
extraneous cognitive load. Emotional and physical considerations as well as preoccupations
from other life domains can impose extraneous cognitive load as well, both acutely and
chronically (Bronzaft & McCarthy, 1975; Engle, 2000; Mullainathan & Shafir, 2014).
Extraneous cognitive load can also be caused by sensory characteristics of the environment, such
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as noise, temperature, and unpleasant odors (Choi, Van Merriënboer & Pass, 2004; Paas, Van
Merriënboer & Adam, 1994; Rotton, 1983).
Extraneous cognitive load can also be imposed by affective factors, such as when people
face stereotype threat and expend mental energy worrying that they might inadvertently confirm
a negative stereotype that is triggered in a given situation or when thoughts about self-doubt have
been primed through other means (Artze-Vega, Richardson & Traxler, 2014; Beilock, Rydell &
McConnell, 2007; Schmader, 2010; Steele & Aronson, 1995). Both emotional reactions and
attempts to suppress them can also impose cognitive load and lead to cognitive overload (Fraser
et al., 2012; Schmader, 2010). In short, a multiplicity of factors can impose extraneous cognitive
load and lead to cognitive overload.
Cognitive Overload
Whatever combination of intrinsic, germane, and extraneous cognitive load causes it,
cognitive overload occurs when a task requires more cognitive capacity than a person has
available (Cohen, 1980; De Jong, 2010; Mayer & Moreno, 2003). Just as a computer’s
processing speed slows down when too many programs are open, regardless of what those
programs are, cognitive overload can occur because of task complexity, the demands of thinking
about the task, or other factors within or beyond the learning environment. Sometimes, cognitive
overload occurs when an individual simply has so much on her mind that her ability to think
clearly about the things that she wants to think about is negatively affected (Nezlek, 2005). The
emotional valence of a task can also impose extraneous cognitive load and lead to cognitive
overload. For example, when faced with complex decisions with high-stakes consequences for
the long term, people often face cognitive overload and struggle to determine which factors are
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relevant, gather all the important information on these factors, and weigh the costs and benefits
of all of these factors in order to make a final decision (Scott-Clayton, 2011).
Effects of Cognitive Overload
Cognitive overload can have a variety of negative effects on people’s cognitive
processing and well-being. For example, cognitive overload can result in reduced processing
speed as well as a tendency to transfer mental resources away from the complex tasks that
impose the overload (Fox, Park & Lang, 2007). Empirical evidence of the effects of the
detrimental effects of cognitive overload on decision making has been found in the context of
complex and emotionally charged life tasks such as financial planning (Agarwal, Driscoll,
Gabaix & Laibson, 2008; Lusardi & Mitchell, 2007).
In situations of cognitive overload, people have little mental bandwidth left to deal with
the demands of their daily lives, which has effects on cognitive, emotional, and even
physiological regulation. One reason cognitive overload has a negative impact on cognitive
tasks such decision making is that, when faced with cognitive overload, people often revert to
using mental heuristics which may not lead to the best outcomes. For example, they show a
“default bias” or tendency to avoid taking action or making a decision (Madrian & Shea, 2001).
People also show an “availability bias” or tendency to make decisions based on easily available
information when faced with cognitive overload (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). In the higher
education context, examples of availability bias might include a student taking a class because a
friend is taking it rather than because it is part of her major or a student applying for a job or
internship because it was the first one she saw advertised.
Cognitive overload has been associated with adverse psychological effects such as stress
and low job satisfaction (Melamed, Fried & Froom, 2001; Verbeek, van Dijk & De Vries, 1986).
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When making complex decisions, people who use analytical, thorough, and rational approaches
rather than mental heuristics often face additional stress, even though they make better decisions,
because they face cognitive overload (Galotti, 1999).
Cognitive overload has also been associated with negative physiological symptoms such
as increased blood pressure, muscle tension, and blood cortisol levels (Hanson, Schellekens,
Veldman & Mulder, 1993; Melamed, Fried & Froom, 2001; Tafalla & Evens, 1997; Veltman &
Gailard, 1996). The cognitive, psychological, and physiological effects of cognitive overload
can exacerbate the stress levels of people who are already facing multiple stressors in their lives,
such as low-income college students. When individuals who are facing multiple stressors seek
help from various service providers, the help-seeking process itself can impose cognitive load
and exacerbate the problems associated with cognitive overload (Lens, Nugent & Wimer, 2018;
Mowbray et al., 2006)
Cognitive Overload and Low-Income College Students
While there has been limited research specifically on the ways in which seeking services
can impose cognitive load on and create cognitive overload in low-income college students,
descriptive accounts of the experiences of low-income college students and studies of help-
seeking behavior in related fields suggest that cognitive overload may be an issue in this
population and that accessing services may contribute to it.
Cognitive Overload and College Students. Both academic and non-academic aspects
of the experience of being a college student can impose significant cognitive load on students
and put them at risk for cognitive overload. Several descriptive studies of college students’
experiences describe how negotiating the college landscape in which different groups and
services target specific parts of their complex identities can impose significant burdens on
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students, cognitively and in terms of time and energy (Harper, Wardell & McGuire, 2011;
Purnell & Blank, 2004).
Harper, Wardell, and McGuire (2011), for example, describe the experience of an
undergraduate student who has to travel to different groups in different parts of his university to
access support based on his gender, racial identities, sexual orientation, religious identity, and
extracurricular interests and who doesn’t find support in navigating the intersections between
these aspects of his identity. As Harpell, Wardell, and McGuire (2011) remark, “this is a lot for
a twenty-year-old to navigate by himself,” even without having to manage the additional
challenges associated with being a low-income student. The cognitive load imposed by
searching for and accessing services related to various identity elements can add to the cognitive
load imposed by other aspects of navigating the university environment to create cognitive
overload.
Among many other things, the process of registering for classes can lead to cognitive
overload for students. Scott-Clayton (2011) describes how college students often become
overwhelmed and make suboptimal choices about which classes they need to take in order to
make progress toward their goals when faced with incomplete information from multiple
relevant sources such as course catalogues, schedules, and program descriptions which are all
located in different places.
Studies of campus mental health services document a myriad of struggles that college
students face and provide evidence that college students of all socioeconomic statuses often
report feeling overwhelmed, an active state that is associated with cognitive overload
(Broughman, Zail, Mendoza & Miller, 2009; Cook, 2007; Gloria & Castellanos, 2012; Hoffman,
Richard, Morrow & Salomone, 2002; Kitrow, 2003).
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Cognitive Overload and Dealing With Economic Scarcity. Evidence from
studies of the experience of low-income individuals in general suggests that dealing with
conditions of economic scarcity can impose significant cognitive load. Research from
behavioral economics has provided evidence of the cognitive load imposed by the increased need
to devote mental resources to thinking about basic survival needs and to make trade-offs
between, as experienced by low-income individuals, as well as the additional cognitive load
imposed by the stress associated with making these trade-offs (Lens, Nugent & Wimer, 2018;
Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013). Lens, Nugent and Wimer (2018) describe the condition of
cognitive overload imposed by the daily struggles of people living in poverty as “survival
fatigue” and explain that it magnifies the effects of other obstacles that people face and make
those obstacles more difficult to deal with by overwhelming people cognitively and emotionally.
For many people, the survival fatigue or cognitive overload due to the demands of living
in poverty, is not constant, but rather episodic. People demonstrate resilience, endurance, and
strategic problem solving until the cumulative cognitive load imposed by the struggles of daily
life exceeds their capacity to cope and their decision-making processes, especially those related
to help-seeking, succumb to the effects of cognitive overload (Lens, Nugent & Wimer, 2018).
The cognitive bandwidth associated with coping with scarcity by exercising self-control has been
shown to be a limited resource. Therefore, when people demonstrate self-control in order to
stay within a budget of money, time, or calories, both their ability to exercise self-control in
other areas and their performance on other cognitive tasks is diminished (Baumeister,
Bratslavsky & Muraven, 2018; Baumesiter & Tierney, 2012; Mullainathan & Shafir, 2014).
Dealing with scarcity of any kind, and economic scarcity in particular, has been shown to impose
a significant cognitive load and lead to cognitive overload in a variety of circumstances.
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Cognitive Load and Low-income College Students. Low-income college students face
the high levels of cognitive load associated with being college students and with economic
scarcity. They are, therefore, particularly at risk for cognitive overload, and the process of
accessing services can sometimes exacerbate this problem. One reason that accessing services
can be a particularly significant source of cognitive load is that they involve students thinking
about something that they lack. Situations that encourage students to think about scarcity and
financial stresses have been shown to increase cognitive load over and above the chronic
cognitive load imposed by those stresses themselves and have been associated with markers of
cognitive overload such as lower scores on tests of attention and cognition (Mani, Mullainathan,
Shafir & Zhao, 2013; Sussman & Shafir, 2012).
Another reason that accessing services can impose a significant amount of cognitive load
is that students may feel stress related to low self-confidence in asking for help or to fearing
stigma related to accessing help, particularly regarding services such as those related to academic
assistance, mental health, homelessness, poverty, or disability (Eisenberg, Downs, Golberstein &
Zivin, 2009; Eisenberg, Golberstein & Hunt, 2009; Hallett & Freas, 2018; Miyazaki & Janosik,
2009; Trammell, 2009).
A third way in which accessing services can impose significant cognitive load is that
deciding where to go to access services can be complicated, especially when accessing services
involves traveling to multiple offices on campus and fitting multiple appointments into an
already strained schedule. This can lead to students drifting from office to office, looking for
support with minimal guidance as Mowbray et al. (2006) found in their study of students
accessing mental health services on college campuses. When students are referred to off-campus
service providers, the cognitive load that comes from planning and scheduling office visits is
29

increased and compounded by the risk that off-campus providers may not be equipped to deal
with the specific needs of college students, which increases the need for students to advocate for
themselves during times of stress (Mowbray et al., 2006).
Low-income college students face a number of chronic sources of cognitive load that can
adversely affect their ability to manage the stresses of everyday survival, to engage effectively in
complex academic tasks, and to manage the additional stresses imposed by the processes
involved in accessing services. All of these factors can impede students’ ability to persist
through and graduate from college.
Supporting Low-Income College Students in Accessing Services
While a variety of supports have been shown to effectively contribute to meeting some of
the needs of low-income college students, the process of accessing these supports can be time
consuming, overwhelming, and contribute to students’ cognitive overload, especially when
accessing different supports involves researching and coordinating services offered by various
offices and organizations. Additionally, the needs of this population are complex and diverse,
and each students’ situation is unique, which can make the process of accessing services even
more complicated, as resource-seeking strategies that have been effective for one student may
not necessarily be as effective for another. In this section, I will review some strategies that
colleges have used to support low-income college students in accessing available resources to
meet their needs: multiservice centers, individualized services, and case management.
Multiservice Centers
In recent years, a number of colleges have begun finding ways to support students in
more easily accessing the array of services that they may need. Purnell and Blank (2004)
describe two main strategies that colleges use to provide services across the different categories:
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programs targeted to low-income and nontraditional students that offer combinations of different
kinds of counseling and support and multiservice centers, also known as one-stop centers.
Cognitive load theory would suggest that multiservice centers could have the effect of reducing
students’ cognitive load by reducing the amount of research, travel, and coordination required in
pursuit of services and that programs might have a similar effect to the extent that they act as
multiservice centers and offer access to a number of services in one place.
One example of on-campus multiservice center provision comes from the Single Stop
organization which works with colleges and universities to create one-stop centers on campuses
where students can access multiple resources from the campus and wider community. In these
centers staff use proprietary technology to screen students for eligibility for a range of public
benefits from food stamps to health insurance. Staff also provide free financial counseling as
well as legal and tax preparation services. (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Goldrick-Rab, Broton
& Gates, 2013). The free on-campus tax preparation services that Single Stop provides are
designed to ensure that students actually receive the deductions and rebates for which they are
eligible (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016). This program also encourages early filing of the fafsa
and thus supports students in getting the financial aid for which they qualify (Broton & Goldrick-
Rab, 2016). Similarly, the Center for Working Families provides a coordinated set of services
including employment, career, income and work support, tax preparation, support in applying for
public benefits, and financial counseling (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Liston & Donnan,
2012).
Comprehensive support for low-income students in accessing services is especially
important because current social safety net programs typically exclude full time students. Thus,
low-income people who enroll in college full time risk losing housing and other benefits that
31

they had been receiving (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016). Because the process of navigating
changes in benefit eligibility related to enrolling in school is particularly complex and because it
can lead to students accessing significant financial benefits that do not need to be provided
directly by the college, this type of support can benefit students substantially at a relatively low
cost to the college. Several of the colleges studied by Purnell and Blank (2004) were also
experimenting with one-stop centers, either on campus or in satellite locations, in which students
could receive support with admissions applications, academic counseling and advising,
registration, financial aid assistance, English as a Second Language support, veterans services,
and other areas. These centers not only serve the needs of students, they can also change the
institutional culture of the larger institution and encourage campus leaders to reimagine the role
of student services on their campuses (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016).
Individualized Services
Many programs exist that provide a variety of services for low-income college students.
These programs may increase or decrease students’ cognitive load, depending on how they are
structured. Evidence from at least one program suggests that individualized, one-on-one services
can be more effective than simply providing an array of services. The Working Students Success
Network (WSSN), a philanthropic initiative, supports community colleges to create academic
pathways and provide resources to meet students’ needs in the short term and set them up for
future success (Sullivan, Price, Fox & Person, 2018). In an evaluation study of this program,
Sullivan, Price, Fox, and Person (2018) found that receiving intensive one-on-one services was
associated with positive academic outcomes, but that receiving services across multiple
categories such as employment and career advancement, income and work supports, and
financial education and coaching increased persistence but not completion. The authors of the
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evaluation study suggest that this may be because when services are prepackaged across
categories, there is a greater likelihood that there will be a mismatch between the services offered
and the specific needs of the student.
The findings align with what cognitive load theory would predict because one-to-one
services both allow a professional to take over some of the cognitive load of fitting available
services to a student’s specific situation and allow the student to access just those services that
are useful to him or her. If a student is required to access services that are not applicable to his
or her needs, the process still consumes cognitive load without the payoff of getting something
that he or she needs; it simply creates unnecessary extraneous cognitive load.
Case Management
Case management programs in the higher education context can provide both the benefits
of being able to access multiple services in one place and access to professionals who are
specifically trained to help students access and coordinate these services and there is evidence
that this approach can be effective for students. Evans, Kearney, Perry, and Sullivan (2017)
describe a randomized control trial of a comprehensive case management program called Stay
The Course (STC) that was designed to help low-income community college students overcome
obstacles that might get in the way of their persistence toward graduation. In this program, a
non-profit social service agency provides intensive services for students such as coaching,
mentoring, and referral services and individually helps them overcome individual barriers that
they face, from finding affordable childcare to selecting classes to locating social services in the
community. Case managers work with students to assess their goals and the barriers to college
persistence that they might face, create a comprehensive action plan that involves both steps that
the student will take and services the case managers help them access, evaluate the plan on a
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regular basis, and work through unexpected barriers that may arise. Students in the STC program
can also access emergency financial assistance to deal with non-academic expenses that might
interfere with their ability to persist in college.
The researchers found that participation in the program significantly increased college
persistence and completion compared to students who only received access to the emergency
financial assistance and the control group who received no special services and that this effect
was stronger for female students (Evans, Kearney, Perry & Sullivan, 2017). While there has
been limited research in this area, this study suggests that case management has the potential to
move the needle in terms of helping low-income college students persist to graduation.
Case Management and Wraparound Services
The experience of facing a variety of complex, interconnected needs and experiencing
cognitive overload when faced with the prospect of accessing a variety of services from a
multitude of sources is not exclusive to low-income college students. Professionals in a number
of fields, including mental and physical health, social work, and special education, have also
faced challenges in effectively supporting the people with whom they work. Case management
approaches, including wraparound and strengths-based case management, have been used across
these fields to improve service provision and client outcomes by moving the cognitive load
involved in accessing and coordinating services from the client to a professional case manager or
support team. While some professionals have challenged the term “case management” because it
deemphasizes people’s agency and values by framing them as “cases to be managed,” the field of
case management has provided several strategies that have been shown to be effective in
supporting people who are facing complex challenges (Eack, Anderson, & Greeno, 2012;
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Gursansky, Kennedy, & Camilleri, 2012; Short, Trembath, Duncombe, Whitaker & Wiman,
2019).
Definitions
Though there are a variety of models of case management, case management can be
generally defined as a process that involves professionals assisting clients in assessing what
kinds of services they need, finding and coordinating services that may be provided by a variety
of individuals and organizations, assessing the extent to which services are helping the client
make progress toward their goals, and adjusting service provision as necessary. In a review of
definitions of case management in a healthcare setting, Font et al. (2019) identified the
multidisciplinary approach to assessment and intervention, coordination of services, goal setting,
and taking an individualized approach to the patient as the most commonly cited elements of
case management definitions.
Wraparound, also known as Intensive Case Management, is a team-based care
coordination strategy for children with complex behavioral health needs and their families
(Coldiron, Bruns & Quick, 2017). Like some other models of case management, wraparound
advocates for involving children, families and other stakeholders in creating a unique plan for
each child that draws on both traditional and non-traditional supports as well as clients’ strengths
in meeting all of their individual needs (Burns & Goldman, 1999; Eber & Nelson, 1997; Suter &
Bruns, 2009). The term “wraparound” has also been used in a variety of fields to indicate that
service providers have dedicated resources to assisting the people they work with in accessing
resources to meet a wide range of needs, going beyond those that are typically addressed by their
professional mandate (Vest, Harris, Haut, Halverson & Menachemi, 2018).
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Historical Context
The context which led to the development of case management in the mental health field
is similar to the context currently faced by college support services. In the 1950s and 1960s, the
deinstitutionalization movement transferred many people with severe mental illness out of
residential treatment into community-based treatment centers. At first, mental health
professionals thought that these centers would continue to provide the same services that they
had been providing in institutional settings, but as they began to provide services, they realized
that the population they were serving had become more diverse (Mueser, Bond, Drake &
Resnick, 1998). As community-based services expanded, patients with less severe mental
illnesses were able to access services. As services were offered in more and more places, the
complexity of the system made it increasingly difficult for previously institutionalized patients
with more severe mental health needs to navigate it and access services (Mechanic, 1991). The
patients with the most complex needs struggled to advocate for themselves, often did not seek
out mental health services proactively, and were thus unable to access services which they had
had access to in institutionalized settings (Bachrach, 1982; Lamb 1982).
Case management as a service function carried out by mental health professionals called
case managers was initially developed to refer patients to various services, to coordinate them,
and to integrate them into a cohesive plan (Moore, 1990; Mueser, Bond, Drake & Resnick,
1998). Over time, this role has expanded. Now there are several different models of case
management and some case managers directly provide a variety of services as well as
coordinating the work of other service providers (Mueser, Bond, Drake & Resnick, 1998).
Additionally, case management has been applied to a number of other fields, including
healthcare in general, social work, and education.
36

Models of Case Management
There are a number of models of case management that vary both in the role of the
service provider and in perspectives on the role of the patient. In the following section I will
introduce three such models.
Brokerage Model. In the brokerage model, case managers connect patients to needed
services and coordinate between those services (Harris & Bergman, 1993). In this model, case
managers are responsible for assessing the patient or client, planning, linking to services,
assessment, and advocacy (Intagliata, 1982). Studies have found that when case managers
confine themselves to the brokerage model, especially when services are provided in offices
rather than in the homes and community settings of clients, this model is less effective than other
models (Rapp, 1998; Scott & Dixon, 1995).
Intensive Case Management and Assertive Community Treatment. In other case
management models, case managers perform brokerage functions in addition to others. In
clinical case management, case managers view clients in a comprehensive way and are
concerned with all aspects of their lives, from housing to finances and health care to social
relationships and provide psychological services directly to patients (Kanter, 1989). In the
Intensive Case Management (ICM) which is also known as wraparound, and Assertive
Community Treatment (ACT) models, which are designed for patients with the most severe
needs, patients are supported by a multidisciplinary team that typically includes multiple case
managers as well as medical professionals. In these models, services are provided in natural
community settings, support is available 24 hours a day, and there is no limit to the amount of
time that patients can receive services (Mueser, Bond, Drake & Resnick, 1998). ICM and ACT
have been the most studied models of case management and have been found to be effective in
37

keeping patients involved in treatment and living independently and in improving their overall
mental state (Dietrich, Irving, Parkland & Marshall, 2011).
Strengths Model. The strengths model of case management, which is intertwined with
community psychology and positive psychology, provides similar services to the other models
but includes an explicit focus on the patient’s strengths and goals (Anthony et al., 1988;
Seligman, 2002; Weick et al., 1989). Practitioners in this model explicitly challenge the deficit-
based framings that have characterized other types of case management and challenge both
themselves and the people they work with to focus on things that the people they work with are
able to do and how they can harness these strengths and abilities to move toward their goals
(Brun & Rapp, 2001). The defining principles of strengths-based case management include
promoting social connections as informal helping networks, assertive community involvement
facilitated by the case manager, and emphasizing the relationship between the client and the case
manager (Brun & Rapp, 2001; Hunter, Lanza, Lawlor, Dyson & Gordon, 2016).
Strengths-based case management does not deny people’s diagnoses or other obstacles
they face, rather it challenges the idea that those obstacles should be a primary factor in defining
a person’s identity (Saleebey, 1996). In the words of Cousins (1989), a strengths-based case
manager should not deny the verdict (diagnosis or assessment) but should defy the sentence.
Overall, strengths-based case management highlights the importance of relationships in
promoting people’s developmental resilience. Strengths-based case management in particular
provides a model for professionals to collaborate with the people they serve to address complex
challenges without undermining the complexity of their identities or slipping into a deficit-
focused framework.
38

