High-impact practices and student-faculty interactions for gender variant students

Abstract

The vast amount of research on student success and engagement in college focuses on a narrative for majority student populations that does not account for unique experiences across social identities. This paper examines the experiences of gender variant students (i.e., students who do not identify as either cisgender men or women) regarding engagement in high-impact practices and student-faculty interactions using a large-scale, multi-institution quantitative data set. Although high-impact practice participation was similar for gender variant and cisgender students, positive student-faculty interaction was found to be a significant predictor for increased high-impact practice participation for gender variant students. Results from this study may also point to chillier climates of certain major fields for gender variant students. Implications for these findings focus on increasing gender variant students' participation in high-impact practices, creating more safe and positive learning environments for gender variant students, and advocating for the inclusion of different gender identities in surveys, institutional data, and higher education research.