Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Education, Sociology of|Education, Higher'

This discussion encompasses the specifics of a partnership between leading U.S. foundations—the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation. This analysis illustrates the dynamics of their collaboration—the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa—and offers an interpretation of how foundations leveraged legitimacy by both working collaboratively with peer grant-makers, and paying attention to their African beneficiaries' input. This inquiry illustrates how these foundations strategically monitored their accountability around various legitimation mechanisms to maximize the impact of their philanthropy on the field of higher education in Africa while supporting the field's institutionalization. They gained legitimacy by rationalizing a form of collective and participatory action, and promoting a discourse of capacity building that reinforced their role in higher education in Africa. The foundations also positioned themselves strategically in the ecology of international developers to advocate for the importance of higher education in the economic development of Africa while upholding their own conception of knowledge societies.

Higher education can present many challenges for students including managing and scheduling classes, assignments, projects, and professional and social obligations. This experience can be even more difficult for students living with chronic illness, many of whom face the additional challenges of debilitating pain, fatigue, social misconceptions, and frequent medical care. To succeed some students with chronic illnesses will need support and accommodation in order to achieve their goals and complete their degrees. In this thesis I explore the barriers I faced as a student with chronic illness in higher education and what accommodations may help remove those barriers for future students. With this thesis I hope to participate in social, political and academic conversations as a means to increase understanding among fellow students, faculty, staff, and administrators. It is my hope that these conversations will contribute to a movement that will help support and encourage students with chronic illnesses.

This study focuses on the relationship between students' social backgrounds and their occupational aspirations (in terms of becoming an authority, financial success and recognition in the workplace). By applying the status attainment theory and segmented assimilation theory, this study examines the significance of parental socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and social capital in predicting college freshmen's occupational aspirations using multivariate analysis. Interaction effects between the main predictors as well as control variables such as immigrant status, gender, school performance, motivations and skills are tested in the analysis. Results suggest that socioeconomic status is not statistical significance in predicting individuals' occupational aspirations in all models. African Americans and Asians have the highest level of occupational aspirations, while Native Americans have the lowest level of occupational aspirations without introducing interactions into the model. All three social capital variables are positively related to students' occupational aspirations, especially the effects for mentors/role models. Strong interaction effects between parental socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity variables have been found in the study as well. Results of interaction effects indicate that although Native Americans have the lowest levels of occupational aspirations at lower levels of parental SES, their levels of occupational aspiration increase radically with the increase of their parental SES levels. However, groups such as African Americans and Asians experience a decrease in their occupational aspirations with an increase of parental SES. The interactions between parental SES and social capital variables are weak. The interaction effects between race/ethnicity and social capital variables suggest that Asian students' occupational aspirations are benefited from their parents' expectations, while other races and other Latino students' occupational aspirations are promoted by studying with peers.

Contemporary research in veterinary medical education indicates alarming rates of depression and anxiety among veterinary students. Yet, the focus of this scholarship is primarily on mental illness as effects of a social and relational process, rather than interrogating the affectual nature of the process. Medical education has a long history of interrogating various facets of socialization as largely embedded in the hidden curricula—the tacit culture of a social entity, and repository for values and norms of conduct. Unfortunately, scant scholarship explores the hidden curricula of veterinary medicine. Recently, an anonymous letter signed Young Veterinarian was published on a public website, and opened an electronic dialogue regarding the nature of affects imbedded in professional socialization. Many themes of the letter referred to issues imbedded in the literature. This study followed this online dialogue, and initiated one in a College of Veterinary Medicine. Centering this letter, object-focused interviews were conducted to explore how members of this community are affected by the anonymous letter. Analytical insights suggest three broad areas of affects related to the hidden curricula: Onto-epistemic tensions; affective neutrality; and freedom, debt, and hopelessness. Implications for research and professional practice/curricula are discussed and deliberated.

