<p> This quantitative correlational non-experimental study examines some major implications of student loan debt that Hispanics face upon graduation from institutions of higher learning. It provides both descriptive and correlational statistics to help view how Hispanics differ from non-Hispanics graduate students in their plight to live the American dream of social mobility. Hispanics now represent over 50 million and are the fastest growing (43% between the 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census) segment of the U.S. population. </p><p> The belief that gaining a college degree will enhance social mobility may in fact impede it, or at least, delay it for Hispanics. With the increase in borrowing to gain college access, Hispanic families may face financial constraints impeding social mobility. This study explores the surveys conducted (2008&ndash;2012) by the National Center for Education Statistics and consisting of approximately 13,500 students in postsecondary schools across the United States. The statistical analysis suggests that for Hispanic student graduates in higher education there may be a relationship between student loan debt and financial difficulties, including home affordability, getting married, and having children. The analysis explores the differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanics along these four dimensions. </p><p> Additionally, this study suggests several leadership practices as a way of influencing initiatives that may help address student loan debt for Hispanics. Recommendations for additional research include assessing measures that address the rise in borrowing by Hispanic graduates.</p>

<p> Based on indicators of educational achievement in the United States, Latinos have lagged behind most other demographic groups. This study explored Latino students&rsquo; social identity through a qualitative research design that privileged student voice as a vehicle to addressing educational disparities. The research design employed a phenomenological approach within the framework of practitioner research to explore students&rsquo; constructions of identity in reference to school in one suburban community. Research has shown that students&rsquo; experiences and sense of social identity can have significant impacts on academic performance (Aronson &amp; Good, 2002; Moya, 2002; 2009; Steele &amp; Aronson, 1995; Steele, Spencer, &amp; Aronson, 2002). As a Latino school district leader who desires to improve practice by better understanding Latino students in a suburban school setting in which they have a minority presence, in this study I created a forum where students could speak to their experiences and reality in that setting. This study&rsquo;s conceptual framework was grounded in the following areas of scholarship: social identity theory, critical race theory, and the concepts of student voice. Data collection included interviews, focus groups, and identity mapping with 15 high school participants. The study resulted in four main findings: Latino students feel stigmatized and isolated; they perceived and replicated racial microaggressions; there are elements of school they appreciate; and institutional practices create and support bias. This study is only a start to a fuller review and exploration of these themes at the school level. For such conversations to be productive, students&rsquo; voices must be included.</p>

Notions of Widening Participation to Higher Education are characterised by perceptions of an inherent "goodness" for (Western) democracy. This is based around a premise that predicates social justice upon access to education to ensure sufficient preparation for successful participation in the Knowledge Economy. This correlation between social justice, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy can be identified as part of the neoliberal ideology that has underpinned political, economic and subsequent educational policies and practices with a rigorous promotion of the Free Market. This thesis examines Widening Participation as a mechanism through which neoliberal ideology has enabled the development of a market model of Higher Education. To understand this, a range of conceptual apparatus is utilised to reframe the common perceptions of what Widening Participation is and what purpose it has, by establishing Widening Participation as a critical part of the discourse relating to the commodification of Higher Education. The proposition of neoliberal Widening Participation is examined through the lens of Commodity Fetishisation (Marx), Educational Fundamentalism (Alvesson) and Stultification (Rancière). Together, these theories form a framework to understand the narratives surrounding the conceptualisation of Widening Participation within neoliberal ideology. These narratives are argued here to have cultivated expectations for a consumerist student population through the transformation of the perceived benefits of a traditional Higher Education into reified concepts of pedagogical practice. As such, Widening Participation is positioned here as a way in which the saturation of Higher Education was justified as social justice. This Widening Participation positions learners and teachers within a Higher Education that is part of a Debt Economy expressed as a Knowledge Economy. The result is a role for neoliberal Widening Participation in propagating pedagogical myths that Rancière describes as suppressing Intellectual Emancipation even when appearing to be facilitating it.

