Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / Liberal education has long claimed moral education to be a chief aim of its educational format. Liberal education supporters regularly assert its unique ability to foster moral and ethical development in students, but data regarding higher education's efficacy in promoting moral development are limited. Additionally, the educational goal of moral development suffers important philosophical and epistemological critiques which bring into question its adequacy as a worthwhile aim of contemporary higher education. In order to discern whether higher education resources should be used to pursue this educational objective, liberal arts practitioners and supporters must identify clearly what moral education is, whether it is a facet of college student development worthy of our attention, and how to adequately measure it. This study offers a careful analysis of data related to student moral reasoning development gathered in an evaluation process of a liberal education course at a mid-sized research institution. The central research questions focus on aspects of student moral development and students' perceptions of the moral dimensions of coursework and highlight how these interact with students' abilities to receive and process course materials and activities. The research design employs a concurrent triangulation approach to quantitative and qualitative course assessment materials. James Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT), a well-researched, neo-Kolhbergian measure of moral reasoning, and student writing were analyzed in pre- and post-course evaluations to investigate students' moral reasoning development as they entered, changed and left a year-long liberal arts course. Results reveal important features of student moral growth, illuminating how students at different levels of moral reasoning development and with varying degrees of change with respect to moral reasoning engaged with liberal education course materials and activities in quite distinct ways. This is an important step in uncovering the unique aspects of liberal education that may foster and sustain moral growth. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

My aim in this work is to identify and contextualize the goals driving contemporary post-secondary education reform in New Brunswick. I do this by grounding the 2007 Advantage New Brunswick Report and New Brunswick Action Plan in the general historical context of higher education. I provide a descriptive account of the policies under review with a view to the ideals of a liberal arts education. Through a critical theory framework, I relate the contents of the policies under review to neo-liberal ideology, professional, bureaucratic and managerial hegemony. My focus is on the place of the liberal arts and humanities in a system dominated by the corporate imperatives of professionalization, specialization and bureaucratization. I propose as a response to neo-liberal policies that seek to make education instrumental to the needs of the market returning to history, philosophy and classics as the core of a liberal arts education.

Agricultural education, originally the province of land grant institutions, has recently entered the liberal arts curriculum. This represents a profound shift from the origins of agricultural education, when it was intended primarily as vocational training for future farmers, and has important implications for the future of the American food system. The first chapter of this thesis addresses the history of agricultural education: what was it originally like, and why did it come to be heavily criticized in the late twentieth century? Formal agricultural education changed significantly in response to these criticisms, making it more environmentally sustainable and bringing it into liberal arts institutions. The Pomona College Organic Farm is representative of a broader student farm movement that has gained momentum since the late 1990s, and offers the chance to evaluate agricultural education in the liberal arts. This thesis includes a curriculum in sustainable agriculture that was led as a group independent study at the Pomona College Organic Farm in fall 2013 and reflections on the process of curriculum design and implementation.

This study was designed to survey and compare current undergraduate business ethics curricular strategies and preferences among national liberal arts colleges in the United States. There are 180 national liberal arts colleges as classified by the U.S. News and World Report Rankings with a significant percentage of these liberal arts colleges offering economics and/or business administration majors. The primary purpose of the study was to examine the survey responses of business school administrators (and/or professors) who work with undergraduate business education in national liberal arts colleges regarding undergraduate business ethics education. The three research questions address curriculum approaches for undergraduate business ethics education currently in use in the national liberal arts colleges, preferences regarding specific instructional approaches to undergraduate business ethics education and preferences for the measurement of learning outcomes in business ethics education. The study utilized an online survey and resulted in a 30.55% response rate (55 responses). Results of the study indicate differences in terms of the curricular strategies (standalone business ethics courses, ethics integration throughout the curriculum, or a combination) currently being used in the national liberal arts colleges, but also that there are very similar preferences for instructional methods (case study, lecture, online, face-to-face), business ethics faculty and the measurement of learning outcomes in teaching business ethics at the undergraduate level.