The purpose of this study was to explore the subjective perceptions held by students of their interactions with faculty members in college, especially as those interactions relate to the integration and membership of students in the academic community. Academic integration, resulting primarily from student-faculty interactions, has been theorized as one element that affects students’ decisions to stay in or leave college (Tinto, 1993). This study, employing a phenomenological research design, collected data through 13 interviews with junior and senior college students attending a small, private college in northwestern Pennsylvania. Interviewees were selected from three majors (English, Psychology, and Hospitality Management). Analysis of the data followed the hermeneutical phenomenological approach described by Max Van Manen (1997). Data were analyzed by adopting three phenomenological writing “lenses”: the existential lens, the thematic lens, and the theoretical lens. Two themes emerged from this: Care and Boundaries. These themes are discussed in terms of Tinto’s (1993) integrationalist theory of student departure. The theme of care (the recognition by students that faculty are attending to their personal and academic situations) was found to be present in Tinto’s theory while the theme of boundaries (recognitions of the differences between students and faculty) is not. It is suggested that the theme of boundaries represents a separate value system held by students of their faculty. Implications of the study and future research are presented.

Research regarding homeschooled students and their transition to college has been focused on two distinct areas: their academic performance and success integrating into a university community. The purpose of this study was to analyze the transition experiences of students who were homeschooled prior to attendance at a residential university campus compared to students who were conventionally educated and attending the same university. My research uses a sociological framework and a qualitative comparative research design to focus on the ability of students from different educational backgrounds to garner social capital, network with peers, manage "rite of passage" experiences (such as dating and exposure to substance use) and nurture friendships. I interviewed 50 students: 25 students who had been homeschooled prior to college entrance and 25 conventionally educated students who attended the same university. Interview data were supplemented by focus group data from 13 homeschooled students. Using social capital, socialization, college student adjustment as theoretical frameworks, my findings challenge assumptions that homeschooled students' lack of formal school-related social exposure prior to attending college typically leads to adjustment problems in the university environment. There were some differences in assimilation experiences and the strategies used in the transition when comparing homeschooled versus conventionally educated students. However, the homeschooled students who transitioned to the university environment were socially engaged with others, both in the residential community and in co-curricular activities, on par with their conventionally educated peers. My findings suggest that, despite receiving their earlier education outside of formal settings that characterize conventional education, many homeschooled students have the skill development, social exposure and capacity to transition successfully to a residential university setting. Homeschooled students' ability to develop social capital, nurture social networks and assimilate into a collective community challenges the position of homeschooling opponents, who assume negative impacts due to insular relationships, lack of routine experience with age peers and limited access to conventional social opportunities. These empirical findings have implications for sociological research, homeschooling families, and critics and proponents of home-based education.

Keywords: homeschool, transition, social capital development, socialization, college student adjustment, student engagement.

The purpose of this study is to understand how social class background plays a role in student experiences on selective campuses. This study centers the experience of low-income students and extends the work of Ostrove and Long (2007). Previous research has indicated that race, gender, and social class status have each, respectively, been demonstrated to have statistically significant relationships to sense of belonging. This research affirms existing research, but also finds that there are more positive relationships than previously theorized. Minoritized students had higher mean scores related to personal-emotional adjustment and social adjustment. Students from the lowest social class also reported higher scores on the same two adjustment scales than their peers.

Based in the theory of critical quantitative analysis (Stage, 2007), the research uses the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (Baker & Siryk, 1999) in order to assess sense of belonging. This survey measures overall sense of belonging, academic adjustment, social adjustment personal-emotional adjustment and institutional attachment. Examining these measures in an intersectional way revealed results that were more nuanced than was previously found in the literature. The data was analyzed using simple linear regression, analysis of variance, and hierarchical multiple regression. The survey was conducted among undergraduate students at The George Washington University, a private, urban institution in Washington, D.C.

In demonstrating that minoritized and economically and educationally challenged students may be adjusting better than has been previously stated, this study emphasizes the need to affirm students in the identities they hold for themselves rather than studying them through deficit models. Reinforcing the cultural and social norms of marginalized groups aids in their personal growth and development, which often leads to a university’s desired outcome, which is retention and graduation.

At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.

Leaders are frequently required to lead change due to mergers, expansions into new markets, and new initiatives to enter global markets compounding the need for change leadership. Frequent change is more the rule rather than the exception. Change is more needed today yet a poor result from leading change can adversely impact a leader's influence. How does a leader know when to lead a change initiative or when to take the easier route and simply stay with the status quo?

