Rebecca E. Crandall

Fostering the Pluralism Orientation of College Students through Interfaith Co-curricular Engagement

Innovative approaches aimed at helping students engage with diversity abound in higher education institutions, but an understanding of effective practice in the realm of religious and worldview diversity is limited. Based on data collected from 13,776 college students attending 52 institutions across the country, this study employs multilevel modeling to examine how informal interactions with peers of diverse worldviews and participation in interfaith activities relate to pluralism orientation. The analyses reveal that student characteristics, measures of campus climate, and both formal and informal interfaith engagement relate to pluralism orientation given controls for institution-level differences. Some relationships in the model are conditional on student religion/worldview.

Faith and LGBTQ Inclusion: Navigating the Complexities of the Campus Spiritual Climate in Christian Higher Education

ABSTRACT In an era of rapid societal change, institutions of higher education are grappling with how to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals are safe and supported on campus. Many challenges remain as LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff are subject to continued acts of discrimination and subtle microaggressions on a regular basis, according to national assessments of campus climate. When religion and spirituality are salient on campus or in the lived experiences of LGBTQ people, the complexities of faith as it intersects with sexuality and gender identity become increasingly apparent. In this essay, we portray current issues concerning the campus climate in an effort to imagine how Christian higher education leaders might respond in light of institutional aims to promote the spiritual growth of all members of their campus communities.

The academic impact of participating in college football playoff games

ABSTRACT This study uses ten years of football team data from NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) institutions to explore the academic impact of intercollegiate football playoff participation. Fixed effects regression analyses of panel data spanning the 2003–04 to 2013–14 academic years show participation in three weeks of postseason play has a negative effect on fall team GPA, though an extremely small sample size elicits concerns regarding generalizability. In contrast, analyses of Academic Progress Rate (APR), the NCAA metric for student-athlete team academic success, reveals teams participating in three weeks of playoffs contention have higher APR scores than teams not competing. The study also compares results produced through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and fixed effects regression analyses.

Women Leaders in Higher Education: Shattering the Myths by Tanya Fitzgerald

“You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men” (Woolf, 1942, p. 242). Setting the stage of her text in Virginia Woolf’s description of the professional challenges of women in 1931, Tanya Fitzgerald presents the perspectives of 30 modern-day women senior leaders in Australian and New Zealand universities. Her text, Women Leaders in Higher Education: Shattering the Myths, expands upon the metaphor of “a room of one’s own,” affording readers insight into the reasons why women seek positions in the male-dominated, highest levels of university leadership. Extending beyond the motivation of women in senior leadership roles, Fitzgerald investigates the ways in which leadership takes shape for these women. She does so by presenting their accounts in light of the gendered rules of both higher education and leadership. Throughout the text, she also includes the accounts of 25 female academic colleagues of the senior leaders—women whose viewpoints allow for a more complete understanding of the population of interest and the complexities that accompany their leadership roles. Ultimately, Fitzgerald aspires to “complicate ‘leadership’ and tease out the ambiguities, silences, and contradictions of women’s lived leadership lives” (p. 4). Organized into six chapters, Women Leaders in Higher Education: Shattering the Myths takes readers on a journey through the current state of women at the highest levels of university leadership, all the while maintaining ties to previous scholarship on women in higher education. In Chapter 1, Fitzgerald introduces readers to the overarching metaphor of “a room of one’s own” and outlines her goals for the project. She also details her methodological approach to the book and positions herself within the work by describing her own experiences and discontent with various aspects of the leadership experiences of women in higher education. Also included in the chapter is a preliminary overview of the existing climate of higher education and the corresponding challenges that this managerial context presents for women. As is the case throughout the book, Fitzgerald directs specific attention to the distinct experiences of

Advising Black Male Student-Athletes: Implications for Academic Support Programs

Abstract The overrepresentation and lack of academic success for Black male athletes on college campuses are problems that warrant attention in the 21st century. A recent report from the University of Pennsylvania shows that over the four-year period between 2007 and 2010, Black males were overrepresented in college sports (Harper, Williams, & Blackman, 2013), a startling reality considering that Black males are severely underrepresented in the general student body. Further complicating matters is the fact that Black male student-athletes do not graduate from college at rates comparable to their peers (Harper et al., 2013). Focused primarily on the experiences of Division I Black male student-athletes, this chapter begins with an overview of literature relevant to successful academic support programs. The authors also present an overview of best practices for advising African American male student-athletes, derived from athletic departments with a demonstrated record of academic success for Black males.