Breakthrough strategies : classroom-based practices to support New Majority college students / Kathleen A. Ross.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The breakthrough strategies project -- Welcome to Heritage University -- Communication, culture, and the new majority -- Part One. Strategies for engagement: Engaging students through effective feedback -- Helping students ask questions -- Engaging students with analogies -- Part Two. Strategies to promote a sense of belonging: Welcoming students with first-day activities -- Relating to students' life situations -- Reframing the classroom as community -- Part Three. Strategies to engender confidence: Creating confidence: a professor's role -- Journaling for confidence and deeper thinking -- Developing students' own academic ideas -- Part Four. Strategies to build a vision for the future: Envisioning an academic identity: how professors can help -- Building professional identities to counter stereotypes.

Breakthrough Strategies identifies effective strategies that faculty have used to help New Majority students--those from minority, immigrant, or disadvantaged backgrounds--build the necessary skills to succeed in college. As the proportion of New Majority students rises, there is increased attention to helping them gain access to college. Once enrolled, however, these students often face significant challenges of adjustment, with few resources for support. Specifically, there is little attention to students' experiences within their college classrooms and their relationships with professors. At the same time, faculty who work with these students have little guidance in how to help them adjust to new expectations and identities as they engage with college-level work. Sister Kathleen A. Ross, a MacArthur fellow and president emerita of Heritage University, has devoted three decades to helping New Majority students get college degrees. Based on an action-research project undertaken at Heritage University and Yakima Valley Community College in Washington State, the book highlights eleven strategies to encourage student success, including: asking questions in class; navigating the syllabus; and developing an academic identity.-- Provided by publisher.