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Unequally Adrift: How Social Class And Institutional Context Shape College Academic Experiences, Mary Scherer
Unequally Adrift: How Social Class And Institutional Context Shape College Academic Experiences, Mary Scherer
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation focuses on how class background and institutional context shape students’ experiences of faculty mentorship, academic success strategies, and the relationship of college values and academic decision-making. In this comparative study, I draw from 68 interviews with working- and upper-middle-class students at a regional and flagship university to identify how institutional variation matters across moderately-selective public universities, the kind where the majority of four-year college students matriculate. Mentorship, often informal, is a resource most easily accessed by students with preexisting cultural capital—specifically, the knowledge that mentoring relationships are available and advantageous, and the skills for cross-status interaction with professors. …
Plazing Inside The Fratriarchal Frame: American College Fraternity Men’S Gender Identity And Hazing, Emily Perlow
Plazing Inside The Fratriarchal Frame: American College Fraternity Men’S Gender Identity And Hazing, Emily Perlow
Doctoral Dissertations
Hazing is both common and accepted within college fraternity culture. It also annually results in dangerous or destructive behaviors that have long-term consequences for students and organizations. One of the reasons college administrators have been virtually ineffective at addressing hazing is that students do not identify their experiences as hazing. I hypothesize that students are performing accepted gender identities as a mechanism to achieve group acceptance. This performance of gender manifests as plazing, a term I have coined to describe a form of adult play behavior that meets the definition of hazing. Within the play frame, individuals negotiate gendered …
Playing The Field: A Case Of Restructuring At The University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Jacqueline Brousseau-Pereira
Playing The Field: A Case Of Restructuring At The University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Jacqueline Brousseau-Pereira
Doctoral Dissertations
In 2008, the United States economy entered a rapid and profound decline. As a result most public universities experienced decreased endowments and a decline in state allocations. Some universities responded to this crisis by refocusing their institutional priorities and restructuring their campuses. This study used the lens of organizational field theory (e.g., 1993; Davis & Marquis, 2005; Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; McAdam & Scott, 2005) to analyze a decision-making and restructuring process at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass), which began in late 2008 and concluded in 2011. The purpose of the research was to investigate the ways the UMass …