Publications by Melinda Mechur Karp

This paper describes how degree-seeking students at the City Colleges of Chicago make choices about their programs in their first year of enrollment, focusing especially on how they interact with advisors and how they use college-based resources in program selection and program planning.

This review draws from the experiences of colleges awarded the Kisco Foundation’s Kohlberg Prize to highlight the practical and philosophical challenges involved in creating integrated services for student veterans.

This study explores the influence of different types of leadership approaches on the implementation of a technology-mediated advising reform at six colleges, and assesses which types of leadership are associated with transformative organizational change.

This practitioner packet summarizes CCRC’s research on technology-mediated advising reform and discusses how institutions are attempting to transform advising systems so that they can support a more intensive and personalized case-management model.

This chapter examines the use of technology and other structural changes to encourage comprehensive advising reforms.

This review describes the early experiences of five colleges that received the Kisco Foundation’s Kohlberg Prize, a grant aimed at making community colleges more welcoming and better able to meet the needs of veteran students.

This paper examines the current state of the literature on Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS), an increasingly popular approach to technology-mediated advising reform.

Building on Karp's 2011 framework of nonacademic support, this article explores the evidence that holistic support can encourage community college students’ success.

This paper examines technology-mediated advising reform in order to contribute to the understanding of how colleges engage in transformative change to improve student outcomes.

Based largely on an examination of college proposals for the Kisco Foundation’s Kohlberg Prize, this review (summary available) presents key insights and policy recommendations about services for military veterans attending community colleges.

Based on a qualitative and quantitative study at Bronx Community College, this paper provides findings on students who take First Year Seminar, a recently redesigned student success course.

This Corridors of College Success brief highlights challenges involved in collective impact work and provides a lens for understanding why well-intentioned collective impact efforts may not take root.

This brief, the first in CCRC’s Corridors of College Success Series, provides an overview of the Ford Foundation’s Corridors of College Success initiative and the collective impact model of educational and social intervention.

Using focus group data from students at six colleges, this paper examines student preferences concerning technology-based advising tools and in-person advising sessions for different kinds of advising tasks.

Based on research at six colleges, this guide provides lessons for colleges that want to use increasingly common technology tools to reform advising practices.

This chapter addresses structural systems reform and college completion, as well as the role of dual enrollment in ensuring equitable postsecondary outcomes.

Based on CCRC’s Readiness for Technology Adoption framework, this self-assessment tool provides rubrics to help colleges identify issues that may need to be addressed to facilitate successful reform.

This report presents a framework that identifies characteristics associated with colleges’ readiness to adopt technology-based reforms, emphasizing the need for both technological and cultural readiness.

Drawing on interviews with students, faculty, and staff at three community colleges, this paper aims to clarify the role of community college student and the behaviors that must be enacted for students to succeed.

Melinda Mechur Karp reviews Higher Education in the Digital Age and argues that the author ignores the potential stratifying effects of online learning in higher education.

This literature review examines the evidence on student decision making in the community college, focusing on the activities most relevant to students’ entry into programs of study—academic and career planning.

Using administrative data from the Virginia Community College System, this paper examines the associations between student success course enrollment and short-term student outcomes.

This report makes a series of policy recommendations for strengthening dual enrollment in Tennessee to ensure that the program contributes to Tennessee's college completion goals.

This paper describes a range of approaches to improving poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards associated with traditional assessment and placement practices at community colleges.

A study of College 101 courses at three community colleges in Virginia suggests that these courses could have long-term impacts if they focused more on the application and practice of learned skills.

This chapter provides a theoretical framework through which to understand the experiences of dual enrollment students as they "try out" the role of college student.

Commissioned by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, this report reviews dual enrollment policies in Tennessee and five peer states—Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Kentucky.

Effective nonacademic supports work by creating social relationships, clarifying goals and enhancing commitment, developing college know-how, and addressing conflicting demands on students.

This paper examines whether Tinto's integration framework—commonly used to examine student persistence in the four-year sector—is applicable to two-year institutions.

In this journal article, the authors examine how student success courses help students develop relationships that provide support and useful information long after the class is over.

This article explores the ways that information networks are related to student persistence in the community college and how institutional structures can encourage such networks.

This study uses rigorous quantitative methods to examine the impact of dual enrollment participation on students in Florida and New York City.

This paper presents a typology of the institutional partnerships in which community colleges engage so that policymakers can develop fiscal and regulatory policy to support such activities.

This paper contains a summary of the National Community College Symposium, at which experts met to articulate a community college research agenda.

This article provides a theoretical rationale for policymakers' support for programs that allow high school students to take college-level classes for credit.

This summary is intended to help decision-makers understand why research on the effectiveness of dual enrollment programs is important and how policymakers can support research activities.

This study examines the ways that student support services in community colleges inadvertently perpetuate and legitimate disadvantage.

CCRC researcher Melinda Mechur Karp reviews After Admission: From College Access to College Success.

This paper explores whether dual enrollment helps students learn about the role of college student.

This chapter examines the extent to which career academies deliver on their promises.

This report identifies ways in which state policies can support students’ academic and labor market success by creating coherent systems of preparation for students entering technical fields.

This report reviews findings from a study of five programs that allow high school students to take classes for college credit, or "credit-based transition programs."

This chapter in Career Pathways: Education With a Purpose explains the differences between articulation (which is predominant in typical Tech Prep consortia) and dual enrollment.

This report analyzes dual enrollment legislation in all 50 states and examines whether these policies promote or inhibit the spread of dual enrollment programs.

This literature review examines research on the effectiveness of school-based career guidance and development programs.

Focusing on dual enrollment, Tech Prep, AP, IB, and middle college high schools, this report offers a comprehensive look at the evidence base on this rapidly growing group of education initiatives.

This article provides an overview of preexisting relationships between high school and colleges and discusses the promising initiative of dual enrollment.

This monograph explores the nurse licensure debate, what is known about the programmatic differences between pre-licensure programs, and research on the job performance of ADN- and BSN-educated nurses.