General Characteristics of Case Management and Wraparound Services
While each model of case management has some distinctive characteristics, the different
models share many essential components. Goals of case management in mental health are wide-
reaching and include promoting the patient’s physical survival, personal growth and learning,
participating in community activities, and adapting to or recovering from symptoms of their
illness (Kanter, 1989). Additionally, these models tend to emphasize service provision in
naturalistic settings rather than referrals to outside providers (Rapp, 1998). Though it has
traditionally been initiated through mental health or social welfare systems, direct application of
wraparound in K-12 schools has been associated with positive outcomes (Eber, 1996). In the
school context, researchers have found that the most effective wraparound teams are prepared to
step out of the box of the usual services provided by typical categorical services and reorganize
services or create new services to meet specific needs as they arise (Eber, Sugai, Smith & Scott,
2002). In school settings, wraparound teams focus on supporting both children and their
caregivers and combine helping families access supports such as childcare, transportation, and
mentoring with providing formal interventions such as therapy and social skills training for
children and caregivers (Eber, Sugai, Smith & Scott, 2002). In the K-12 school setting, the
wraparound process has been used effectively both for students who are experiencing severe
academic, behavioral, and emotional problems and for students who are at risk of developing
problems (Burns et al., 2000; Walker & Sprague, 1999).
Pragmatic Use of Models in Practice
While the various models of case management are helpful theoretical categories,
implementation studies have found that factors that distinguish between the models are often the
factors that are implemented less consistently (Rapp, 1998). For example, a program that uses
39

the strengths model might implement most aspects of the model consistently but meet with
clients in offices rather than in the naturalistic settings that the model prescribes (Macias,
Kinney, Farley, Jackson & Vos, 1994). The models are typically not replicated in their entirety
but adapted to the context in which they operate (Rapp, 1998). The key elements of case
management, however, tend to be consistent across the different models (Bachrach, 1980; Gaylin
& Rosenfeld, 1978).
Effectiveness of Case Management & Wraparound
Studies of the effectiveness of case management programs, including wraparound, have
found significant benefits for a variety of client outcomes that are stronger the more the case
managers work directly with clients rather than relying on referrals. Evidence from healthcare,
K12 education, mental health, social work, and other fields supports the effectiveness of case
management strategies in achieving positive outcomes from reducing emergency department
visits among frequent users to improving academic and behavioral outcomes among students,
and reductions in unmet needs, problem behavior, and symptoms among people with mental
health issues (Eber & Nelson, 1997; Kumar & Klein, 2013; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue,
1992). Several studies have found that programs in which the case managers directly worked
with clients, coaching them, teaching them skills, and helping them navigate complex processes
were much more effective than programs in which case managers referred clients to outside
agencies (Bond & Dincin, 1986; Bond, Miller, Krumwied & Ward, 1988; Rapp 1998). Eber and
Nelson (1997) found that implementing wraparound in K12 school settings had significant
effects on achieving relevant program goals such as behavioral and academic improvement and
increasing children’s ability to stay in their homes and schools rather than be moved to
residential settings. They also found that implementing wraparound in K12 schools led to
40

system changes such as redesigning programs, creating more flexible service offerings, job-
function services for key staff members, and better integrating educational and social service
agencies (Eber & Nelson, 1997). Effects of implementing case management strategies on
systems change have also been found in other fields (Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
Several programs that serve postsecondary students have begun to implement case management
models in supporting their students and have found evidence of improved retention and
completion rates as well as other positive outcomes when they have done so (Evans, Kearney,
Perry and Sullivan, 2017; Scrivener et al., 2015). The effectiveness of case management is
supported by evidence from a variety of fields.
Strategies Used by Case Managers
Both professional organizations and empirical studies from a variety of fields have
identified key strategies used by effective case managers. These include a client centered
philosophy, clear criteria for identifying clients, assessment, clear and flexible planning, ongoing
assessment, and continuous access to support for as long as the client needs it.
Client Centered Philosophy. One key element of case management is a commitment to
being client centered. Philosophically, this involves placing the client as an individual and his or
her environment at the center, rather than program goals, cost containment, or other concerns
that routinely drive service provision (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Rapp, 1998; Surles, Blanch,
Shern & Donahue, 1992). It also involves a focus on client autonomy and self-determination
(Clemens, Wetle, Feltes, Crabtree & Dubitsky, 1994). Practically, this philosophical
commitment can be reflected in meetings taking place in community locations familiar to clients
rather than in offices, in clients’ voices being heard during meetings, and in clients’ goals and
desires driving the creation of treatment plans (Carten, 1996; Hubberstey, 2001). Evidence from
41

several fields suggests that a philosophy of case management that centers the client is associated
with higher levels of client satisfaction and engagement as well as measurable positive outcomes
(Farmer & Owen, 1995; Hubberstey, 2001).
Clear Criteria for Identifying Clients. Another key element of effective case
management is establishing clear criteria for identifying clients for case management services
(Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Shepard-Tew & Creamer, 1998). Because case management
programs typically have a mandate to serve clients with a specific profile, whether that is defined
in terms of challenges clients face, institutions that clients are part of, or other factors, it is
essential that the case management team is clear about their mandate and communicates it to
everyone who may be involved in recruiting clients (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Ross, Curry
& Goodwin, 2011).
Additionally, because clients who face multiple challenges often face obstacles in
connecting with service providers, it is important for case managers to enlist a range of
individuals and organizations who may already have contact with potential clients to help with
recruitment and to communicate program criteria to them (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018). While
no studies have examined the unique effects of recruitment criteria, the importance of clear
criteria for effective practice is outlined in professional literature in the field (Fraser, Perez &
Latour, 2018).
Assessment. Additionally, effective case management involves assessing clients’
strengths, needs, and potential natural supports in all relevant life domains (Fraser, Perez &
Latour, 2018; Shepard-Tew & Creamer, 1998). Because case management is centered around
the unique goals, strengths, and challenges of the individual client’s situation and the ethic of
doing whatever is necessary to help the client, it is vital that a multidimensional understanding of
42

the client’s situation is developed at the beginning of the process so that an intervention plan can
be developed that is effective for the particular individual (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018;
Woodside & McClam, 2014; Blundo & Simon, 2015).
It is also vital that clients’ progress and the intervention plan are continually assessed
both because doing so helps the team improve the effectiveness of the treatment plan and
because clients’ situations are dynamic (Eack, Anderson & Greeno, 2012; Fraser, Perez &
Latour, 2018). While the effects of assessment have not been studied on their own, assessment
has been an essential part of case management models that have been studied and is
recommended in professional guides (Eack, Anderson & Greeno, 2012; Eber & Nelson, 1997;
Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
Planning. A fourth key element of effective case management is developing a clear and
flexible plan for connecting a client with services (Eack, Anderson & Greeno, 2012; Fraser,
Perez & Latour, 2018). The plan should include clients’ needs, barriers they face to meeting
those needs, and opportunities for collaboration between the client, the client’s family and
significant others, and members of the professional case management team to provide effective,
integrated strategies to meet the client’s needs. The plan should also include prioritized goals
and action plans for meeting those goals (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Rapp, 1998; Shepard-
Tew & Creamer, 1998). Effective case management practice involves reviewing the client’s
progress with a professional team on a regular basis and revising the plan as necessary (Rapp,
1998; Shepard-Tew & Creamer, 1998).
Flexible Funds for Individualized Support. In order to address all of a client’s relevant
needs, it is helpful if a pool of flexible funds is available to create individualized supports for
needs that are not addressed through formally available programs (Surles, Blanch, Shern &
43

Donahue, 1992). This allows case managers to be responsive to the changing needs of clients
and more fully implement the comprehensive model. Like other elements of case management,
planning has largely been an element of case management programs that have been studied
rather than having been studied on its own (Eack, Anderson & Greeno, 2012; Eber & Nelson,
1997; Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
Always Available Support. Finally, ideal case management practice involves
supporting clients whenever they need support and for as long as they need support. One key
part of this is providing clients with continuous access to support, either through an individual
case manager being “on call” or through sharing “on call” responsibility with a team of case
managers (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Rapp, 1998; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
Another key element is providing support that is not time-limited but is available as long as
clients need it (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992). Because
case management clients often face multiple challenges and may be vulnerable to having their
progress undermined by emergencies to which they may not have the resources to respond, a key
way in which case management is helpful to clients is in providing the support they need when
they need it, thus preventing small setbacks from spiraling into larger crises (Rapp, 1998; Surles,
Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
The client-centered philosophy and the nature of the challenges faced by many clients
suggest that clients should have access to case management support for as long as they need it,
rather than being exited from the program based on an externally determined timeline (Rapp,
1998). While in practice, many programs and studies of case management are only able to
provide case management for a limited period of time and not all programs have continuous on-
44

call support, there is some evidence that accessibility of services is associated with positive
outcomes (Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Rapp, 1998; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
Case Management in Higher Education
These strategies have been identified as supporting the effectiveness of case management
practice in a variety of fields from physical and mental health to social work and education. In
recent years, a number of colleges have begun to draw upon the case management and
wraparound approaches developed in other fields to develop strategies for meeting the needs of
their student populations. While research on these programs has been somewhat limited, several
researchers have written descriptive or evaluative studies of programs and a few themes are
beginning to emerge. Just as in other settings, case managers in higher education help their
clients meet their emotional, physical, academic, and personal needs by arranging, coordinating,
monitoring, evaluating, and advocating for them with service providers both on and off campus
(Adams, Hazelwood & Hayden, 2014; Shayman, 2010). Administrators with the “case manager”
title have particularly been added to student affairs departments, counseling centers, deans of
students’ offices, and other campus offices that do work related to student advocacy (Adams,
Hazelwood & Hayden, 2014). Many case managers in higher education come from student
services backgrounds, but recently some colleges have hired staff members to work in campus
student services positions who have backgrounds in social work or in working with populations
whose basic needs are not being met (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Evans, Kearney, Perry and
Sullivan, 2017).
Case managers in higher education, like case managers in other fields, provide direct
services such as advising, advocacy for students with various service providing institutions,
helping students cope with institutional barriers, and helping students navigate the university
45

system to access services when their academic, personal, and social circumstances threaten to
interfere with their academic progress (Randazzo & Plummer, 2009). Case managers in higher
education, like case managers in other fields, meet with students to establish trust, assess their
goals and the barriers they face, develop and implement a comprehensive service plan, assess the
plan’s effectiveness on a regular basis, and support the students in dealing with unexpected
barriers as they come up (Evans, Kearney, Perry and Sullivan, 2017). They can coordinate
services for individual students and create programs that institutionalize partnerships. One
college, for example, partners its food bank with its culinary arts department to provide healthy
cooking demonstrations in the location where students can pick up food (Broton & Goldrick-
Rab, 2016).
While some case managers do provide services such as advising directly, a recent study
found that many university staff members who act as case managers use a broker model of case
management and rely primarily on referring students to services, a practice that has been shown
to be somewhat less effective than direct service provision in other fields (Adams, Hazelwood &
Hayden, 2014). Colleges that have used more comprehensive models with a variety of supports
and requirements have found improved retention and completion rates, improved grades and
other positive outcomes (Evans, Kearney, Perry and Sullivan, 2017; Scrivener et al., 2015).
As colleges continue to develop strategies to support their increasingly diverse student
populations, there is much that they can take away from the case management literature. As case
managers become more prevalent in higher education, they can take some of the cognitive load
of accessing and coordinating services away from individual students, thus freeing up more of
students’ cognitive capacity for academic engagement.
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Conclusion
In this chapter, I reviewed three main bodies of literature. The literature around existing
support programs for low-income college students demonstrates the breadth of services that can
be helpful and even necessary for low-income college students as well as some strategies that
colleges have used to make the process of accessing services less overwhelming. The literature
around cognitive load theory provides a model for understanding how searching for, accessing,
and coordinating different services can impose a cognitive burden on low-income college
students and thus impact their functioning in a variety of life areas. The literature around case
management presents a process that professionals in a variety of fields have used to support
people who, like low-income college students, face a variety of challenges and may need a
variety of supports, the accessing and coordination of which can prove overwhelming. In the
next chapter, I will outline my research methodology for analyzing how TSLC staff, like case
managers in other fields, customize their program to meet the needs of low-income college
students.

47

Figure 1
Complex Identities Make the Process of Accessing Services Complex

Figure 2
Cognitive Overload Among Low-income College Students

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Chapter Three: Research Methods
This chapter presents an overview of the methodology and research design that was used
to understand the following question: How did Thompson Scholars Learning Community
(TSLC) staff customize the program to meet individual students’ needs?
1
This study sought to
understand the strategies that TSLC used to customize the program to meet the individual needs
of the students in the program.
The chapter will cover the rationale for the design and information regarding the site and
selection of participants as well as how the data was analyzed. The chapter will end by
identifying the positionality of the author that might have influenced the study.
Overall Design
Data were drawn from a broader research project that employed a longitudinal, mixed-
methods design that examined traditional academic short- and long-term outcomes, such as
retention and GPA, and explores a multitude of psychosocial outcomes (e.g., career self-efficacy,
belonging) using quantitative and qualitative data sources (Cole, Kitchen & Kezar, 2018). The
larger mixed methods study included longitudinal surveys conducted with two cohorts of
participants, student focus groups, digital diary interviews with students, and case study data
collection (e.g., program observations and stakeholder interviews).
A qualitative research design was used in this study to help explore the processes
through which TSLC staff customize the program to meet students’ individual needs. Merriam
(2009) states that “qualitative research is interested in how the meaning is constructed, how
people make sense of their lives and their worlds” (p.24). The value in using a qualitative
research method is that it allowed me to understand the processes through which TSLC staff

1
Chapter 3 draws on the larger Thompson Scholars Learning Community proposal and papers
49

members customized the program to meet the needs of individual students. Denzin and Lincoln
(2011) state:
Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world.
Qualitative research consists of a set of interpretative, material practices that make the
world visible. These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of
representations, including field notes, interviews, conversations, photographs, recordings,
and memos to the self…qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings,
attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people
bring to them. (p.3)
This definition was helpful as it laid out my role as the researcher and how I could approach my
study. In addition to this definition, Creswell (2013) summarizes several common characteristics
of qualitative research including that it happens in a natural setting, the researcher serves as a key
instrument, uses multiple methods, complex reasoning through inductive and deductive logic,
participants’ meanings, emergent design, reflexivity, and provide a holistic account. These
concepts also served as guidelines for my approach as a researcher conducting a qualitative
study. I was looking to understand the processes through which TSLC staff customized the
program to meet the needs of the students in their program. The best way for me to do this was
to use interviews and observations to access the ways that TSLC staff customized the program in
their everyday work lives.
Qualitative methodology is preferred when conducting exploratory studies because it
allows for the identification of unanticipated phenomena and influences (Maxwell, 1996).
Creswell (2009) stated that qualitative methodology allows the researcher to focus on providing
a holistic account of the phenomena being studied. Because there had not been significant
50

previous research into the ways in which staff in college transition support programs customize
their programs to meet the needs of students, the current study was exploratory in nature and
focused on developing an understanding of the phenomenon of customization in this context. It
was, therefore, well-suited to the qualitative approach.
Case Study
In accordance with Merriam’s observations, I “[chose qualitative case study research]
because [I was] interested in insight, discovery, and interpretation rather than hypothesis testing”
(pp. 28-29). The aim of this study was to examine the processes used by college support staff
rather than to test a predetermined hypothesis. To portray the complexity of the entire group of
all college transition program staff was not the aim of this study. Lincoln and Guba (1985)
declare that such a portrayal with a selected homogeneous group is not possible (p. 297).
Instead, case study research is designed to listen to the individual voices of participants that will
represent a variety of perspectives (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). In this study I sought to
provide multiple staff perspectives on the processes used for customizing support to meet the
needs of individual students within a single program, using the whole TSLC program as the case.
I selected the descriptive case study as my methodology, as it was well-suited to the
purpose of my study—to conduct an in-depth examination of the process of customization in a
program that supports students’ transition to college. Creswell (2007) writes that "in a case
study, a specific case is examined, often with the intent of examining an issue with the case
illuminating the complexity of the issue" (Creswell, 2007, p. 93). Additionally, I selected the
case study because it is a strong method for practices and the focus of this study was the
practices that TSLC staff used in customizing the program to meet students’ individual needs.
51

A case study was appropriate for my research purpose because I was working from a
social constructivist paradigm, which assumed that "individuals seek understanding of the world
in which they live and work" and that they "develop subjective meanings of their experience—
meanings directed toward certain objects or thing" (Creswell, 2009, p.8). Since the social
constructivist approach relies heavily on the participants' views of the phenomenon being
studied, a case study method, with its interviews and open-ended questions, was appropriate.
Also, how individuals make meaning of their experience is varied and multiple, and the case
study method enabled me to understand the complexity of staff members’ experiences as they
sought to understand the complexity of students’ experiences and customize the program to fit
their needs.
Site Selection
Creswell (2009) stated that purposefully selecting sites or individuals is the first step in
qualitative data collection procedures because these individuals will best help the researcher
understand the phenomena under analysis. The sampling strategy used in this study was
purposeful sampling. “Information rich cases” (Patton, 2002, p. 40) were specifically selected
for the in-depth information that would provide data towards answering the research questions in
this study. According to Patton (2002), “information-rich cases are those from which one can
learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the research, thus the term
purposeful sampling” (p. 46). For this study, I analyzed staff members’ customization practices
at all three University of Nebraska campuses at which the TSLC program operated: University of
Nebraska, Kearney, University of Nebraska, Omaha and University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
I chose to include all three campuses, both to expand the range of staff members whose
perspectives could be included and to be able to examine similarities and differences in staff
52

customization strategies across campuses with programs of different sizes and different student
demographics. While staff at each of these campuses served low-income students, many of
whom were also first generation students and work within the context of the same program, the
campuses on which they worked had different institutional missions and the students that they
served differed in ways which affected the program’s operation as well as the challenges and
opportunities that students faced. One campus, for example, served a large proportion of
commuter students who spent less time on campus when they were not in class and thus
experienced the program differently.
A campus’ location in a rural, urban or suburban area, the size of the campus, the
diversity of the student body, its selectivity, and whether it had a research focus could affect
students’ backgrounds, experiences on campus, and the types of program customization options
that were available to staff members on each campus. For example, if a student had a particular
interest in a research topic or a certain career, was struggling in a certain subject, or wanted to
process the ways in which their ethnicity affected their experience of gender, their opportunities
to do so could be affected by which of the campuses they attended. The presence or absence of
other students facing similar issues could also affect the strategies that staff used to customize
the program. Because the campuses differed from each other in a number of ways, I decided to
study the phenomenon of customization in the TSLC program across the three campuses on
which the program is located.
Overview of TSLC Program
The TSLC program, the CCTP at the center of this study, exists on three University of
Nebraska campuses: University of Nebraska, Kearney, University of Nebraska, Omaha and
University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Hallett, Reason, Toccoli, Kitchen & Perez, 2020). The TSLC
53

programs at the three campuses range in size from approximately 200-600 first- and second-year
students each year and each campus serves a different student population. University of
Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL) is the flagship campus of the University of Nebraska system. UNL is
a research-focused, land grant university that serves about 26,000 students, 74% of whom
identify as non-Hispanic white. University of Nebraska, Omaha (UNO) is located in a major city
and serves approximately 12,000 students, many of whom live off campus and around 30% of
whom are considered “ethnically diverse.” University of Nebraska, Kearney (UNK) is located in
a rural area and primarily serves students from rural areas of the state. UNK serves
approximately 5,000 students, 77% of whom self-identify as non-Hispanic white.
The overall purpose of the TSLC program is to facilitate a successful college transition
and promote a pathway to college completion. Students in this program must be residents of the
state and come from low-income households who are expected to contribute less than $10,000
per year to the student’s education, which is determined by the financial aid offices. The
students apply for the TSLC scholarship while in high school. If selected and admitted to one of
the University of Nebraska campuses, they receive a five-year scholarship that covers
approximately the cost of tuition and participate in a two-year support program that is composed
of shared academic courses, college success seminars, peer mentoring, individualized
professional advising, and social, academic, and educational programs. Being a first-generation
college student is not required for participation, although many of the students do identify as
first-generation.
The open application process, with only one requirement, as well as the relatively large
financial resources available through the private foundation to support the program, means that a
54

diverse group of students are included in the program. The program admits students with a wide
array of academic abilities and achievement levels.

