Thesis advisor: Ana M. Martinez-Aleman / This qualitative study employed a Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens to gather a deeper understanding the racialized experiences of students of color (SOC) at a PWI, and how these experiences impact the way in which they understand, conceptualize, and/or actualize student leadership on campus. This study presents the lived experiences of twenty-five SOC. Participants shared their experiences and perceptions through individual semi-structured interviews, with an opportunity to also participate in a focus group. Findings revealed that the ways in which participants view how race is socially constructed on campus and their encounters with normalized racism (such as their experiences with microaggressions, the lack of diversity, the negative racial climate, and the racial segregation on campus) seemed to profoundly impact participants lived experiences and perceptions. Participants in this study exhibited a strong pull towards SOC groups (both for participation and leadership expression), citing a desire to seek involvement with individuals of similar/racial and ethnic background, a responsibility to give back to their racial/ethnic group, and seeking a group that affirmed their sense of identity as some of the top reasons they joined SOC groups. However, participants’ perceptions of predominately White groups on campus, encounters with normalized racism, and the way they view student groups are valued (or undervalued) on campus seems to suggest that the campus racial climate may play a powerful role in students’ decision making around co-curricular involvement and leadership expression. The findings strongly intimate that the college campus remains a microcosm of larger society in that it continues to perpetuate normalized racism as a product of inherent (and biased structures), influencing students’ leadership perceptions and expression. This study recommends that institutions assess the racial landscape on campus in terms of perceived and actualized student leadership, be willing to engage in experimentation on different practices that will foster a greater sense of inclusivity within student leadership, and take active steps towards creating permanent inclusive change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

The ways that young people learn to engage in democratic and other mechanisms for community involvement is a product of how they are socialized into the institutions they inhabit and how they incorporate this socialization into their ongoing construction of identity. In order to become active and agentive members of their society, young people must learn to view themselves as able to productively engage in social practices and social change. Conventional schools are structured in ways that limit opportunities for marginalized students to develop agentive and active social identities. This study suggests that students may construct more agentive identities if they have opportunities to frame their life circumstances and actions in political and historical terms.This project has studied how high school students may construct expanded subject positions as a result of participating in a culturally relevant and explicitly political youth development program. The Project for Conscious Education and Activism (PCEA) incorporates critical and culturally relevant pedagogy with participatory action research. Embedded in a required senior year social studies course, the PCEA provides students a chance to perceive their roles as sociohistorical actors. This two-year ethnographic case study examined shifts in students' academic identities and social agency. Increasing identification with school subject matter fostered intellectual empowerment that often extends beyond the context of school to effect broader social identities. Findings detail the ways that participants can come to see their actions as socially and historically grounded, eventually coming to think of themselves as social actors.Conventional typologies of civic engagement tend to leave out ways that youth of color and those from poor communities resist and address debilitative social disinvestment. But neither do young people tend to think of their actions as constituting social or civic action. Many shifts in subjectivity were apparent as PCEA participants began to frame their actions as intentional intervention in social injustice, becoming "civic" attempts to improve conditions in their communities. As young people learn to see their actions in relation to political and institutional patterns, they may both expand their social agency and increasingly frame their actions as contributing to social justice.

Thesis advisor: Heather Rowan-Kenyon / Community college students comprise over 40 percent of undergraduates in the U.S. but account for less than two percent of undergraduates who study abroad (Community College Research Center, 2020; Open Doors, 2020). Additionally, students of color are overrepresented in the two-year sector (Ma & Baum, 2016). While study abroad participation has been examined in terms of which students study abroad (Barclay Hamir & Gozik, 2018; Salisbury et al., 2011) and students’ decision-making process (Luo & Jamieson-Drake, 2014; Stroud, 2010), much of this literature centers on four-year colleges and universities. Several studies have investigated the factors that influence study abroad participation at the community college level from both the student and institutional perspective (Amani, 2011; Amani & Kim, 2017; Raby, 2012, 2019, 2020; Whatley, 2018a). However, of the studies that examined study abroad participation factors from the student perspective, few interrogated how racial or ethnic identity shaped the students’ experiences throughout the study abroad decision-making process. With the exception of a handful of studies (e.g., Willis, 2012), little is known about the experiences of community college students of color who have studied abroad. This Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith et al., 2009) study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining how community college students of color navigate the study abroad decision-making process. Guided by Yosso’s (2005) Community Cultural Wealth framework, this study examined the experiences of eight community college students of color at a single community college in the Southwest. Two semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant, and data were analyzed using the IPA data analysis process (Smith et al., 2009). The findings indicate that the students in this study activated familial, linguistic, aspirational, and social capital when navigating both the study abroad decision-making process and their time abroad. The participants’ racial and ethnic identities, as well as systemic factors, influenced their decision to study abroad in particular destinations and shaped their study abroad experiences. This study offers a nuanced understanding of the experiences of community college students of color who have studied abroad and how they employ cultural wealth to overcome systemic barriers to studying abroad. Implications for higher education practice, research, and theory are offered. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

