Commuter Student Integration During COVID-19

ABSTRACT

This Complete Research paper describes the experiences of commuter students pertaining to integration during COVID-19. Many colleges and universities host a large population of commuter students who often live at home and also work part-time or full-time jobs. Although there are varying definitions of commuter students, typically they are defined as someone who does not reside in University housing and primarily live at home with their families. Commuter student needs differ significantly from residential students. On top of academics and extracurricular activities, commuter students face the daily challenge of commuting to and from campus. However, a recent report found that there were more students that wanted to and or chose to live at home even with the extra demands on being a commuter student. The COVID-19 pandemic has added another challenge to commuter students as well. The incorporation of online classes and having almost no opportunity to be in on campus in person has left many students, especially commuter students, feeling isolated and disconnected from university life. The pandemic allowed for many technological solutions to attending classes but the challenge to stay connected and involved was often overlooked and left some commuter students disheartened. The ability to integrate or involve those commuter students fully into the university environment is important to the success and graduation of those students. Commuter students face many challenges that students who live on campus do not. Socialization for college students and peer group interaction positively affects critical thinking skills as well as academic development, thus having this key element to university life is critical to the success of students. However, commuter students often miss out on those opportunities because of their living situation and were directly impacted by having no on-campus interaction because of the online nature of classes caused by the pandemic. Another hurdle faced by commuter students is a lack of face-to-face contact with their instructors. It is also important to understand the connection between student's involvement on campus and the benefits of a high-level involvement, especially in terms of graduation. Those students who integrate more successfully are at less of a risk of dropping out. Students that have higher interaction with university academic and social systems tend to persist at higher rates. In order to ensure the success of commuter students we need to find ways in which to integrate them fully into the campus and create new programs and outreach to ensure future success. Thus, we frame this study in the Model of Co-Curricular Support (MCCS) and focus on four elements of integration Academic, Social, Professional, and University. Using the MCCS as the framework, this study examines how first-year engineering commuter students are integrated academically, socially, and professionally into a regional university in the mid-west during COVID-19. For this study, we have one research question to examine During COVID, to what extent do commuter students differ in integration compared to residential students? To answer this question, 146 students in the first-year engineering program gave consent to use their survey responses on the engineering student integration instrument, which is a valid and reliable survey instrument containing 22 questions across four integration constructs (e.g., academic, social, professional, and university). Data are presented for each of the four integration constructs and areas for improvement are discussed. Results show no significant differences for each of the four integration constructs between commuter and residential engineering students. Multiple reasons for this are discussed as well as implications for first-year programs that cater to commuter students in engineering. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.