Descriptive statistics and a logistic regression model demonstrated differences in outcomes for students experiencing each model. Results indicate a statistically significant improvement in academic outcomes for students who experienced the partnership model.

Introduction: students in need of support and academic outcomes

College students experience difficult circumstances at alarmingly high rates, as described in the literature on campus counseling centers (Locke, Bieschke, Castonguay, & Hayes, 2012), controlled substances (Anon., 2012), and student debt (Fry, 2014), among others. For engineering students in particular, the conditions for distress are primed by the intensity of the undergraduate curriculum, the vitality of the campus social environment, and the relentless ambition but somewhat rigid mindset of today’s millennial students (Lowery, 2004). Academic, social, peer, familial, financial, and other forms of stress conspire to seriously challenge some students. These factors sometimes coalesce into a circumstance that millennial students have not experienced previously, that challenges them in ways to which they are unaccustomed, and that can have a crippling effect on the academic outcomes of these previously-high-achieving students.