Segregation is often seen in terms of race. However, it can also be based on socioeconomic status. Public colleges and universities in the U.S. had highly divergent responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite operating under similar health and legal considerations, campuses at most elite institutions were treated as essential functions while the…

Objective: No studies have assessed the need for abortion access at California Community Colleges (CCCs), despite recent research and legislative attention toward on-campus medication abortion access at California's public universities, and the fact that CCCs enroll more than twice the number of students per year as the public universities.…

This study responds to a national conversation about the role that Career Technical Education (CTE) might play in meeting workforce demand for soft skills. It is challenging for CTE programs to offer soft skills for several reasons. Both educators and employers tend to associate CTE with hard skills, or technical skills and therefore the programs…

In March 2020, COVID-19 sent shocking changes through California's public higher educational institutions' means and methods of operating, which resulted in sharp drops in revenue along with sudden costs associated with on-campus COVID-19 safety measures and with moving courses and student services online. To make matters worse, state funding also…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore how supervisors at a four-year, public, Hispanic-serving institution in Southern California described their process for socializing new Student Affairs professionals. Data from interviews and documents were analyzed to describe how supervisors initiated opportunities for relationship…

Objective: The growing prevalence of obesity among college students is a major public health issue, as over one-third are overweight or obese. This study used gender-stratified multivariate analyses to examine psychological distress and social contextual factors as key determinants of obesity. Participants: Students of a large public university in…

The most recent data on tuition, appropriations, and state grant aid present an economic outlook that appears favorable in the West. Tuition rates remained relatively flat for the past decade, total state funding to higher education increased across the region in the past year, and state grant aid continued to increase since 2010-11. Despite these…

Throughout history, society in the United States has marginalized women, People of Color, and queer individuals. Various systems of oppression often intersect to further subjugate individuals due to their inclusion in various underrepresented communities. Utilizing concepts from critical race theory and Latine critical theory (LatCrit), this…

Across the landscape of higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused fundamental changes at a variety of scales. To understand which aspects of higher education instruction at the departmental (meso-scale) level were most and least impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, chairs of geoscience departments at public higher education institutions in…

The purpose of this narrative qualitative study was to investigate the impact of ethnic/racial ambiguity and legal invisibility on racial identity perception and experiences of differential treatment of Arab and Arab American Muslim students at U.S. public higher education institutions. Guided by the multilevel model of intersectionality…

Previous research on student learning outcomes has begun to advocate for the inclusion of student researchers. To fully grasp undergraduate student perspectives of learning objectives, this study was co-created and conducted by undergraduate student researchers, allowing for an inclusive, equity-centered research model to guide our findings. We…

The California Community Colleges (CCC) system is the largest, most diverse public college system in the nation. As the system works to improve outcomes for all students, and in response to the racial climate in the United States during 2020, the system's Chancellor's Office released a call to action, asking all colleges to address systemic racism…

This dissertation describes a study that examined the experiences of community college leaders engaged in leading institutional change to improve student success. The study was conducted at a mid-size, public, 2-year institution in Southern California. Eight participants were chosen through purposeful snowball sampling of leaders from across the…

The following study employed a student-centered methodology to understand undergraduate student confusion with student learning outcomes (SLOs), or the statements that specify what students should know or be able to do by the end of a course. Through understanding and investigating student confusion with undergraduate student researchers, we have…

Home to the nation's largest Latinx (15 million), Asian American NHPI (almost 7 million) and the 5th largest Black (2.8 million) populations, California is our nation's most diverse and populous state. This diversity is one of the state's greatest assets, yet, representation of racially minoritized leaders in California's colleges and universities…