The purpose of this study was to explore the different kinds of microaggressions that students of color experienced with white faculty, including the process and outcomes of these interactions. Undergraduate students of color face fewer positive outcomes, in comparison to their white peers, such as increased attrition, lower academic self-efficacy, and feeling less connected to their campus (Tinto, 1975; Cabrera et al., 1999; Rankin & Reason, 2005). The relationship between students and faculty has been shown to have a direct impact on student’s engagement on campus and their academic self-efficacy (Komarraju, Musulkin, & Battacharya, 2010), thus implying that students of color could benefit from strong relationships with faculty. However, faculty are more likely to have lower expectations of minority students, interact with these students less frequently, and depend on racial stereotypes to develop perspectives on students (e.g., Jussim & Harbor, 2005, Trujillo, 1986, Jussim, Eccles, & Madon, 1996). Participants in this study were recruited from a mid-size Midwestern university from university-based organizations and direct contact with students in various campus locations. Experiences with microaggressions were assessed through a short answer survey, in which participants were asked to recount both a negative incident and a positive incident that involved a faculty member committing or responding to a microaggression. A Grounded Theory approach was used to analyze the data. The emergent themes from this study were categorized in terms of type of incident, proximal outcomes, distal outcomes. Relationships were also examined between the events and outcomes. Participants observed that white faculty did commit microaggressions in the classroom, involving stereotyping, dismissing derogatory comments made by other students, and treating participants differently than their white peers. These microaggressions were typically not noticed by the faculty themselves, and students often did not address them with faculty due to the faculty members’ power and influence on participants’ grades. However, participants experienced internal cognitive and emotional reactions that led to them feeling a loss of trust and respect for their faculty and institution. Students who experienced classroom microaggressions also experienced a negative impact on their academic performance, as they were less likely to attend class, participate, and seek out the faculty member for academic help after such incidents. These students also reported some positive experiences with other faculty, such as having discussions around diversity or being encouraged to be successful. Participants who experienced such positive interactions felt a stronger connection to faculty and reported that they were motivated and cared more about their coursework. These findings suggest that the interactions between faculty and students of color have an impact on students’ relationship with faculty and their academic performance, specifically when they are negative, race-related interactions such as microaggressions.

This study focused on the disciplining actions given to students of color after the implementation of the zero tolerance (ZT) policy in Texas’ schools. Out-of-school suspension and expulsion data were analyzed to depict trends and/or patterns across school levels as well as gender and race/ethnicity. More specifically, the disciplinary action of 34,047 elementary, middle and high school students of color suspended out-of-school and expelled in Texas’ public schools during the1999-2000 and 2002-2003 academic school years were statistically analyzed then evaluated via specific tenets of critical race theory (CRT). A critical policy analysis, as defined by the researcher, was discussed using the results of the data analysis. In addition, the predictive power of the variables school level, gender and race/ethnicity on the disciplinary action given to students of color were analyzed during the school terms under study. The most statistically significant finding of the study was the influence of ethnicity on out-of-school suspension and expulsion rates of students of color in the State of Texas after the implementation of the policy known as ZT during the selected school terms. Furthermore, of the students enrolled in public schools in Texas during the 1999-2000 and 2002-2003 school years, African-American students comprised 14.3 and 14.4 percent of the population; yet, they received more than one-third of all disciplining actions, second to European Americans who comprised 43 and 40 percent of the enrolled population. When compared to other students of color, African-American students received 53.6 and 53.9 percent of the out-of-school suspensions and 64.3 and 65.1 of the expulsions. Even though the data presented were aligned with previous research studies, the view of disciplinary actions for students of color from a critical race theory (CRT) lens highlights the deficiencies outlined via a critical policy analysis of the ZT policy as it is used to fortify the safety of schools.

The achievement gap is still an epidemic in America and many schools struggle with identifying the reasons that their students of color are not achieving at the same rates as their White peers. This review of the literature uncovers some of these reasons and gives counselors ideas for how they can help these students achieve appropriately. Throughout the literature the disproportionate ratio between the overwhelming majority of White school counselors and educators and the growing number of students of color is clear, meaning that Whites in educator roles are over-represented compared to the demographics of the student body. Also, it is evident that the education that counselors have received in the past, and are still receiving, has been lacking in multicultural competency standards. These are just a few of the reasons for the emotional disconnect that students of color feel with the education system and counselors in particular, which makes the job of the counselor difficult when trying to help all children be successful, as is mandated by the American School Counselor Association and NCLB. The literature suggests that White school counselors can become multiculturally competent and can improve school climates to embrace diverse cultures, which in turn increases the chances of student success. Counselors are important change agents in schools and can help to close the achievement gap. / text

