Sometimes, Faculty Matter: The Contribution of Faculty Support to Future Engagement

In this study, we examine the contribution of student-faculty interactions to the future engagement of students in their academic endeavors. These relationships were evaluated in a one-year longitudinal study of STEM (including engineering and computer science) students at five different institutions. These five institutions include three types of Carnegie 2010 classifications (Bac-Diverse, Master’s L, and RU-VH), four geographical locations including the northwest, northeast, midwest, and southeast, and both public and private institutions with total undergraduate enrollments varying from 1,900 to 29,000 students. Both behavioral (effort, participation) and emotional (positive, negative) aspects of engagement are studied. Results show that significant relationships emerged for three of the five schools between faculty support and engagement. Formal faculty support (that provided in the context of a particular course) predicted effort (a form of behavioral engagement) at the HBCU in this study and also positive emotional engagement for both the HBCU and Teaching institution. Informal faculty support (that provided outside the context of a particular course) predicted participation (another form of behavioral engagement) and positive emotional engagement at the Research institution in the study. These results suggest that institutional culture influences how what faculty do predicts future engagement outcomes for students. At the Research institution, it appears that what happens between faculty and students outside of class influences students while at smaller or teaching-oriented institutions, what faculty do inside a class matters more. These results can provide important insight to faculty as to how to guide their interactions with students at different institutions to make the most difference in students’ academic lives.