Influencing Academic Motivation: The Effects of Student-Faculty Interaction

Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, we examined the influence of student faculty interactions on student academic motivation over 4 years of college. Results suggest that several forms of student faculty interaction, such as quality of faculty contact, frequency of faculty contact, research with faculty, personal discussion with faculty, and out-of-class interactions with faculty, have a positive influence on academic motivation, even when controlling for a host of student background characteristics and institutional characteristics, including a precollege measure of academic motivation.