<p> The purpose of this case study was to evaluate a multi-campus university program designed to support STEM faculty in redesigning bottleneck courses, with integration of technology as one strategy. Despite the positive student learning outcomes in course redesign programs with an aim to support faculty in technology integration, there remains a need to evaluate how technology integration professional development (PD) programs impact faculty instructional practice, and determine the effectiveness of these programs in that effort. </p><p> This study researched the California State University (CSU) Office of the Chancellor Course Redesign with Technology (CRT) Program, and employed the logic model of program evaluation to document the activities of the PD program to study the impact of the activities on what faculty learned about technology and their application of the program to develop instructional strategies that incorporate technology. Data were collected from the first two academic years of the CRT program (2013-2014 and 2014-2015) and frameworks related to andragogy as well as the theories of Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK), Diffusion of Innovation, and Communities of Practice frameworks were used to analyze archived professional development training content and faculty-produced electronic portfolios. </p><p> The findings reveal that while the training content focused on simple technology adoption, most course redesigns involved changes in technology and instructional strategies in which faculty sought to understand students&rsquo; challenges, support scientific thinking of course content, and enhance reflective teaching practices. This investigation showed strong, significant, and positive relationships among high levels of technology integration, awareness of innovation characteristics, and faculty collaboration in course redesigns. High occurrences of these variables were also significantly associated with grade point average increases in course redesigns. This study&rsquo;s findings and methodology have the potential to inform the development and evaluation of further efforts to redesign university courses using technology.</p>

<p> An increasing number of women are returning to school as nontraditional students to complete their bachelor&rsquo;s degrees. These women may have specific needs related to life transitions and re-entry into postsecondary education that traditional students do not. The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the experiences of women who are nontraditional students, including their everyday supports and challenges. The guiding research question for this study was: Upon identifying the challenges for women at a branch campus, what changes can the university make to better serve the women? Study participants included 12 students currently enrolled in a bachelor&rsquo;s program in social work. Participants also included four university social work faculty and five campus administrators from the study site. A participatory action research methodology was used to collect data from multiple stakeholders. Interviews with social work faculty and university center and branch campus administrators were conducted. Data were coded using open and axial coding. NVivo 11 was employed to help facilitate the coding of the data for the study in order to assure accuracy in identifying common themes. The two main themes to emerge from this study were Experiences and Challenges. Participants&rsquo; experiences included personal and academic. Personal challenges that the women described included abuse, childcare, and health. The two forms of abuse described were substance abuse and domestic abuse, and the health subthemes included personal and family issues. Women&rsquo;s academic challenges included finances, academic writing, and class schedules. Study results may be used to raise stakeholders&rsquo; awareness of students&rsquo; needs, explore and change university processes, and develop workshops to assist nontraditional female students with career development and financial literacy.</p>

<p> Student retention is considered a complex human behavior. Adding to the complex nature of student retention is the ever changing landscape of higher education due in large part to the growth of Hispanic undergraduate student enrollment on college campuses. While notable gains have been made increasing the number of Hispanic students graduating from high school and going on to college, little progress has been made in increasing the college graduation rate of this group. Narrative inquiry and autoethnography methods were used in this study to explore the family background and lived experiences of the researcher along with those of a sample population of 19 current and former Hispanic undergraduate students of a private Christian university. Tinto&rsquo;s Theory of Student Departure (1993) served as a theoretical framework for this study because it was well suited for exploring student persistence as longitudinal process impacted by a multitude of institutional factors, external influences, family background characteristics, and student attributes. Primary data was collected using demographic questionnaires, individual interviews, focus groups, and reflective journaling. Several common themes emerged from data analysis and interpretation which shed light on the topic of Hispanic undergraduate retention at a private Christian university. The emerging themes from this study were comprised of: family, family support, motivation, religion, transition, institutional support, and supportive relationships. These themes point toward a connection between a student&rsquo;s family background, individual skills and abilities, and pre-college academic readiness to the development of initial academic goals and commitments to earn a college degree. This study provided evidence that the cultural beliefs, values, and language reflected in the emerging themes converge with the cultural elements of the university in a way indicating connections between students and institutions were important determinates of student success. The findings revealed that a university&rsquo;s ability to effectively engage and retain Hispanic students may be a function of a broad and supportive network of persons dedicated to the success of minority students throughout the university. This study provided evidence that supportive relations provided by agents of the institution and sources external to the university played a major role in a participant&rsquo;s educational journey. </p>

<p> The current study is a replication and extension of Wilson and Ryan (2013), the goal of which study was to reduce the size of the 34-item Professor-Student Rapport Scale via principal components analysis. In light of several shortcomings of their methods, including use of an inadequate sample size, we sought to determine whether or not the two factors were replicable. An exploratory factor analysis conducted using an adequately large sample (>300) failed to replicate the factor structure previously found. Instead, we describe the emergence of two new factors: &ldquo;Professor Cares about Students&rdquo; and &ldquo;Professor Creates an Engaging and Constructive Atmosphere.&rdquo; The new factor-structure exhibited adequate model fit in a confirmatory factor analysis (<i>N</i> > 300) and significantly predicted five of the six student and course outcomes examined through multiple linear regressions (<i>N</i> >= 109 for all regression analyses). Importantly, in addition to methodological improvements, our results appear to have produced two factors &ndash; &ldquo;Professor Cares about Students&rdquo; and &ldquo;Professor Creates an Engaging and Constructive Atmosphere&rdquo; &ndash; that better capture the broader construct of professor-student rapport than did the previously identified factors. Implications of our findings for instructors wishing to establish rapport with their students are discussed, as are directions for future studies and remaining problems for the scale not addressed by the current research (namely, a need for discriminant validity). </p>

