Innovative Higher Education最新文献

Stress levels are high among college students in the United States. Growth mindset and stress-is-enhancing mindset interventions offer ways to reduce stress, but minimal research has examined them. This study’s aim was to examine the effect of mindset interventions on mindsets, stress, academic motivation, and responses to hypothetical academic scenarios. Participants included 210 college students who were randomized to one of four groups: growth mindset (intelligence is malleable), stress mindset (stress is beneficial), synergistic (intelligence is malleable, and stress is beneficial), or control (brain functions). The growth mindset and the synergistic mindset group increased in growth mindset, and the growth mindset group had higher growth mindset than the stress mindset and control group post-intervention. The stress mindset and the synergistic group increased in stress-is-enhancing mindset, and both groups had higher stress-is-enhancing mindsets than the growth mindset and control group post-intervention. All groups decreased in stress and increased in academic motivation. The synergistic group was the only group to improve on all the main outcomes, and students in this group were less likely to want to withdraw from a course in both negative hypothetical academic scenarios (if they failed an assignment or were faced with a professor with a fixed mindset). Our findings suggest that students would benefit from increased access to mindset interventions.

Research article publication is often considered a critical indicator of academic institutions' success and productivity. It improves the institution's reputation, attracts talented students and faculty members, and increases the institution's chances of receiving funding opportunities from different funding agencies. This paper provides a reliable and sustainable methodology for improving the quality and quantity of research article publications for engineering institutions in India. The various tools, techniques, and initiatives that promote research culture and improve its outcome in terms of research papers are also discussed. A case study of Pimpri Chinchwad College of Engineering (PCCOE), Pune, India, depicts how predictive, prescriptive, descriptive, and diagnostic data analytics approaches help to identify the barriers in the research article publications in academic institutions and provides the ways to overcome them. It also helps to set the publication targets and develop the path to perceive the targets. The outcomes and effectiveness of the case study are discussed using the papers published in Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases. The challenges, opportunities, and recommendations are also provided for the smooth and effective implementation of the developed methodologies.

Administrators and faculty at many colleges and universities are dedicated to making the faculty hiring process fair and equitable. One program that has shown promise is to train and appoint a Diversity Advocate (DA) to serve on each faculty search and screen committee. In this study, we created and examined the early stages of a DA program at a single institution. After undergoing special training, the DA works on the search committee to encourage best practices and to discourage schemas and stereotypes from interfering with the process. Our DA program differs from some in that efforts are made to train DAs who are demographically in the majority, work in the area where the search is taking place, and have earned tenure or promotion. Training those who are demographically in the majority helps meet our goal of broadening the responsibility for evidence-based and equitable hiring practices across faculty members. While reliable data on hiring outcomes is not yet available, we developed a survey to evaluate the DA training and conducted focus groups to understand the DA experience better. Our results highlight how DAs intervened in the search process to make it more equitable. The interventions included encouraging the use of best practices, such as leading the committee in creating a rubric for evaluating candidates and intervening when bias was present. Our study provides evidence that a DA program is one way to expand the pool of faculty committed to inclusive excellence.

Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Islamophobia became increasingly visible across the U.S, impacting anyone perceived to be Muslim. Despite being named after a religion, Islamophobia is a racial ideology predominantly targeting people of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian (MENASA) descent. In this qualitative study, the author explores how MENASA students navigated their college campuses in the period shortly following the 2016 election through examining the ways in which MENASA-focused cultural centers provided spaces of inclusion and belonging. The findings suggest that processes of racial formation and panethnic identity formation influenced the experiences of MENASA students in this period. Students demonstrated both a clear sense of racialization outside of whiteness, and the beginnings of panethnic identity formation across groups. These findings are situated in the particular temporal context of college-aged adults who both experienced 9/11 as young children and the 2016 presidential election in early adulthood.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of the UCSF Summer Student Research Program (SSRP) in enhancing research-related skills, academic outcomes, and post-baccalaureate aspirations of underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM undergraduate students in biomedical sciences and STEM fields. The SSRP, spanning 9 weeks, provides immersive research experiences, structured mentorship, trainings, seminars, and STEM education. Pre- and post-program survey data from eight cohorts (N = 315) were analyzed using paired-sample t-tests, MANOVA, and content analysis. Results demonstrate significant gains in critical thinking skills, research abilities, science identity, applied science skills, and readiness for a research career. Notably, participants exhibited improvements in understanding the research process, scientific thinking, science writing, and problem-solving. URM and non-URM students experienced similar gains, highlighting the program’s inclusivity. The SSRP also positively influenced students’ postgraduate aspirations. Some participants expressed heightened interest in pursuing Master of Arts, Ph.D., and M.D. degrees, indicating increased clarity and motivation towards advanced education and research careers. Furthermore, 87% of participants expressed a high likelihood of engaging in future research endeavors, underscoring the program’s sustained impact on research interest. This study underscores the transformative potential of a well-structured, intensive summer research program in significantly enhancing academic outcomes for URM and non-URM students alike. These findings align with the persistence framework, emphasizing the importance of early research experiences, active learning, and learning communities in fostering student success. The SSRP’s effectiveness in improving research skills and post-baccalaureate aspirations suggests its potential in diversifying the STEM fields, biomedical sciences and health-related professions.

