Faculty are the academic heart of colleges and universities. They guide learning and facilitate student academic and social integration in the campus community. As described by Tinto, student integration is an important component to success in college. Out-of-class and in-class faculty-student interaction supports student integration and may lead to improved college completion. Students enter college with expectations for what they are about to experience, including expectations for faculty interaction. Smart adapted Holland's vocational choice theory to study college disciplines and found that faculty in six broad categories of disciplines displayed specific environmental and personality traits and interacted differently with students. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine relationships between first-time-in-college (FTIC), prior-to-matriculation student expectations of faculty-student interaction and two dependent variables: four-year degree completion and FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student's major, as categorized in one of Holland's categories. High school GPA, ethnicity, and gender were controlled in the study. The sample consisted of 3,144 FTIC, prior-to-matriculation students enrolled at the University of South Florida, a large, metropolitan public university in the South during the summer or fall of 2008. Students completed the College Student Expectations Questionnaire (CSXQ) as part of a mandatory university orientation program. Seven items on the CSXQ's "Experiences with Faculty" section were summed and used to assess a FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student's level of expected faculty-student interaction. Students' prior-to-matriculation majors were assigned to one of seven Holland major categories --investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, realistic, conventional, and not in Holland. However, only five categories; investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and not in Holland were used because no FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student majors were assigned to the realistic and conventional Holland categories. A binary logistic regression was used to investigate the potential relationship between (FTIC), prior-to-matriculation student expectations of faculty-student interaction score and four-year degree completion. A statistically significant relationship (p<.05) was not observed between a FTIC, prior-to-matriculation student's expectation level for faculty-student interaction score and four-year degree completion. A statistically significant relationship (p<.05) was observed between the independent variables of high school GPA and gender and the dependent variable of four-year college completion. A one-point increase in the student's high school GPA showed an increase of the odds of four-year graduation by a factor of 2.96. The study also found the odds of a female graduating in four years is increased by about 1.3 times over a male four-year graduation. A multinomial logistic regressions were used to evaluate the relationship between (FTIC), prior-to-matriculation student expectations of faculty-student interaction score and Holland's categories. A statistically significant relationship (<.05) was found between a FTIC student's expectation level for faculty-student interaction and a student's FTIC Holland classification. As the level of the faculty-student expectation score increased by one point, the odds of being a member of the investigative category over the artistic, social, or enterprising category increased by 1.05 times, 1.03 times, or 1.04 times, respectively. The results must be interpreted with caution, given the small effect sizes, as exhibited by a Cox and Snell's value of .005 and a Nagelkerke value of .006.

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This dissertation investigated the relationship between course characteristics and student ratings of instruction at a large research intensive university. Specifically, it examined the extent to which academic field, course level, and class size were associated with variation in mean class ratings. Past research consistently identifies differences between student ratings in different academic fields, but offers no unifying conceptual framework for the definition or categorization of academic fields. Therefore, two different approaches to categorizing classes into academic fields were compared - one based on the institution's own academic college system and one based on Holland's (1997) theory of academic environments. Because the data violated assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance, traditional ANOVA procedures were followed by post-hoc analyses using bootstrapping to more accurately estimate standard errors and confidence intervals. Bootstrapping was also used to determine the statistical significance of a difference between the effect sizes of academic college and Holland environment, a situation for which traditional statistical tests have not been developed. Findings replicate the general pattern of academic field differences found in prior research on student ratings and offer several unique contributions. They confirm the value of institution-specific approaches to defining academic fields and also indicate that Holland's theory of academic environments may be a useful conceptual framework for making sense of academic field differences in student ratings. Building on past studies that reported differences in mean ratings across academic fields, this study describes differences in the variance of ratings across academic fields. Finally, this study shows that class size and course level may impact student ratings differently - in terms of interaction effects and magnitude of effects - depending on the academic field of the course. / Ph. D.

Holland's theory of vocational personalities and work environments incorporates four theoretical constructs (congruence, consistency, differentiation and identity) which attempt to explain sources in variability of achievement and satisfaction among employed adults and college students. This study sought to: (1) investigate the relationship of Holland's constructs to academic achievement and educational satisfaction of undergraduate music majors; (2) investigate differences in all variables according to gender and degree major. Data were collected from undergraduate music majors (N = 100) enrolled at the University of North Texas using the Vocational Preference Inventory. Mv Vocational Situation. and the Music Major Satisfaction Questionnaire. Reliability for the Music Major Satisfaction Questionnaire was estimated at .92 using Cronbach's coefficient alpha. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients indicated that: (1) congruence was significantly related to academic achievement and educational satisfaction; (2) identity was significantly related to academic achievement and educational satisfaction; (3) consistency was significantly related to academic achievement, but not to educational satisfaction; (4) differentiation was significantly related to academic achievement, but not to educational satisfaction. Multiple regression using a stepwise entry method indicated that: (1) the identity construct was the best predictor of educational satisfaction scores; (2) identity was the best predictor of academic achievement scores. The results of the study suggested: (1) it is unlikely that any single theory accounts for all dimensions of variability in achievement among college music majors. To arrive at a comprehensive model of achievement, it will be necessary to utilize constructs of several theories. Such a model should include Holland's constructs of identity, congruence, and possibly differentiation. (2) similarly, a comprehensive model of satisfaction should include Holland's constructs of identity and congruence. (3) Holland's classification system may distinguish among two traditionally held divisions of college music majors, performance majors and education majors. (4) music education majors and music performance majors differ on the social dimension of their vocational personalities.