Figure 3
Diagram of Comprehensive College Transition Program Components (Hallett, Kezar, Perez &
Kitchen, 2020)

Over the course of the two-year program, TSLC students participate in a range of
academic, social, career development, and community service activities (see
Diagram of Comprehensive College Transition Program Components (Hallett, Kezar, Perez &
Kitchen, 2020)). The present study focuses on the processes through which TSLC staff
customize the program to meet the needs of individual students.
55

There are several reasons why this program was a strong site for this study. First, the
TSLC program encompassed a wide variety of supports along many domains which gave the
staff a broad range of services to work with in customizing the program experience for each
student. Additionally, the TSLC staff partnered with other organizations around the university,
which further broadened the range of services they had available. Another reason that the TSLC
program was an excellent site for studying customization is that each student had a primary staff
member who was their point of contact and who knew their strengths and challenges well
enough to be able to customize program elements to meet their unique needs. This program was
also a strong site for this study because students received generous financial and non-financial
support as program participants and thus had a strong incentive to comply with the program
requirements that staff set for them. Finally, this program was an excellent site for studying
customization because, unlike in many college support programs, the staff had the authority to
customize the program requirements to meet students’ unique needs.
Participants
Because the ways in which staff engaged in customization across the program were of
interest and because there were a relatively small number of staff members overall, all staff who
were interviewed as part of the larger study were included in this study. This included 14 staff
members at UNO, 18 staff members at UNL, and 4 staff members at UNK (see Error!
Reference source not found.).
Each program had multiple points of contact for each student, including the program
director and support staff and faculty coordinator. A primary point of contact (POC) for each
student allowed a ready, consistent connection for information, support, and encouragement.
Students met regularly with their POC, which facilitated the development of a relationship
56

between student and POC over time. Staff members received training that emphasized the
building of relationships and providing validating experiences for students. Staff were required
to proactively reach out to students, initiating contact regularly to check on students. The staff
provided students both academic and interpersonal support and are empowered to customize
program offerings and requirements to meet the needs of individual students.
Data Collection and Sources
A descriptive case study involves collecting data from multiple sources, including
interviews, observations, documents, and audiovisual material (Creswell, 2007) to arrive at a
detailed, rich, "thick description" of the case (Stake, 1995, p). The larger case study drew upon
(a) interviews with faculty and staff, including program directors, program staff, and course
instructors; (b) multiple observations of program activities conducted on-site at each of the three
universities; (c) collecting authentic documents that were produced by program leadership. Staff
interviews and a document analysis of three years of annual reports were the primary sources of
data for the current analysis.
Table 1
Participants and Interviews From the Three University of Nevada Campuses
Campus Number of Participants Number of Interviews
UNO 13 18
UNL 8 14
UNK 4 10

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Staff Interviews
Over the course of the broader study of the program, researchers conducted semi-
structured interviews with staff (n=42) at the three campuses. Researchers also conducted
periodic informal interviews with program staff to fill in gaps in our understanding of program
components and processes, and to clarify information we had gathered in the larger project. The
program staff included program directors, faculty coordinators, and program coordinators who
provided direct support to students, including teaching the first-year seminars. For each group,
they developed shared protocols across the three campuses in order to facilitate the collection of
comparable data (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017). Protocols for interviews with program staff and
faculty coordinators were designed to explore the historical development of the program, the
explicit and implicit goals of the various program interventions, and each staff member’s
experiences with students in the program. Interviews were professionally transcribed.
In analyzing the interviews, I was particularly looking for descriptions of actions that
staff members had taken to customize the program to the needs of students as well as ways in
which they thought about the customization process.
Document Analysis
Each academic year, the TSLC program at each of the campuses creates an annual report
which outlines the program’s progress on its goals for the year, budget and student demographics
and successes. Each report also outlines the program’s goals for the upcoming year. I reviewed
three years of annual reports from each campus in order to contextualize my analysis of the staff
interviews and look for explicitly stated goals related to customization.
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Data Analysis
I used deductive and inductive thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998). Observation notes and
interview transcripts were read and reread to identify major trends in the strategies that staff used
for customizing parts of the program. A case study document that integrates the staff interviews
and document analysis was created. Within the larger case study, I also compared the data from
the three different campuses.
I began my analysis by deductively capturing the important aspects of the data and
writing a short narrative. The deductive aspects of my analysis utilized theoretical constructs to
guide my analysis. In particular, I focused on two aspects of deductive analysis. First, I
analyzed the staff data to understand their experiences of customizing the program. Second, I
explored the data through the lens of my theoretical constructs. For the purposes of this study, I
specifically looked for the ways in which the customization strategies they used compared to
strategies from the case management literature and for strategies that might affect students’
cognitive load.
I also used inductive analysis in order to capture themes that emerged from the data that I
did not anticipate or that were not suggested by previous literature. For sections of the data that
discussed customization but were not covered by the deductive codes, I identified themes within
and across interviews and used those themes to create codes and apply these codes to the data,
following Boyatzis (1998).
Trustworthiness and Role of the Researcher
Qualitative research can be challenging because there is no one way to test the
trustworthiness of a study. However, there are different tools that can be used when analyzing
the data to ensure that as the researcher I am reporting my data in a reliable manner.
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Researchers’ prolonged engagement with each CCTP for four years enhanced the credibility of
the data (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The data from this study has been member checked for
accuracy with interviewees. Third, the study uses multiple forms of data and triangulates
interviews, digital videos, observations, and documents.
Equally important is to remember that I am a first generation student from a low-income
background myself and a teacher of low-income elementary and middle school students who
aspire to become first generation college students, and that I wish to ensure that future students
are both celebrated in their complex individuality and supported well throughout their
postsecondary careers. As Creswell states “we conduct qualitative research when we want to
empower individuals to share their stories, hear their voices, and minimize the power
relationships that often exist between a researcher and the participants in a study” (p.48).
Through this study I hope to empower both students and the staff that support them by
giving the staff an opportunity to share the important work they are doing in supporting students
as individuals rather than reducing them to one aspect of their identities. Additionally, I hope to
present these strategies in a way that may be useful to other professionals who work with low-
income college students. Having these goals in mind I will ensure that I am presenting their
perspectives on customization in an accurate and ethical manner.
Limitations
This overall study has some limitations to note in order to fully understand our findings.
First, the CCTP underwent some changes over the course of our study, and our observations
were necessarily a snapshot of the program component at a point in time. Second, we relied on
instructor and student volunteers to participate in the data collection. Instructors who were
inclined to participate in our data collection processes were likely also to be more closely aligned
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with the overall CCTP program and goals. We did not observe all the instructors who we
interviewed in classroom settings, so for some instructors we cannot make distinctions between
espoused and enacted pedagogies. Students who volunteered for, and completed, the digital
diary portion of data collection had to commit to a longitudinal study; thus, not all student
perspectives may be represented. Nevertheless, the multiple sources of data and longitudinal
nature of the study contributed to a rich, holistic analysis. The staff members who are the focus
of the current study were interviewed in their professional capacity which may have biased them
to answer in more positive ways and in ways that align more with their understanding of what
they were supposed to be doing than the reality of practice. Because the study does not focus on
a particularly sensitive issue, however, I anticipate this to be less of a problem.
Conclusion
This chapter summarized the methodology and key components of the research design
including participant selection, data collection methods, and proposed data analysis procedures.
Chapter 4 will present the findings that emerge from data analysis. Chapter 5 will present
implications of these findings for researchers and practitioners in the field as well as
recommendations for further research.
Chapter Four: Findings
The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the ways in which
Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC) staff members at three University of Nebraska
campuses customized the program to meet the needs of TSLC students. This study examined
how staff members gathered data about students’ strengths and needs in order to customize the
experience of individual students, groups of students, and TSLC students as a whole.
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Going forward I will use the following terminology: Individual customization refers to
situations in which staff members worked with students to create a unique experience for an
individual student based on their specific situation through leveraging an existing set of services,
drawing upon their experience with proven strategies, or creating fully bespoke supports. Group
customization refers to situations in which staff members modified elements of their
programmatic offerings to better meet the needs of a group of students or the entire population of
TSLC scholars through customizing mandatory program elements, adjusting mandatory
programming for a specific group of students, or modifying the menu of supports that were
offered to students. Customization will be used as a general term that encompasses both
individual and group customization.
The study also examined how staff learned to customize the program, both for
individuals and for groups. The research questions that guided this study were as follows:
1. How do TSLC staff customize the program to meet individual students’ needs?
2. What student characteristics do TSLC staff consider when they customize the program
for students?
3. How do TSLC staff learn to customize the program for students?
This chapter presents results from the analysis of 42 interviews with TSLC professional
staff members across the three campuses, 28 interviews with campus stakeholders across the
three campuses, and nine annual reports that the staff of each campus prepared for the
foundation. Fourteen of the staff interviews, which represented eight participants, were
conducted at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (UNL), 18 interviews, which represented 13
participants, were conducted at the University of Nebraska, Omaha (UNO), and 10 interviews,
which represented 4 participants, were conducted at the University of Nebraska, Kearny (UNK).
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Nine of the stakeholder interviews were conducted at UNL, 7 were conducted at UNO, and 12
were conducted at UNK. Three annual reports were from UNL, three were from UNO, and three
were from UNK. The professional staff were hired to advise and support TSLC students in their
first and second years in the program through workshops and curriculum as well as one-on-one
meetings. The campus stakeholders were drawn from a variety of campus departments that
interact with TSLC staff and serve TSLC students. The Annual Reports summarized each
campus program’s progress and goals and were prepared by TSLC staff for the Buffett
Foundation.
Summary of Findings
Throughout their interviews, TSLC staff consistently discussed ways in which they
centered the individual student and considered each student from a holistic perspective, just as
case management professionals in social work and other fields do (Short, Trembath, Duncombe,
Whitaker & Wyman, 2019). This holistic perspective on student success was also evident in the
ways they talked about the student characteristics they considered when customizing the program
to meet students’ needs. While staff members did consider a variety of student characteristics in
their work, the idea of each student as a complex individual with different intersectional
identities was a key part of the way staff members framed these discussions. Within this
perspective, staff members discussed six main categories of student characteristics that they
considered when customizing the program. These categories included levels of academic
preparation, status as an English Language Learner, mental health and disability services needs,
student major, available resources, and other student characteristics.
A holistic perspective on student success also framed the ways in which staff members
gathered data about student needs and the strategies that they used to customize elements of the
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program for individuals, groups, and the TSLC population as a whole. In their interviews, TSLC
staff described their experiences working with individual TSLC students, considering the needs
of groups of TSLC students, and customizing the program on their campuses to better meet the
needs of the TSLC student population as a whole. In the interviews that I analyzed, staff
described customizing students’ experience of the program through working with them one-on-
one, coaching them through challenging situations, and creating individualized plans for students
who were struggling academically as well as through customizing elements of the program to
meet the needs of groups of students.
The importance of one-on-one meetings between students and staff for the process of
customizing support to meet students’ needs was also evident in TSLC staff’s descriptions of the
ways in which they gathered data about students’ needs. While staff members did discuss other
strategies, they used to gain information about student needs such as surveys, skill analyses, and
referrals, the vast majority of their descriptions focused on individual students sharing their
stories with staff members. Staff members described customizing the program in a variety of
ways as they gathered data about student needs. They described both providing individualized
support in response to specific situations and customizing programmatic components through
adding, changing, and removing elements of the programming offered by TSLC.
In addressing the third research question, “How do TSLC staff learn to customize the
program to students’ needs?” my analysis revealed that TSLC staff members mostly learned
through collaboration with others as they create customized supports. There were also a number
of formal and informal learning opportunities that influenced the ways in which staff members
customized the program to meet students’ needs. These learning opportunities ranged from
formal onboarding and professional development to individual professional reflection time and
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opportunities to collaborate with and learn from colleagues within and between campuses.
While formal professional learning opportunities were often relevant to the ways that TSLC staff
members thought about creating customized supports, TSLC staff members mostly learned to
customize supports in informal ways, typically by creating them in collaboration with the
students they served, their colleagues, and other stakeholders.
Emerging Framework for Customization Activities
TSLC staff members used a wide variety of approaches to customize the program
offerings to best meet students’ needs. Activities ranged from individualized guidance based on
their knowledge of a specific student’s situation to modifying the format and contents of
workshops and support services, to individual support with specific struggles in a specific
students’ personal life. Moreover, many options for customization were integral to the
programming offered by TSLC: Students could choose to access certain supports (e.g. disability
testing) while other supports were mandatory only for students meeting certain criteria (e.g.
supports for students on academic probation).
Given the range of support options offered by TSLC and the variety of activities
performed by TSLC staff members as they customized the support for students, a framework was
needed to structure and organize customization activities and guide further analysis. The
framework needed to take into account both choices in the program design and the
customizations performed by TSLC staff members in response to the needs of individual
students.
Given the absence of an established framework for the types of customization of support
offerings in the postsecondary education space, I cast a wider net and considered potential
analogs in other fields. This section will draw upon a framework introduced to classify the
65

modes of customization of products and services in the private sector by Lampel & Mintzberg
(1996). After introducing the framework, it will be applied to categorize the types of support
offerings provided by TSLC and the inherent customizations, before moving on to considering
the role of TSLC staff members in customizing support offerings across each of the categories.
The resulting framework is shown in Error! Reference source not found..
Lampel & Mintzberg’s (1996) framework identifies five distinct modes of customizing
products and services to specific customers’ needs, arranged across a spectrum from Pure
Standardization characterized by a complete absence of choices to Pure Customization denoting
bespoke, one-of-a-kind creations:
1. Pure Standardization: The Model T. Only a single design is available, geared
towards the broadest set of customers, with no choices or options. Examples of
this approach include the Ford Model T or Classic Coke. Consumers’ only choice
in this model is to accept the standardized product or not.
2. Segmented Standardization: Breakfast Cereals. A basic design is modified to
meet the needs of various segments or clusters of buyers. Examples include
various car models or types of cereal. Companies may have different categories
of consumers in mind and design different iterations of a product to match the
needs and desires of those categories of consumers, but there is no feedback
mechanism which allows for the consumers to communicate their desires to the
company and affect the production process.
3. Customized Standardization: The Menu. Products are made to order, or
assembled, for each customer based on a standardized set of components.
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Examples include the “build your own” menus at many hamburger chains or the
option catalogues with various engine, paint, and interior choices for new cars.
4. Tailored Customization: The Birthday Cake. A defined product prototype is
modified to meet the individual customer’s specific needs. Examples include
tailored suits or custom birthday cakes.
5. Pure Customization: The Apollo Mission. A product is designed and created
specifically to meet the customer’s unique needs. Examples include custom
jewelry, a custom home designed by an architect, or large-scale projects such as
the Apollo project.
Applying this framework against the types of support provided to TSLC scholars pointed
to analogues for all five modes of customization:
1. Pure Standardization: The Model T. Examples of pure standardization
included aspects of the program that were mandatory for all students such as the
First Year Experience class, completing a certain number of workshops, and
completing mid-semester grade checks.
2. Segmented Standardization: Breakfast Cereals. The analogue to this type of
product offering included discrete sets of supports targeted at the needs of specific
student populations, for example programs for students on academic probation
(such as PERSYST) or programming for English Language Learners. These
offerings were typically required for students that meet certain criteria, and
usually not available to the remainder of the student population.
3. Customized Standardization: The Menu. Examples of customized
standardization comprised a broad subset of the supports offered to TSLC
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scholars, including TSLC classes that overlapped with honors classes for students
who were participating in both programs, optional disability testing, workshops to
introduce students to potential local employers, or preparation materials for the
PRAXIS professional exams.
4. Tailored Customization: The Birthday Cake. This category was characterized
by the use of an existing type of intervention that was customized by a TSLC staff
member to better fit the needs of a specific student. Many examples in this
category could be described as “advising”, wherein the TSLC staff members draw
upon their experience with a range of strategies and work with a student to create
a personalized strategy and action plan customized for their specific situation, for
example leveraging the resources available to said student through their personal
network.
5. Pure Customization: The Apollo Mission. This would refer to unique, one-of-
a-kind support provided to individual students, often leveraging the personal
resources of a TSLC staff member. One example would be a TSLC staff member
who leveraged their personal network to construct an accessible shower for a
student with a physical disability.
While this framework covers the majority of supports offered to TSLC scholars, there is
one category of activities without a direct match in Lampel & Mintzberg’s (1996) model: In
many cases students receive individualized guidance from TSLC staff members on which
available support offerings to leverage in order to meet their specific needs. Examples include
TSLC staff members helping a student identify resources to meet food needs after they had given
their entire refund check to their family. In the analog of the products and services space this
68

could be thought of as a sommelier guiding a restaurant patron to select an appropriate wine
pairing for her dinner.
To reflect this type of support services, an additional category will be added, titled
“Customized Standardization with Guidance: The Sommelier,” and slotted in between categories
3 and 4, “Customized Standardization” and “Tailored Customization.” Going forward, the
adapted framework with six categories along the spectrum from Pure Standardization to Pure
Customization will be used (see Error! Reference source not found.).
The next section will examine the types of activities applied by TSLC staff members as
they customized support services across the six categories of supports. I will give examples how
staff members engaged with individual students in each of the six categories to customize their
specific experience and meet their individual needs (individual customization) as well as how
they customized aspects of the broader program to reflect their learnings and observations of
broader student needs (group customization).
1. Pure Standardization: The Model T. TSLC staff members monitored the
needs of the broader student population and customized the program requirements
to respond to changes in needs. For example, TSLC staff members revised the
curriculum of the First Year Experience class to address common gaps in
knowledge (e.g. how to handle parking tickets on campus) or set up mandatory
workshops to bring the entire student population together after an incident of
racial discrimination.
2. Segmented Standardization: Breakfast Cereals. TSLC staff members
customized the offerings on two levels: They refined the existing offerings, e.g.
reduced the frequency of meetings for students on academic probation at UNK,
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and they added or discontinued programs for specific groups, e.g. created a class
for students beyond second year that were on academic warning or probation at
UNO.
3. Customized Standardization: The Menu. Similar to the hamburger restaurant
example referenced by Lampel & Mintzberg (1996), the customization activities
in this category take place on two levels: First, students select and access a
specific, personalized combination of supports from the “menu” made available
by the program, creating an individual customization. For example, the program
might cover the cost of disability testing, but the choice whether to enroll in and
complete a test belonged to the student. Second, the TSLC staff members
monitored the needs of the student population, which services they may or may
not avail themselves of, and whether the services were appropriately meeting their
needs. Based on those observations they performed group customizations, for
example adding new optional programs, such as a lunch with a professor or
covering the cost of learning disability testing and mental health services at UNK
and UNL through the Buffett Foundation. They also modified existing offerings,
for example move the location of mental health services to avoid a perceived
stigma, or discontinue services that are perceived as less worthwhile (UNL) or
duplicative of other campus offerings (UNO).
Categories 4-6 are in effect defined by individual customization, as the TSLC staff
members create unique experiences that are customized to the needs of an individual student.
The main difference between these categories lies in the resources the staff members leverage as
they customize the experience. No examples of group customization, i.e. changes to how
70

services are provided were observed across categories 4-6. Concretely, the following examples
of customization activities were observed:
4. Customized Standardization with Guidance: The Sommelier. Staff members
guided students through the process of understanding and taking advantage of
available resources and services, acting as de-facto case managers.
5. Tailored Customization: The Birthday Cake. Staff members drew upon
successful strategies and case examples from their professional training and
personal experience and customized them to the specific student’s situation.
6. Pure Customization: The Apollo Mission. Staff members created new and
unique solutions without leveraging existing services or applying known
strategies and case examples.
In reviewing the role of TSLC staff members in customizing the offer across the six
categories of support, two modes of engagement emerge:
● Individual customization. Staff members worked with students to create a
unique experience for an individual student based on their specific situation.
They leveraged an existing set of services (Category 4), drew upon their
experience with proven strategies (Category 5), or created fully bespoke support
(Category 6). In all three cases the result is a unique, customized experience for a
specific student.
● Group customization. Staff members monitored the evolving needs of the
student population and identified potential changes to the programmatic offerings
in order to better meet the needs of a group of students. They sometimes changed
the mandatory program elements (Category 1), adjusted offerings for specific
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groups of students (Category 2), or added, removed, or modified optional
available support services (Category 3). In all three cases they customized the
program to meet the evolving needs of a group of students.
The framework introduced in this section is summarized in Error! Reference source not
found. and will be referenced in the remainder of this thesis.

