Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / This study explored the relationship between pre-college and college racial environments and post-secondary outcomes for Asian American students at selective institutions. This research utilized a sample of API students (n=940) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshman (1998-2003) which examined the pre-college and college experiences of students from 28 universities across five separate wave instruments from freshman through senior year. A series of blocked, linear regressions investigated the impact of homogeneity and heterogeneity of three racial environments (childhood, adolescence, and college) and the transition between adolescence and college on post-secondary outcomes in six categories (GPA, assertiveness, psychological health, satisfaction, cross-racial interactions, and racial microaggressions). Additional considerations included possible mediating effects of peer group racial composition and racial identity variables. The major findings reveal that (1) diversity in adolescence predicted lower academic assertiveness; (2) college homogeneity predicted lower academic assertiveness, higher psychological distress, and fewer racial microaggressions; and (3) high school-to-college transitions in racial diversity decreased assertiveness. Additionally, peer composition of racial environment was found to mediate between GPA and college homogeneity. Several control variables (gender, ethnicity, college type, immigration) were also strong predictors in the model. These findings add a new dimension to the literature on Asian American college students by identifying some potential links between their racial environments and post-secondary outcomes. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education.

Powerful norms tend to define the purpose and function of higher education as a means for individual students to improve individual social mobility and to attain occupational status, and oftentimes, we assume this to be the primary intent of any college student (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2013; Day & Newberger, 2002). For the purpose of this study, the normative framing of college as primarily an individual benefit is scrutinized to understand how this norm engages American Indian students in the college-going process. Indigenous scholars argue that infusing the concept of Native Nation Building into our understandings of higher education challenges such mainstream cultural norms and fills a space between the individual and mainstream society (Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, and Solyom, 2012). This qualitative study proposes the Individual-Independent/Political-Collective Paradox Model to understand how American Indian students navigate and make-meaning of collective values and the role of student tribal status on the college-going process. Through the voices of thirty-seven American Indian college students, the findings demonstrate the critical thinking and navigation of varying realities that American Indian students face when entering higher education institution. I present the three main findings of this study. The first finding presents how the participant's college-going process is not linear in both pathways and meaning making. Through a college-going typology, students reveal how the college-going phases have cyclical aspects, where each phase is built upon each other and influence subsequent meaning- and decision-making. The second finding demonstrates how the college-choice process is instrumental in understanding how students frame the purpose of higher education through collective values that are intricately related to students' reference of tribal enrollment. The third finding shows how collective values and tribal enrollment help inform the meaning of financial aid for students. These meanings reveal that tribal aid is not only relevant to providing access during the college exploration and choice phases, but the aid reinforces students' purpose of higher education and future goals, which both are primarily collective in nature.

"Living Within and Outside the Margins and Borders…" depicts the lived experiences of eight Latinx high school seniors transitioning from an urban high school categorized by the State as a high poverty, high achieving, Latino majority-minority school in a large, southern Arizona city on the cusp of the U.S. Mexico border. This qualitative study spans the course of an academic school year, and includes an examination of narratives from three educational leaders within the target school. As longtime educators contained and often constrained inside a sizable metropolitan district, educational leaders were challenged to serve these Latinx youth within the limits set by state and national policies related to immigration, achievement testing, and education of emergent bilinguals. A major goal of the study was to understand how educational leaders negotiate educational policy margins to resist deficit-framed approaches and to incorporate socially just action within their schools. As demonstrated by the participants in the present study, many Latinx youth are searching for ways to navigate linguistic, cultural, racial, and class-based borders. Furthermore, many seek to breakthrough prescribed margins characterized by educational policies and practices that seek to track, label, and often marginalize them. These margins can be "more than a site of deprivation…[but] also a site of radical possibility, a space of resistance" (hooks, 1990, p.149). Thus, these Latinx students' narratives, which include descriptions of the capital employed to overcome these barriers, were analyzed via a Community Cultural Wealth lens (Yosso, 2005).

In 2004, the Transition Mathematics Project (TMP), funded by the state of Washington and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was established to create projects to help high school students gain the necessary skills to become college and work-ready. Aligned to TMP's College Readiness Mathematics Standards, a fourth-year capstone mathematics course was developed and implemented, titled Applications in Mathematical Reasoning (AMR), a rigorous course option for students to take during their senior year of high school. The purpose of this study was to explore any relationship between taking the AMR course and preparation for college level mathematics. Using causal-comparative study design and matching participants in the sample, variables were examined based on the number of precollege courses taken; college level math course completed and grade earned; and placement test results for students who took the AMR course compared to those students who took no mathematics during their high school senior year. Though findings for precollege and college level course-taking were inconclusive, mathematics placement test scores were found to be significantly higher for those students who completed the AMR course. The placement test findings supported other research that links rigorous mathematics courses taken in high school with improved college placement and persistence. Based on the research examined and the study findings, there was support to consider the following: (a) creating alternate but rigorous math course offerings for the high school senior year; (b) striving toward a four-years of mathematics graduation requirement for all high schools; (c) enacting mandatory placement at the community college for students placing into precollege courses; and (d) reducing barriers to successful transition between high schools and post secondary institutions by fostering K-16 communication, aligning standards, and improving course alignment. / Graduation date: 2012