The purpose of this study was to understand what personal, environmental, and experiential aspects of undergraduate sorority engagement promote relational leadership development. A robust literature review and theories of relational leadership developed for application within the collegiate context provided the foundation for this inquiry. Through use of multilevel modeling, we analyzed a sample of 8,435 undergraduate National Panhellenic Conference sorority women from 172 institutions located within the United States. Results demonstrated the substantial importance of supportive sisterhood at both the individual and group level and showcased how variations in perceptions of sisterhood (e.g., accountability), student involvement (e.g., additional activities), and background characteristics (e.g., SES) affected undergraduate sorority members’ relational leadership development. We close by discussing our findings and offering implications for future practice and research.

This article explores patterns in the US professoriate and the relationship to institutional wealth and status in public higher education, 2012–2021. We use latent profile analysis to identify different models for building a faculty and multinomial logistic regression to describe the characteristics of institutions employing these models. The results describe the human toll of the financial disruptions facing American public higher education. The findings suggest that changes to the faculty have been widespread but uneven.

Capstone experiences (CEs) are established high impact practices (HIPs) designed so students can synthesize their knowledge and skills obtained across their academic training. Understanding how instructors’ intrinsic motivation and external expectations influence the design of CEs can help institutions create resources to support instructors when developing and teaching CEs. We aimed to determine whether different levels of intrinsic motivation were associated with: (1) demographics of faculty teaching CEs, (2) structure of CEs, (3) pedagogy or assignments used by faculty teaching CEs, and (4) use of resources and/or perceived resource effectiveness available to faculty teaching CEs. We used a fixed convergent mixed methods approach in which quantitative and qualitative research questions were distributed via survey and interviews, respectively. Data were collected and analyzed independently. Analyzed data were merged to compare and interpret qualitative and quantitative results pertaining to faculty perceptions of motivation related to teaching CEs. Instructors who develop and teach CEs are highly intrinsically motivated. The quantitative and qualitative data reveal the instructors’ perceptions of value of and their interest in the CE were the most common intrinsic motivators. The participants with the highest levels of intrinsic motivation used more evidence-based pedagogical approaches, reported higher colleague recognition, and reported access to more teaching resources. Understanding the factors that promote motivation to develop and teach CEs is imperative to support instructor and student success when engaging in this type of HIP.

In higher education settings, instructors play a critical role in integrating Human-Centered Design (HCD) in existing and new courses. This study explores how instructors teach about and through HCD in higher education settings and what challenges they encounter as they do so. Participants were four faculty members and four graduate teaching assistants from four different courses. The participants were interviewed after their course ended for the semester. A phronetic iterative analysis approach was used to analyze the transcribed interview data. Findings indicated that when teaching about and through HCD, instructors intentionally and purposefully plan to integrate HCD, implement targeted instructional strategies to scaffold students’ learning of disciplinary content and HCD concepts, provide multiple forms of assessment and feedback, and facilitate collaboration between students, peers, and classroom visitors for deeper engagement in learning. Nevertheless, teaching about and through HCD is challenging and requires further specific teaching competencies that can empower instructors to integrate HCD in their courses.

This article employs quantitative critical race theory (QuantCrit), set against a historical context backdrop, to understand key aspects of Black religious engagement and post-college educational pathways. The variables selected for this study illuminate post-graduation outcomes for Black students valued by the Freedmen’s Bureau and other similarly focused organizations that coalesced immediately before, during, and shortly after the American Civil War. Data from the 1979-80 National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA) provides the content for an analysis herein of Black Americans engaging in the church following college graduation and their pursuit of advanced degrees. This survey conducted roughly 100 years following the Civil War, has remained influential to policymakers to the present day and allows an opportunity to reflect on today’s views on Black education at this sesquicentennial juncture. So doing provides for a reconceptualization of Black post-college success as originally imagined by organizations dedicated to social and educational initiatives for freedmen and remains independent of the metrics that often obscure the landscape and perception of Black post-college success.