The Serenity Strategy will minimize challenges to retaining LGBTQIA faculty, staff, and students on college campuses. The Serenity Strategy's main goal is to decrease oppression of the LGBTQIA community on campuses through expanding and highlighting what is available to the LGBTQIA community in regards to identity, convincing higher education stake holders investing in the LGBTQIA community correlates positively with a positive spike in enrollment.

The question my research will answer is whether or not a positive change in enrollment proves a function of how much resources campuses devote to the LGBTI+ community (as indicated by their star rating).
I used the Campus Pride database to identify which campuses in the US are LGBTQIA friendly on a 1-5 star scale. I calculated the average star rating for each state, and then identify the top eleven states that support LGBT+ students. I developed a table that includes every entry in those states (137 sample higher education campuses). Then I spilt the data into above average rating to high star ratings (3.5 and higher or not).

I used an R function to get the increased enrollment function between fall 2017 enrollments – fall 2016 enrollment. I used the pride database (www.campusprideindex.org) for star rating, location, city size, state, city size category, and private school status. I used a variety of websites for enrollment statistics that is cited in an attached document with the Appendix. I used the National Center for Education statistics site to obtain statistics on Total Percentage of Students receiving any kind of financial aid, undergrad programs offered, Public High School Graduation Rate with their cohort by state in 2014-2015, Number of 12th grade students by state in 2015-2016, Total dollars spent on student support services in primary and secondary education by state in 2013-2014, Reduced lunch program student enrollment by state in 2015-2016, and Average college tuition Price by state in 2015-2017. I examined Act.org for a sample of ACT information like Average ACT% participation by state in 2017, Average ACT score by state English in 2017, Average ACT score by state Math in 2017, Average ACT score by state Reading in 2017, Average ACT score by state Reading in 2017 .I examined trends between the increased enrollment function and the 16 variables using a two techniques one called Pearson’s R Correlation and the other technique is called Regression analysis.

We found that higher average ACT scores and ACT participation by state as well as lower high school graduation rate with their cohort will result in a higher probability that post-secondary education institutions will invest more into their student LGBTQIA communities.
Based on these findings, I suggest universities adopt the Serenity Plan, a proposal I developed to better address the needs of the LGBTQIA community.