Over the past five years, the national average college persistence rate for low-income students was 16%. Compared to the national rate of 60%, this number presents a significant gap in college persistence rates between low-income and the overall persistence rate. However, the college persistence rate for low-income students from Cristo Rey Boston…

Merrimack College is a midsized Catholic Augustinian College pursuing its historical service-based commitments while shifting priorities toward research. With limited time and resources, these two aims can create tension at institutional and faculty levels. This single institutional case study shares the work of faculty and College leadership to…

Catholic educational institutions play an important role in educating Latino high achieving students. Latino students attending Catholic high schools are more likely to graduate and transition to college immediately following high school. Few studies have examined the outcomes of Latino students who attend Catholic colleges and universities and…

This Proceedings document begins with the text of the keynote by Dr. Michelle Caswell, followed by seven papers, representing a sampling of the symposium presentations from the 2022 Digitizing Hidden Collections (DHC) Symposium, a capstone event for the Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives program. This program was funded by the…

After recounting the historical circumstances of the establishment of independent boards at Catholic colleges and universities, this paper considers the present conditions of boards at six Holy Cross institutions. Interviews and correspondence with the presidents of these institutions provided answers to a number of questions, including: How are…

What common values do diverse Jesuit institutions share? In what ways are Jesuit colleges and universities working to maintain mission, identity, and traditions within the context of 21st-century higher education? To ground their response to these questions, the researchers first review the historical and ecclesial developments that have…

How can we best prepare pre-service teachers to succeed in the classroom--and to stay in teaching over time? The one-size-fits-all model of traditional teacher education programs has been widely criticized, yet the most popular alternative--fast-track programs--have at best a mixed record of success. An increasing number of districts and charter…

This article describes the University of Consortium for Catholic Education (UCCE) as an example of collaboration between Catholic colleges, universities, schools, and other stakeholders. The UCCE supports a collaborative cadre of primarily Catholic colleges and universities as they design and implement graduate-level teaching service programs for…

This article shows how Merrimack College's Catholic heritage and Augustinian tradition provide intellectual and spiritual resources for the college to fulfill its educational responsibility to prepare students for virtuous citizenship in a religiously and culturally pluralistic society. It uses four major Vatican documents and several foundational…

The study was an exploration of how participants in lay formation mission and identity programs on three Jesuit higher education campuses understand their experiences of the programs; what competencies were developed as a result of participation; and how the programs helped participants understand the cultural context of Jesuit higher education.…

This article examines the current and potential contributions of the University Consortium for Catholic Education (UCCE) to both K-12 and higher Catholic education. In order to situate the development of alternative teacher preparation programs, a history of Catholic teacher formation is addressed followed by a brief summary of the existing…

Family Partnerships for Achievement is not a course typical of most master's programs in education. The course was designed with one overriding goal: to prepare teachers to be effective in the Boston Public Schools (BPS). This goal drives every aspect of the Boston Teacher Residency (BTR), a district-based program for teacher training and…

Catholic high schools in Chicago came onto the educational landscape in significant number in the 1920s, a critical time period in American educational history. In an era focused on efficiency and compulsory schooling, Catholic high schools organized themselves to meet the legal statutes affecting them directly and those that would govern their…

In this article, the author examines the newly revised speakers policy in Boston College. The revised policy, defended by administrators as being consistent with past practice, differs in two important respects from the speakers policy it replaced. Lest the scope of this unfortunate policy be exaggerated, it is important to note that the policy…