In this study of curricular and co-curricular learning in STEM disciplines at four liberal arts colleges, comparative analysis of 62 interviews with graduating seniors demonstrates that out-of-class experiences fostered many intellectual, personal, and professional gains. Undergraduate research, in particular, helped to shape science identities…

Since Georgia's "Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally" (HOPE) Scholarship was initiated in 1993, more than a dozen states have adopted similar state-sponsored merit-based financial aid programs. One recent concern on merit-based programs has focused on their unintended adverse effect on students' choosing science and engineering as their…

An institutional commitment to educating a diverse student body is most compelling when it is broadly defined and connected to the educational mission, different levels of institutional practice, and systematic research on student educational outcomes. This study examines how structural diversity and intentional educational practices involving…

Identities are not only shaped by self-perception, but are influenced by others' perceptions of self as well. More pointedly, one's physicality or bodily self can be perceived differently depending upon the viewer. To that end, Turner (2002) notes, "faculty women of color experience multiple marginality, characterized by lived contradiction and…

During the past 50 years, the field of higher education has experienced growth, maturation, and specialization, coinciding with an almost exponential increase in the number of higher education journals. The proliferation of journals has led to an increased focus on journal status by members of the field. Not surprisingly, an informal journal caste…

This article focuses on three separate historical case studies in the 1940s and 1950s in order to challenge common assumptions about who has been active, and when, in the struggle for racial equality in U.S. higher education. Although scholars have traditionally argued that the late 1950s represent the beginning of the activities and naming of the…

This study seeks to understand academic faculty job satisfaction, focusing on three different sets of variables--characteristics of the individual, the work context and institutional interactions. In one sense, each explanation is rooted in the individual, as is appropriate to a study of individual satisfaction. Thus, when the authors examine…

The author's purpose in this article is to understand the ways in which socialization to a discipline might be gendered. How might socialization teach students not just the skills, but the gendered values that are equated with success in a discipline? This article begins with a review of the socialization literature before turning to a definition…

The purpose of this paper is to provide the higher education community with information about the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR), the Academic Progress Rate (APR), and the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) to assist in developing sound institutional policy. First, relevant background information is provided to clarify the context underlying the…

Authors examine the proportion of undergraduate applications, admissions, and enrollments preceding, during, and after Proposition 209 while accounting for the relative growth in University of California eligibility for underrepresented minorities (URMs). They employed standard deviation analyses to measure dispersion of the URMs to non-URMs.…

Over the past decade, community engagement has emerged as an important priority among many colleges and universities. This study employs a multi-case study design to examine boundary spanning practices of research universities that have adopted a community engagement agenda. A model is advanced to conceptualize spanning behaviors and to inform…

Institutional prestige is an inherent part of higher education in the U.S., resulting in rankings that often become the rationale for resource allocation including research grants and increased admission applications. While the desire for prestige and high rankings are important to research universities, the reality is that not all universities…

We examined the effects of student (academic preparation, psychosocial, socio-demographic, and situational) and institutional characteristics on long-term enrollment outcomes. We tracked enrollments and degrees awarded for students who originally enrolled at two-year institutions across five years. Our findings have implications for identifying…

United States National Guard and Reserve units--including their college student members--increasingly are deployed, resulting in students' abrupt withdrawals from college and subsequent re-enrollments after their return. This study explored student veterans' transitions from deployment back to their prior status as full-time college students at…

How do interactions with diverse peers affect moral reasoning development? Results from a longitudinal study of 171 students enrolled in an Intergroup Dialogue or Introduction to Sociology course indicate that students who experience more negative interactions with diverse peers report lower developmental gains in moral reasoning, although the…