Education Commons^™

Race-Neutrality And Race-Consciousness In Students’ Sensemaking Of “Servingness” At Two Hispanic Serving Institutions, Nik Cristobal, Gina A. Garcia

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Postsecondary institutions that enroll 25% or more Latinxs are eligible for federal designation as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). Yet few studies examine how students within HSIs make sense of what it means for an organization to be Latinx-serving. Utilizing interviews and focus groups with students at two HSIs in the Midwest, this study sought to understand how students make sense of the idea of “servingness.” We analyzed differences by students’ race/ethnicity within each institution, and by institution across the two sites. Data revealed a pattern of language that reflected race-neutrality and race-consciousness, with some differences by students’ race/ethnicity and stark …

Angry White Men On Campus: Theoretical Perspectives And Recommended Responses, Kyle C. Ashlee, Pietro A. Sasso, Christina Witkowicki

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

In this article, the authors explore a rise in violent protest among white college men, theoretical interpretations of this trend, and recommendations that student affairs educators can implement to address the harmful acts of white male on campus. By examining hegemonic masculinity, the theory of dispossession, anomic protest masculinity, and white men’s disengagement in college, student affairs professionals can begin to understand the larger contemporary trend of student activism among white college men. Moreover, evaluating common strategies for engaging college men, including behavior-only approaches, bad-dogging accountability practices, and white privilege pedagogy, educators can gain perspective on how current responses in …

Understanding Views On Undocumented Students’ Access To Higher Education: A Critical Review And Call For Action, Elizabeth Jach

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

This review critically examines previous literature on opinions of undocumented immigrants in the United States as well as undocumented students’ access to higher education through a consideration of the context of the current political climate, and interrogates going beyond raising consciousness towards taking action, as invoked by Freire’s (2000) liberatory praxis and postcolonial feminism.

Surviving Domestic Violence And Navigating The Academy: An Autoethnography, Robert L. Hill

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

This autoethnography takes a critical view of my experiences surviving domestic violence while navigating the university’s resources to support survivors as well as my academic life. I turn to Spade’s (2015) critical trans politics in order to complicate the notion of higher education structures as neutral and to question who benefits from existing domestic violence survivor support programs and procedures. Guided by Nash’s (2004) guidelines for scholarly personal narrative, I tell my story of surviving in five parts, beginning with initial conversations and continuing with processes of surviving, leaving home, mandatory reporting, and (not) learning. Throughout the narrative, I analyze …

Wellness Interventions For Social Justice Fatigue Among Student Affairs Professionals, Sara Furr

Dissertations

This project explored the construct of social justice fatigue (SJF) among student affairs professionals. Utilizing racial battle fatigue (RBF) and compassion fatigue to construct the definition of SFJ, a thirty day wellness intervention plan was created and tested amongst participants. Social justice fatigue is the physical, mental, and/or emotional toll incurred through advocating for social change while serving as an agent of an institution of higher education. Using participatory action research design we learned this definition resonates with student affairs professionals; particularly those who are engaged in equity and social justice oriented work and share the marginalized identity of the …

Counter-Narratives Of Latino Men And Machismo In Higher Education, Hiram Ramirez

Dissertations

This dissertation study addresses the gaps in research concerning the gendered experiences of successful Latino men in higher education. As Latino men in postsecondary education continue to enroll and persist in low numbers, new lenses are needed to consider their educational experiences. This study attempts to add a gendered lens, in the form of machismo, to consider ways in which successful Latino men are persisting. Machismo, a construct with both positive and negative attributes, has the potential to influence Latino men's navigation of higher education. Research documents the negative ways in which machismo has hampered Latino men in education, however …

An Exploratory Study Of Factors Influencing The Success Of Refugee Youth In College And University, Lea Tienou-Gustafson

Master's Theses

The educational needs, challenges and outcomes of refugee youth in the United States have been studied a great deal, particularly in regard to primary and secondary education. There is a dearth of research, however, on the refugee experience in higher education in the United States.