An in depth study of what appeared to be a very risky and highly successful organizational change initiative was thought to possibly shed light on answering these difficult leadership questions. This inductive qualitative case study discovered a university that achieved a successful, sustainable organizational change. The leader overcame the organizational change odds of one-third to two-thirds of the outcomes are often unsuccessful (Beer & Nohria; Bibler; as cited in Gilley, Dixon, & Gilley, 2008). "The rate of failure to deliver sustainable change at times reaches 80–90%" (Cope as cited in Gilley, Dixon, & Gilley, 2008, p. 153).

The leader in the private university organization in the Midwest that led the successful organizational change was inspired by his personal vision. He did not lead change using a theoretical framework. He was successful in persuading the board to authorize implementation of his vision. The president established goals to lead the way for workers to help achieve the organizational change. He effectively communicated his vision and goals and met resistance due to the status quo. The president overcame the challenges of status quo, and the successful organizational change resulted in an effervescent campus environment with record breaking-fundraising. Regardless of the type or size of the major change, organizations that seek to make change may glean insights from this study of how leaders of one organization approached significant change.

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore salient nonacademic factors related to social, economic, and cultural aspects together with traditional academic factors that influenced college retention. The study design employed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory method design, collecting quantitative data for correlation and regression analyses with qualitative data for content analysis. The sample included students with various SES backgrounds who graduated from North Philadelphia secondary schools since 2009. A predictor equation explained 60% of the variance college retention using 13 predictors: household income, college preparatory curriculum, competency based instruction, academic self-confidence and commitment, academic skills, academic integration, social integration, parents’ educational attainment, parents’ occupation, high school GPA, undergraduate GPA, and SAT scores. The predictors were found to be independently associated with college retention and interrelated with low SES variables, which may reduce the chances of earning a college degree. The qualitative findings indicated lack of skills, levels of academic engagement, and time allocation as major themes. Future research should explore underlying psychological processes driving the college retention relationship, using a cohort research method. A recommendation for practice was to identify students with skill deficiencies at the ninth and tenth grade levels to provide remediation of requisite skills to ensure college readiness and retention. Despite limitations, this study offered reasons low SES variables may influence college retention.

Post-secondary student retention and persistence is on the minds of professionals at various higher learning institutions due to the disparities in educational attainment. These disparities may lead to inhibited social mobility, and lack of cultural and social capital. This study examined what factors Southern Connecticut State University sophomore students perceived as aiding or impeding their degree path. It questioned how underrepresented students shaped their perception on their educational attainment and how this compares to the existing research and literature on the success practices of underrepresented students in higher education. The study was conducted using open-ended semi-structured interview questions administered to second year sophomore students at Southern Connecticut State University. Specifically, they were underrepresented students defined as being low-income, racial minority, and first-generation students. This study aimed to explore the narrative of underrepresented students by exploring why college access doesn’t necessarily result in college completion.

Commuter students, or students who do not live in institutionally owned or operated housing, have consistently struggled to persist to graduation. Since commuter students make up the collegiate majority, identifying ways to support this student population's academic success is imperative. Because of the positive association between social integration and student persistence, this study examined the relationship between student involvement in extracurricular activities and sense of belonging among commuter students at 4-year institutions set in urban areas. Student involvement and sense of belonging were measured using scales from the fourth edition of the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ). A random sample of 712 was drawn from the 2012 administration of the CSEQ. Structural equation modeling, including latent means and multiple group analyses, was used to answer the study's research questions. The findings suggest that commuter student involvement mirrors Astin's theory of student involvement; sense of belonging is heavily influenced by meaningful relationships with faculty and administrators; there is a positive relationship between student involvement and sense of belonging; parental education, race, transfer status, and employment patterns are background characteristics that account for student subgroup differences; and employment patterns impact student involvement, sense of belonging, and the relationship between these variables. These findings can inform institutional practice and direct future research efforts in order to further support the commuter student population.