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Table 2
Emerging Framework for Modes of Customization
← Group customization → ← Individual customization →

Pure
Standardization
Segmented
Standardization
Customized
Standardization
Customized
Standardization
with Guidance
Tailored
Customization
Pure
Customization
Definition (Lampel &
Mintzberg, 1996)
Single design,
no choices or
options
Basic design
modified for
segments of
customers
Made to order
based on
standardized set
of components
n/a Defined
prototype
modified for
individual
customer
Designed and
built to specific
customers’
needs
Product and Services
example (Lampel &
Mintzberg, 1996)
Ford Model T Types of cereal,
car models,
bumper stickers
“Build your
own” menu at a
Hamburger
chain restaurant
(Sommelier)
2
Birthday cake,
tailored suit
Custom
jewelry,
custom home
TSLC support analog
Mandatory
program
elements
Services for
specific groups
of students
Supports
offered to all
TSLC scholars
Individualized
guidance on
supports and
services (Case
management)
Advising based
on past cases,
strategies, and
experience
Unique, one-
of-a-kind
support
TSLC example
First Year
Experience
class,
mandatory
workshops
PERSYST
program for
students on
academic
probation, ELL
program
Elective classes,
optional
workshops,
testing for
learning
disabilities
Helping a
student access
resources to
deal with
temporary food
insecurity
Personalized
strategies and
action plans,
leveraging
student’s
personal
network
Construct an
accessible
shower for a
student with a
physical
disability
Staff - Student
engagement
Understand and
fulfil
requirements
Understand
support offer
and
requirements
Student chooses
which services
to access
Staff member
combines
available
services and
resources
Staff member
creates
personalized
strategy
Staff member
personally
provides new
and unique
support
Program customization
Customize
program
requirements
Refine existing
offer, add or
discontinue a
program,
convert into
mandatory or
optional offer
Add new
programs,
modify existing
offerings,
discontinue
offerings
Not observed Not observed Not observed
Examples
Modify
curriculum of
First Year
Experience,
hold mandatory
workshop to
address current
event
Reduce
frequency of
meetings in a
program, create
class for
students beyond
2nd year on
academic
probation
Add lunch with
a professor
program, cover
cost of mental
health services,
relocate
services,
discontinue
duplicative
services
Not observed Not observed Not observed

2
Example added by author; category not present in Lampel & Mintzberg (1996)
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Detailed Findings and Application of Framework
The remainder of this chapter will apply this framework to the research findings. It will
be organized in five sections: First, I will introduce the philosophical approach that was
pervasive with TSLC across all three campuses. The following three sections will describe how
TSLC staff approached customizing the program to meet students’ needs, including the student
characteristics they considered, how they gathered this information, and the strategies they
utilized. The last section will describe the formal and informal ways in which TSLC staff learn
to customize the support they provide for students. This discussion will inform the next chapter
which will place these findings in a larger context and present recommendations for future
research as well as implications for practice.
Philosophical Approach: A Holistic Perspective
Throughout their interviews, TSLC staff from all three campuses described taking a
holistic perspective to supporting student success. The holistic perspective involved treating
students as individuals with complex identities embedded in relationships and circumstances in
and beyond the university that affect their lives as students. This holistic perspective echoed the
client-centered philosophy used in case management contexts across different fields, in that it
involved gathering multiple types of information about students, using a plethora of different
supports in a coordinated way and focusing on the individual (Font et al., 2019). This holistic
perspective framed the work that the staff did as they coached students through specific
situations and as they identified trends in support needed by certain groups of students and the
TSLC student population as a whole. One staff member described their commitment to “really
just making sure to think of [students] holistically, because I really – I feel like even though I'm
here for them academically, academically they won't succeed if other parts in their lives aren't
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doing well.” This comment demonstrated the belief that holistic support was necessary for
academic success that was reflected in many of the staff members’ comments. While they
perceived their professional role as being primarily focused on ensuring students’ academic
success, they considered holistic support an integral part of doing so effectively. This
perspective was rooted in an understanding that the TSLC student population was diverse and
thus the students had a diverse set of needs. As one staff member remarked, “They're very
diverse, and their backgrounds and experiences, it could be easy to categorize students because
they're all from Nebraska high schools, but they're so diverse,” emphasizing that she recognized
diversity in the TSLC population despite some common characteristics that TSLC students
shared. This understanding informed her work as she customized the support she offered to
different students. Overall, taking a holistic perspective that highlighted the multifaceted nature
of students' identities and the complex contexts in which they were situated allowed staff
members to identify a wider variety of student needs and assets and customize the supports they
provided to match students’ needs (Ruch, 2005).
The Holistic Perspective as an Asset and a Challenge. While TSLC staff members
consistently described providing holistic support as an important part of their jobs, several staff
members described this philosophical commitment as both an asset and a challenge. For some
staff members, especially those who had previously worked in other programs where they had
recognized students’ need for more holistic support but had not had the resources to provide it,
TSLC’s commitment to providing holistic support is a major organizational asset that positively
influenced their decision to take a job with the organization. One staff member from UNO
described her decision to accept a position with TSLC as follows
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What essentially brought me here was the mission, the purpose of what this organization
or department does. For me, I have to have a job or a calling that I feel is purpose-driven,
specifically the notion of providing support in all formats to college students and
especially first-generation college students. [emphasis added]
She emphasized the consistency of TSLC’s commitment to providing holistic support for
students with her own professional values and described this consistency as an important aspect
of her decision to come to work at TSLC.
For other staff members, the process of attempting to provide comprehensive holistic
support could feel overwhelming, especially when they were not able to effectively address all
the challenges that students face in their lives. For one staff member from UNO, the feeling of
frustration associated with not being able to fully support a student with whom she had formed a
relationship made her consider deemphasizing the holistic perspective that she had been taking in
her work.
So, I think for me, it’s kind of slowing down with the whole picture stuff. Everything
that’s influencing a student, by all these things that are influencing a student, and then
being, what can I do within my academic capacity when I realize that all of these systems
are interacting with how a student is performing. So, I think with me, that’s always been
the hard part is feeling powerless against the system, and I really want to change the
circumstance for this ex-student, because they just need to catch a break.
For this staff member, frustration with the limitations of the support she could provide in her
predominantly academic capacity was rooted in her experience trying to support a specific
student. While the TSLC’s resources did allow staff members to provide a wide range of
supports, these supports were not always sufficient to address the challenges that students face,
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especially when these challenges were rooted in larger social systems that are outside of staff
members’ control. When this happened, staff members were sometimes overwhelmed and upset
that they were unable to effectively support students with whom they have formed relationships
and for whom they felt responsible.
Other staff members perceived a tension between job descriptions which they perceived
as focused explicitly on supporting students academically and the reality of their practice. One
staff member, for example, described helping students search for apartments and government
resources and feeling like doing so was something that she wanted to do but was perhaps not
supposed to do. She acted as a “sommelier,” helping the student navigate resources that were
available in the community but felt unsure about whether helping a student navigate this type of
resources was within her purview. She described feeling “partly like I need to remind myself,
though, where is that line I need to draw? Because sometimes, I want to be – let's find you that
apartment and I've looked at apartments with students online” and was quick to explain that she
did not just connect the student to resources but also coached them through the process and
helped them develop the navigational skills that they would need to do so themselves in the
future. This description reflected a tension between the staff member’s perception of what the
student needed and her perception of what she was supposed to do as a professional. In other
interviews, staff members talked about criticizing others or receiving criticism themselves for
“doing too much” for students rather than expecting them to solve problems on their own. This
staff member’s ambivalence toward the holistic support that she provided for students may have
been rooted in a fear of this type of criticism or in a feeling that she was acting outside of her job
description in a way that she should not have.
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Despite these reservations, this staff member, like many others, expressed a desire to
learn more about available resources in order to be better able to provide holistic support to
TSLC students. Several staff members described wanting to know more about what resources
are available in the community. They either had limited exposure to available resources in their
professional lives or they had recently moved to a new city and did not have the same type of
knowledge of locally available resources that they had had in the places they had lived before.
For example, the same staff member who reported feeling unsure about where to draw the line in
providing support that was not directly tied to academics stated “I don't know that as much here
[about available services in the community] because I'm not in that realm on a day-to-day basis.
So, I do find myself wanting to know more about resources people can tap into so I can tell my
students.” Other staff members discussed both their success in using their personal networks to
help connect students with resources and their desire to learn more about the available resources.
Staff members’ desire to learn more about available resources reflects their belief that
holistic support is an important part of their work, even if they are unsure of the extent to which
providing this support is supposed to be part of their job. In both of these examples, staff
members express a desire to expand their knowledge of the menu of resources that may be
available to students in order to be better able to guide students toward the appropriate
resources—increasing their abilities to act as “sommelier” in the customized standardization with
guidance model of individual customization.
The Holistic Perspective and Cognitive Load. In taking a holistic perspective, staff
members shared the cognitive load of understanding the gestalt of the student’s situation, placing
a challenge in the matrix of multiple contributing factors and using that analysis to formulate
solutions from the student. In other words, they moved from the “menu” model in which the
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staff performs group customization and the student is responsible for the individual
customization to the “sommelier” model in which the staff member performs the individual
customization. This allowed the student to focus more of their mental energy on enacting the
solution and to have more cognitive capacity left over for the other demands of life as a college
student (Baumeister, Bratslavsky & Muraven, 2018; Baumesiter & Tierney, 2012; Mullainathan
& Shafir, 2014).
This section described the holistic perspective that informed and drove TSLC staff
members as they developed and provided customized support for the students with whom they
worked. In the next section, I will explore some of the student characteristics that staff members
frequently considered when customizing supports to meet student needs.
Student Characteristics Considered by Staff
This section will describe the student characteristics that TSLC staff considered when
customizing the program to meet students’ needs. As noted above, the TSLC staff consistently
described taking a holistic perspective to student success in their work, striving to understand
each student in a multifaceted way rather than focusing on a single aspect of their identity. The
staff did, however, discuss specific student characteristics which they considered when
customizing support for groups of students and for individuals. These student characteristics fell
into six major categories: different levels of academic preparation, English proficiency level,
mental health and disability services needs, major and career development, student resources,
and other identity markers. In the following I will discuss each of the six main categories of
student characteristics that the staff considered and the ways in which consideration of these
student characteristics informed their group and individual customization of the program
supports.
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Students With Different Levels of Pre-College Academic Preparation. One of the
student characteristics that TSLC staff members most often discussed when describing how they
customized the program was students’ level of academic preparation. While some staff members
did describe efforts to create specialized programming for students with high and middle levels
of academic preparation, most of the programming was focused on students with lower than
average levels of academic preparation, especially those who found themselves on academic
warning or academic probation.
One staff member from UNL and one from UNK referred to the diverse levels of
academic preparation among the TSLC student population on their campuses and the actions that
they take to create specific programming for students at different levels of academic preparation.
This diversity was contrasted to the preconception among some people on campus that TSLC
students were all low-performing students, though it was also acknowledged by some
stakeholders who were interviewed. Staff members characterized the diversity of students’
academic preparation and related it to their diversity in other aspects of their background,
specifically being from low-income families, being the first in their families to attend college,
and coming from schools that were under-resourced. They acknowledged that there were TSLC
scholars who are more academically prepared than average as well as TSLC scholars who were
less well prepared academically. They observed that K12 schools played a particularly important
role in determining levels of academic preparation for students who came from low-income
families and those who were first-generation college students.
One staff member at UNK, for example, brought up the diverse levels of academic
preparation represented by the TSLC students that he worked with. He discussed the differences
both within cohorts and between the cohorts of TSLC students that enter the program each year.
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He pointed out that his campus primarily used ACT scores as a measure of academic preparation
for incoming students and described the ACT score as a good proxy for students’ study skills.
Specifically, he stated that “Those students [with lower ACT scores] were not as prepared as
those with an ACT score of 30 or above. They know how to study already for the most part. It
really depends on each individual.” Even as he described a trend in the data about the students
he worked with, he referred to the individuality of each student, positioning this trend as a tool to
guide staff members’ work with individual students rather than as a generalization that would
erase the differences between individual students’ situations. In characterizing the differences
between students who were well-prepared academically and those who were not, he focused on
skills, such as knowing how to study, that some students bring with them to college and others
need to learn while they are in college. This framing highlights a challenge that some TSLC
students face, frames it in terms of an obstacle that can be overcome and suggests a type of
support, namely study skills instruction, that could help students with this challenge.
The same staff member identified the different levels of resources available in the
secondary schools that TSLC students had previously attended as a key driver of their level of
academic preparation, particularly the challenges faced by students whose high schools did not
have a sufficient number of specialized teachers for certain academic subjects. He described the
process of learning about students’ experiences in high school and academic preparation in
different subjects and how doing so informed his advising process:
Again, listening to our students and hearing about their high schools, and their
experiences – some of them come from schools where they had one teacher teaching all
four years of science, and maybe they weren't very prepared in science, but they were in
English, and helping them to assess that, and come to terms with it, and move forward.
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He also pointed out that students’ levels of academic preparation can vary across subjects in
accordance with the resources they have had access to. He went on to describe how levels of
academic preparation in specific subject areas often affected students’ abilities to be successful
in their chosen majors. This staff member from UNK described how diverse levels of academic
preparation inform his work and lead him to adjust his practice to meet the needs of students.
The observations along this characteristic suggest the need for both group customization,
e.g. by introducing supports for students with lower study skills, and for individual customization
to address the holistic situation of a specific student.
Strengths of TSLC Students Who Are Struggling Academically. While some staff
members mentioned that it can be easy to slip into a deficit perspective when discussing students
who are struggling academically as a group, at least one staff member made a point of
delineating the strengths of TSLC students when faced with academic struggles. This staff
member, who was from UNK, described TSLC students overall as a hardworking and
determined group and praised the ability of many TSLC students to recognize when they were
struggling academically, reach out for help and access campus resources. She reported that
a lot of [TSLC students] do know how to ask for help or ask for support if they know
they're not doing well. This semester we've seen a lot of freshmen already, they struggle
in a class, they come see us before we even got a EWR (Early Warning Referral), so we
know they're not doing well in that class, and they're coming forward, and telling us
about that, and telling us what they have been doing. They go to see tutors. They're
trying really hard. It's probably the first exam that threw them off. They don't know how
to do it. I think that's definitely a strength they have. I think a lot know how to use
resources on campus. They learn pretty quick on that. If they're not good at chemistry,
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they see the chemistry tutors on campus, or study in a group. They do learn to catch up
pretty quickly and that's helpful.
Though these students were struggling academically, they were able to overcome the academic
challenges that they faced because they were willing to share their struggles with TSLC staff
members and, when they were made aware of the resources their campus had to offer, make use
of them. Some TSLC students, however, faced academic challenges that they were not able to
deal with effectively and found themselves on academic warning or probation.
Students Who Were on Academic Warning or Probation. Students could be placed on
academic warning or probation if their semester or cumulative GPAs fell below a certain
threshold. Students who were on academic probation and did not raise their GPAs could lose
their scholarships and be asked to leave the university. Much of the customization of support
that the staff did was focused on supporting students on academic warning or probation and staff
members devoted a significant amount of time to working with this group of students. Because
of the time and resources that were invested in academic warning and probation students some
staff members worried that they might be spending too much of their time focusing on students
in this situation.
Despite those concerns, however, staff members continued to provide significant,
customized supports for students who were on academic warning and probation. TSLC staff
members identified common struggles faced by students who were on academic warning and
probation and addressed those programmatically (group customization). They also recognized
the need to identify specific challenges that each student faced in order to customize their action
plans to the unique needs of each student (individual customization). Some strategies that TSLC
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staff members used to customize support for students on academic warning and probation will be
discussed in a later section.
Students With High Levels of Academic Preparation. Some TSLC staff members
brought up specific challenges faced by TSLC students who are well-prepared academically
when they enter college. Staff members explained that staff tended to pay less attention to
students with high levels of academic preparation and who were doing well academically
because they appeared not to need as much help. They did, however, identify unique needs
among this student group, including struggles with understanding the benefits of certain program
components. In order to make sure that TSLC was contributing to these students’ experience,
TSLC staff were working on creating specific programming for this student group (group
customization).
English Language Learners. Another group of students who TSLC staff members
identified as facing unique academic challenges in college were English Language Learners,
students whose first language was not English and who were not yet proficient in academic
English. The unique struggles of students who had only started learning English during high
school were mentioned by staff members from UNO and UNK. At UNK, having recently started
learning English was identified by staff members as a risk factor that staff considered when
deciding which students might need extra support. UNK did not, however, have a highly
developed program for addressing the needs of English Language Learners.
At UNO, where English Language Learners made up 55% of the student population, staff
members considered the specific needs of English Language Learners with several different
levels of language proficiency, including students who were virtually unable to communicate
verbally or in writing in an academic setting and students with low to moderate levels of
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academic English proficiency. Staff members at UNO used their knowledge of students’ levels
of English proficiency to recommend appropriate placements for students and customize various
supports to meet their needs. These supports generally followed the segmented standardization
model of group customization in that they were required for this group of students.
Staff members highlighted the particular importance of guiding the transition process for
students who were English Language Learners early in the summer because taking the
university's English Placement Exam and enrolling in English as a Second Language (ESL)
coursework early was key in setting students up for success throughout their university careers.
TSLC staff members, in collaboration with faculty members who taught in the program, had also
been instrumental in working with the university to set up a system for placing students into the
appropriate courses so they could be academically successful.
Students Who Needed Mental Health Services. TSLC staff members identified
students’ struggles with mental health issues as a major contributing factor to their academic and
other struggles. Staff members from UNL and UNK identified a wide range of mental health
needs among students as well as a number of obstacles to accessing mental health care that
students faced. They also enumerated several ways in which a lack of access to mental health
care adversely affected students’ development.
TSLC staff members reported working with students whose mental health concerns
ranged from chronic to acute, from ongoing to newly diagnosed, and from test anxiety, through
which the staff could easily coach them, to depression so severe that it required hospitalization.
Some students had not had access to mental health services before coming to the university and
were dealing with a new diagnosis for an issue that they had been dealing with for a long time.
Others were in treatment for a mental health issue and had a relapse when they stopped taking
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their medication or were triggered by the stress of adjusting to campus life. Still others faced a
traumatic life event and needed mental health support to cope.
Regardless of the issue, staff members reported that prompt access to mental health
services had a significant impact on students’ experience at the university. One staff member
described working with “a lot of students that struggle with mental health issues, and the earlier
we can get them to resources, typically it becomes a little easier for them to adjust and focus on
their academics.” Both students’ ability to adjust to the university context and their academic
progress were profoundly affected by the state of their mental health. Similarly, when a student
had a mental health issue and is not able to access mental health services, it sometimes had a
profound effect on her academic progress. A staff member from UNL described
a great example of a student that [she was] working with right now who all the way to
mid-semester will go and doing great, you know, like mid semester grade check, all A's.
And then something will happen that you know, they either forget to take their
medication or just relapse, get depressed, whatever that may be, or they'll get sick, and
then everything just falls apart to the point that they just get straight F's and they just stop
going to class.
In this example, a student had a mental health crisis that was not immediately apparent to staff
members because it occurred after the student’s mid-semester grade check. The staff member
moved from discussing a specific case to connecting it to a pattern of mental health crises
leading to rapid academic decline that she saw in many students. This statement drew attention
to the need for ongoing, proactive support for students’ mental health and the academic struggles
that can occur when students are not able to access mental health services. Staff members
described other cases in which access to mental health services were a matter of life and death.
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A staff member from UNK recalled supporting several TSLC students who were hospitalized
after suicide attempts.
While noting the importance of access to mental health care for students’ success, TSLC
staff members outlined a number of obstacles to accessing mental health care that students faced.
At UNL, many students do not have health insurance. Many others were on their parents’ health
insurance and did not want their parents to know that they were accessing mental health services.
Because of these obstacles, many TSLC students relied on mental health services provided by
the university.
At the time of the interviews, the University of Nebraska system was in the process of
changing the way it administered mental health services to students, a change that included the
introduction of fees for some mental health services that had previously been provided without
charge. In addition to these financial barriers, stigma surrounding mental health services
sometimes prevented students from accessing mental health care. Staff members pointed this out
as a particularly serious issue for students of color and students from rural backgrounds. TSLC
staff members identified a variety of barriers to accessing mental health care faced by the
students with whom they worked.
Assessments for Learning Disabilities. Another situation in which students’ need for
mental health services impacted their academic progress was when students had undiagnosed
learning disabilities. While TSLC staff did not discuss any programming or supports for
students with learning disabilities in general, they did discuss supporting students who were
being diagnosed with a learning disability for the first time while in the TSLC program. Staff
members at both UNK and UNL identified the need for disability testing as an emerging need on
campus.
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Because of the set of obstacles to accessing psychological care outlined above, TSLC
staff members had requested funding from the Buffett Foundation to pay for psychologists to
conduct learning disability testing, which was not covered by the university, an example of the
customized standardization model of group customization. At the time of the interview, TSLC
paid for a handful of students to get full learning disability testing each semester. Additionally,
TSLC staff members referred 10-15 students per semester to be evaluated for clinically
significant test anxiety, the cost of which was covered by the university. TSLC staff members at
UNL and UNK reported noticing signs that students may have had an undiagnosed learning
disability during their day to day work with students and working to connect them with services
either through the university or through additional TSLC programming.
Students Pursuing Different Majors and Career Paths. At both UNK and UNL,
TSLC staff members considered students’ majors and career paths when designing programmatic
supports that were customized for different groups of students. They found that students who
had yet to choose a major had different needs than students who had already chosen a major and
created different pathways for the two groups. According to TSLC staff members, the former
needed structured opportunities to explore different fields as well as a balanced approach that
pushed them toward making a decision without making them feel discouraged that they had not
yet made one. The latter, on the other hand, needed support in confirming that their chosen
major was right for them and opportunities to develop a professional identity in their chosen
fields.
Overall, the two-group structure was an example of the segmented standardization model
of group customization. Within this model, however, they built in elements of the customized
standardization model by building a “menu” of assignments from which students could choose
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into each category. When staff members helped students sort through their options and make
choices which career exploration options would work best for them, they acted as “sommelier”,
following the customized standardization with guidance model of individual customization.
TSLC students also occasionally approached staff members for support with issues
related to their specific majors. Some students struggled to fit the TSLC course requirements
into schedules that were rigidly determined by the requirements of certain majors, particularly in
the performing arts. Other students faced family pressures to declare a certain major or follow a
certain career path and asked for support in dealing with those pressures. As TSLC staff
members helped students navigate their individual situations, they provided individually
customized support, typically following the customized standardization with guidance or tailored
customization models.
Students Who Had to Switch Majors. Staff members from UNK reported sometimes
being called upon to provide support for students who were obliged to switch majors for a
variety of reasons. In these cases, staff members both worked to help the student address the
specific issue that was prompting the involuntary major change and to support the student
through the process of making a new plan. Some students who had planned on a certain major
did not earn high enough grades to continue in that major and found themselves needing to
reevaluate an aspiration that they have had for a long time, which had a significant emotional and
psychological impact on them. In these cases, TSLC staff members provided individually
customized support.
Other UNK students came to TSLC staff members for support when they were struggling
to pass a professional exam, without which they would not be allowed to proceed in their major.
For education majors, who made up a significant share of TSLC students at UNK, this was a
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particular issue and several students were unable to sign up for the classes that they needed to
move forward with their majors.
Some students were faced with the prospect of having to switch majors because of a life
event of circumstance. For example, a UNK staff member described a student who had received
a citation for marijuana possession which disqualified him from becoming a teacher. Though the
student was going through an appeals process, he had to face the prospect of being unable to
enter his chosen profession.
Access to Resources. Staff members’ reports on customizing support based on access to
two types of resources: social capital and financial resources. I will explore both in the
following section.
Social Capital. According to TSLC staff, a major challenge faced by the students with
whom they worked was their level of social capital. When discussing ways in which they
customized support for differing levels of social capital, one group that TSLC staff members
frequently considered was first generation college students. While all TSLC students came from
low-income families, only some of them were the first in their families to attend college and
TSLC staff at UNK and UNL described several challenges that they commonly observed among
this group of students which were rooted in students’ level of social capital.
One staff member from UNL delineated a number of challenges that first generation
college students often face. He started by explaining that many first generation students needed
support in developing a sense of belonging through consistent validation and being reassured that
“they're not the only ones who are coming from a background that may not have provided them
the cultural capital that helps them feel comfortable.” He also identified first-generation
students’ social and cultural capital challenges with several networks: their families, their
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communities and their schools. Because first generation students’ families do not have
experience with higher education and because many of them live in communities in which few of
their neighbors have experience with higher education, the role of their high schools is
paramount. He pointed out, however, that many first-generation students attend under-resourced
schools which do not have sufficient staff and resources to provide students with comprehensive
information about the expectations and culture of university life. He outlined the ways his
understanding of the specific needs of first-generation college students informed his work by
saying
And so, providing them lots of tools and eliminating the barriers that we often impose
unintentionally to help them succeed, I think is critical. So, I think it's more about helping
the institution recognize what they need to do to change, rather than requiring the
students to change.
His understanding that first-generation students did not always have sufficient information to
navigate college life successfully informed his work, both in supporting students and in
advocating for the university to remove some of the barriers. This staff member illustrated
specific psychological, social and structural challenges faced by first generation college students
who did not have the same kinds of social capital available to help them navigate the university
as other students did.
Staff members from UNK also highlighted the differences in social and levels of college
knowledge that they had observed between first and continuing generations college students.
One staff member from UNK introduced her delineation of the specific challenges faced by first
generation college students by pointing out that all students struggle in some way, emphasizing
the commonalities of students from different backgrounds. In describing TSLC students as a
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group, he pointed out that many were first generation college students. He went on to list a
number of areas in which many TSLC students struggled, including transition, “the academic
rigors of higher education,” and relationships of various kinds.
Like the staff member from UNL, he described gaps in first generation students’ college
knowledge. He explained that first generation college students often did not know how to
perform administrative tasks such as registering for classes and have incorrect ideas about the
level of academic rigor expected at the university level setting. Additionally, they could not get
help with these things from family members who do not have experience in a higher education
setting. The staff member described the students’ need for support in learning how to manage
these obstacles as well as their need for emotional support. He went on to reiterate the particular
importance of emotional support and validation for first generation students, particularly those
who did not receive them from their own social networks
A lot of them do need that support, and a lot of them need you to believe in them. We
did have some students that not all their family members think education is necessary.
They want to come to college because they don’t have that support from family
necessary, or on the other side of that, families don't think they can make it, not
necessarily their immediate families. Some family members or the people they grew up
with, the neighborhoods, a lot of times they will be down because people think they can't
make it, for whatever reason it is. The fact we believe they can be successful, they're
here, can do a lot of things for themselves, that makes a big difference for them as well.
Sometimes here we will say, "You can do this." and that will make a difference in their
lives.
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He described the challenges faced by some first-generation students who had people in their
families or friends from home who did not support their educational aspirations or who actively
communicated to students that they did not think they could be successful. He contrasted these
messages with the encouragement and validation provided by TSLC staff members and
concluded that this type of support is especially important for students who received conflicting
messages from other significant people in their lives.
Financial Struggles. TSLC staff members reported that the students they worked with
struggled financially for a number of reasons beyond having trouble accessing their financial aid.
The TSLC program is designed, in general, around the needs of students from low-income
families. It provides a scholarship as well as a variety of supports. Despite these supports,
TSLC staff members reported that the students with whom they worked often faced financial
struggles. Staff members from UNK and UNL both discussed this issue in the abstract sense of
how they supported students in dealing with these issues in general and gave examples of
individual cases.
TSLC staff members mentioned a variety of circumstances which had contributed to the
financial struggles of students with whom they had worked. Because TSLC students were often
not in a position to ask their families for financial help, they sometimes struggled when an
unexpected expense came up. One staff member from UNK explained
Financial pressures continue to be a challenge for some of our students. Even though you
get a big scholarship, college is very expensive, and that doesn't always mean they have a
lot of money on the side to pay for things you don't expect at college.
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This staff member explained that students differ in how they react to unexpected financial
hardships. Some students come to a staff member to talk through the situation and others try to
self-manage, sometimes getting themselves into greater financial trouble.
Other students faced financial challenges because they had obligations to families who
were in financial difficulty. For example, some students were unable to buy books because they
gave the money intended for books to their families to pay household bills. Other students were
able to work and study less than they had planned because they had to return home to act as
caretakers for younger siblings while another family member was at work. A few students faced
steep declines in family budgets when an undocumented family member had to stop working
because of fear of deportation.
When working with TSLC students who are struggling financially, TSLC staff members
from UNK reported several effects that financial struggles had on students which led to specific
student needs. Staff members took these effects into account when thinking about how to
support them effectively. One common effect of financial struggles was a sense of shame. A
staff member explained “There's still I would say some shame for those students with that
identity, and that can impact their sense of belonging.” For some students, financial struggles
became a salient part of their identities and there were feelings of shame attached to these
identities. These feelings of shame impacted students’ sense of belonging. Relatedly, TSLC
staff members also reported that when students spent a significant amount of time working,
either because they themselves were in financial difficulty or because they needed to help their
families make ends meet, they felt pulled toward their families rather than toward their studies
which also impacted their sense of belonging.
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Other Identity Markers. While most of the categories that TSLC staff members used
when discussing how they thought about supporting students and customizing the program were
based on student needs rather than traditional demographic categories, staff members did
sometimes discuss the specific needs of certain demographic groups. These groups included
students from rural backgrounds, Muslim students, students from different racial and ethnic
backgrounds, students who were parents, and students whose families included people who were
undocumented.
TSLC staff members mostly used these categories when a specific issue came up that
affected a group of students (group customization). For example, a TSLC staff member from
UNL discussed the needs of rural students in the context of explaining that the decision to host
SLC offices in the multicultural center helped students from rural backgrounds become
comfortable with the idea of diversity and inclusion. Students’ religious identities only came up
when a staff member from UNL described working with Muslim students who were
experiencing fear in the political climate which was compounded by harassment that students
faced while walking in front of fraternities.
Throughout these discussions, TSLC staff members addressed the impact of these
identity categories on students’ experiences in the context of the complexity of their individual
stories. As one staff member from UNK put it, “I think our approach [to working with students
from different backgrounds] as a team is to build relationships so that we can learn their
individual stories.” In the following section I will describe some of the ways that TSLC staff
members thought about supporting students who faced racial discrimination and students who
had undocumented family members as illustrative examples of how TSLC staff members were
attentive to different identities as they provided customized support.
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Race. In the few examples in which TSLC staff members discussed the specific needs of
students from different racial and ethnic groups they mostly focused on individual-centered ways
of speaking, acknowledging the impact of racial and ethnic identities on students’ experiences
while centering the student as a whole person with multiple, intersectional identities. One staff
member from UNL, for example, acknowledged that a single, visible aspect of identity such as
race could dominate the way a student was perceived and expressed a desire to continue to work
to push forward discussions of intersectional identity on campus, saying “A lot of students it’s
like you might be many, many different things but you’ll see them as this is a black student or –
you know things like that.”
Staff members discussed students racial and ethnic identities in relation to both specific
incidents and ongoing needs. A staff member from UNL, for example, recounted an incident in
which a student was harassed and called racial epithets on campus. A staff member from UNO
described an incident of cultural appropriation in which some student leaders, who were not
black, dressed up as members of the rap group NWA who are black. In both instances, staff
members brought members of the TSLC community together to address the incidents and in the
case of UNL, staff members implemented a series of diversity workshops for TSLC students in
response to the incident, an example of group customization (As the workshops applied to all
TSLC students, this was an example of the pure standardization model).
In reflecting on ways in which being part of a racialized minority affected students’
experiences over time, a staff member from UNL acknowledged that race affected many aspects
of a student’s experience in college which in turn affected their sense of belonging. This
understanding motivated her to work toward helping students understand how systemic and
personal factors affect their experience. A staff member from UNL also expressed concern that
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certain groups of students including Latino and Native American students and African American
females might have difficulty finding role models on campus with whom they could identify and
connected her ability to support students on this issue with the extent to which she personally
knew people from those groups in the community.
Based on the available data, staff members at UNO seem to have had more conversations
about race and racism within their community than staff members from other campuses. Several
staff members from UNO described having conversations about race within TSLC events and in
their staff team. One staff member recalled that “race has come up as something that people felt
that they've been misrepresented or not heard, or been stereotyped.” Another staff member
reflected that “even in [his] experience there was plenty of times where specific activities or
conversations would be very one-sided and where students of color would speak or give their
view or their opinion of their experience, and it was like no, that’s not how the world works, the
end. And it was dismissed.”
Both staff members said that the issue “was being worked on,” indicating ongoing staff
engagement with race and racism in their community. There had previously been staff
committees focused on supporting African American students in general and African American
men in particular, but according to one staff member, “the people that were leading that
committee stopped with their commitment to it and it just fell off by the wayside again.” At the
time of the interviews, staff members at UNO were engaging in more discussions about race and
racism than staff members at other campuses, but even they didn’t have programs specifically
designed to support students of color in place.
Undocumented Family Members. TSLC staff members at UNK also customized their
support for students who faced specific challenges because they had undocumented family
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members. They discussed helping students cope with feelings of shame, financial struggles, and
stress. One staff member told the story of a student who felt shame around having
undocumented parents and had not shared his situation with anyone until he was a senior in
college and discovered that his father had used his identity to acquire a significant amount of
debt, ruining the student’s credit score and adding to his financial distress. Other students had
family members who were deported or who had gone into hiding to avoid deportation.
These situations caused emotional stress as well as financial difficulties when those
family members were no longer able to work. As news about Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) raids escalated around the time of the interviews, many students who had
undocumented family members experienced significant anxiety and sought out TSLC staff
members for help in coping. Some students had to spend a significant amount of time leaving
campus and going home when ICE officers arrived at their homes and their family members
thought they were going to be deported.
Conclusion. This section described the student characteristics that TSLC staff
considered when customizing aspects of the support that they provided in order to better meet
students’ needs. It outlined the holistic approach to student success that motivated TSLC staff
members to consider multiple identities and contexts when formulating customized supports. It
then detailed types of student characteristics that the staff considered including different levels of
academic preparation, mental health and disability services needs, major and career
development, student access to resources, and other identity markers. The next section will
describe how staff members gather data about students which they then use to inform their
creation of customized supports.
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How TSLC Staff Members Gathered Data About Students’ Needs
In order to effectively serve students whose complex identities interacted with their assets
and challenges in complex ways, TSLC staff members needed to gather data about their needs.
Multifaceted data collection strategies, similar to those used in case management, were integral
to both the creation of effective, customized supports and the process through which staff
members learned to create customized supports by working with others to create those supports
(O’Hare, 2016). Staff members described a commitment to using a variety of data sources to
inform their work. As a staff member from UNL explained
So, every year, we're constantly seeing—what’s happening with our students? What do
our students need in our community? What’s happening nationally in terms of research?
What’s happening in terms of what have our students told us, by virtue of literally just
conversations? Not necessarily by formal assessments, but by, “What have we heard?”
and being able to think about what’s been useful or helpful for students. And our
students know that they can come to us, to me with new ideas
In addition to consulting research, staff members gather data formally and informally from
individual students, from component parts of the program, and occasionally from campus
partners in order to form a holistic perspective and to more effectively customize the support
they provide to the needs of the students.
Gathering Data About the Whole Student. In order to provide this support, staff
members took a variety of approaches to gaining a holistic perspective on students’ lives as well
as helping students to draw upon their assets and face their challenges. Developing this holistic
understanding of students’ lives made staff members aware of below-the-surface student
characteristics and the challenges students faced, just as professionals in other fields have
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successfully used multidimensional assessment strategies to build holistic understandings of the
challenges faced by people they work with (Font et al., 2019). This allowed staff members to
customize the support they gave to the needs of students.
One significant way in which staff were able to gain a holistic perspective was through
building relationships with students. By showing interest in students as whole people and the
uniqueness of each students’ circumstances, staff built trusting relationships with them (Ruch,
2005). Those relationships both helped staff gather data about what was going on with students
and make students more receptive to staff interventions, both individual and group. This
relationship building began with practices as simple as staff learning students’ names early in the
program and continued through advising sessions and other programming.
It was through this relationship building that staff members not only learned about the
needs that students had, but also earned the requisite trust that allowed them to speak to students
about sensitive topics that became important in students’ lives. In turn, the process of talking
about potentially sensitive topics together strengthened the relationship between students and
staff members. As one staff member explained,
So, number one, I think it starts with us learning their names and their faces and
validating that they're part of us and our community and that they matter from the very
beginning and that's for each and every student. I think it's the way that we work with
students and try to be very intentional to be inclusive, that when hard things happen in the
community that we address it, we talk about it so they know that we're not trying to keep
those things at arm's length. I think they see us as authentic.
As they intentionally built relationships with students, staff members were able to directly
support and validate individual students and gather data about issues as they arose. Some TSLC
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staff members were intentional about identifying and remembering people and situations in
students’ lives that might become assets or challenges to their academic success as the students
progressed through their academic career. One staff member described the process through
which they get to know a student holistically and then used that information later to inform a
customized approach to helping the student address challenges in their lives like this
I know we have an educational, an academic [perspective] to what we do, and we
have to, but from my past experience, you have to see this person as a whole, the holistic
person, so they feel like you're seeing them. But beyond that, to really tap into the other
resources in their life beyond us. Because a lot of times, those other systems either aid
them or actually don't, and somehow bring them down or outside of their track in pursuit
of their goals.
So, I definitely do, and I think I do that by wanting to know their story. I ask
them about what brought them here and what influenced and shaped their life. I ask a lot
about important social supports in their life, so family, friends. I usually do that in my
first meeting. Whenever I meet somebody new, that's not like an intake, but I do that
where in my mind, I'm looking at what am I working with and how can I remember these
things about these people so that later on, when they're hitting obstacles, for me to be,
like, "Oh, so have you talked to your friend lately?" or, "Have you thought about ways in
which you can tap into your family to help out, with your brother?"
This staff member identified her job primarily as providing academic support but explained that
she believed that getting to know and supporting the student as a whole person was an essential
part of doing so effectively. This approach was rooted in the belief that students’ relationships
and networks outside of TSLC could be both assets and challenges to them and that by getting to
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know them, the staff member was better able to remind students of the assets and resources that
they had in their lives when they faced challenges in the future, in other words, serve as inputs to
individual customization of the supports provided to said student.
At the same time, it allowed the staff member to anticipate challenges that students might
face and provide customized support to guide them through these challenges more effectively.
This helped the staff member to acknowledge the very real obstacles that the student faced
without slipping into a deficit perspective. Rather, the staff member had built up a specific
knowledge base around natural supports in the student’s life that could be drawn upon as assets
to help them overcome these obstacles.
While most staff members relied on informal interactions and relationship building to
develop a holistic understanding of students’ situations, some staff members also aggregated data
from different sources to gain a deeper holistic perspective. For example, the Preventative
Education Retention System (PERSYST) Program at UNK used data about students’ life
circumstances (such as whether they are parents) as well as their ACT score and high school
GPA to identify students who were at greater than average risk of leaving the university after
their first year and provided targeted support. Additionally, staff at UNL used an advising
inventory which includes various types of information about students including
their persistence level, their toughest subject, what do they feel the most prepared
about, what are they most nervous about, so looking on the onset at certain demographics
or qualities that others might predict – such as a GPA or ACT score, how they’ve done on
a math placement exam to what types of classes are they enrolled in.
Staff members review all of this information and use it to inform decisions about “what can
[they] potentially offer as programs that might support them in a more meaningful way.” While
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each of these tools is only used at one campus, they reflect the holistic perspective which is
prevalent in the TSLC program on all three campuses.
Informally Gathering Data From Individual Students. The strategy that TSLC staff
members mentioned using most often to learn about students’ needs was talking to students
informally. Staff members repeatedly highlighted the importance of informal sharing in the
context of ongoing relationships for their ability to learn about student needs. A staff member
from UNK, for example, remarked that “We also have a very close relationship with our
students, so they give us a lot of feedback.” This staff member spotlighted the causal connection
between student-staff relationships and the informal feedback that staff received. This informal
sharing of stories and information took place during their ongoing advising sessions, when
students dropped into their offices and sometimes through the courses that staff members taught.
As students shared their experiences with staff members during informal discussions, staff
members were able to learn about their individual needs as well as resources in their networks
that could help them overcome the challenges they faced. These conversations in which students
shared their experiences with staff members also reinforced trusting relationships between
students and staff members which made students more comfortable sharing in the future.
Trusting, informal relationships that facilitated students’ sharing of their needs and experiences
were critical to TSLC staff members developing a comprehensive understanding of each
student’s needs.
TSLC staff members identified a number of benefits of having informal discussions that
are situated in ongoing relationships as a primary tool for gathering data. First, it allowed staff
members to access a wide range of student voices which could inform their decision making.
This was especially important because staff members identified the limited range of student
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voices as a challenge in some of their more formal data collection practices. It also allowed staff
members to address both tangible and emotional needs immediately while at the same time
noticing trends in student needs that might need to be addressed with broader programming.
One staff member described the interplay between meeting individual needs and
gathering data about trends in the whole student population by saying “If we see an issue, we
address it right away if it's a bigger need. If it's something for the entire student population, then
we'll do programs on it.” For example, staff members at UNK helped several students with their
resumes. As they did so, they noticed that resume writing support was probably a need for most
students in their population, so they created resume workshops for all students. In other words,
they started with individual customization of supports (tailored customization or pure
customization), and later moved to a broader reach, with group customization for all TSLC
students (pure standardization).
Finally, it gave staff members opportunities to notice small issues that might be
symptomatic of larger challenges and address those challenges before they became more difficult
to deal with.
Formal Processes That Facilitated Gathering Data From Individual Students.
While the bulk of TSLC staff members’ data collection was rooted in informal conversations,
they also used a variety of tools to facilitate these conversations and gather additional data about
individual students. For example, staff members at UNL used an advising inventory that
includes a variety of data points including students’ perceptions of their own preparation, things
they are nervous about, and how persistent they are in general as well as demographic
information and scores on a mathematics placement exam.
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They used the information to identify individual students’ potential needs as well as
trends in student needs. Staff members also used academic data points about specific students,
such as their high school GPAs, high school rankings, and ACT scores, to predict the kinds of
challenges that students were likely to face. For example, UNK staff members used a risk score
composed of ACT score and high school rank to identify students who were likely to face
academic challenges and who would, therefore, benefit from their PERSYST program.
Additionally, staff members used the formal structure of mid-semester grade checks to
both gather information about students’ grades and as an opportunity to engage in conversations
about broader factors that were impacting students’ academic progress. Staff members at UNO
also identified the curriculum of their autobiographical writing class as a tool that could facilitate
staff members’ ability to access information about students’ lives and needs. This curriculum
was beneficial both because students sometimes revealed tangible needs in their writing and
because it helped students reflect on their lives and articulate their needs in ways that made it
easier for staff members to understand them.
Finally, staff members gathered data from individual students through administering
student surveys. Some staff members reported using data from surveys though several staff
members commented that it was often difficult for them to get useful data from them because
there was not much variability in students’ responses, especially when they used Likert scales.
Staff members found survey data most useful when they sent short, targeted surveys as for
example when UNO staff members surveyed all students in their sophomore sections about
whether they would like help in finding a major. TSLC staff members used the data they
gathered with these formal tools to inform their decision making as they worked to customize
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supports to students’ needs (group customization) and to guide informal conversations which
allowed them to gather more information about students.
Gathering Data From Other Stakeholders. In addition to gathering data directly from
individual students, TSLC staff members also gathered information from a variety of other
stakeholders. Sometimes, this feedback was informal, as when a peer mentor or course
instructor mentioned concerns that they have about a student to a staff member. TSLC staff
members also created more formal structures to facilitate stakeholders sharing information about
students. For example, on one campus the staff brought all the faculty members who taught in
the program together to discuss each students’ progress.
Additionally, staff members had regular meetings with peer mentors in which they could
discuss the progress of students in their mentor groups. The conversations that happen within
these structured meetings provided staff members valuable insights into students’ needs. Two
campuses, UNK and UNO, had formed student committees to provide another venue through
which they could gather feedback from students. At the time of the interviews, the student
committee continued to be an avenue for student input at UNK but at UNO it “hadn’t got off the
ground.”
The formal processes through which staff members kept track of students’ requirements
also provided information about students’ needs. For example, a staff member from UNK noted
that when students started to fall behind on study hours it was often “the first indication that we
know someone is not doing too well. They're starting to miss classes, or feeling a little down,
something like that.” When staff members who were tracking students’ requirements noticed
that a student was falling behind on a requirement, it was often an impetus for them to reach out
to the student and have a conversation about challenges that the student was facing.
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Finally, staff members sometimes gathered data about students through collaborating
with partners on their campus. Sometimes this was formal, as when TSLC staff members at
UNK created a survey for the counseling department to find out whether TSLC students were
using counseling services more frequently than other students on campus or set up a process
through which an advisor on campus would send them lists of students who were not attending
classes regularly or were struggling academically. Sometimes it was informal, as when staff
members spoke with stakeholders in their personal campus networks about emerging student
needs. TSLC staff members used a variety of strategies to gather data from various stakeholders.
Conclusion. This section outlined the strategies that TSLC staff members used to collect data
about students’ needs. It described how TSLC staff members used informal and formal
strategies to gather data about individual students and how they worked with other stakeholders
to gain additional insight into students' needs. The next section will explain how staff members
used this data to create customized supports.
Strategies Staff Used to Customize the Program to Students’ Needs
Once staff members had gathered data about students’ needs, they used a variety of
strategies to customize the program to meet those needs. Employing group customization
strategies, they customized the components of the program for the entire TSLC student
population at their campuses (pure standardization). They also customized the program for
groups of students by changing, adding and removing components of the program and by
building choices into the program which allowed students to collaborate in customizing program
components to meet their own needs. When they added requirements for all members of a
specific group, they engaged in segmented standardization. When they changed the menu of
supports that were offered to students, they engaged in customized standardization.
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TSLC staff members also customized the support they provided to individual students by
providing wraparound services to meet specific student needs that would not be met by
traditional advising. This individual customization often took the form of helping students
navigate and access available services—customized standardization with guidance. When staff
members developed new supports, they engaged in tailored customization when the new support
was based on a previously existing template or prototype and pure customization when the
support was entirely novel. This section will outline the strategies that TSLC staff members used
to customize the program to students’ needs.
Changing a Component of the Program. TSLC staff members customized the program
support to students’ needs by modifying components of the program. One way in which they did
this was by changing the content of workshops based on student feedback and staff observations
of what elements of the workshop worked best. This included changing aspects of how content
was presented, guest speakers who were called in to present, approaches to workshop content,
and the order in which content was presented. Staff members described participating in an
ongoing cycle of evaluating and modifying the content of their workshops. Because it involved
changing the content of a workshop that was offered to all students but not required of them
(though students did have to complete a certain number of workshops), this is an example of the
customized standardization type of group customization.
Staff members also customized the curriculum of TSLC courses. For example, staff
members who taught the First Year Experience (FYE) course started each semester by gathering
data about student needs and customized the curriculum to those needs. A staff member from
UNK who taught in the FYE course explained
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First year students have a learning skills class that's been very helpful. Whatever they
lacked, like they don't know how to do: parking tickets, or they're sick and some of them
don’t know where to go to the nurses on campus – we address that right away. I think for
the very first year, very first semester, that class has been very helpful to filter a lot of
things they need but don't know how to get to, and then the topics we cover in class are
based on what the student needs.
In the FYE class, staff were able to adjust the curriculum to help students learn how to meet
tangible needs that they identified. Because this involved changing the content of a class that
was required for all first-year students, this is an example of the pure standardization type of
group customization.
Another way in which TSLC staff members changed components of the program was
through changing the location in which a service was offered in order to make it more accessible
for students. For example, staff members at UNL brought counseling services into the
multicultural center in an effort to normalize counseling for students who may have come from
communities in which accessing mental health care was stigmatized. This was an example of the
customized standardization type of group customization because it involved modifying
something that was offered to all students.
Another way in which TSLC staff members changed a component of the program was by
changing the timing of workshops and other types of programming. Sometimes they changed
the timing of workshops by offering them at different times of the day and different days of the
week or in other cases they proceeded to offer the same workshop in multiple time slots in order
to give students opportunities to fit workshops into their schedules. They also identified rhythms
of student need in the course of the semester and adjusted the timing of workshops and other
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programming so that they would be offered during times when they were most needed. One staff
member explained that the staff team had “researched the stress points in the semester” and
arranged the timing of workshops “so around the high stress point in the semester is when we're
gonna be proposing that we have certain events reoccurring” to address anxiety, depression and
other mental health needs that often presented themselves at times in the semester in which
students were experiencing high levels of stress. TSLC staff members also changed the courses
that were offered based on student need, preferences and enrollment.
TSLC staff members changed the content, timing and location of elements of the program
in order to meet the needs of groups of students and their student population as a whole.
Because these were examples of modifying things that were offered to all students, they were
examples of the customized standardization type of group customization.
Adding a Component. Another way in which TSLC staff members customized the
program to meet students’ needs was through adding components. They added programs,
services, classes, and workshops, as well as initiatives to weave thematic elements into existing
programming. This section will provide examples for each.
Adding Programs. One major program that TSLC staff members developed was the
Preventive Education Retention System (PERSYST) program at UNK which was created to
preemptively address the challenges faced by students with lower levels of academic preparation
and prevent them from being placed on academic probation or leaving the university. This
program originated in an intern’s quantitative analysis of factors that were correlated with
students being placed on academic probation and leaving the university. That intern was later
hired as a TSLC staff member and spearheaded this program to reach out to those students with
support before they began to struggle in their classes.
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In its first incarnation, PERSYST was a voluntary program in which TSLC students who
were identified as having multiple risk factors for academic challenges were invited to
participate. All invited students declined to participate and many of them ended up leaving the
university during their first year. At the time of the interviews, the PERSYST program was no
longer optional. TSLC students at UNK whose high school rank + ACT national percentile rank
was less than 100 are considered at risk and are required to take part in the PERSYST program.
It consisted of monthly holistic check ins with a staff member and additional study hour
requirements. Because the students in the first PERSYST cohort bonded with each other during
the fall semester, the staff chose to add a second semester program which consisted of two
meetings.
The PERSYST program was a significant program that staff members added. In its first
incarnation, the optional PERSYST program was an example of the customized standardization
type of group customization in which the offer is standardized for a group of students but the
choice whether to participate lies with the student. As staff became aware of the high rate of
declines, they moved to segmented standardization as they made program participation
mandatory for a segment of the student population.
TSLC staff members also added other, smaller programs in order to meet student needs.
For example, staff members at UNL created a “take a scholar to lunch with a professor” program
to encourage students who were in the middle academically to build their academic identities and
think about their post-graduation options. This was an example of customized standardization
because it was offered to all students, but not required.
Adding Services. Staff members also customized the program to meet student needs as
they arose by adding services. Sometimes they added services when a student’s experience
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highlighted a need among the student population. For example, staff members at UNK noticed
that several students were faced with the prospect of being unable to continue in their intended
major because they were struggling to pass the PRAXIS, the professional exam for teachers that
was used in Nebraska. They worked with professionals in their campus library to curate a
selection of preparation materials for this test which they made available to students in the
program.
TSLC staff members also sometimes added services in order to compensate for cutbacks
on their wider campuses. For example, when the University of Nebraska introduced fees for
mental health services, staff members at UNL and UNK worked with the Buffett Foundation to
add mental health services to their programming. Similarly, when they found that their
university’s counseling center was no longer providing testing for learning disabilities, UNL
staff members added funding for disability testing for students. Each of these was an example of
the customized standardization type of group customization, adding a service that all students
could choose to access. TSLC staff members customized the program to students’ needs by
working with their funding agency as well as partners on campus to create new services.
Adding Classes. TSLC staff members also sometimes customized the program to the
needs of the students they served by adding to their course offerings. Staff members at UNO, for
example, created a class for students beyond the second year who were on academic warning or
probation. The impetus for developing this class came from staff members’ observation that
some students struggled as they transitioned out of the program and into their majors. Because
these students had developed relationships with TSLC staff members, they returned to them to
ask for help even though they were beyond their second year and no longer officially part of the
program. As they were no longer officially enrolled in the program, staff did not have approved
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time or resources dedicated to them so they looked for a way to support the students effectively
without the resources to have frequent one-on-one meetings as they did with first and second
year students who were on academic warning or probation.
They decided to create a class for these students, taught by a TSLC staff member who
had a reputation for working well with TSLC students. They proposed the class to the Buffett
Foundation, had it approved, and were piloting the class at the time of the interviews. Depending
on whether the class eventually becomes mandatory or not, it could develop into an example of
the segmented standardization or the customized standardization type of group customization.
The class was based on journaling and had a slightly different focus than the
Autobiographical Reading and Writing class that was also offered on the UNO campus. The
instructor who developed and taught the class explained that it was based around the premise that
“at this point [students] know what [they] need to be doing,” and helped them explore why they
weren’t able to do what they knew they needed to do. The instructor used a variety of different
activities to engage students and help them find a path forward at the university that would work
for them. UNO staff members created this class to meet the specific needs of a group of TSLC
students who struggled as they transitioned out of the program.
Staff members at UNO also created a custom pathway through the TSLC requirements
for English Language Learners that included creating Bridge courses, an ESL Lab for TSLC
students, and a special section of the Autobiographical Reading and Writing course for English
Language Learners. After working with the university to create a system for assessing students’
level of English language proficiency which directed students with very low levels of English
proficiency to the local community college, TSLC staff members created a series of classes
designed to support English Language Learners’ language development as they developed the
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skills necessary for collegiate level work. Participation in this program was mandatory for
students who were English Language Learners, so this was an example of the segmented
standardization type of group customization.
TSLC staff members at UNL added classes to their program’s repertoire to better meet
the needs of students who entered college with a significant number of credits already
completed. TSLC staff members had noticed that many students who had acquired college
credits while in high school through Advanced Placement tests and dual enrollment programs
were frustrated about having to take lower division TSLC classes even though they had already
completed their general education requirements. Not wanting to “hold students back,” and
noting that many students who were in this situation were also part of the university’s honors
program which also had required courses, TSLC staff members worked with the honors program
to reserve seats in some honors classes as “TSLC seats” so that students would have the
opportunity to fulfill their TSLC requirements as well as their honors program requirements in
appropriately challenging classes. These classes were offered to students and no individual class
was required (though students were required to complete a certain number of TSLC classes) so
this was an example of the customized standardization type of group customization.
Adding Workshops. Staff members at UNL and UNK discussed adding to their
repertoires of workshops in response to emerging needs in the student populations that they
served. Sometimes the needs that inspired staff members to create workshops were rooted in
ongoing student trends. Other times they were rooted in specific incidents. TSLC staff members
at UNL, for example, created a workshop introducing students to potential local employers in
professional fields because they noticed that many students were so focused on the daily struggle
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to balance their jobs, school and personal commitments that they were not spending much time
focused on preparing for professional careers after graduation.
TSLC staff members at UNL also created a series of workshops on topics related to
diversity in response to a specific incident of a student being harassed and called racial epithets.
Similarly, staff members at UNK created bystander training workshops in response to some
incidents that had occurred on campus. Staff members at UNK also introduced a resume
workshop after recognizing that resume preparation assistance was a need for many of their
students. In one case, a student had walked out of a job fair because he didn’t have a resume and
ended up returning to his family’s pig farm.
Because workshops were shorter and less formal than academic classes, staff members
could more easily add workshops in response to specific incidents and evolving needs. The
addition of workshops typically involved a change in the menu of options offered to students, an
example of customized standardization. Sometimes, however, workshops were added that were
required for all students which followed the pattern of the pure standardization type of group
customization.
TSLC staff members across the three campuses added components to their respective
programs when they felt they were necessary to better support their students. They added
programs, services, classes and workshops to meet the needs of specific groups of students as
well as to address emerging needs in the student populations on their campuses. These
programmatic changes were all examples of group customization and followed the pure
standardization, segmented standardization, and customized standardization models.
Removing Program Components. In addition to changing and adding components,
TSLC staff members sometimes removed components of their programs. They did so for a
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variety of reasons. Staff members at UNK and UNO discussed removing or scaling back
services in order to preserve resources. One staff member explained that when requests to add
staff as student enrollment increased were not approved, the staff decided to scale back some
services in order to try to preserve the level and quality of student services overall. When they
felt that they were unable to maintain a high level of comprehensive support to all students with
the available resources, staff members discussed scaling back the support that they were
providing for students who were struggling academically as well as those who seemed to be
thriving. One UNK staff member explained their reasoning for cutting back on the frequency of
meetings with students who were on academic warning by saying “what happened with us, and I
know this has happened with other campuses too, is you feel like you're putting so much of your
human resources into helping students make it, that we weren't also able to put resources into
helping students develop some leadership pieces.” This staff member described redirecting
