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Sponsored Projects

What a Difference a Decade Makes: A Cohort Study of Multicultural Affairs Administrators

Preston W. Hicks, PhD
Director of Development for Health and Human Services College, Western Michigan University

American higher education’s most chronicled initiatives tend to involve campus diversity. Institutions having made the greatest advances toward becoming multicultural tend to have superior presidential leadership and sustained collaboration between faculty, staff, students, and other stakeholders. Inasmuch as title elucidate roles and responsibilities, multicultural affairs administrators are central to the pursuit of student affairs’ diversity initiatives, and increasingly so to the pursuit of broader institution diversity goals. Despite the institutionalization of multicultural affairs offices, attendant discourse, and palpable social frictions, the study of multicultural affairs administrators precipitously lags.

This study engages a cohort of multicultural affairs administrators through interviews in 1997, and 2007, with the cohorts’ successors being interviewed in 2007. Interviews explore roles, responsibilities, relationships, organization, and campus ethos. Organizational Studies literature informs the development of conceptual frameworks. Emergent themes include motivation, management and leadership styles, change, power, influence, organizational culture, meritocracy, and marginalization. Analysis of data will be followed by recommendations.

The National Study of Living Learning Programs: Continuing the Study to Examine Long-Term Outcomes and Best Practices

Karen Kurotsuchi Inkelas, PhD
Associate Professor, University of Maryland, College Park

The National Study of Living-Learning Programs (NSLLP) includes three goals:

1. Continue to assess the L/L environments that stimulate student learning, achievement, and development. The 2007 NSLLP included the participation of over 22,000 undergraduates at 49 universities across the United States. Half of the respondents participated in one of 617 different living-learning programs represented in the NSLLP; the other half comprised a comparison sample of students living in a residence hall but not participating in a living-learning program. Both student-level data using the NSLLP survey instrument and program-level data on the various structural elements of the L/L programs were collected.

2. Examine whether L/L participation in the first year of college has a long-term impact on students' learning and cognitive growth throughout their college years. In addition to investigating L/L students at new sites, the project followed-up with respondents from the 2004 NSLLP, when the majority of those students will be seniors in college. The longitudinal follow-up study included 1,509 students on 16 different college campuses. This facet of the project can elucidate whether innovative experiences like L/L programs not only have an immediate impact on students, but also an enduring influence on higher learning and intellectual growth.

3. Identify exemplary L/L programs as well as components of L/L programs that can be replicated to maximize L/L effectiveness in multiple contexts.Using the data collected in 2007, the NSLLP project selected four institutions whose survey data reveal high-performing L/L programs for campus site visits. Through structured interviews, student focus groups, document analysis, site observations, and other case study data collection techniques, the project learned more about the program designs, physical spaces, and administrative oversight of these model practices during Spring 2008. The intention of this design element is to identify both processes that are proven to be empirically effective and exemplars for excellence among L/L programs.

The Impact of Parental Involvement on College Students' Development of Life Purpose, Mature Interpersonal Relationships, Academic Autonomy, and the Establishment of Healthy Lifestyles

Zaneeta E. Daver, NASPA 
Brad Harmon, University of Georgia
Sheri King, University of Georgia  
Jen Meyers, University of Maryland
Lydia McDonald, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences 
Lynette Merriman, University of Southern California
Richard Mullendore, University of Georgia
Patricia A. Rissmeyer, Emmanuel College, Massachusetts
Marjorie Savage,  University of Minnesota
Joyce Shotick, Kettering University
Carolyn Stirling, University of Southern California
Angela Watson, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth

Using Alexander Astin's (2001) input-environment-outcome college impact model as a conceptual framework, the purpose of this longitudinal study is to examine the impact of parental involvement on development of life purpose, mature interpersonal relationships, academic autonomy, and the establishment of healthy lifestyles in traditional age college students, using a national sample of U.S. college students and their parents at a diverse set of higher education institutions.  The research seeks to address the following questions:

1. How (in what ways) are parents involved in their students' lives?
2. How often (level) are parents involved in their students' lives? 
3. For what reasons are parents in involved in their students' lives?
4. Does institutional strategy affect how, when, and for what reasons a parents is involved with their students' lives?
5. Do development of life purpose, mature interpersonal relationships, academic autonomy, and the establishment of healthy lifestyles increase while a student is in college?
6. Do different types of parental involvement influence college students' development of life purpose, mature interpersonal relationships, academic autonomy, and the establishment of healthy lifestyles to varying degrees?
7. Which types of parental involvements, after controlling for background and pre-college characteristics, best predict development of life purpose, mature interpersonal relationships, academic autonomy, and the establishment of healthy lifestyles in college students?

National Survey of Programs and Services for Active Military and Veteran Students

American Council on Education (ACE)
Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges (SOC)
NASPA - Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education
National Association of Veteran Program Administrators (NAVPA)

Due to the recent enactment of the GI Bill, a significant influx of veterans beginning in the 2009 fall semester is expected.  While providing additional financial support is part of the answer to the question of how to best serve active-duty military and veterans, it is understood that they will need additional support.  In order to help colleges and universities prepare for this influx, the first national survey to identify institutional policies and practices that affect the enrollment, persistence, and academic success of our nation's active-duty military and veterans, is being administered.