The African American Student Network: An Intervention for Retention

Comparing retention rates for 91 Black women and 56 Black men who participated in the African American Student Network with 68 women and 36 men who were randomly selected from the population of Black undergraduates at a Midwestern university, we included an analysis of covariance to control for ACT score and first-term grade point average. Results demonstrated a statistically significant main effect for network (F(1, 245) = 10.14, p =.002, ²=.04), where network participants were retained at a significantly higher rate than randomly selected non-network African American students. There was no effect for gender and no interaction.