Institutions of higher education grapple with low retention rates, including community colleges, which have even lower rates. Historically, retention barriers include financial reasons, transportation issues, or lack of motivation. However, investigating the institution's role is also important. Institutional barriers come in the form of navigational concerns, policies, and procedures, and access to resources. I conducted a qualitative single case study with faculty and student interviews at the largest college in Nevada from nine high retention courses (ENG 101, PSY 101, and PSC 101). I also collected data from Pascarella and Terenzini's (1985) student-faculty contact scale student questionnaire responses (n = 67). Participants responded to questions related to describing informal faculty-student interaction. Then, I applied Pascarella's (1980) informal faculty-student contact model for framework analysis, which indicated patterns in how and why faculty and students informally interact with each other. The six findings show alignment between faculty and students with Pascarella's (1980) model in all four areas: context, exposure, focus, and impact. Finding 1: Both faculty and students each believe they initiate informal faculty-student contact more. Finding 2: Faculty and students engage in informal faculty-student interaction anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours each week and also engage in informal conversations daily, weekly, or sporadically. Finding 3: Faculty described the purpose of informal communication about personal connection more often than the students. Finding 4: What constitutes a meaningful experience differs for faculty and student participants, although the ethics of care matters to both. Finding 5 and 6 are themes that emerged. Finding 5: Faculty-student interaction locations include email, office hours, before or after class, in the hallway, off-campus, meeting for lunch in faculty's office and for coffee. Lastly, Finding 6: Students and faculty maintain personal boundaries while engaged in informal faculty-student interactions. This study provides some underexplored considerations in the complex issue of improving retention rates. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]