Existing policies and procedures have been uniformly applied to all undergraduate traditional and non-traditional students at Ball State University. The purpose of the study was to determine the judged effectiveness of existing policies and procedures when applied uniformly to undergraduate students over age twenty-three at Ball State University. The study was designed to reflect the judgments of three distinct sub-groups of nontraditional undergraduate students and personnel of four selected administrative offices at Ball State University.A questionnaire was developed and mailed to a random sample of undergraduate non-traditional students and to the personnel of four selected administrative offices: Admissions, Curricular Advising, Financial Aid, and Registration and Records. Student respondents accounted for a 46.3 percent return and administrative personnel had a 55.5 percent return. A Likert Scale with levels of agreement or disagreement as Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D), or Strongly Disagree (SD) was used. A Chi Square Analysis at the .05 level of confidence with one degree of freedom and a p level of 3.84 was used to test the six null hypotheses of the study.Findings based upon the study were:1. Undergraduate enrollment in institutions of higher education is projected to decline.2. Enrollments of undergraduate non-traditional students in institutions of higher education are projected to increase.3. Needs and characteristics of non-traditional students differ from the traditional undergraduate student.4. Seven questionnaire items showed significant differences between undergraduate non-traditional students and administrative personnel regarding Office of Admissions services.5. Three questionnaire items showed significant differences between undergraduate non-traditional students and administrative personnel regarding Office of Financial Aid services.6. Six questionnaire items showed significant differences between undergraduate non-traditional students and administrative personnel regarding Office of Curricular Advising services.7. Two questionnaire items showed significant differences between undergraduate non-traditional

This qualitative study was designed to investigate Millennial Family Members and their impact on higher education. The goal of this research was to richly describe the institution-student-parent relationship. Eighteen interviews were conducted with parents of first year students in order to gather descriptive data. The researcher had contact with the family members through "The Conference on Student Success."Five conclusions emerged. Millennial Family Members:1. Have a very different role in their student's higher education process than their parents did.2. Have expectations that the University guarantee safety, provide life lessons and career development.3. Communicate regularly with their students regarding all aspects of their lives including academic work, social issues, community concerns, and financial issues.4. Believe that they have a strong and essential influence on their college student.5. Interact with Student Affairs and Academic Affairs departments on behalf of their students.Implications of these findings and future directions for research were discussed. / Department of Educational Studies

The purpose of this study was to examine the Ball State University collegiate student organizational structure and determine how leader and manager roles develop, :based on responses that student organizational officers and members provide on the Leadership Questionnaire (Burke, 1988) at two different times during the 1999-2000 academic year. This study also investigated the development process of student officer positions to determine whether transactional (management) or transformational (leadership) is promoted. Using thethe pre- and post-test data, the results showed that those subjects who were members decreased in leadership skill development, while officers increased in leadership skill development during a two month time span. The difference between the two groups was significant at the .064 level. (F (1,23) = 3.79, p = .064) The alpha level was chosen as .10 due to the exploratory nature of the study and the small data history. This data confirms our initial research hypotheses that 1) participation in authority roles develops leadership skills, and 2) those authority roles are experienced as leadership roles. / Fisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology