The presentation was broken down into four parts: Low-Income Student Characteristics and College Enrollment, Profiles of Low-Income Students, Models of Retention and Success, and Case Studies of Intervention Programs. The first part of the presentation contained statistics and data for the non-college-going population, low-income students, and first-generation students. It also included information about educational attainment rates broken down by race, socioeconomic status, and first-generation student status. This gave the audience an overview of what barriers students face when making an enrollment decision.

The second part of the presentation contained real life profiles of low-income students that enrolled in 4-year colleges in 1997 and 1998. All of these students had characteristics other than socioeconomic status that put them at risk for attrition. These included being a person of color, first generation college student, and exhibiting nontraditional student characteristics. I asked the audience to keep in mind that students whose family income was under $25,000 have less than a 6 percent chance of earning a 4-year degree. With that in mind, the audience answered questions about how each of the students performed their first semester in college. They also answered questions about what they thought happened to the students.

The first profile was of a Latino male who was a first-generation college student and had a history of health issues. I had forgotten to mention that he was a gay male and raised by strict, religious parents. Another student was a Vietnamese female who was a first-generation college student. Her parents depended on her to translate for them. I also presented statistics that many people may not know about: Vietnamese (like other Southeast Asians) have lower educational attainment rates than South Asians and East Asians. The educational attainment rates that we see for the Asian American demographic tend to be high, but if one were to look only at Southeast Asian educational attainments, the statistics are similar to those of Blacks and Hispanics. The third profile was of an African American male who was the first in his family to go to college. He won a scholarship to attend a private performing high school. We made sure to point out that most African Americans in college are females to show the "lost boys" phenomenon. The last profile was of a white student who came from a single-parent household and did not perform well her first two years in high school. She also had another sister who was attending college at the same time and her mother could not afford to support them financially through college.

It was extremely interesting to hear the responses that the audience gave about what happened to these students. Some of the audience members suggested that the students took time off, transferred to community colleges, dropped out of school, graduated within 4 years, and graduated within 5 years. Asking the audience for their thoughts about the students really helped in getting them involved in the students’ stories. They really had an interest in learning what the students’ outcomes were.

Patricia and I made sure to use profiles of students that we knew personally who had an extremely difficult time transitioning from high school to college as most low-income students do. However, we strategically chose students that were alumni of in intervention programs that helped them succeed. This assisted us in making a shift to the third section in which we covered models of retention and success. This topic included information about student characteristics, institutional characteristics, good academic practices, good student services practices, cognitive influences, non-cognitive influences, pre-college influences, college-related factors, and personal development factors. With all of the theories discussed in this section, we were then able to go over specific case studies for specific intervention programs that some of the students in the profiles we discussed belonged to.

During this part of the presentation, a discussion arose about best practices in student recruitment and retention. It was a great way for professionals like us to share ideas about how to best serve our low-income students. A dialogue also arose about immigration spurred on by a comment about the new ACG and SMART Grants’ citizenship requirements.

It was amazing observing others react on a personal level to what was discussed and share their opinions. When I first thought about presenting at the MASFAA Conference, I really wanted to create a workshop in which attendees could learn more about educational attainment. This meant that a lot of statistics and theories would be involved in the presentation which would make it a bit dry. However, including an interactive piece in which attendees really identified with the student was extremely helpful in creating an engaging atmosphere. The questions and comments of attendees showed that they were interested in the topic and the discussions that resulted were thought-provoking.

Patricia and I had a great time making this presentation. We hope that all attendees enjoyed it. I am already thinking about putting in a proposal for MASFAA Conference 2007 with Dana Cole of TERI College Access.