This qualitative case study utilized Swail's Integrated Model of Student Success to discover how the structures, practices, and discourses at an urban charter high school affected the college aspirations and decisions of students of color from low-income households who matriculated to four-year institutions immediately after high school. This discovery took place by exploring the influence of educational and familial resources and support on students' college choice process and how students experienced and used these resources and support to successfully navigate the transition to college. Data for this study included pre- and post-matriculation interviews with eight low-income students of color who graduated from an urban charter high school after four years of attendance and immediately enrolled in a four-year institution. Data also included interview transcripts from students' parents, six of their teachers, and their counselor and principal.

Findings from this study revealed that, for the most part, educational and familial resources and support were complementary and facilitated students' progression through the college choice continuum. The school's college-going culture reinforced students' predispositions toward postsecondary education. High quality instruction in rigorous college-preparatory classes and caring, supportive relationships with teachers and other school personnel helped students remain on track for four-year admissions. Students who were on track for four-year admissions were provided more extensive college planning resources that facilitated their college searches and choices. Parents encouraged their children to pursue postsecondary education at four-year institutions because of the financial benefits. The majority of parents were not high school graduates, but all were willing to provide whatever financial and emotional support they could to ensure that their children fulfilled their educational goals. These findings suggest the need for a national policy mandating a college preparatory curriculum for all students and for schools to provide college planning resources that complement those provided in the home so all students have an equal opportunity to reap the benefits of a four-year postsecondary education.

Low graduation rates are a significant issue for colleges. The majority of higher education institutions in the United States offer learning communities (LCs), which have been found to be effective for improving course success and persisting to the next semester. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding the effectiveness of LCs with different types of populations and different types of LCs. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to identify the most effective types of LCs. Research questions addressed the effects of different types of LCs on different student success outcomes for community colleges. The study was based on Tinto's interactionist model of student departure and Astin's model of student involvement. Studies examining the relationship between student success and participation in college LCs provided the data for the meta-analysis. A random effects model was used to generate the average effect size for 39 studies and 50 individual effect sizes. The results showed that LCs are most effective with community college students when they include additional support strategies, counseling is available to students, one of the linked courses is an academic skills course, at least one of the linked course is developmental, and the focus is on increasing course success or student engagement. The implications for positive social change suggest that LC programs implement two linked courses, include an academic skills course, focus on developmental courses, and provide access to a counselor and additional student support strategies. In addition, LC programs are most effective when the goals of the program are student engagement and course success.

Largely because it puts higher education within reach for all people, the community college is thought to play a vital role in the democratic functioning of American society. Partly driven by an ethos of American egalitarianism, low-cost and open access community colleges enroll, train, and educate nearly anyone who aspires to higher education. For low-income and first-generation college students, the community college serves as a primary vehicle for social mobility. Problems associated with low retention and graduation rates have lowered the public perception of community colleges and threaten to exacerbate growing concerns over income and wealth inequality in America. Therefore, it becomes important for policy analysts to explore and better understand the nature of community colleges in an effort to create improvement strategies.

This qualitative study seeks to understand the community college experience from the perspective of low-income, first generation students. It asked first year students about their background experiences and analyzed how those experiences shaped their transition to the first year of college. It also asked how low-income, first generation students perceived the community college in order to understand how students evaluate it and define its purpose. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to make sense of student experiences and to give voice to community college students who, as a studied population, receive far less attention than students at four-year colleges.

This study finds that low-income, first generation community college students lived experience includes managing class-based disadvantages; this made navigating their first year of community college challenging. Students had come to the community college expecting to learn skills that would help them to form new professional identities so that they could begin transforming their lives, making it possible to ascend the socio-economic ladder. In order to succeed in this new environment, students had to learn and adapt to a new set of social norms and expectations that the institution uses to socialize its students. Based upon the analysis of student experiences and perceptions, this study makes six recommendations to help improve student success which may lead to improved public perception and funding for community colleges.

