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Examining The Role Of Professional Orientation In How Trustees Of New Jersey's State Colleges And Universities Experience Their Fiduciary Responsibilities: A Mixed Methods Study, Brittany Ann Williams-Goldstein

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this sequential explanatory study was to examine, through the lenses of sensemaking theory and professional authority, the relationship between how largely non-educational professionals in New Jersey experience their fiduciary responsibilities as trustees of the state's public colleges and universities and to what extent their professional orientations influence their oversight.

Trustees draw from a continuum of orientations to navigate their responsibilities and chief among them are professional orientation, institutionally-rooted orientation, and orientations as members of traditionally underrepresented populations. Trustees frequently engage in deferential activities with their fellow board members whose professional or other orientations provide needed context for …