Supporting Course and Career Success: Results From Two Years of the Tennessee Coaching Project

By Cara DeLoach

In 2022, TBR – The College System of Tennessee and two pilot colleges, Jackson State Community College and Northeast State Community College, launched the Tennessee Coaching Project, an initiative designed to provide additional support for students placed into corequisite learning support coursework. These students, designated as underprepared for college-level coursework, are at a higher risk of not completing a postsecondary credential. The Tennessee Coaching Project aims to give them the support and resources they need to succeed.

Students are paired with First Steps coaches who help them navigate coursework, connect with campus resources, and explore majors and careers; they serve as students’ primary point of contact at their college and as their academic advisor. Coaches leverage a comprehensive curriculum that guides their outreach to students and includes structured meetings each semester and a robust text message and email outreach plan. Last year, TBR shared promising early results from the first year of coaching. Now, results from the project’s first two years provide even more confidence that access to course and career coaching through the Tennessee Coaching Project helps support underprepared students’ success.

To evaluate the impact of coaching on students’ outcomes, we randomly assigned students to be paired either with a First Steps coach or with a standard staff/faculty advisor each fall. This process allows us to compare the outcomes between these two groups of students and attribute differences to the impact of coaching. Results from the project’s first year demonstrate that access to coaching improved students’ gateway math completion and persistence rates. Students assigned to a coach were 7 percentage points more likely to pass a gateway math course in their first semester than those not assigned to a coach (57% of students assigned to coaching passed their math course in the first semester, compared with 50% of those not assigned). In addition, students assigned to a coach were 7 percentage points more likely to return the following semester. Among students who began in fall 2022 and were assigned to a coach, 75% returned in spring 2023, compared with just 68% of students who began the same term but were not assigned to a coach.

In addition to providing more evidence for these findings, results from the project’s second year demonstrate the positive effects of coaching on students’ gateway writing course success and their likelihood of earning college credit in the first semester. Students who began in fall 2023 and were assigned to a coach were 5 percentage points more likely to pass their gateway writing course in their first semester than students who began in the same term but were not assigned to a coach (64% vs. 59%, respectively). Similarly, 82% of students assigned to a coach starting in fall 2023 earned college credit in their first semester of college, compared with 77% of those not assigned to a coach—another 5-percentage-point difference.

These positive findings on the impact of coaching led us to ask additional questions about how the coaching model is helping students navigate college. To gain more insight, we conducted interviews with students, coaches, and professional staff advisors and collected audio diary reflections from coaches. We learned from this data that access to coaching allows students to build relationships with their assigned coaches, who serve as their primary contact on campus. As a result, coaching makes it easier for students to develop college connections in more meaningful ways. Finally, coaching provides students with structure, which enables them to navigate college processes and offices such as course selection, financial aid, admissions, and student services.

To learn more about the Tennessee Coaching Project, please read our research and curriculum briefs:

• A quantitative policy brief provides an overview of the Tennessee Coaching Project, describes the coaching curriculum, and explores outcomes from the project’s first two years.
• A qualitative policy brief describes the interview and audio diary collection described here and explores students’, coaches’, and advisors’ experiences with the Tennessee Coaching Project.
• The First Steps Advisor Coaching Model brief provides detailed information about the curriculum that the First Steps coaches use to coordinate their outreach to students and organize their meetings.
• The Coaching with Labor Market Data brief outlines how First Steps coaches use labor market data to help students navigate their career and major choices. It also provides recommendations for giving career guidance to students.

As the third year of the Tennessee Coaching Project starts, TBR continues to track students’ outcomes and will randomize a third cohort of students in fall 2024. Because of the pilot’s success, TBR is beginning plans to further fund and scale the Tennessee Coaching Project to provide course and career support for more students at TBR colleges.

Cara DeLoach is a policy researcher at TBR – The College System of Tennessee.

This project is supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305S220005 to the Tennessee Board of Regents.