This study seeks to add to the body of literature on refugee education by exploring shared features of the refugee experience in higher education. Through an in-depth study of refugee youth in Chicago, the study seeks to understand their experiences before, while entering and during college and university, particularly how these experiences are tied to …

Exploring Community College Practitioners' Cultivation And Praxis Of Antiracist And Asset-Based Approaches To Education: A Phenomenological Study, Ester Ulibasa Sihite

Dissertations

Community colleges comprise a robust and complex sector of U.S. higher education, serving large numbers of students of color and other historically underrepresented groups. There is a dearth of literature on how antiracist and asset-based approaches to education can be utilized to promote student success and racial justice. Using an inductive, phenomenological approach, this study utilized data from interviews with a purposive sample of community college practitioner-educators (faculty, staff, and administrators) who invested in racial justice praxis€”reflection and action€”to explore (a) how their cognitive frames, abilities, and interest in racial justice were cultivated, and (b) what this praxis looks like. …

Navigating A Social Justice Motivation And Praxis As Student Affairs Professionals, Nadeeka D. Karunaratne, Lauren M. Koppel, Chee Ia Yang

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

While diversity and social justice are espoused values of the field of student affairs, student affairs professionals are socialized to varying degrees in regard to the awareness, knowledge, and skills necessary to be social justice advocates. Through qualitative interviews with nine entry- and mid-level student affairs professionals, we explored the motivations and experiences of student affairs professionals who enact values of social justice in their praxis. Participants shared strategies to navigating the field and their advocacy, the influence of theirs and others’ identities on their work, techniques for implementing intentional social justice praxis, challenges faced in their advocacy, and how …

“Undocumented” Ways Of Navigating Complex Sociopolitical Realities In Higher Education: A Critical Race Counterstory, Alonso R. Reyna Rivarola

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

In the United States, undocumented students must navigate complex sociopolitical realities to access and succeed in higher education. These complex sociopolitical realities are shaped by federal policies on education and immigration, state-specific legislation on education and public policy, as well as general attitudes regarding race, immigration, and nationalism in the U.S. In this manuscript, I weave in counter-storytelling to document some of the ways one undocumented student accessed and navigated U.S. higher education. I begin by reviewing the national and state policy contexts that affect undocumented students in the U.S. I focus a state policy analysis in Utah, as one …

Transfer Student Success: Latinx Students Overcoming Challenges At Two- And Four-Year Institutions Towards Baccalaureate Degree Attainment, Ajani Mcarthur Byrd

Dissertations

As the largest post-secondary educational system, community colleges enroll nearly 35% of all college students (American Association for Community Colleges, 2014). However, the vast majority of students attending two-year institutions aspiring to vertically transfer (from community college to four-year institution), fall short of their academic goals and do not obtain a baccalaureate degree (Student Success Score Card, 2013). To this end, the extant literature has illustrated students of color, especially Latinx and African American students, transfer and graduate at disproportionately lower rates than their white counterparts. Qualitative researchers have explored this phenomenon; yet, often fall short of highlighting the specific …

Maintaining College Access In A Post Recession Era: A Multi-Level Competing Risks Model, Brendan Martin

Dissertations

Post-Great Recession budgets cuts and funding freezes have decreased the level of institutional resources available to recruit and retain undergraduate students. To optimize remaining expenditures in this challenging climate, new analytical approaches must be considered to evaluate and interpret pre-enrollment student data. To date, much of the higher education literature has focused on predicting enrollment using traditional fixed or mixed effects binary logistic models. While robust, these modeling approaches are constrained by standard statistical assumptions, do not account for the timing of students' enrollment decisions, and cannot efficiently incorporate censored data points or competitor information. This study applies a multi-level, …

Centering The Margins: Elevating The Voices Of Women Of Color To Critically Examine College Student Leadership, Natasha T. Turman

Dissertations

The leadership viewpoints of Women of Color (WOC), in general, and WOC collegians specifically, are not widely available or recognized. This exclusion and oversight is a disservice to all. The inadequate inclusion of WOC's perspective in leadership literature is due to the assumptions of race and gender neutrality in leadership studies. Viewing leadership as a set of universal constructs, garnered from a select few and generalized to a great many, is not adequate to understanding the leadership experiences of WOC within dominant-culture environments. To address these deficits, critical leadership scholars have proposed that leadership be (re)conceptualized from a multicultural perspective, …

Navigating A Social Justice Motivation And Praxis As Student Affairs Professionals, Nadeeka D. Karunaratne, Lauren Koppel, Chee Ia Yang

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

While diversity and social justice are espoused values of the field of student affairs, student affairs professionals are socialized to varying degrees in regard to the awareness, knowledge, and skills necessary to be social justice advocates. Through qualitative interviews with nine entry- and mid-level student affairs professionals, we explored the motivations and experiences of student affairs professionals who enact values of social justice in their praxis. Participants shared strategies to navigating the field and their advocacy, the influence of theirs and others’ identities on their work, techniques for implementing intentional social justice praxis, challenges faced in their advocacy, and how …