Latinas/os are the fastest-growing racial minority group in the United States, yet there is a lack of parity between their increased population and their participation rates in higher education. The economic strength and vitality of the nation require a college-educated workforce; therefore, the need to improve educational environments that support increased degree attainment among Latinas/os is imperative. Despite the disproportionately low enrollment of Latina/o college students at selective U.S. higher education institutions, research has suggested that attending these types of institutions uniquely and positively influences students’ educational and socioeconomic outcomes (Hearn & Rosinger, 2014). Using Astin’s (1991) Inputs-Environments-Outcomes (I-E-O) model, this study examined Latina/o college students’ cognitive development over time, their experiences related to perceived climate for diversity, and the effects of negatively-perceived climates for diversity on their cognitive development based on students’ gender, first-generation college status, and immigrant status. A quantitative design using the 2014 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES) was employed, of which system-wide data from 4,299 junior and senior level Latino/a college students were used. Inferential and regression analyses were used to examine the effects of perceived negative climate for diversity on students’ cognitive outcomes. Results indicated that Latina/o students attending selective institutions benefitted greatly in their cognitive skills development, although unique differences were found when students’ outcomes were examined by their gender, first-generation college status, and immigrant status. Perceived negative climates for diversity varied depending on students’ gender, first-generation college status, and immigrant status. Examination of the effects of students’ background characteristics and college experiences on their cognitive outcomes also varied based on their gender, first-generation college status, and immigrant status. In particular, perceived negative climates for diversity were found to have mixed effects on Latina/o college students’ GPA, yet demonstrated little to no effect on students’ cognitive skills development.

Previous research has identified student engagement as an important antecedent to student learning in higher education. Although student engagement is viewed as important for learning, a significant number of college students still report frequently feeling bored in their courses. The use of music as a pedagogical tool is believed to be beneficial for promoting student engagement and student learning in higher education sociology courses, yet it has been suggested that sociology faculty members do not commonly incorporate the technique into their courses. The purpose of this comparative interview study is to explore higher education sociology faculty members' understandings of the use of music as a pedagogical tool, and the perceived importance of student engagement to student learning among higher education sociology faculty members.

In this study, it is found that higher education sociology faculty members believe student engagement can lead to increased student learning. It is also found that higher education sociology faculty members generally identify music as an effective pedagogical tool for promoting student engagement and learning in higher education sociology courses. Interestingly, participants believed the use of music as a pedagogical tool to be an uncommon practice in higher education sociology courses in the United States. As part of their efforts to explain their choices to use or not use music as a pedagogical tool, faculty participants described potential barriers that may impact faculty member choices to use music in their higher education sociology courses.

Sociology faculty participants in this study agreed that a lack of discussion of pedagogical tools among colleagues and in teaching courses might serve as a potential barrier for the use of music as a pedagogical tool. Higher education sociology faculty participants also identified a lack of knowledge of how to use music as a pedagogical tool as a potential barrier for the use of music in sociology courses. This research suggests that the lack of faculty knowledge of music as a pedagogical tool may be due to the lack of discussion of pedagogical tools both among colleagues and in the teaching courses completed by higher education sociology faculty members.

Past research has suggested that sociology faculty members need to create an environment that encourages students to be active and engaged participants in their own learning through building a community of learners. This study suggests that higher education sociology faculty members may successfully build a community of learners through using music as a pedagogical tool in their courses. This study recommends that changes at the departmental level need to occur in order to make it easier for sociology faculty members to gain the knowledge required to use music effectively in their courses. Suggestions for practice and future research are provided.

Higher education institutions continue to struggle with encouraging retention for first-year students. Prior research has shown that establishing social integration during the first-year of college is a crucial component of a successful transition and has a positive influence on student persistence and academic success (Astin, 1993; Chapman & Pascarella, 1983; Tinto, 1993). Social integration has historically been defined in terms of peer connections and involvement (Tinto, 1993); however, recent research has explored the importance of sense of belonging as an important psychosocial component in the transition to college (Strayhorn, 2012a). Sense of belonging focuses on feelings of fit, perceptions of social support, and feeling as though one matters to the community. The current study sought to explore the conceptual framework in which sense of belonging was included as a component of social integration. Moreover, this study explored whether institutional action could influence first-year students’ overall social integration through a focus on peer connections, involvement, and sense of belonging.

