Moderator: BILL CURLEY, Penn State University
Presenters: CHRISTINE l. PERSICO, Empire State College, SUNY;
JIA FRYDENBERG, University of California Irvine

    Analyses of student persistence or attrition are crucial for institutions to formulate and implement their retention strategies. This interactive presentation will introduce two scenarios: one from online continuing professional education and one from an undergraduate degree program, the latter focusing on underserved students. The primary issue in online continuing education is the timing and potential causes of student non-completion. additionally, this presentation will compare online and onground CE persistence in a two-year longitudinal study. The undergraduate study will provide a review of research that identifies retention risk factors for underserved students. As a corollary, research validated for more than 20 years at a major university utilizing non-cognitive variables in their admissions process will demonstrate the effectiveness this approach has for enrolling and graduating a substantially higher percentage of underserved students.