BUSSW’s Renee Spencer Receives a William T. Grant Research Award
The William T. Grant Foundation is pleased to announce that Renee Spencer, Dept. of Human Behavior, School of Social Work, Boston University, is part of a Research Award under the Foundation’s Reducing Inequality focus area, which funds high quality, empirical projects that examine programs, policies, and practices that can reduce inequality among young people in the U.S. She will be will be working with the lead researcher, Sarah Schwartz, Dept. of Psychology, Suffolk University, along with Jean E. Rhodes, Dept. of Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston; and Janis Kupersmidt, Innovation Research & Training. This two-year $582,150 grant brings together leading researchers in adolescent and young adult development to identify and promote pathways of academic success for first generation college students.
“I am excited about this study and am hopeful that leveraging a mentoring intervention will help to improve academic outcomes for racial/ethnic minorities and low-income college students” said Adam Gamoran, president of the Foundation.
About the Research
The research project, Connected Scholars: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of a Social Capital Intervention for First-Generation College Students, will test the efficacy of a mentoring program in supporting the development of social capital and positive academic and psychological outcomes among first-generation college students. It also seeks to explore how first-generation college students acquire social capital and how their relationships may facilitate positive outcomes.
The resources, information, and support available through one’s social ties—collectively known as social capital–play a key role in college and career success. A lack of such capital during the transition to college contributes to lower grades and lower rates of college completion for students, especially first-generation college students, who are disproportionately racial and ethnic minority and low-income.
This study focuses on Connected Scholars, an intervention that allows first-generation college students to participate in a one-credit course focusing on identifying current and potential academic and professional connections, where students develop relationships with potential college faculty mentors and discuss how their backgrounds may present challenges and strengths in college experiences. This focus of this intervention differs from most mentoring programs, which match youth with a volunteer mentor and address that single mentoring relationship. The team’s pilot studies show that Connected Scholars may be able to increase first-generation college students’ willingness to seek support, improve their relationships with instructors, and raise their grade point averages.
The study involves random assignment to the Connected Scholars intervention, with a mixed-methods design that allows for an evaluation of the efficacy of the program, the processes by which it works, and its implementation. The team will gather administrative data on course credit completion, college enrollment status, and grade point average, and will conduct student surveys before, during, and after participation, focusing on measures of social capital, relationships, use of university services, psychological functioning, and academic engagement. They will also interview a sub-sample of first-generation college students in the intervention and control groups about the facilitators and barriers to developing social capital, and analyze differences in how they respond.
About the Foundation
The William T. Grant Foundation is a private philanthropy that invests in high-quality research with the potential to advance theory, policy, and practice related to children and youth in the United States. Currently, we are interested in understanding how we may reduce inequality among young people and how we can improve the use of research evidence in policy and practice.