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In order to design effective interventions for working with graduate and professional students, educators must first assess students' needs and experiences. This chapter highlights the importance of assessment in graduate and professional education and offers insights gained from three studies.

Fostering a sense of belonging for students has long been considered a crucial component of retention and success for colleges and universities. However, there is no universal definition of what "belonging" actually is. In College Belonging: How First-Year and First-Generation Students Navitage Campus Life, Lisa M. Nunn (2021) delves into what it means for college students "to belong." Through student interviews during their first two years of college, Nunn explores how students define and experience belonging; in doing so, creating a new perspective on what belonging is and how students achieve (or are gifted) belonging.

A long-standing concern of many colleges and universities are low persistence and graduation rates. This study examined how institutions can affect, and potentially improve, persistence and graduation rates by targeting their expenditures toward those activities that have an affect on persistence and graduation. Framed by Tinto's theory of academic departure, the inquiry investigated the relationship between expenditures for instruction and academic support on persistence and graduation rates at 218 universities. The results confirmed Tinto's theory and were able to explain approximately half the variance in persistence and graduation rates among the institutions included in the study. Recommendations for practice are suggested, including using the results of the study to develop resource allocation strategies to enhance persistence and graduation rates.

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Since their inception, student leadership development has been a consistent goal of outdoor recreation programs (ORPs). However, little research has been conducted to better understand how these experiences contribute to leadership development for college students. Using the Komives et al. (2005) model of leadership identity development, this qualitative research study examined leadership identity development in the context of a training trip for student employees of an ORP. By focusing on this particular training program, the study sought to answer the following research question: How does participating in an outdoor recreation training trip impact students' leadership identity development? The study found that the participants were navigating through the final three stages of Komives et al.'s (2005) leadership model: leadership differentiated, generativity, and integration/synthesis stages. Participants understood the role of positional leaders and that there were others who were able to lead without holding titles or positions; participants were able to articulate the role of leaders in helping others and sustaining the program; and participants also articulated how these experiences related to their lives beyond ORP trips, achieving the reflective goals of the integration and synthesis. The results highlight the importance of communication and teamwork in leadership development. The findings provide evidence of the role of ORP in enhancing student leadership identity and make the case for continued or expanded support for these programs. The findings of this study provide insight into how student leadership identity development takes place when students are involved in ORP experiences.

Improving student persistence, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, continues to be at the forefront of national educational policy discussions. Living in university housing, with its focus specifically on assisting students in transition, has consistently been positively related to student persistence. Using institutional data and data from a first-year student transition study from all the first-year first-time residential students from Fall 2008 through Fall 2012 (N ¼ 17,850), this study examined the relationship between student characteristics and experiences and retention for STEM and non-STEM students who live in on-campus housing. Results illustrate that experiences that contribute to retention differ between STEM and non-STEM students. Noncognitive factors related to academic self-efficacy, academic adjustment, and degree aspiration positively affect residential students' persistence in STEM. Academic performance was a significant factor in institutional persistence for STEM and non-STEM students. Implications for future and practice are discussed.