The Relationship Between Student Involvement, Psychological Sense of Community, and Academic Plan

Lexie Cox

Student retention and graduation rates have been a popular area of research for the last several decades. This research has looked at how institutions can more effectively retain students and the individual attributes that lead to student success.One of the challenges facing higher education today is developing a sense of community in a diverse student population. In the previous research we can see that increased student involvement is correlated with both increased student psychological sense of community and increased student persistence. Southern Oregon University has a wide variety of resource opportunities for students that include: academic resources, mentoring, student government, clubs and organizations, and small identity based resource centers. This research will see if there is a correlation between increased involvement in campus resource opportunities and increased psychological sense of community and students' academic plan at SOU. The research will also focus on the relationship between PSC and the smaller identity-based resource groups that include: the women's' resource center, the queer resource center, the commuter resource center, and the international student resource center. I surveyed 62 undergraduate students using the Campus Atmosphere Scale, resource center use questionnaire and academic plan questionnaire. The results will be available at the Psychology poster session and at SOAR.