resources away from attempting to keep struggling students from leaving the university toward
helping students build leadership skills.
Conversely, a staff member from UNO described considering scaling back support for
students who seemed to be doing well on their own, saying “if we could let a few of them out
that can go on their own, and know that there's a way to get back in if they're struggling, but then
we'd have more capacity to help more, like the students who are really struggling.” Rather than
focusing on the students that were currently taking up a significant amount of staff time, this
staff member addressed the issue of limited staff resources by limiting the amount of resources
devoted to checking in with students who did not seem to need that support. The removal of
services, typically in the form of required check-ins with staff, for groups of students followed
the segmented standardization pattern of group customization.
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Another reason that TSLC staff members considered removing services and programs
was when they were found to be duplicative of those offered on the larger campus. This was
particularly an issue on the UNO campus because that campus had not previously offered much
programming for students and was, at the time of the interviews, in the process of significantly
expanding its offerings. Consequently, the TSLC program was able to scale back the types of
student leadership opportunities and other programming that it offered internally and rather
partner with other organizations on campus. In removing optional activities offered by the
program, these staff members followed the customized standardization pattern of group
customization.
Staff members at UNL primarily discussed removing specific workshops from their
offerings which they did for several reasons. Staff members at UNL reported consistently
attending workshops in order to determine which of them seemed most worthwhile for students.
Workshops that did not strike staff members as particularly worthwhile were replaced or
removed from the next year’s schedule. In response to student feedback, staff members at UNL
were in the process of reducing the number of different workshops offered so that useful and
popular workshops could be offered multiple times to accommodate students’ schedules. Some
of the workshops that were deemed most important for students were included in the First Year
Experience (FYE) class and replaced by the class. In changing the menu of offered workshops,
these staff members followed the customized standardization pattern of group customization, and
when workshops were included in the mandatory FYE class they moved to pure standardization.
Faced with finite resources, including staff capacity, as well as changing campus
environments and student needs, TSLC staff members sometimes customized their programs to
students’ needs by removing components. They did so in order to adjust the extent to which they
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focused on students who were struggling academically, to avoid duplicating services that were
offered on their wider campuses, and to focus students’ attention on programming that they
considered most worthwhile.
Building Choices Into the Program to Engage Students in Customizing the Program
to Their Own Needs. In addition to modifying program components themselves, TSLC staff
members also built choices into the program and empowered students to customize parts of the
program to their needs and preferences. TSLC staff members built choice into their
programming in a variety of ways, including by varying the times at which different activities
were offered, offering a variety of activities which students could choose to attend, and allowing
students to choose which staff member to meet with.
Building choices into the program not only gave the students opportunities to reflect on
their needs and shape their own experiences with the program. It also challenged staff members
to frame their workshops in ways that were attractive to students and gave them additional
insights into students’ developmental trajectories and needs. In describing students’ choices in
Success Sessions, a staff member at UNK explained
I think, again, trying to always add value to their lives is continuous. Recognizing they
are in different places. Success Sessions, for instance, they can all go to the same ones
but how they pick and choose depends on where they are at in their journey and what
they recognize they want to do next.
This staff member emphasized the relationship between staff members’ efforts to “add value” or
be useful for students and empowering students to make choices based on their knowledge about
their own needs and interests.
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Staff members at UNK also made student choice a central component of the career
activities for students in their second year. They had different tracks for students who had
decided on a major and students who were still exploring. Within each track, students could
choose from several assignments such as “job shadowing, going and interviewing two people in
a profession, going and talking with faculty in an academic department that you might be
interested in, or two different academic departments you might be interested in” for students who
were exploring majors and attending job fairs, interviewing professionals in their chosen field, or
researching graduate schools for students who had chosen a major. By creating the overall
structure of the two tracks and creating choices within each track, TSLC staff members at UNK
collaborated with students to create a program experience customized to their needs. In creating
options for students TSLC staff members followed the customized standardization pattern of
group customization. TSLC staff members empowered students to participate in the process of
customizing the program to meet their needs.
Customizing the Program Experience for Individual Students Through
Comprehensive Wraparound Services. In addition to customizing aspects of the program to
the needs of groups of students and their student population as a whole, TSLC staff members
also customized supports to the needs of individual students through providing comprehensive
wraparound services. While providing these services, staff members engaged in individualized
customization which included customized standardization with guidance, tailored customization,
and pure customization.
These wraparound services extended beyond the type of coaching through difficult
circumstances that may be typical of well-resourced advisors on college campuses to a proactive
use of staff networks and program resources to providing niche support for individual student
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circumstances. Some examples of this kind of targeted wraparound support involved the kind of
supports that are typical of wraparound services in other fields such as support in accessing food,
housing, childcare, and other resources in support of meeting basic needs. For example, a staff
member from UNK described a student he had spoken to on the day of the interview who came
to him saying that they had given their whole refund check to their family. The staff member
was able to respond by asking the student if they had enough food and offer to help them get
resources while validating the student’s experience and reminding them that facing this kind of
struggle “doesn’t take away from who they are as people.” Similarly, another staff member from
UNK spoke with an incoming student who was a single parent. In addition to telling the student
that the staff members were confident that she would make it to graduation, the staff member
connected her with the director of the campus’ child development center and referred her to
housing options that were located near the center.
In these cases, when staff members helped students choose and access supports that were
already available, acting as a “sommelier” and following the customized standardization with
guidance pattern of individualized customization. When they customized the advising that they
gave each student to their individual needs, they followed the tailored customization pattern of
individual customization.
Other examples of targeted wraparound services involved less typical kinds of supports.
For example, a staff member at UNO recounted the following story of several staff members
working together to solve a problem for a student.
So [another staff member] and I just came up with this idea. [An instructor] teaches
autobiography for us. She had a student in her class who was, he's African American and
he was paralyzed with a gunshot wound. I think it might have been a drive-by or
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something like that. And he started – this was before he came to school, but he went
ahead and came in his wheelchair. And he, [a staff member] discovered – I think [two
staff members] both discovered – that he's having real difficulty for one thing that he
didn't have a shower in his house. Sometimes [a staff member] or other people would
help him get over to the recreation building to take a shower. And [the instructor’s]
husband does construction and remodeling, built him a shower for nothing in his house.
In this case, multiple staff members had a relationship with a student and recognized an ongoing
need related to a physical disability. In the short term, they worked with a group of people to
help the student find a way to access the needed support. They also drew upon their networks to
find a longer-term solution to meet the need. These staff members created a novel support that
was not based on supports that had previously been provided. They followed the pure
customization pattern of individualized customization.
In addition to customizing programmatic elements to meet the needs of groups of
students, TSLC staff members customized their support to the specific needs of individual
students through providing wraparound support.
Conclusion. This section outlined several ways in which TSLC staff members
customized the components of the program to meet students’ needs. Staff members customized
aspects of the program to better fit the needs of the student population at their campuses and for
groups of students by changing, adding, and removing components of the program and by
building choices into the program. In doing so, they followed the pure standardization,
segmented standardization and customized standardization patterns of group customization.
When their customization applied to the entire program, such as when a mandatory workshop
was added, they engaged in pure standardization. When they customized the experience of a
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specific group, for example by modifying their program for students on academic probation, they
engaged in segmented standardization. When they modified a service that was offered to
students but not required, they engaged in customized standardization.
Additionally, TSLC staff members customized the support they provided to individual
students by providing wraparound services. In customizing the supports they provided to
individuals’ needs they followed the customized standardization with guidance, tailored
customization, and pure customization models of individual customization. Most often, they
followed the customized standardization model of individual customization—helping students to
navigate and access available services. When they created new services based on a template or
completely ex novo, they engaged in tailored or pure customization. The next section will
describe the processes through which TSLC staff learned to customize the program to students’
needs.
How TSLC Staff Learned to Customize the Program and Customize Support
In this section, I will discuss how TSLC staff members learned to customize the support
they provided to groups and individuals. While TSLC staff members reported appreciating and
benefiting from both formal training and informal socialization processes as they learned how to
do their jobs in general, informal, dynamic processes seemed to be particularly significant.
While most of the examples of job-based learning that TSLC staff members described in their
interviews were related to professional learning in general rather than specifically learning to
customize, several of the types of learning that they discussed were relevant to the process of
learning how to provide customized support to groups and individuals. On the whole, however,
TSLC staff members’ accounts of the process of learning to customize the support they provided
came from descriptions of the active process of working with their students, their colleagues, and
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the data they had collected to solve problems as they arose rather than from incidents that the
staff members identified as training.
Learning by Doing: TSLC Staff Members Learned to Customize by Customizing.
In general, TSLC staff members framed their accounts of instances in which they customized the
program to meet student needs in terms of a dynamic, collaborative problem-solving process.
Rather than describing how they applied specific concepts or processes that they learned through
formal training or informal socialization to the practice of customizing the program, they
highlighted instances in which they used data, worked directly with students, and collaborated
with colleagues to create customized responses to needs that their students faced. By definition,
these responses involved creating novel solutions and required staff members to decide what
customized responses were appropriate and how best to implement them in flexible, dynamic
ways rather than drawing explicitly on previous models in which they might have been trained.
This process is described in detail in the above sections.
General Training and Socialization Processes Informed the Customization Process.
TSLC staff members did describe some aspects of their general job training and socialization
processes that were relevant to customization. These elements are outlined below.
Informal Learning Opportunities. TSLC staff members reported participating in
informal learning and socialization opportunities as they initially learned how to do their jobs
and as they worked to improve themselves professionally. Some aspects of these processes that
were relevant to customization are described in this section. For example, staff members
described having work time set aside for individual reflection and reflection with other staff
members. This gave them space to think about what was going well with the program and what
might need improvement, including in what ways students could benefit from customized
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support. Similarly, brainstorming sessions with colleagues created a forum for TSLC staff
members to broaden their knowledge of issues that students on their campuses were facing as
well as work together to create innovative solutions. Staff members also noted that they had
some opportunities to share ideas across campuses and that, despite differences between the
campuses, these collaborations sometimes sparked ideas about the types of supports they might
offer on their own campuses. While these informal learning opportunities were not specifically
focused on customization, they did provide support for TSLC staff members’ creative problem-
solving processes which were in turn important for developing customized solutions for students.
Formal Learning Opportunities. TSLC staff members also participated in formal
learning opportunities as part of their onboarding process and professional development. These
included both formal processes that were designed to facilitate informal interactions between
staff members and formal training sessions designed to impart knowledge about specific topics.
Some aspects of these learning opportunities that were relevant to staff members’ customizing of
the program are described below. One example of a formal process that facilitated learning
through informal interaction was the onboarding process at UNO which included opportunities to
shadow fellow staff members and a concerted effort by TSLC staff members to introduce new
staff members to services and potential partners available on campus. One new staff member
from UNO described participating in an onboarding process in which leaders intentionally
introduced her to various stakeholders across campus so that the staff member would be familiar
with services that were available and partners with whom they could work to address student
needs. In the midst of this process, she reflected, “I feel like I'm really having meaningful
conversations with other individuals that will kinda help me to address the needs of students that
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I see.” Another staff member described shadowing a colleague and having the opportunity to
observe the strategies that they used with the students they worked with.
All of these experiences helped staff members build their repertoires of support strategies
that they were later able to deploy in creating customized supports for students, as did attending
conferences and training sessions around issues such as mental health and learning disabilities.
A final type of formal learning which informed the work that TSLC staff members did,
including customizing the program to meet students’ needs, was the professional graduate
programs that many staff members were taking part in or had taken part in. Several staff
members described applying conceptual models that they had learned in graduate school to their
work. Some of them mentioned theories that emphasized the importance of understanding
contextual factors that influence individuals’ experiences such as Bronfenbrenner’s (2007)
bioecological theory. These conceptual models influenced how staff members thought about
students’ needs and appropriate supports. While these learning opportunities were not
specifically designed to help staff members learn to customize the program to students’ needs,
they did inform the work that staff members did, including how they developed customized
supports for students in their program.
This section outlined the processes which TSLC staff members learned to customize the
program and provide customized support to individuals. Most of the examples of job-based
learning that TSLC staff members described in their interviews were related to professional
learning in general. Some of this professional learning was relevant to the process of learning
how to customize the program. On the whole, TSLC staff members described learning to
customize the program through an active process of collaborating with students, coworkers and
stakeholders and using the data to provide customized support as needs arose.
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Conclusion
This chapter presents results from the analysis of 42 interviews with TSLC professional
staff members, 28 interviews with campus stakeholders, and three annual reports from each of
the three campuses. This chapter described the student characteristics that TSLC staff
considered when customizing the program and customizing support for individual students. It
then described strategies that TSLC staff used to gather data about students and customize the
program to meet students’ needs. Finally, it described the process through which TSLC staff
learned to customize the program. The next chapter which will place these findings in a larger
context and present recommendations for future research as well as implications for practice.
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Chapter Five: Discussion and Conclusions
The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of the ways in which
Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC) staff members at three University of Nebraska
campuses customized the program to meet the needs of TSLC students. This study examined
which student characteristics staff members considered, how staff members gathered data about
students’ strengths, and the challenges they faced as well as the customization strategies they
used in order to customize the supports they provided to the needs of TSLC students. This study
also explored the process through which TSLC staff members learned to customize the support
that they provided to meet students’ needs.
Summary of Findings
Analysis of 42 interviews with TSLC professional staff members across the three
campuses, 28 interviews with campus stakeholders across the three campuses, and six annual
reports highlighted several student groups that staff members considered and strategies that staff
members used to collect data and customize the program. TSLC’s staff member’s discussions of
each of these areas reflected a philosophical commitment to viewing each student holistically,
placing the individual as a whole rather than programmatic concerns or a single aspect of the
individual’s identity at the center of their practice. This philosophical perspective, which
mirrored best practices in case management, informed many aspects of the work that TSLC staff
members did to customize support for students’ needs (Short, Trembath, Duncombe, Whitaker &
Wyman, 2019). This holistic approach was evident in many aspects of TSLC staff members’
work, including their approach to customizing support for groups and individuals based on
student characteristics. The conceptualization of each student as a complex individual with
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different intersectional identities was a key aspect of the way staff members framed discussions
of student characteristics.
While emphasizing the individuality of each student, staff members also acknowledged
the significance of multiple identity characteristics in shaping students’ experiences and
consequently what type of support would be most effective for them. They discussed several
categories of student characteristics that they considered when customizing the program,
including levels of academic preparation, status as an English Language Learner, mental health
and disability services needs, student major, and other student characteristics. The most
extensive customized supports were designed for students who were struggling academically,
particularly those who were on academic warning or probation and were thus at risk of leaving
the university. Some staff members expressed concern that they may have been focusing too
much of their time and too many of their resources on this group of students, but there was broad
consensus that this group did require extensive support. Staff members also provided significant
customized support for students with mental health needs, especially as the university withdrew
some of its financial support for student mental health services. While staff members, especially
at UNO, sometimes mentioned providing support for students based on traditional demographic
categories such as gender, race, religion or sexual orientation, and while several staff members
discussed how knowledge of these aspects of students’ identities informed the individual
advising they did with students, the majority of their customized support was based on other
types of categories such as being on academic probation or needing mental health services.
The strategies that TSLC staff members used to gather data about student needs and the
strategies that they used to create customized supports for individuals, groups, and the TSLC
population as a whole were also informed by their holistic, individual-centered philosophical
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perspective. Staff members noted customizing elements of the program to meet the needs of
groups of students and customizing the experiences of individual students in the program
through creating opportunities for individualized plans within their supports for student groups
and through traditional advising strategies embedded in ongoing relationships. As noted in
chapter 4, I will refer to these modes of customization as group customization and individual
customization, respectively.
Staff members discussed various strategies that they used to gain information about
student needs such as surveys, skill analyses, and referrals, but the vast majority of their
descriptions focused on individual students sharing their stories with staff members. The
importance of one-on-one relationships between students and staff for the process of customizing
support to meet students’ needs was highlighted in TSLC staff’s descriptions of the ways in
which they gathered data about students’ needs.
Staff members also described customizing the program in a variety of ways as they
gathered data about student needs. As described in chapter 4, the ways they provided
customized support can be categorized as individual and group customization.
This analysis revealed that TSLC staff members mostly learned to customize by
experimentation rather than through training. They did, however, discuss a number of formal
and informal learning opportunities that had some relevance to the ways in which they thought
about customizing the program. While these professional learning opportunities were often
relevant to the ways that TSLC staff members thought about creating customized supports,
TSLC staff members mostly learned to create customized supports by creating them in
collaboration with the students they served, their colleagues and other stakeholders. Learning
opportunities that were relevant to staff members’ thinking about customizing supports ranged
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from formal onboarding and professional development to individual professional reflection time
and opportunities to collaborate with and learn from colleagues within and between campuses.
While many staff members mentioned specific formal training opportunities, much of their
professional learning overall occurred in a less formal manner.
Discussion of the Findings in Relationship to the Literature
The TSLC program exists in the context of a wide variety of programs that seek to
address low levels of college persistence in the United States through providing support for
students. The TSLC program is distinctive in that it, unlike most other programs, allows for
customization to meet the needs of individuals and groups in a way that is more sensitive to their
needs and is reflective of case management best practices. As a program, TSLC offers a wide
range of supports that have been demonstrated to be effective in promoting college student
persistence including financial aid, a programmatic focus on the first year, systems for
monitoring student progress, high quality instruction in gatekeeping courses, special programs
for underserved populations, a culture of success, academic guidance and counseling, academic
supports, personal guidance and counseling, career counseling, grouping students into cohorts,
providing mentoring, and supplemental supports such as assistance with housing, transportation,
and other tangible needs (Angrist, Lang & Oreopoulos, 2009; Bettinger & Baker, 2014; Engle &
Lynch, 2011; Page, Kehoe, Castleman & Sahadewo, 2017; Purnell & Blank, 2004; Sprandlin,
Rutowski & Burrough, 2010; Walsh, 2000; Xu, Solanki, McPartlan & Sato, 2018).
Unlike most other programs, however, TSLC offers a comprehensive assortment of these
supports while also providing staff members with the opportunity to customize aspects of the
supports to the needs of students. TSLC staff members employ a holistic philosophy which
recognizes that each individual student brings a unique constellation of strengths and challenges
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with them into the college experience based on their particular identities, life experiences, and
the interactions between them and builds support around the evolving needs of the individual
(Clark, 2005; Duggan & Pickering, 2008; Rios-Aguilar & Kiyama, 2012). Through their
comprehensive approach to providing support for students which includes an ongoing, dynamic
process of customizing supports to meet students’ needs, TSLC staff members are able to
provide effective support for students who differ in many characteristics that have been
previously shown to influence students’ persistence in college, including academic preparation,
educational aspirations, financial resources, academic and social integration, psychological
characteristics, mental health, and living situation (Engle & Tinto, 2008; Eisenberg, Golberstein
& Hunt, 2009; Lohfink & Paulsen, 2005). In customizing their supports to meet the needs of the
students they served, TSLC staff members employed several strategies that have been shown to
be effective when used by case managers in other contexts such as social work and health care.
1. TSLC staff members used a holistic, client centered philosophy. Philosophically,
this involved centering the student or client as an individual in his or her specific
environment rather than program goals, cost containment or other concerns that
routinely drive service provision (Font et al., 2019; Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018;
Rapp, 1998; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992). It also involved a focus on
individual autonomy and self-determination, a focus on the student’s own goals,
and an effort to empower students to solve problems themselves rather than
solving problems for them (Clemens, Wetle, Feltes, Crabtree & Dubitsky, 1994).
TSLC staff members mentioned both of these themes repeatedly in their
descriptions of the types of supports they sought to create. Practically, the
philosophical commitment to centering the individual and viewing each
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individual holistically was also reflected in commitments to providing supports in
spaces in which students were comfortable and to letting students’ experiences
shape the types of supports that were provided (Carten, 1996; Hubberstey, 2001).
2. TSLC staff members used ongoing multidimensional assessments. Like effective
case managers, TSLC staff members used a variety of data collection strategies to
assess students’ strengths, needs, and potential natural supports in all relevant life
domains (Font et al., 2019; Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018; Shepard-Tew &
Creamer, 1998). They collected data in order to develop a multidimensional
understanding of each student’s situation at the beginning of the program so that
supports could be customized to each student’s needs (Fraser, Perez & Latour,
2018; Woodside & McClam, 2014; Blundo & Simon, 2015). Like effective case
managers, TSLC staff members continually monitored students’ progress and
collaboratively assessed the effectiveness of the supports they provided in the
context of students’ dynamic circumstances (Eack, Anderson & Greeno, 2012;
Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018). This ongoing assessment was done in the context
of clear and flexible plans for connecting students with the supports they needed
(Eack, Anderson & Greeno, 2012; Fraser, Perez & Latour, 2018).
3. TSLC staff members provided “always available support” (Fraser, Perez &
Latour, 2018; Rapp, 1998; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992). TSLC staff
members reported being available for many hours each day and sometimes
attending events and answering emails or cell phone calls late into the evening.
Having staff members available when they were needed has been shown to be
effective in preventing small setbacks from spiraling into larger crises (Rapp,
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1998; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992). Another key element from case
management that was reflected in how TSLC staff members provide support that
is not time-limited, but is available as long as clients need it (Fraser, Perez &
Latour, 2018; Surles, Blanch, Shern & Donahue, 1992).
In addition to these general case management strategies and practices, TSLC staff applied
strategies that have been found to be essential elements of strengths-based case management.
Specifically, TSLC staff members promoted connections and the use of informal helping
networks, engaged in assertive community involvement facilitated by the staff members, and
emphasized the importance of the strength of the relationship between the students and the staff
members (Brun & Rapp, 2001; Hunter, Lanza, Lawlor, Dyson & Gordon, 2016). TSLC staff
members promoted the use of informal helping networks by asking students about important
people in their lives during their advising sessions and referring back to those relationships
throughout the year. Staff members were also assertive in their efforts to connect students with
the TSLC community, the university community as a whole and the larger community.
Specifically, they created programming to build community within the program and assisted
students with building their networks on campus and with potential employers in the larger
community. Additionally, TSLC staff members, like strengths-based case managers, emphasized
the importance of their relationships with students throughout the process of gathering data,
recognizing different student groups, and creating customized supports. Finally, TSLC staff
members, like strengths-based case managers, worked hard to build a non-deficit approach into
their programming. They employed a number of strategies such as providing students with
ongoing validation, reassuring them that they were not the only ones to face obstacles, taking a
solution-based approach, and asking students about the supportive people in their lives during
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early discussions so that they could bring these natural supports up again later when students
were facing obstacles.
Customization
In Chapter 4, I outlined a framework based on Lampel & Mintzberg’s (1996) model of a
continuum between customization and standardization. I applied this model to the ways TSLC
staff members customized support services across the six categories of supports. This
framework spanned activities that involved customization of the program affecting groups of
students as well as customization of experiences for individual students. The categories, as
applied to the work of TSLC staff members are outlined below.
1. Pure Standardization: The Model T. In this type of customization, only a
single design is available. It is geared towards the broadest set of customers, with
no choices or options. Examples of this approach include the Ford Model T or
Classic Coke. Consumers’ only choice in this model is to accept the standardized
product or not. In the context of TSLC, staff members customized mandatory
program elements to respond to changes in student needs, e.g. TSLC staff
members revised the curriculum of the First Year Experience class to address
common gaps in knowledge (e.g. how to handle parking tickets on campus).
2. Segmented Standardization: Breakfast Cereals. In this model, a basic design
is modified to meet the needs of various segments of buyers. Examples include
various car models or types of cereal. Companies may have different categories
of consumers in mind and design different iterations of a product to match the
needs and desires of those groups of consumers, but there is no feedback
mechanism for the consumers to communicate their desires to the company and
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affect the production process. In the context of TSLC, this parallels supports
available for specific groups of students, for example students on academic
probation or English language learners. TSLC staff members customized and
evolved these offers on two levels: They refined the existing offerings, e.g.
reduced the frequency of meetings for students on academic probation at UNK,
and they added or discontinued programs for specific groups, e.g. created a class
for students beyond second year that were on academic warning or probation at
UNO.
3. Customized Standardization: The Menu. In this model, products are made to
order, or assembled, for each customer based on a standardized set of
components. Examples include the “build your own” menus at many hamburger
chains or the new car option catalogues with various engine, paint, and interior
choices. Similar to the hamburger restaurant example referenced by Lampel and
Mintzberg (1996), the customization activities in the context of TSLC in this
category were owned and driven by the students who took advantage of some
combination of supports from the menu of choices made available by the
program. For example, the program might cover the cost of disability testing, but
the choice whether to enroll in and complete a test belonged to the student. The
TSLC staff members customized the program by making changes to the choices
offered based on evolving needs of the student population, which services they
may or may not avail themselves of, and whether the services were appropriately
meeting their needs. Based on those observations they added new optional
programs, such as a lunch with a professor or covering the cost of learning
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disability testing and mental health services at UNK and UNL through the Buffett
Foundation. They also modified existing offerings, for example move the
location of mental health services to avoid a perceived stigma, or discontinue
services that are perceived as less worthwhile (UNL) or duplicative of other
campus offerings (UNO).
These three categories effectively spanned the range of group customization performed
by TSLC staff. The remaining three categories on the other hand describe modes of individual
customization, defined by the role of the TSLC staff members creating a unique experience that
is customized to the needs of an individual student. The main difference between these three
categories lies in the resources the staff members leverage. No examples of programmatic
changes, or group customization, were observed across these three categories.
4. Customized Standardization With Guidance: The Sommelier. In this model,
there is a range of standardized components, or choices, available, however,
rather than leaving the selection to the customer, a professional guides the
customer through the process, as for example a sommelier would guide a
customer to an appropriate wine pairing. In the context of TSLC, a collection of
standardized supports was available similar to the Customized Standardization
model, however rather than leaving students to choose and access services as they
choose, staff members in this model guided students through the process of
understanding and taking advantage of available resources and services, using an
approach similar to that used by case managers.
5. Tailored Customization: The Birthday Cake. In this model, a defined product
prototype is modified for the specific individual customer’s needs. Examples
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include tailored suits or custom birthday cakes. In the TSLC context, staff
members followed the pattern of this model when they drew upon successful
strategies and case examples from their professional training and personal
experience and adjusted them to the specific student’s context.
6. Pure Customization: The Apollo Mission. In this model, a product is designed
and created specifically to the individual customer’s needs. Examples include
custom jewelry, a custom home designed by an architect, or large-scale projects
such as the Apollo project. TSLC staff members followed this pattern when they
created new and unique solutions without leveraging existing services or applying
known strategies and case examples.
In summary, two modes of customization were observed as TSLC staff members
customize the support they provided to students across the six categories explored above:
● Staff members monitored the evolving needs of the student population and
identified potential changes to the programmatic offerings in order to better meet
the needs of a group of students or the student population as a whole. They
sometimes changed the mandatory program elements (Category 1), adjusted
offerings for specific groups of students (Category 2), or added, removed, or
modified optional available support services (Category 3). In all three cases they
customized elements of the program to meet the evolving needs of a group of
students. This mode is referred to as group customization.
● Staff members worked with students to create a unique experience for an
individual student based on their specific situation. They leveraged an existing
set of services (Category 4), drew upon their experience with proven strategies
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(Category 5), or created fully bespoke support (Category 6). In all three cases the
result is a unique, customized experience for a specific student. This mode is
referred to as individualized customization.
I will continue to use the term customization when referring to both individual and group
customization.
Comparing TSLC Staff Members and Case Managers
I described earlier in this section how TSLC staff members used many strategies that
resemble or draw upon case management best practices. The repertoire of customization
strategies employed by TSLC staff members, however, was much wider than what is typically
used by case managers. TSLC staff members customized the program as well as individual
students’ experiences in a variety of ways that ranged from customizing the standard program
offering (the Pure Standardization associated with the Model T) to Pure Customization to one
individual student’s needs (as with the “Apollo mission” model). While case managers do
occasionally have access to a small pool of flexible funds that they can use to provide
customized supports for the people with whom they work, their support typically fits in the
Customized Standardization With Guidance or “Sommelier” model. In other words, they have
knowledge about a collection of supports that are available within their own organizations or in
the larger community and help the people they work with select and access those supports.