This quasi-experimental, quantitative study analyzed the influence of a campus intervention focused on social integration, called the Belonging Reinforcement Intervention (BRI). The BRI program was delivered to first-year students at a small, private institution during the first three weeks of their collegiate experience. The Belonging Reinforcement Intervention included researched components related to social belonging and normalizing students’ not feeling an immediate sense of fit (Walton & Cohen, 2011a), reinforcing institutional commitment and belonging through communications (Hausmann et al., 2007), and research focused on peer mentoring as a way to encourage campus involvements (Peck, 2011). The study used a national instrument, the Mapworks Transition Survey, to determine if this intervention could influence the various components of social integration.

The findings from the study support a comprehensive view of social integration that includes sense of belonging. The findings further indicate that students who participated in the BRI program showed statistically significant increases in peer connections, involvement, and the current study’s social integration scale which included sense of belonging. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the BRI program was particularly beneficial for Hispanic students with their intent to become involved and for female students for their overall social integration. The results of this study have implications for future institutional interventions and developing lasting programs that will help first-year students to succeed and persist in their college experience. The conclusions presented suggest that a broader definition of social integration can allow institutions and researchers to better understand and support the challenges students face during the transition to college.

This dissertation advances scholarship on how financialization ? the increasing power of financial ideologies and markets ? has transformed diverse organizations, including non-profits, state institutions, and households. In three papers, I explain how financialization has contributed to rising organizational inequality in U.S. undergraduate education education since the 1990s: 1) ?The Financialization of U.S. Higher Education? develops new quantitative measures to find large but skewed relative increases in the financial costs and returns from endowments, colleges? institutional borrowing, equity offerings by for-profit colleges, and student loan borrowing, 2) ?The Transformation of U.S. For-Profit Colleges,? uses a unique college-level and multi-wave longitudinal dataset to show how the spread of shareholder value ideology led to a new industrial-scale business model with negative consequences for student outcomes, and 3) ?The Ivory Tower Tax Haven? explains how long-standing tax exemptions have supported new endowment investment strategies that have fueled rising expenditures to maximize the prestige of the wealthiest universities. Altogether, I highlight the importance of finance ideologies in the shifting balance of resources between and within the many heterogeneous types of U.S. colleges.

Based on current research and seminal theories on learning, quality, and academic persistence, this study sought to establish the core components of academic quality in higher education and to determine if these components can be used to predict students' intention to persist. This study also looked at differences between traditionally aged college students and their non-traditional adult learner counterparts. Results were significant for all questions asked, suggesting that academic quality can be used as a predictor of students' intention to persist. Additionally, the study found that adult learners rated both the academic quality of their programs and their intention to persist significantly higher than traditional students. Recommendations for further study include research aimed at better understanding persistence estimation and the specific academic quality and persistence relationships that exist in individual programs.

First-generation, low-income, and disabled college students are an increasing population (Tinto, 2012). TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) is an academic support program funded by the U.S. Department of Education that seeks to support this demographic to overcome challenges and thrive while in college (Coffman, 2011). Utilizing a mixed methods approach, the goal of this study was to examine the student success outcomes of retention and grade point average of TRIO SSS students compared to students who are similarly qualified but not being served by TRIO SSS at a Midwestern, large, public, four-year institution. In addition, TRIO SSS seniors were interviewed during focus groups. During focus groups, students reflected on their overall programmatic experiences in TRIO. A total of 1,913 students were involved in the quantitative analysis, and 16 TRIO seniors participated in the focus groups. Data analysis resulted in the emergence of four major themes: (a) relationships, (b) loyalty, (c) trust, and (d) transformation. These findings were consistent with other studies conducted within the scope of Tinto’s (2012) theory of student retention. All of the interview participants identified a profound and personal emotional connection to their time in TRIO SSS. This study was significant due to the lack of previous research that couples the experiences of students with quantitative data. Implications for practice included, but were not limited to, stronger support for first-generation students through a range of campus partnerships and initiatives. Recommendations for future research included expanding this study by examining TRIO programs at other institutions and gathering perceptions of first-generation students through multiple focus groups.

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of distributed leadership at the University of ABC's SCPS, as the School worked to transform itself through reorganization. The study examined the perceptions of key leaders and members of the implementation team as they sought to understand the implementation of a more participative approach to change within the School. The primary question guiding this study was "What is the nature of leadership within a participative change effort in a higher education setting as perceived by active participants in the effort? The secondary question was "What is the nature of power sharing within this change effort?"