<p> The low employment rates of individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) are a major concern. In 2011 only 34% of adults with ID were employed compared to 76% of adults without disabilities (Siperstein, Parker, &amp; Drascher, 2013). Higher educational attainment is associated with higher employment rates for students with ID (Smith, Grigal, &amp; Sulewski, 2013). postsecondary education has been shown to increase employment (Carnevale, Rose, &amp; Cheah, 2013). Increasingly postsecondary education is becoming an option for individuals with ID. </p><p> This study examines the effect of postsecondary education on employment and earnings for individuals with ID and the effect of state variation on those outcomes. Research hypotheses were developed from Human Capital and Social Capital Theories. </p><p> This dissertation employed secondary data analysis of the Rehabilitation Services Administration&rsquo;s RSA 911 from 2008 through 2013 to examine the effect of postsecondary education on employment for individuals served by state Vocational Rehabilitation Service Agencies. The RSA 911 includes variables on attendance of postsecondary education, employment outcomes, earnings, as well as individual and demographic information. Additional economic and state level demographic and policy variables were added to the dataset. Multi-level modeling techniques were used to understand state variation, such as various economic and programmatic features that influence outcomes. Those outcomes for those individuals with ID who had postsecondary education were compared to those who did not. </p><p> This study found postsecondary education improves odds of employment, increases weekly earnings, and decreases reliance on SSI benefits for individuals with ID. In addition, postsecondary education increases their odds of obtaining employment in positions not typically held by individuals with ID. Gender, race, cost of services, and the receipt of Medicaid moderate these results, but when all these factors are included the results are that postsecondary education increases the odds of employment more than twice that of an individual with ID without postsecondary education. </p><p> This research provides greater understanding of the effects of postsecondary education for individuals with ID and its effect on employment and earnings. This research informs policy makers by examining ways to increase employment and earnings for individuals with ID through postsecondary education.</p>

<p> Gambling disorder is a behavioral addiction that disproportionally affects college students as a population group and can disrupt college careers. While gambling disorder has not traditionally been one that institutions of higher education have addressed, the rapid growth of legalized gambling in the United States and the resulting widespread availability and acceptability of gambling in general have led to calls for policies and programs to prevent the negative consequences that even mild to moderate gambling disorder can cause. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine the stage of readiness of a university campus community to address the issue of students&rsquo; disordered gambling, to identify the barriers and needs of the community prior to the implementation of disordered gambling prevention on campus, and to explore the reliability of using the Community Readiness Tool (Oetting, 2014) as a repeated measure tool over time to appraise changes in levels of community readiness, particularly when re-interviewing the same key informants. </p><p> Eleven mid-level university administrators participated in the study. Each participant was interviewed using an adapted version of the CRT. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and scored according to the standard scoring procedures. Grounded theory analysis was used for the purpose of identifying barriers and needs of the community not fully captured by the CRT. The results indicated an overall lack of awareness of problem gambling as a higher education issue. Eight barriers and nine needs emerged from the qualitative analysis. To examine the use of the CRT as a repeated measure, four participants were re-interviewed one year after their initial interview, and scores were compared to both their own original scores and the scores of a second cohort of participants who were interviewed only once but at the same time. There were no significant differences in overall CRT scores from time 1 to time 2, or between the two cohorts of participants. Implications for appropriate prevention programming and future research are discussed.</p>

<p> Certain coaches seem to have a basic blueprint for success that consistently puts them at the forefront of their respective industries. Within this blueprint are various components of leadership. The purpose of this study was to identify how successful NCAA Division I baseball coaches understand their roles and responsibilities as leaders in a higher education context. Eight NCAA Division I college baseball coaches were interviewed. Each guided his respective program to at least three regional playoffs over an 11 year span (2005&ndash;2015). A qualitative analysis indicated two major themes, and one minor theme. The two major themes were Winning and Coach as CEO, and the minor theme was Need for Personal Life. First, the coaches recognized that their main responsibility was to win. Before the team can win collectively, each member of the program had to win individually. Second, as the CEO of the organization, coaches understood that it was their responsibility to create a culture of winning throughout their program. This was done by setting high expectations for assistant coaches, and focusing on the overall development of student-athletes. One of the main challenges in strengthening a culture of winning was the entitled beliefs and behaviors of student-athletes. Third, coaches realized that in order to truly be a successful leader, they had to balance their personal and professional responsibilities.</p>