Fostering Equitable Engagement: A Mixed-Methods Exploration of the Engagement of Racially Diverse Students in a Comprehensive College Transition Program

While student engagement has long been associated with students' learning, development, and success, the climate and culture of historically white institutions often create barriers to engagement among racially minoritized students. Given the institutional responsibility to facilitate equitable engagement, there is a need for new policies and practices that meet students' needs. One increasingly popular intervention is comprehensive college transition programs (CCTPs) that provide multipronged approaches to promote the success of underrepresented students. While there is growing evidence that these programs benefit students' outcomes, very little research has explored how they might shape students' engagement--a prerequisite for student success. Therefore, this sequential explanatory mixed methods study used longitudinal data from a multicampus CCTP to understand various aspects of engagement among students with different racialized identities. We found that racially diverse students participating in a CCTP engaged similarly across groups with their peers, faculty, staff, and CCTP academic courses. Key explanations for the similar levels of engagement among racially diverse students that emerged from our analysis included the compositional diversity among students and educators, structured opportunities for meaningful interactions across racial groups, and the identity-conscious approaches used by educators in this CCTP. Our qualitative findings aligned with previous research on college environments, providing empirical evidence that such environments foster similar levels of engagement among racially diverse students. Thus, this study offers important implications for researchers, educators, and administrators to promote equitable engagement among increasingly racially diverse college students.