Music performance anxiety (MPA) is reported in musicians of all experience, levels, and genre. However, solo classical musicians report MPA more often and at higher levels than performers in other genres because of its formal culture and traditional structure. Within solo classical musicians, collegiate training greatly differs between conservatories that award a Bachelor of Music (B.M.) and liberal arts institutions that award a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). In 2 studies, the proposed research examines the differences in general anxiety, MPA, and private lesson content between these two groups. Participants will be from the two groups of types of collegiate music students. In Study 1, participants will take the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Kenny Music Performance Anxiety Inventory (K-MPAI), and a Personal and Musical Background Questionnaire (PMBQ) at 3 times intervals before a public, solo performance in order to assess general connections between anxiety and MPA. In Study 2, participants will partake in weekly session of 1 of 3 interventions (meditation, journal entry, and biofeedback training) in order to determine an effective method for preventing and coping with MPA. Proposed results suggest higher levels of general anxiety and MPA in conservatory music students and lower levels of MPA in participants who undergo biofeedback training. Individuals who report learning about MPA strategies in their lessons will have lower levels of MPA, suggesting the need to consistently address MPA in classical music pedagogy.

<p>Writing centers and writing programs, as well as the role of their administrators, are shaped by historical and disciplinary factors that have been closely examined by scholars over the last half century. However, the role of institutionality in writing center and writing program administration (WPA) studies has been ignored in much of the scholarship about these two sub-disciplines. This dissertation examines the role of institutionality by developing a new method, relationship-mapping, as a way of understanding how the complex nature of institutional contexts impacts the work of writing centers and writing programs. Through a study of 13 small liberal arts colleges, it is determined that the factors of this specific institution type shape and transform the ways in which centers and programs develop relationships and collaborations to teach and support writing. Relationship-mapping shows promise, though, beyond small colleges and could be used at a multitude of institution types as a way to responsibly critique institutions and how they support students, as well as a way to study institutional cultures of writing. </p>

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This qualitative study explored motivational factors informing the choice to pursue graduate study among 14 first-generation Liberal Arts, college graduates from Striver, a large, urban, public university. As a graduate degree has increasingly become the common gateway for upward social mobility in U.S. society, identifying the source of this population's post-baccalaureate motivations and value assessments of an advanced degree will contribute to a broader understanding of college student aspirations and potential barriers to academic and professional success for students from first-generation backgrounds. Analysis of student narratives through the respective lenses of Eccles' et al., (1983) Expectancy-Value and Bandura's (1986) Self-Efficacy Theories yielded four major themes. The first identified the role of critical socializers in co-creating expectations for high achievement (even within lower attainment environments). The second demonstrated the prevalence of incongruous appraisals of ability (as defined by GPA and self-reported past performances) in assessments of efficacy for graduate study. The latter themes identified perceived values and costs associated with the choice process and raised further questions about access to timely and reliable information to inform these value assessments. These four emergent themes were relatively consistent with Battle and Wigfield's (2003) finding on the role of intrinsic, attainment and utility value in graduate choice, but offered a slightly nuanced understanding of what is termed here as "social impact values" and subsequent costs to post-baccalaureate choice. With institutions of higher education serving key roles in student progression from the undergraduate to graduate level, this research sought to inform future institutional approaches toward engaging and supporting first-generation college students seeking advanced degrees. Research on the choice process of graduate degree-seekers has been primarily quantitative in nature, so the present study adds a missing qualitative voice to this growing body of work. / Educational Administration

Hierarchical regression was used to determine if high school community type is an effective predictor of academic success when controlling for demographics, prior academic achievement, socioeconomic status, and current commitment or work habits for students entering Austin College in 1992,1993, and 1994 . Findings revealed that there is a relationship between attending high school in community types of rural and independent town controlling for the effects of SAT scores, high school rank, sex, and late application deposit on first semester grade point average.

The University of Piano was a private, liberal arts college with a campus in Piano, Texas and an extended campus in Frisco, Texas. The University was incorporated in 1964 under the original name of the University of Lebanon. Classes began in temporary space in downtown Dallas in 1964 and continued on its campuses in Piano and Frisco until the summer of 1976. The University of Piano was comprised of two separate schools within the University: the School of Developmental Education and the Frisco College of Arts and Sciences. This study explores the curricula of both schools and the students and faculty who participated in both programs. This study focuses on the establishment, development and final closing of a wholly privately supported university which accepted both traditional college students and students whose basic academic skills or neurological development prevented their acceptance into traditional college programs. It addresses the history of the University, the roles of its leaders, and the lasting effects of its programs.