Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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. …

Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis Of Gender Inequality In Higher Education, Topaz Szewczok, Bethany Parslow

Senior Honors Projects

This project explores how gender inequality in contemporary society impacts the individual’s experiences in their career path, especially in regards to higher education. We document experiences that gender minorities have in their academic disciplines and gain insight on how individuals overcome or do not overcome being the gender minority. Our data come from in-depth interviews with college professors and survey responses from college students in gender segregated fields such as nursing, STEM, early education, and family studies. For this study, according to information gathered and published by the university, a “gendered field” at URI is determined by two thirds or …

Are You Supporting White Supremacy?, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, professor of English at Linfield College, provides an opinion piece in the form of a checklist of 15 “troubles” she has identified to help others in academe recognize (un)conscious contributions to white supremacy.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.