Brain Food: The Relationship between Home-Cooked Meals and Student Success.
The influence of informal faculty/student interactions (i.e., group dinners at faculty member's home) on GPA and retention rates was investigated. Students were invited to attend dinner at a faculty member's house in groups of approximately 6 students. The academic performance and retention rates of attendees and nonattendees were compared. Analyses indicate a relationship between attendance at the dinners, higher GPAs, and stronger retention rates. However, due to the quasi-experimental design of the investigation caution is encouraged in determining the direction of the relationship between academic performance and this type of informal faculty/student interaction. ********** The goal of the college and university admissions process is to select applicants who will thrive academically at the institution and will persist to graduation. Although the admissions process is an important educational and business decision for institutions of higher learning, the long-term societal implications are also salient. The cognitive and economic benefits of completing college reaped by students invariably impact their surrounding community and society at large (Kuh, et al., 2008). Current data indicate that only 52% of students complete college within 6 years of entering higher education (USGAO, 2003). Student input characteristics such as high school grades, standardized test scores, and personal goals are related to academic performance at the college level (Kuh, et al., 2008; Kuh, et al., 2007). Yet, research indicates that college experiences do contribute to academic success beyond the influence of personal characteristics (Zhao & Kuh, 2004). College experiences consist of a wide range of activities and interactions including first-year seminars, residential college experiences, collaborative research, and informal faculty-student interactions. The present paper will focus on one type of informal faculty-student interaction--a dinner hosted at a faculty member's home. Numerous researchers have touted the benefits of faculty-student interactions on persistence to graduation (Kuh & Hu, 2001 ; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). Astin (1993) reported gains in cognitive and affective student development as a result of close faculty-student interactions. Anaya and Cole (2001) described a positive relationship between faculty-student interactions for Latina/o students and student academic performance. Yet, as Cox and Orehovec (2007) pointed out, the majority of research on faculty-student interaction focused on academic or intellectual interactions, with little attention paid to the impact of informal, non-academic interactions between professors and students. In their qualitative analysis of faculty-student interactions all forms of faculty-student interaction provided some benefit to the student. In particular, informal interactions helped students to feel that they were valued members of the institution. The authors surmised that out of class informal interactions could act as stepping stones to more formal and substantial contacts between students and faculty members. Unfortunately, faculty-student interactions are fairly uncommon on college campuses according to data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE: 2008). One venue that has the potential to increase these interactions is that of the residential learning community. Residential learning communities are based upon the assumption that academic success increases as students become more involved in the academic and social sides of college in a supportive community of peers (Shapiro & Levine, 1999). Although residential learning communities can take many forms (Lichtenstein, 2005), research suggests that overall the residential learning environment leads to positive outcomes including higher retention rates (Schroeder, et al, 1999) and higher grade point averages (Baker & Pomerantz, 2001). Perhaps more importantly for the current research, participation in a residential learning community also fosters a sense of community (Donahue, 2004) and the development of personal relationships with participating faculty members (Blackhurst et al. …