Dear Officer Bogash: Policing Black Bodies On College Campuses, Jordan S. West

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Students' Critical Reflections on Racial (in)justice

The Pain Of Our Bodies And Souls, Wendolens A. Ruano

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Students' Critical Reflections on Racial (in)justice

Recycling Incompetence: A Reflection On Cultural Competency Development In Graduate Preparation, Khaled J. Ismail

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Students' Critical Reflections on Racial (in)justice

Research In Brief - Can They Teach Each Other? : The Restructuring Of Higher Education And The Rise Of Undergraduate Student “Teachers” In Ontario, Jennifer Massey, Sean Field

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Changes to public funding regimes, coupled with transformations in how universities are managed and measured have altered the methods for educating undergraduate students. The growing reliance on teaching fellows, teaching assistants, and increasingly undergraduate peer educators (administering Supplemental Instruction [SI] programs) is promoted as a means toachieve a greater “return on investment” in the delivery of postsecondary education. Neoliberal discourses legitimating this downloading of teaching labour suggest it offers a “win-win” solution to the “problem” of educating growing numbers of undergraduate students. It proposes universities can deliver the same curricula, and achieve the same “outcomes” (primarily measured through grades and …

Understanding The Role Of Leadership Motivation In College Student Leadership Development, Benjamin Paul Correia-Harker

Dissertations

Current scholarship situates leadership capacity, leadership self-efficacy, and motivation as core factors in predicting leadership action (Chan & Drasgow, 2001; Dugan, 2017). With relationships between leadership capacity and self-efficacy clearly established in college student leadership development literature (Dugan & Komives, 2007, 2010), this research endeavors to better understand motivation’s role in the student leadership development process. Using Dugan (2017) and Chan and Drasgow’s (2001) theoretical models as guides, this research will examine several models that test various relationships between leadership capacity, self-efficacy, and motivation. Because scholars have emphasized the importance of disaggregating data based on social identities (Kodama & Dugan, …

Improving Causal Claims In Observational Research: An Investigation Of Propensity Score Methods In Applied Educational Research, Julie Diane Wren

Dissertations

This study used existing institutional data from a large, urban, public, very high research university to compare sixteen matching schemes, built from three separate datasets, to estimate the propensity score, achieve balance between groups and test the sensitivity of the average treatment effect (ATE). For each PS model, four different conditioning strategies were applied. The first four matching schemes used commonly collected data available within a student information system (referred to as SIS dataset). The next four matching schemes combined the SIS dataset with data from an entering student survey (referred to as ESS dataset). The next four matching schemes, …

Can They Teach Each Other? : The Restructuring Of Higher Education And The Rise Of Undergraduate Student “Teachers” In Ontario, Jennifer Massey, Sean Field

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs

Changes to public funding regimes, coupled with transformations in how universities are managed and measured have altered the methods for educating undergraduate students. The growing reliance on teaching fellows, teaching assistants, and increasingly undergraduate peer educators (administering Supplemental Instruction [SI] programs) is promoted as a means toachieve a greater “return on investment” in the delivery of postsecondary education. Neoliberal discourses legitimating this downloading of teaching labour suggest it offers a “win-win” solution to the “problem” of educating growing numbers of undergraduate students. It proposes universities can deliver the same curricula, and achieve the same “outcomes” (primarily measured through grades and …

Self-Perceived Stress Of Undergraduate Students Before And After Participation In A Breathing Meditation Intervention: A Mixed Methods Study, Cindy Oneida Sloan

Dissertations

This mixed methods study examined the effects of an eight-week breathing meditation intervention on the self-perceived stress of undergraduate students. Previous research suggests meditation is an effective strategy to alleviate stress and stress-related symptomatology (Baer, 2003; Conley, Travers, & Bryant, 2013; Shapiro, Brown & Astin, 2011). Forty-one undergraduate student volunteers participated in the study and were randomized into either an intervention group or control group. The intervention group met once per week for eight weeks and participated in a nine minute guided breathing meditation. At the conclusion of eight weeks participants, when compared with the control group, reported significantly lower …

Shifting Narratives In Doctoral Admissions: Faculty Of Color Understandings Of Diversity, Equity, And Justice In A Neoliberal Context, Dian Drew Squire

Dissertations

Little is known about how faculty make decisions in the doctoral admissions process or how they conceptualize diversity, equity, and justice in those same processes. As the United States continues to diversify, understanding how students are selected into graduate programs and how faculty understand diversity, equity, and justice is increasingly important to supporting diverse leadership bodies and shaping an inclusive campus cultural context. This qualitative study utilized semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and critical discourse analysis to explore how faculty of color understand diversity, equity, and justice norms, values, and behaviors in the doctoral admissions process in Higher Education and Student …

Resipwosite, Benefis Mityel And Solidarite: A Case Study Of Global Service Learning Partnerships In Post-Earthquake Ayiti, Jessica Darnell Murphy

Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to study select long-term successive partnerships between American universities of the Haiti Compact and various non-government organizations working in Ayiti (Haiti) despite contextual tensions of historic relations between Ayiti and the West, disparate global status of Ayiti and the United States of America, and the unprecedented impact of the 2010 earthquake in Ayiti and subsequent response from U.S. institutions of higher education. The Haiti Compact was a unique case for study due to its formation (1) as a resource of aggregated American student volunteerism and activism to be used in assistance to Ayisyen …

College Admissions Debates, Oiyan Poon

Education: School of Education Faculty Publications and Other Works

An investigation of affirmative action and its impact on the enrollment of Asian American college students.

A Structural Model Of Leadership Self-Efficacy For Asian American Students: Examining Influences Of Collective Racial Esteem And Resilience, Corinne Maekawa Kodama

Dissertations

This study investigated the relationship between racial identity, using the constructs of collective racial esteem (CRE), and resilience on LSE for a diverse sample of 2,223 Asian American college students, using data from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, a national survey of college outcomes. Structural equation modeling was used to explore the relationship between CRE and Resilience, as well as Non-Discriminatory Climate and Identity-based Experiences, on LSE. The model was tested for invariance for gender as well as for five Asian American ethnic groups (Chinese, Indian/Pakistani, Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese).

Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the 4-item CRE subscales were …

Reporting Methods And Analyses In Higher Education Research: Hierarchical Linear And Ols Regression Models, Kimberly Quandt Fath

Dissertations

This study examined the reporting practices used by higher education scholars to communicate the methods and analyses of studies using hierarchical linear and OLS regression models. The study consisted of three parts: (a) a citation analysis of sources associated with methods of hierarchical linear models, (b) a content analysis of reporting practices associated with studies that used hierarchical linear models, and (c) a content analysis of the arguments and corrections used by scholars who have used OLS regression techniques on nested data. When possible, results were compared to similar research. The data for this research was drawn from Journal of …

Examining Latino A First-Generation College Students' Educational Resilience At A Jesuit Post-Secondary Institution, Diana Chavez

Dissertations

This qualitative study focused on exploring and understanding Latino/a first-generation college students' process for drawing or enabling educational resilience to persist and achieve their postsecondary education degree. Using Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Paradigm as the framework, the study explored how interactions between individuals and their environments influenced their persistence outcomes. Using purposeful sampling, 19 juniors and seniors attending a Midwest, private, religiously-affiliated university were selected to participate. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted during one-on-one meetings.

Findings indicated that Latino first-generation college students drew on or were enabled by internal (e.g., first-generation status, self-identified academic challenges, sense of purpose) and external resources (e.g., …

The Backgrounds And Outcomes Of Allopathic Medical School Applicants: Exploring Stratification And Inequality, Sunshine Nakae

Dissertations

A career in medicine remains one of the most rigorous and arduous journeys in higher education. The time and cost to train coupled with the academic and extracurricular requirements have resulted in challenges in diversifying the profession. This study utilizes an HLM and HGLM to model the influences of individual and institutional predictors on acceptance to medical school. Full descriptive analysis of individual and institutional predictors are also included.

Master's Students' Experiences In A Graduate Preparation Program: Multicultural Competency And Social Justice Curriculum, Kristin I. Mccann

Dissertations

This dissertation study focused on master's students experiences with multicultural competency curriculum in graduate preparation programs (GPPs) and contributes to gaps in the extant literature on multicultural issues in higher education. The two overarching research questions for the study considered how, if at all, students' understanding of core concepts of the required course (privilege, oppression, and social justice) changed over time as evidenced by a primary curricular component called the photo elicitation project. Educators' experiences were also addressed, per their impact on the context in which students learned. This study employed a qualitative approach and, in line with the study's …