This work is a case study focused on the practices of a comprehensive college access program that serves students in south Los Angeles that has maintained a high school graduation rate of 100% and a college matriculation rate of 98% since 1997. This study sought to utilize the voice and experience of students of color to discern the factors that are most effective in helping urban students of color and in turn, inform the future work of the college access community. The study was driven by the following research questions: a) which practices of a south Los Angeles college access program most impact a student's ability to matriculate to college? and b) How can the epistemology of urban students inform the work of college access programs? Through observations, interviews, journal exercises and document review, this study ranked the practices in order of importance according to the participants, and identified that structure and accountability are essential to the success of this college access program. In addition, the study revealed that the students of this program succeed academically because the program, provides students with structure, access and guidance; because it immerses its students in a college-going culture; because it offers access to academic and cultural resources; because it sets high academic expectations; because it engages the family of origin and creates a family within the program; and because it enhances the self-concept of its students: college access programs see students as scholars. Using funds of knowledge as a framework, this study also introduced the original term, “masked epistemologies” which refers to the shared experiences of college access students once they enter college. The concept of masked epistemologies refers to the experience of students who enter college via a college access program, who go on to feel like her ways of knowing, shaped by the unique experience of being a high achieving student participant of a college access program from an urban setting, are disregarded in the new, unknown terrain of college, and must be masked or concealed, only to be revealed in environments considered safe. The students’ epistemologies go from being highly praised and admired, to being ignored to the point of invisibility. This study found that students of this college access program struggle with adapting to the social realm of college because they have not been exposed to class differences throughout their tenure in the program.

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The purpose of the study was to compare a freshman cohort of first and non first-generation college students enrolled in an urban university and to identify characteristics that distinguish the two groups in terms of selected demographics, pre-college behaviors and beliefs (expectations and personal traits). Moreover, the study sought to identify variables whose distribution indicated a significant difference between the two groups and rank those variables by order of the strength of association. Data analysis for this study consisted of a combination of chi-square and descriptive discriminate analysis using logistic regression. Chi-square analysis was the preliminary statistical procedure used in this study. I relied on a sequence of chi-square analyses to help identify a list of statistically significant variables to be used in the subsequent descriptive discriminate logistic regression model. Descriptive discriminate analysis was used because its primary function is designed to reveal projected differences among groups (Huberty, 1994). The results revealed seven important characteristics (Reading for pleasure (Hpw0111), Household income (Income), Asked teacher for advise (Act0114), Rate computer skills (Rate0103), Get a bachelor's degree (Futact11), Change major field of study (Futact01) and Obtain recognition by colleague (Goal0103) were commonly statistically significant student characteristics across all race/ethnicity groups, and three (Gain a general education (Reason05), High school grade point average (HSGPA) and Felt overwhelmed (Act0110) were unique to one or some of the groups. These variables can also be viewed as predictors that help identify the likelihood that a student is first-generation. Results of this study had implications for the practice of high school guidance counselors, student and academic affairs practitioners and specifically support services personnel and financial aid officers. / Ph. D.

Demographics in American urban cities have been steadily changing over the last few decades and are on their way to becoming more ethnically diverse than ever. Cities in the southwestern region of the United States are increasingly becoming primarily Latino (Mellom, Straubhaar, Balderas, Ariail, & Portes, 2018). This demands the need for a reflective and critical view of the schooling system in this region and how it serves the needs of the Latino communities. This dissertation makes a case for the need to push against mainstream educational practices that are imposed on school systems by lawmakers, capitalist corporations, and philanthropist, and looks instead to the educators of color, more specifically to Latina principals, who work hand in hand with teachers and families in working-class Latino schools. This proposal calls for the development of a critical consciousness by educators of color as a grassroots change effort to heal the dehumanization that these educators have themselves suffered as a result of their experiences in American school (Annamma & Morrison, 2018). Educators have a responsibility to support students in the development of voice and participation in ways consistent with a democratic social order. This requires educators committed to the amelioration of oppression and the formation of an educated and empowered citizenry. Through examining the perceptions of bicultural principals who are aware of this dilemma and involved in the mentorship of bicultural educators, the study sought to identify what practices and understandings are needed in working-class Latino schools to support educators and students of color to deal with the duality of their biculturalism, which can have a negative impact on the academic achievement of Latino students. Similarly, the study brought to light the emancipatory approaches that conscious Latina principals utilize when engaging with bicultural teachers who teach bicultural students from working-class communities The goal was not to create another superimposed reform effort that closes the “achievement gap” of students of color, but to instead, close the “critical consciousness gap” that affects many educators of color, so that they can in turn create emancipatory pedagogical centers in majority minority urban schools.