Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Educational Studies

First Advisor

Kathleen M.W. Cunningham

Abstract

This dissertation examines the persistent problem of poor first-semester success rates among Physical Therapist Assistant (PTA) students at the Technical College of the Lowcountry (TCL). In the past five years, 25% of students entering the PTA program have been unsuccessful, either due to academic failures or non-academic withdrawals. Even more concerning, over 80% of these students did not persist past the first semester. A root cause analysis using the five whys, fishbone diagramming, empathy interviews, local data, and scanning outside the organization was used to help broaden our understanding of the problem and guide further research.

Based on the results of our initial understanding of the problem, a comprehensive literature review was conducted. This examined student success as a general concept, while diving deeper into both student factors (academic skills, motivation, and social integration) and institutional factors (peer support, the classroom environment, and the curriculum) that influence student success. After a thorough understanding of the problem and a comprehensive literature review, our team utilized a driver diagram to help develop a change idea that would address two key drivers impacting first-semester student success: insufficient academic learning strategies and delayed integration/belonging into the program.

The TCL PTA Peer Academic and Social Support (PASS) Groups were created to improve the current system and provide the cohort with increased overall support. The academic training would emphasize evidence-based academic skills to improve students’ learning strategies, while the peer mentoring aimed to speed up student integration and  belonging into the program. The implementation of this improvement effort followed the iterative Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles synonymous with improvement science, and multiple practical measures were used to determine if our efforts were working, to what extent they were working, and how we might adapt our efforts in the next cycle. Altogether, there are four cycles described in this dissertation, and the discussion examines how the process of iterative improvement allowed us to meet and exceed our aim of improving first-semester student success by 15%.

The PASS group model was aligned closely with institutional goals and the strategic plan of the college. The effort was an overall success for the TCL PTA program, and the PASS groups will be continued with future cohorts. Furthermore, this effort was intentionally designed to be scalable to other health sciences programs at TCL, as well as even larger improvement across the college and the state technical college system

Rights

© 2026, Carl Joseph Swearingen

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