Paul D. Umbach

Student Experiences with Diversity at Liberal Arts Colleges: Another Claim for Distinctiveness

This study explores the relationship between organizational and individual characteristics and diversity-related experiences at liberal arts colleges. Compared with their counterparts at other types of institutions, students at liberal arts colleges report more experiences with diversity. In addition, this study also finds that diversity experiences are positively related with a variety of student outcomes.

Institutional Selectivity and Good Practices in Undergraduate Education: How Strong is the Link?

Academic selectivity plays a dominant role in the publics understanding of what constitutes institutional excellence or quality in undergraduate education. In this study, we analyzed two independent data sets to estimate the net effect of three measures of college selectivity on dimensions of documented good practices in undergraduate education. With statistical controls in place for important confounding influences, an institutions median student SAT/ACT score, a nearly identical proxy for that score, and the Barrons Selectivity Score explained from less than 0.1% to 20% of the between-institution variance and from less than 0.1% to 2.7% of the total variance in good practices. The implications of these findings for what constitutes quality in undergraduate education, college choice decisions, and the validity of national college rankings are discussed.

Women Students at Coeducational and Women's Colleges: How Do Their Experiences Compare?

This study compared the experiences of women attending womens colleges with those of women attending coeducational institutions. Analyses of data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) from random samples of female first-year and senior students from 26 womens colleges and 264 other four-year institutions were conducted. Women at single-sex institutions were more engaged in effective educational practices and reported higher levels of feelings of support and greater gains in college. With regard to the effect of different backgrounds on college experiences, transfer students at womens colleges were as engaged or more engaged than students who start at and graduate from the same school, and students of color tended to be less engaged than White students.

Why Do More Women than Men Want to Earn a Four-Year Degree?: Exploring the Effects of Gender, Social Origin, and Social Capital on Educational Expectations

We test the assumption that peer and/or familial influences are partially responsible fore the expectation gender gap, and examine the differences in this gap by race/ethnicity. We find that the effects of social capital differ by gender but that the gender gap in expectations does not differ by race.

Scholar, Steward, Spanner, Stranger: The Four Career Paths of College Presidents.

Would recruiting presidential candidates from nontraditional sources increase the gender and ethnic diversity of college presidents? Based on data from American Council on Education surveys, this study develops four career trajectories to the presidency and how they are related to the demographic and professional backgrounds of presidential incumbents in different types of institutions. The study suggests how presidential aspirants and higher educational institutions may increase the gender and ethnic diversity of the pool from which successful; applicants are selected.

Faculty and Academic Environments: Using Holland's Theory to Explore Differences in How Faculty Structure Undergraduate Courses.

Variation in how faculty in disparate theory-based academic environments design and structure their undergraduate courses to promote student learning in 12 areas was examined. The findings suggest that faculty create distinctive academic environments that reinforce and reward their preferred patterns of student competencies in a manner consistent with Hollands theory. Implications of the findings for faculty, student affairs professionals, and other campus leaders responsible for student learning are discussed.

Faculty Cultures and College Teaching

College faculty members work and live in a web of varying cultures, all of which influence their work with undergraduates in and out of the classroom. In this chapter, I explore the influence that various faculty cultures (professional, institutional, and disciplinary) have on how faculty teach and interact with students. I begin by defining culture and its manifestations followed by a discussion of research on faculty subcultures. I then propose a model for studying faculty cultures as they relate to teaching and use my work and the work of others as examples of the effects of cultural contexts on teaching. Finally, I conclude by describing the implications that this research and the conceptual model have for practice and future research

Pedagogical Approaches Used by Faculty in Holland's Model Environments: The Role of Environmental Consistency.

This study examines the extent to which faculty members in the disparate academic environments of Hollands theory devote different amounts of time in their classes to alternative pedagogical approaches and whether such differences are comparable for those in “consistent” and “inconsistent” environments. The findings show wide variations in the use of alternative pedagogical approaches among faculty members in four of the academic environments of Hollands theory based on the level of consistency or inconsistency in the environmental profiles of these environments. The implications of these findings for future research using Hollands theory to understand longitudinal patterns of change and stability in the attitudes, interests, and abilities of college students as well as variability in the patterns of professional attitudes and behaviors of college faculty are discussed. Attention is also devoted to the policy development and practical implications of these findings for careers counselors and other college and university leaders.

Bounded Aspirations: Rural, African American High School Students and College Access

Abstract:This qualitative case study explores the career and educational aspirations, college choice process, and college barriers and opportunities of 26 rural, African American high school students. Data included interviews with 26 students and 11 school staff members. Findings suggest that the students’ rural context shapes aspirations. In addition, students have emotional support and motivation to attend college from their family members and schools, but the students did not always have the “know how” to prepare for college. Finally, students described financial and academic preparedness barriers for college, but they also mentioned grades and teenage pregnancy as potential barriers for college.

Unique Campus Contexts: Insights for Research and Assessment (review)

incentives; the convergence of academic and professional fields of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries; state oversight and assessment typified by accountability mandates, quality controls, and resource delivery; and technological advances that transform graduate study and professional practice” (p. 99). About the first of these mechanisms, GlazerRaymo states that the master’s degree has been the American university’s “most successful export” (p. 99). But the United States is not without competition. As she points out, the European University Association has agreed to replace current degree programs by 2010 with “a single model combining a three-year baccalaureate and a two-year master’s degree” (p. 99). Where the European university once was reserved for society’s elites, the European Union is now pushing institutions toward greater inclusion and diversity, matching those of American institutions. On the second point, Glazer-Raymo states that professional master’s degrees predominate, “having long since overtaken the arts and sciences as terminal credentials that connect more directly with the workplace” (p. 35). But graduate education in the arts and sciences is changing. She cites, among many examples, the professional science master’s (PSM) promulgated by the Sloan Foundation. The PSM is “a freestanding terminal degree for scientists seeking nonacademic careers” (p. 59). Glazer-Raymo notes that the Sloan Foundation has funded PSM degree tracks at forty-five institutions with the motive that “gaining acceptance at the top tier of research university science and mathematics departments would enhance the status of the degree” (p. 59). She describes similar market-driven degree programs in other fields. Most of these programs attempt to acknowledge, as a Modern Language Association committee (2003) did with respect to languages and literature, “that graduates increasingly enter careers in the ‘business, government, and not-for-profit . . . sector’” (qtd. on p. 78). In making her third point, Glazer-Raymo cites state legislative demands for quality assurance that increasingly are “being linked to tuition increases, financial aid, faculty collective bargaining, and capital expenditures” (p. 105). One institutional response has been to adopt for-profit marketing strategies. Consistent with her theme, Glazer-Raymo believes that “the lines are blurring between for-profit and not-for-profit centers of graduate education” (p. 105). “For those who study professionalism,” she concludes, “these changes also reflect a shift in the trajectory from gatekeeping to credentialism, that is, from restricting the supply of practitioners and striving for positions of public respect and influence to raising the collective mobility and status of occupational groups” (p. 105). Finally, in reference to the fourth point, the author writes about technological advances, such as distance learning and the proliferation of online degree programs, as overcoming economic and geographic barriers to graduate education. Glazer-Raymo offers a cogent, readable study of the American master’s degree. As today’s marketplace truly is global, however, it would have been helpful to learn more about graduate education trends elsewhere. The author provides some information about European developments that are resonating in American higher education but, unfortunately, entirely omits higher education initiatives in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia. Large numbers of today’s Asian graduate students travel to the United States to earn their degrees, but the Asian universities are advancing rapidly. Some comparative insights into this area would have provided a broader understanding of the professionalizing of American graduate education.