Education Commons^™

Family Policies And Institutional Satisfaction: An Intersectional Analysis Of Tenure-Track Faculty, Heather Lee Schneller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Gender and faculty career advancement have been examined with a focus on academic work environment, including faculty workloads, mentoring relationships, access to research networks, and work-life balance. Previous studies concerned with gender, employment, and care work only have considered child care. Additionally, the exploration of faculty and care work focused specifically on gender instead of examining the interaction of race and gender. To date, no study on academic work-life policies includes faculty perceptions of their importance and effectiveness nor has the faculty assessment of eldercare policy been examined in relation to career success.

Guided by an intersectional perspective, this study …

Division I Student-Athlete Degree Choice Assessment, Tony Terrell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Though the NCAA has established rules that require student-athletes to complete their college degree in an expeditious manner, the 40/60/80% rule may impinge on student-athlete academic decisions (i.e., degree choice).Yet limited empirical data exist regarding the nature and prevalence of student-athlete degree impingement. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Student-Athlete Degree Choice Questionnaire (SA-DCQ). The SA-DCQ assesses factors that influence Division I student-athletes' degree choice. An initial 40 item, 4 component SA-DCQ instrument was piloted with 170 Division I student-athletes. In order to develop scales, Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was conducted. PCA results yielded 13 …

The Neglected Minority: Interviews With Successful Community College Students From Poverty, Heather Hollifield-Hoyle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Poverty in the US is growing at an alarming rate. The current economic climate demands higher education to embrace the economic diversity of all students and to prepare them, regardless of economic class, for a globally competitive workplace. Unfortunately, the higher education community is not as adept at serving low-income students, as it is middle- and upper- income students. Low-income students are less likely than their more affluent peers to enroll in college or graduate. Employing qualitative narrative methods, this dissertation explores the factors that contributed to the persistence and success of 18, low-income, community college students. This study addresses …

The National Survey Of Student Engagement As A Predictor Of Academic Success, Paul Michael Fursman

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Student engagement measures have been shown to be excellent predictors of desirable educational outcomes, and in some cases, these measures are being used as a means of institutional accountability. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is one of the most widely used measures of student engagement. In this study, I examine the relationship between NSSE subscale scores and measures of student academic success. I also examine the extent to which pre-college ability and ethnicity moderate the relationship between engagement scores and academic outcomes. Results indicate that the benchmark academic challenge was a significant predictor of freshmen GPA and the …

Exploring The Two-Year College Faculty Work Experience: The Active Job, The Evolving Institution And The Changing Effort-Reward Bargain, Jacobs Wayne Hammond

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

While significant research describes the occupational experiences of four-year college and university faculty, two-year college faculty have received little attention from scholars. This study enters the existing void. Fourteen two-year college faculty members from a variety of institutions in Minnesota were interviewed utilizing a semi-structured depth interview technique. Questions were derived from sociological and interdisciplinary literature pertaining to the higher education faculty experience. Two-year college faculty were found to hold active jobs, work in evolving institutions and face a decreasing effort-reward bargain. Faculty were also found to be susceptible to experiencing role strain, stress derived from group-decision making processes and …

Beyond The Black Horizon, Aaron Bruce

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Although U.S. colleges and universities continue to discuss creative ways to increase the number of African American collegians participating in study abroad, this research is limited when revealing the unique perspectives of African American collegians who have studied abroad. Traditionally an emphasis on program success has been placed on the quantity of study abroad participants rather than the quality of African American student support and engagement; the personal reflections through the lens of African American race and identity are often overlooked. A series of culturally responsive, guided interviews were conducted with African American collegians from a variety of institutions across …