This descriptive case study investigated distributed leadership at the University of ABC School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS) by exploring the perceptions of leaders and the implementation team as they underwent a leadership paradigm shift that required a more participative approach. The study also explored how these academic leaders adapted to sharing power in this new change effort by examining the perceptions of change for administrative and faculty leaders as they sought to make sense of the launching of a more participative approach to change efforts.

The findings from this study identified ten ways in which SCPS practiced leadership: (1) A participative approach to change influenced synergy. (2) Leader participation greatly influenced collaboration. (3) Leaders' actions created a shared sense of responsibility. (4) Change in structure influenced leader, follower behavior, and organizational culture. (5) The creation of a safe environment influenced employee conversations. (6) Engaged leaders and followers influenced decision-making. (7) Leader involvement improved efficacy of decisions. (8) The situation (tools, routines, structures) enabled leader action on process improvement. (9) A shared belief in the schools training mission influenced the mitigation of resistance and intransigence. and, (10) A focus on strategy supported collective action.

This descriptive study has drawn conclusions that begin to fill the gap in understanding the nature of leadership within a participative change effort in a higher education setting as perceived by active participants in the effort. It was discovered that a participative approach to change plays an important role in leadership practice and the interactions of leaders, followers, and their situation. The tools, routines, structures, and other aspects of the situation mediated leaders' and followers' interactions, and allowed leadership practice to move to the forefront. Finally, the study concluded that a distributed perspective, when used as a design tool for School leaders, could inform future design decisions and that strategic decision making must be ongoing when designing leadership practice. The conclusions of the study prompt questions that can be resolved by further study.

This quantitative study examined the experiences of first-generation college students and the influence of cultural wealth capital on their college outcomes. The study analyzed secondary data from The Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), a nationally representative data set capturing the high school, college and early post-secondary education experiences and outcomes of high school sophomore students in 2002 over a 10-year span, including college and early career outcomes. The scope of the data was narrowed to only examine students that indicated they were first-generation college students.

Using Tara Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth model as the conceptual framework, and, using factor analysis, the study operationalized two forms of capital from the model: aspirational capital and navigational capital. Both linear and logit regression analysis were used in examining this relationship between the capital constructs and college pipeline outcomes (enrollment, persistence and graduation) for first-generation college students.

The study found that for every one standard deviation increase of aspirational capital, first-generation college students were found to be 28.5% more likely to enroll in college. Additionally, for every one standard deviation of aspirational capital, first-generation students were 25.6% more likely to persist through to their fourth semester college, a time when first-generation college students are found to be most likely to drop out of college. The dissertation includes a robust discussion of outcomes and related recommendations for theory, practice and policy.

This qualitative study examined the process of adopting online education at three private colleges. All three institutions participating in the study were private Catholic colleges that offered their first online courses in the late 1990s. The research question posed for this study was: Within the participating institutions, how did online education get started and what was the process for its development?

Findings from this research indicated that, for an institution to successfully implement online education, four elements emerged: (a) some form of infrastructure needed to be in place that could support online education, (b) a latent force, referred to as an engine, was necessary to provide ongoing support, (c) an innovator, who had a strong interest in online education, was imperative, and (d) a bridge builder, who provided credibility, communication, and coordination between stakeholders, was critical to the sustainability of the online initiative. The institution successfully implementing online education also needed significant amounts of personnel, funding, and technology.

The purpose of this project was to write a grant to support the Napa Valley DREAM Team (NVDT) in its efforts to increase the academic achievement and personal growth of undocumented children and young adults in the area. An extensive literature review; consultation with key informants; and personal communication with undocumented youth, their families, and allies were used to create a comprehensive needs assessment.

Every year, tens of thousands of undocumented students graduate from high school, despite the social, economic, and legal challenges of their immigration status, with limited opportunities to participate fully in society. If funded, this program will support undocumented students who have the skills and aspirations to pursue a college education and achieve a more meaningful life, thus contributing to the economic and social well-being of the nation. Actual submission and/or funding of this grant were not required for successful completion of this project.