Education Commons^™

Managing Illegality On Campus: Undocumented Mismatch Between Students And Staff, Holly E. Reed, Sofya Aptekar, Amy Hsin

Publications and Research

Contributing to the literature on the institutional experiences of undocumented youth, this essay by Holly E. Reed, Sofya Aptekar, and Amy Hsin explores undocumented and “DACAmented” students’ experiences managing their illegality on campus and how college staff and faculty manage that illegality while organizing programs and support. Their analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with more than a hundred undocumented college students and former students and thirty-five faculty and staff members at the City University of New York identifies multiple points of tension. The “undocumented mismatch” between campus management of illegality and student experiences was evident in the exclusion and …

Yes, You Can Get A Job With That Major! Goal 5 Strategies For Facilitating, Assessing, And Demonstrating Psychology Students’ Professional Development, Kristin M. Vespia, Karen Z. Naufel, Jerry Rudmann, Jaye F. Van Kirk, Deborah Briihl, Jason Young

Publications and Research

The Summit on the National Assessment of Psychology was held on June 2016 to chart a path for assessing student achievement of the goals of the undergraduate psychology major. Our subcommittee was charged with identifying evaluation strategies and tools for students’ professional development, which included applying psychology to various careers; engaging in effective self-regulation, project management, and teamwork; and developing lifelong professional skills. In this article, therefore, we not only review a wide range of assessment tools for facilitating and evaluating professional development in psychology, but we also discuss the larger importance of the learning goal both to students and …

“Technology Is Great, But It’S Really Time-Consuming:” Understanding Students’ Digital Academic Lives, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

Digital technology has become integral to higher education, incorporated by colleges and universities into teaching, student support and operations. We know that undergraduates lead busy lives, especially those attending commuter universities, and that they bring their prior experiences with technology with them into their college careers. However, while technology access and use in our everyday lives and workplaces has increased in the past few decades, it is not as ubiquitous as we might wish, and our students do encounter barriers to learning and connecting with digital technologies.

We draw on our decade of research on the experiences of CUNY undergraduate …

“For A Long Time Our Voices Have Been Hushed”: Using Student Perspectives To Develop Supports For Neurodiverse College Students, Kristen Gillepsie-Lynch, Dennis Bublitz, Annemarie Donachie, Vincent Wong, Patricia J. Brooks, Joanne D'Onofrio

Publications and Research

Although the challenges that autistic students face adapting to college are often pronounced, they are similar to the challenges that students with other disabilities face (e.g., difficulties with social interaction, self-advocacy, and executive functioning). However, extant evaluations of services for autistic college students are very limited despite an emerging literature examining supports for college students with a range of other disabilities. Given that many autistic students do not self-identify as autistic in college, and consequently might avoid autism-specific services, autistic students might benefit from services that are designed to support a broad range of neurodiverse students, or services that are …

Personalized Outreach To University Students With A History Of Reading Difficulties: Early Screening And Outreach To Support Academically At-Risk Students, Hélène Deacon, Rebecca Tucker, Bradley W. Bergey, Annie Laroche, Rauno Parrila

Publications and Research

We examined whether identification of and personalized outreach to a group of students with a history of reading difficulties would impact their use of support services and academic outcomes. Using a brief self-report questionnaire, we identified students with a history of reading difficulties (n = 175) and a comparison group of university students without a history of reading difficulties (n = 100). One half of the students with a history of reading difficulties were individually invited to visit the Academic Advising Centre; the other students received standard university communications about and access to university support services. Students with …

Verbal Behaviors During Employment Interviews Of College Students With And Without Asd, Dennis James Bublitz, Katherine Fitzgerald, Maria Alarcon, Joanne D'Onofrio, Kristen Gillespie-Lynch

Publications and Research

BACKGROUND: Even well-educated people with ASD struggle with obtaining employment, partially due to social difficulties during interviews. Although increasing numbers of individuals with ASD are entering college, little research focuses on this population. Particularly little is known about how to help college students with ASD obtain jobs.

OBJECTIVE: This study attempts to identify challenges with verbal communication during employment interviews that are specific to college students with ASD.

METHODS: We administered mock employment interviews to 16 college students with ASD and 14 college students without disabilities. Responses to interview questions were coded for content and timing.

RESULTS: Students with ASD …

“I Am More Productive In The Library Because It’S Quiet”: Commuter Students In The College Library, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

This article discusses commuter students’ experiences with the academic library, drawn from a qualitative study at the City University of New York. Undergraduates at six community and baccalaureate colleges were interviewed to explore how they fit schoolwork into their days, and the challenges and opportunities they encountered. Students identified physical and environmental features that informed their ability to successfully engage in academic work in the library. They valued the library as a distraction-free place for academic work, in contrast to the constraints they experienced in other places—including in their homes and on the commute.

Serving The Commuter College Student In Urban Academic Libraries, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

Cities often host many colleges and universities; while the commuter student in suburban or rural areas may drive or be driven to school, students at colleges and universities in dense, urban settings rely predominantly on mass transit for their commute to class. The act of commuting to campus has been found by a number of researchers to define and shape the experiences of commuter students in college, though the literature on college students who commute is not extensive. A qualitative study of the academic culture and scholarly habits of undergraduate students at the City University of New York (CUNY) revealed …

“I’M Just Really Comfortable:” Learning At Home, Learning In Libraries, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

While commuter students may use their college or university libraries, student centers, or other campus locations for academic work, as commuters they will likely also create and negotiate learning spaces in their homes. Our research with urban commuter undergraduates revealed that finding space for their academic work at home was difficult for many students whose needs collided with the needs of other residents using those locations for non-academic purposes. Understanding the details of students’ off-campus academic workspaces can inform the design of learning spaces in academic libraries.

Reinventing The University: Finding The Place For Basic Writers, Jane E. Hindman

Publications and Research

A poststructuralist critique of basic writing placement and pedagogy, this paper argues that our notions of good writing (i.e., the criteria by which we as English professors and compositionists authorize and "place" students) come not from some general or transcendent standards, but rather from the practices by which we self-authorize within our own discourse community. Using Bartholomae and Petrosky's curriculum presented in Facts, Artifacts, Counterfacts as a point of departure, I propose a language-centered curriculum which uses discourse itself as the subject of the semester-Jong project wherein students eventually learn to critique our practices and create their own discourse communities. …

Enhancing Undergraduate Achievement In Educational Psychology With Instructional Objectives, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Eric Rasmussen, Rosemary Nieto, Cheryl Sims

Publications and Research

Two quasi-experiments were conducted to assess the effects of exposure to instructional objectives on the achievement of undergraduates enrolled in an educational psychology course. Students enrolled in morning and afternoon course sections during the fall semester did not receive objects. Comparable students enrolled in morning and afternoon sections of the course during the subsequent spring semester did. Regression analyses that controlled for age and past achievement indicated that among afternoon classes, exposure to objectives improved performance on the midterm and final exams by at least 7 points. No significant effects were found for the morning classes. It was argued that …