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Table 3
Comparing TSLC Staff Members and Case Managers
TSLC Staff Members Case Managers
Philosophical approach
Individual-centered approach (student-centered or client-centered)

Focus on the individual’s goals
Assessment
Comprehensive initial assessments to assess strengths, needs and
potential natural supports
Strength/Deficit model
Strive to focus on strengths rather than use a deficit model (some
types of social work, particularly strengths-based social work)
Support Availability
Always available support or strive to minimize wait time between
needs arising and support being provided
Support network
Promote the development and use of social support networks
Case managers typically work
with clients individually and/or
coach them through interacting
with members of the larger
community
TSLC staff members and
students work together within a
tight-knit program community
embedded within a university
and larger community
Program Evaluation Constant evaluation of how well supports are working
Program Customization
Focusing on navigating and
accessing a menu of defined
services
Variety of customization
strategies targeting groups and
individuals

Data Analysis Through Cognitive Load Theory
Cognitive load theory provided one explanation for the effectiveness of these strategies
when used by TSLC staff members as well as case managers in their respective contexts. They
transfer some of the cognitive load of navigating life as a low-income or first-generation college
student from the student to the staff member which leaves students less overwhelmed and with
more mental capacity left to make good decisions and focus on their studies. Cognitive load
139

theory asserts that working memory, a person’s cognitive capacity to control their attention and
hold multiple things in mind at the same time, is limited and if a task requires too much cognitive
capacity, learning and other forms of reasoning suffer (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Covre,
Baddeley, Hitch & Bueno, 2019; De Jong, 2010; Engle, 2002; Sweller, 1988).
The daily lives of low-income and first-generation college students like those served by
the TSLC program involve many situations that impose high levels of cognitive load. Some
examples of these situations include navigating unfamiliar situations, making complex decisions
with high-stakes consequences for the long term, making tradeoffs and thinking about basic
survival needs, and learning information in a new field of study (Lens, Nugent & Wimer, 2018;
Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013; Sweller, 1993). Affective factors that are not uncommon in the
lives of TSLC students such as stereotype threat, triggers for self-doubt and emotional reactions,
and attempts to suppress those reactions have all been shown to impose cognitive load and thus
contribute to cognitive overload (Artze-Vega, Richardson & Traxler, 2014; Beilock, Rydell &
McConnell, 2007; Fraser et al., 2012; Schmader, 2010; Steele & Aronson, 1995).
If students, who were already facing all these demands on their cognitive capacity, had to
search for and access multiple offices and services across campus and in the community to get
the supports they needed, research suggests that this would impose a substantial amount of
additional cognitive load which could lead to cognitive overload (Harper, Wardell & McGuire,
2011; Lens, Nugent & Wimer, 2018; Mowbray et al., 2006; Purnell & Blank, 2004). Cognitive
overload has been associated with adverse psychological effects such as stress and low job
satisfaction (Melamed, Fried & Froom, 2001; Verbeek, van Dijk & De Vries, 1986). This
research supports the idea that providing customized support takes some of the cognitive load
from students and thus helps to reduce students’ stress levels. Moreover, this reduction in
140

cognitive load also increases their level of satisfaction with their role as students, thus promoting
student retention.
Cognitive load theory also supports the effectiveness of reflective professional practice.
TSLC staff members noted using reflective professional practice which is a tenet of strengths-
based case management. Cognitive overload has been associated with difficulties with cognitive
tasks such as effective decision making. When faced with cognitive overload, people often
revert to using mental heuristics which may not lead to the best outcomes. For example, they
show a “default bias” or tendency to avoid taking action or making a decision (Madrian & Shea,
2001). People also show an “availability bias” or tendency to make decisions based on easily
available information when faced with cognitive overload (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).
By doing the cognitive work of finding or creating appropriate resources for students and
the emotional work of supporting students through difficult situations, staff members moved
cognitive load off of students and onto themselves, increasing their own risk of cognitive
overload. The fact that TSLC staff members reported feeling overwhelmed, an affective state
associated with cognitive overload, suggests that they were successful in taking some cognitive
load off of the students. It also suggests that staff members may have been at risk of struggling
to make effective decisions, especially in the demanding context of designing customized
interventions while learning to customize and keeping up with the rest of their jobs. Having time
set aside for professional reflection and collaboration potentially decreased staff members’
cognitive overload by allowing them to process some aspects of their professional practice in an
offline context and thus supported effective decision making, including the design of customized
supports (Iskander, 2019).
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Implications for Policy and Practice
This study illustrated strategies that TSLC staff members used to collect data about
student challenges and create customized supports to better meet the needs of the students in
their program. It examined the strategies that Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC)
staff members employed as they customized the supports provided within a comprehensive
college transition program at three University of Nebraska campuses. It showed that using
strategies similar to those used within strengths-based case management, including a holistic
perspective toward students’ identities, combined with a spectrum of approaches for program
customization, could reduce students’ cognitive load.
Some colleges and universities do not yet have targeted student retention programs and
many of those who do have not yet developed comprehensive supports or empowered their staff
members to customize the programs to meet the needs of students. These colleges and
universities should consider the strategies used by TSLC staff members as they design programs
to support their own students. Strategies that have been shown to be effective when used by case
managers and have been used within the context of TSLC can provide a jumping-off point for
professionals who are designing support programs in education and possibly also in other fields.
Furthermore, they may consider the benefits of staff members owning and driving program
customization and leverage the customization approaches employed by TSLC staff members.
This section highlights the ways in which college retention programs, support
professionals in other fields, and TSLC staff members can apply the findings and conceptual
framework of this study to shape policy and practice.
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Consider the Importance of Relationships Between Staff Members and Students When
Finding Approaches to Understand Student Needs
In TSLC, ongoing relationships between staff members and the students who they served
were essential in helping staff members understand the specific needs of individual students in
dynamic environments and recognize trends in student needs. Trusting staff-student
relationships were also instrumental in helping students feel comfortable asking for and
accepting support. The context of these relationships made it easier for students to share about
sensitive issues that they were facing and which they might not otherwise have disclosed. This
allowed customized supports to be created to target those needs and helped students feel more
comfortable accessing those supports. The relationships between helping professionals and
individuals being served is also deemed essential within case management literature which has
been applied in several fields.
Though offering sufficient staff capacity for students to form trusting relationships with
staff members does require a significant resource investment, leaders who are designing support
programs for college students should seriously consider the importance of relationships when
allocating resources. Additionally, providing sufficient staff capacity can help prevent staff
members from developing cognitive overload related to compassion fatigue, as reasonable
caseloads allow them to both support students well and have opportunities to process the
vicarious trauma they may face.
Utilize Ongoing Multidimensional Assessments
Programs designed to support college students should utilize a variety of formal and
informal assessments to evaluate students’ goals, assets, and challenges. After gathering data in
a variety of ways and providing targeted supports appropriate for students’ circumstances,
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professionals should continue to gather data about how well the supports are working and how
students’ needs change over time.
Incorporate Discussions of Students’ Own Goals
Professionals who are working with college students should incorporate discussions
about students’ own goals into their advising discussions as much as possible. This can help
build student engagement with academics by connecting coursework with future aspirations.
Discussions of students’ goals, especially when connected with coaching on how to take steps
towards those goals, can also strengthen the relationship between students and the professionals
with whom they work. These strong relationships can then help students feel more comfortable
disclosing sensitive needs and accepting support for those needs.
Provide Services in Settings That Are Comfortable to Students
Programs designed to support college students should provide supports in settings that are
comfortable for students: settings with which students are familiar and which are convenient for
students. This is particularly important when offering services which students may have
associated with stigma, such as mental health services. Providing supports in comfortable
settings can both increase students’ comfort level with accessing those services and can help to
normalize accessing services amongst students participating in the program.
Involve Front-Line Professionals Who Have Daily Interaction With Students in Policy and
Programmatic Decisions, Including the Creation of Customized Supports
In the TSLC context, staff members often cited their relationships with students as
generating useful information about students’ needs which they were able to use to guide
decisions about the types of support that would be effective for the students they served. Leaders
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in similar programs should ensure that they do not miss out on the insight offered by
professionals who interact regularly with students.
Front-line professionals may have particular insights into the types of customized
supports that might be appropriate in a given context. Though programs designed to support
students in higher education often target groups of students who face similar challenges and
benefit from similar supports, each group of students is unique and the specific challenges they
face may change over time. It can, therefore, be helpful for leaders to design policies and
structures that empower the professionals with the most direct knowledge about changing student
needs to customize some of the supports provided to meet these changing student needs, as the
TSLC staff members in this study were able to do.
Frontline professionals may also have a better understanding of the impact of specific
elements of services on student experiences. For example, they may have a deeper
understanding of the way a service provided in a certain setting which may seem duplicative of a
similar service offered elsewhere actually offers access to a group of students who might not
otherwise be able to access that service. These kinds of specific insights about students’
experiences in accessing services may be instrumental in addressing systems of institutional
racism, sexism, and other embedded problems.
Employ a Systematic Approach to Program Customization
TSLC staff members utilized a broad range of approaches to customize supports to
address the evolving needs of the student population, ranging from individualized support for a
specific student, to creating and modifying programs targeted at select groups of students, to
changes to the mandatory program elements, affecting the entire population of TSLC students.
In some cases, the choice of customization approach was self-evident, such as when a staff
145

member decided to support a student with the construction of an accessible bathroom. Arguably
this was a clear case for Pure Customization, with limited applicability for the broader student
population. In many other cases, however, staff members need to select the customization
approach most appropriate to address an emerging need. For example, as staff members became
aware of incidents of harassment based on factors such as race or religion, they were faced with a
choice how they would customize the program in response:
1. Help the affected individuals access pertinent existing support services (Customized
Standardization With Guidance)
2. Counsel the affected student based on successful strategies in similar past incidents
(Tailored Customization)
3. Create specific offers such as workshops or seminars for students to attend (Customized
Standardization)
4. Set up mandatory workshops to raise awareness and initiate conversations across the
entire population of TSLC scholars (Pure Standardization)
Choices 1 and 2 would be examples of individual customization, while 3 and 4 entail
group customization. The various choices trade off specificity to the individual, reach across the
student population, investment of staff members’ time to create them (near term cost), and re-
usability for future sets of students (long term cost). In many cases there was no obvious choice,
and the most impactful strategy might combine multiple approaches (e.g. individual counseling
and mandatory workshops).
Staff members who are driving customization of supports may benefit from utilizing a
framework of the various approaches to customization, and explicitly weighing the trade-offs
involved as they consider how to customize their program to meet evolving student needs.
146

Organizations aiming to enable and empower their staff members to drive customization of
supports may consider including such a framework in their formal professional development
programs.
Supplement Academic Support With Wraparound Services
As TSLC staff members created, implemented, and refined customized support for
groups of students, they continued to make themselves available to help students access
resources to meet basic needs such as food, housing, and transportation. As care teams at a
growing number of postsecondary institutions have demonstrated, providing support for
students’ basic needs can be an essential lever in supporting student success. Leaders who are
designing support programs for students should include support for these kinds of needs,
including direct provision of resources and support in navigating public assistance programs.
Affirm Staff Members’ Use of a Comprehensive Collection of Supports
Some TSLC staff members expressed feeling tension around providing support that was
not explicitly academic in nature because they did not necessarily see it as part of their mandate,
even as they acknowledged that this support was necessary for their students’ academic success.
Consider introducing some of the concepts around customizing, case management strategies, and
minimizing cognitive load into staff training and professional development to affirm staff
members’ as they work to help students connect with a variety of resources.
Recommendations for Future Research
The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine the strategies that staff members in
the TSLC comprehensive college transition program at three University of Nebraska campuses
used to customize the program and the supports they provided to individual students.
Specifically, I analyzed the strategies that they used in relation to strategies used within
147

strengths-based case management and in the context of considering the ways in which these
strategies could reduce students’ cognitive load. Because this was a descriptive study of one
program at one point in time and because discussions around meeting individual needs are only
just starting to emerge in higher education, much research remains to be done in this area.
Impact of Customization on Student Outcomes
First, in this study I looked at staff data to understand customization but did not examine
its impact on student outcomes. Future studies should examine the impact of customization on
student outcomes. As colleges and universities around the country begin to develop care teams
and other approaches to providing customized support which differ in their emphases and
formats, comparative studies could deepen our understanding of customized supports in a variety
of settings. Different approaches to providing support such as care teams, TRIO, and targeted
programs for specific groups (i.e. Latinx students in STEM) should be examined and compared.
Comparative quantitative and qualitative studies could address the types of customized support
that are most needed or most effective in different settings or with different populations. They
could also examine the feasibility of providing customized support in programs that are less
well-resourced or less comprehensive than TSLC.
Similarly, future research should examine each of the strategies mentioned in this study
(multidimensional assessment, focus on students’ goals, providing services in comfortable
settings, etc.) in detail and look for associations between more specific aspects of strategies used
and student outcomes. These studies could investigate the effects of different strategies on
students’ subjective experiences as well as on outcomes such as retention and graduation. Future
studies could also assess the extent to which different strategies are associated with these
outcomes.
148

Measuring the Impact on Cognitive Load of Students and Staff Members
Future research should examine student data related to cognitive load, both
quantitatively and qualitatively. In this study I examined practices of customization aimed at
reducing cognitive load, but I did not examine data that demonstrates whether it actually reduced
the cognitive load of students. Therefore, follow up studies that examine this issue could help
support the effectiveness of this approach. Similar studies should also be conducted in related
fields such as health care, social work, the instructional side of education, and other fields in
which professionals may have a wide array of supports to offer to the individuals with whom
they work.
Another suggested area for future research is the role that cognitive load plays in the
work of professionals in support programs for college students. For example, measures of
cognitive load could be used with professionals in contexts in which cognitive load theory would
postulate that they face high levels of cognitive load. These measures could be particularly
interesting in combination with cognitive load measures for students as they could provide
insight into the extent to which professionals are able to transfer cognitive load from the students
they serve to themselves. Similar measures could also be used to build an understanding of the
extent to which different professional development opportunities and reflective strategies are
effective in reducing cognitive load for professionals in comprehensive college transition
programs as well as in other related fields. Future studies could also involve presenting the
concept of cognitive load to professional staff members within TSLC or other comprehensive
college transition programs and gaining their perspectives about the extent to which they find
these concepts helpful in thinking about their experiences doing the work that they do.
149

Effectiveness of Support Mechanisms and Customization Approaches
Future research should continue to focus on understanding and refining the mechanisms
through which staff members are able to provide effective and equitable support to the students
who they serve. For example, further research could focus on developing a deeper understanding
of the ways in which customizing support to groups that are largely not defined by traditional
demographic categories (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) affects students’ experience of the
program as well as student outcomes. Additionally, studies could examine which strategies for
providing customized support to certain groups, such as students on academic probation or
students with mental health needs, are most effective and efficient. This could lead to policies
and practices that could help address concerns that staff members expressed about having
sufficient resources to serve their students.
Conclusion
While a college degree is increasingly necessary to access employment and other
opportunities, many students in the United States, especially first generation college students and
students from low-income families, face significant obstacles to completing one, even once they
have entered college (Engle & Tinto, 2008; Eisenberg, Golberstein & Hunt, 2009; Lohfink &
Paulsen, 2005). In response to these low and inequitable rates of college success, numerous
programs have been created to support students in gaining access to and persisting in college
through the provision of services such as advising, social and academic support, and financial aid
(Inkelas, Daver, Vogt & Leonard, 2007; King, 2009). Typically, each of these programs
provides access to a defined set of interventions, though some are customized at the program
level to meet the needs of a specific subgroup of students (Arendale & Lee, 2018). While these
programs have had some success, more needs to be done to ensure that our institutions of higher
150

education offer equitable opportunities to all students. While a few colleges and universities
have begun to introduce elements of customization into some of their support services, the
processes through which they carry out this customization have not been well researched. The
purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which TSLC staff at three University of
Nebraska campuses customize the program to meet students’ needs, placed those customizing
strategies in the context of strategies used in strengths-based case management, and analyzed
them using cognitive load theory.
The results of this study may prove valuable to practitioners and scholars for several
reasons. Developing a more robust understanding of strategies that staff members used to
customize elements of a comprehensive support program to meet the needs of students has the
potential to inform efforts that are underway across the country to more effectively support
diverse student populations. Additionally, applying principles from case management and
cognitive load theory to college support systems can provide new ways of understanding the
work that professionals in this field do. Finally, there has been limited empirical research on
customization in college support programs and this study can thus contribute to addressing this
gap in the literature.

151

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173

Appendix A: Chapter 2 Coding List
Code Description Notes
Customization Changing some element of the
program to meet the needs of a
student or students
Adapt, change, customize,
exception, individualize,
meet the needs
Low-Income student For this paper, low-income
students are those who have an
estimated family contribution of
$10,000 or less as assessed by
university financial aid office

Definition as used by
TSLC program
Complex Identities Reference to students being part
of multiple identity groups (i.e.
race and gender, major and
sexual orientation)

Program-First Year
Experience
Reference to student
participation in first year
experience programs such as
orientation, first year experience
classes, etc.

Program-Proactive
Advising
Reference to student
participation in proactive
advising activities such as mid-
semester grade checks

Program-Courses References to student
participation in special, smaller
courses for TSLC scholars

Program-Tutoring References to student
participation in tutoring

Program-Financial
Support
References to financial support
provided by the program to
students

Program-Tangible
Support (Non-Financial)
References to non-financial
tangible supports provided to
students (i.e. textbooks,
childcare, formal clothing,
transportation, etc.)

174

Program-Requirements References to program
requirements
Include references to
customizing requirements
for students’
circumstances
Program-Combining
Supports
References to the combination
or interaction of multiple
supports (i.e. transportation &
formal clothing for an
internship)

Cognitive Overload Reports of students having too
much on their minds, feeling
overwhelmed

Cognitive Overload-
Sources
Reasons students feel
overwhelmed according
What students have said to
staff members & what
staff members think
Cognitive Overload-
Coping
Strategies students use
themselves to cope with
cognitive overload

Cognitive Overload-
Support
Actions that staff members take
to help students cope with
cognitive overload

Case Management
Techniques-Student
Centered
References to the importance of
the individual student

Case Management
Techniques-Identifying
Students Who Need
Support
Techniques staff members use
to identify students who might
need additional support

Case Management
Techniques-Initial
Assessment
Strategies staff members use to
assess a student’s situation

Case Management
Techniques-Ongoing
Assessment
Strategies staff members use to
assess whether a plan that has
been put in place

Case Management
Techniques-Planning
Strategies staff members use to
make an action plan to address
students’ challenges

175

Case Management
Techniques-Referral
References to sending students
to organizations outside the
program to receive support

Case Management
Techniques-Continuous
Support
References to staff members
being on-call or always
available to support students

Case Management
Techniques-Transition
Out
References to supporting
students as they transition out of
the program

176

Appendix B: Faculty and Staff Interview Protocol
Intro
● Review informed consent document
● Highlight nature of confidentiality in the research process
● Confirm end time of interview

Questions
● Tell me about what brought you to your position?
o What drew you to working at TLC and at UNO?
o What prior experiences influenced your desire to work with low-income, first-
generation college students? Students of color? ESL students?

● Tell me about your position
o What are your primary responsibilities?
o What do you find most rewarding?
o What do you find most challenging?

● How would you characterize the culture of the program?
o How do you see this enacted?
o What are the core values of TLC? How were these conveyed to you?

● How have you seen TLC change over time?
o What do you think prompted those changes?
o How have those changed affected students? Staff? Faculty?

● What do you think are the strengths of the program?
o What led you to identify these areas?
o What effect do these programs/initiatives/relationships have on students?

177

● In what areas do you think the program can continue to develop?
o What led you to identify these concerns?
o What needs to happen to address these areas?

● What do you think TLC does that is unique from other programs that serve similar
students?
o At UNO?
o In the Nebraska system?
o Nationally?

● How has working in TLC affected or influenced you?
o How has this informed your career aspirations?
o How has this work informed your practice?

● Is there anything you think it’s critical for people to know about TLC and your work
within it?

Abstract (if available)

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Asset Metadata

Creator Estes, Hilary Mae Erin (author)

Core Title Program customization in a comprehensive college transition program for low-income students

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 09/21/2020

Defense Date 06/29/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cognitive load,college transition programs,customization,first generation college students,low-income students,OAI-PMH Harvest,program customization

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Kezar, Adrianna (committee chair), Hallett, Ronald (committee member), Tobey, Patricia (committee member)

Creator Email estesmorrison@gmail.com,peter.hildebrandt@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-376133

Unique identifier UC11666363

Identifier etd-EstesHilar-9002.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-376133 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-EstesHilar-9002.pdf

Dmrecord 376133

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Estes, Hilary Mae Erin

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA