In principle and practice, Michigan's public universities are committed to the sustained improvement of educational and economic opportunities in the state. However, their place in the state's general fund budget makes them especially vulnerable to reductions, when resources are low. The remarkable impact that higher education has on every person…

Plagiarism has been the focus of considerable scholarly research in recent decades, much of which has examined the number of students who are plagiarizing, why they plagiarize, and what instructors can do to teach students to effectively and ethically integrate their own words and ideas with those of their sources. Overlooked in this scholarship…

This mixed methods, case study research examined the teacher education program at Illinois State University (ISU-Normal, Illinois) as related to the views and assessment practices of the dispositions of its teacher candidates. Five years of quantitative and qualitative data from ISU's Disposition Concern form was collected and analyzed currently…

This dissertation explores California's current A-G requirements and investigates whether or not students are more college ready now than they were in previous years. This study also investigates whether or not students have adequate opportunities to access the rigorous coursework in an urban high school largely populated by minority students. The…

Lifelong learning programs for older adults are expanding in university communities, given the growing emphasis on successful aging in our society. This dissertation consists of two articles that examine data from ethnographic research in a southeastern lifelong learning institute associated with a state university. Data include observations over…

Factors such as a declining tax revenues and an underperforming economy have been justifying the need for additional external private funding to meet the increasing needs of a growing California higher education system and ethnically diverse student body. The purpose of this study was to examine ways in which California private higher education…

The purpose of this study was to determine what factors were motivating Latino/a students in the southern San Joaquin Valley to pursue STEM degrees and whether these factors were specific to the Latino/a culture. A 12-question survey was administered to STEM majors at California State University, Bakersfield and California State University, Fresno…

Although researchers have investigated the role of new student orientation and transition programs on college campuses, the focus has been primarily on issues such as retention and persistence rates of program participants, academic preparation techniques, and program content or logistics. Little research has been reported on student volunteers or…

The purpose of this study was to test how well social cognitive career theory (SCCT) explains the effects of an introductory freshman year science course on the career perspectives of African American males at a large, public mid-Atlantic state university. Embracing SCCT as the foundation of this project, the dissertation intended to gather data…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine whether the use of non-cognitive assessment in combination with traditional criteria predicted potential academic success as measured by first-semester GPAs of provisionally admitted students. Survey data were collected with a non-cognitive questionnaire (NCQ) from provisionally admitted…

This bounded case study describes the readiness of a Southeastern State University System to support the growth of online learning. Structured as a case study, the view provided of the Southeastern State University System in this moment in time provides a contextually rich view of the phenomenon of change within a university system. The study…

Articulation agreements were created to make transferring from a state-supported community college to a state-supported university a smoother process while reducing the higher education costs for the state. This ex-post facto study examined the relationship between the pathway North Carolina community college students used to complete the general…

In a national context of high failure rates in freshman calculus courses, the purpose of this study was to understand who is struggling, and why. High failure rates are especially alarming given a local environment where students have access to a variety of academic, and personal, assistance. The sample consists of students at Colorado State…

The University of Alabama opened its doors in April 1831, and over the next six years, the first president, Alva Woods, was confronted by numerous episodes of student misdeeds. Knife fights, dueling, shootings, slave baiting, hazing, the torture of animals, and the destruction of property were common events on campus. Woods--a Baptist minister…

In this study, the Arizona State University Mathematics and Science Teaching Fellows 2010 program was analyzed qualitatively from start to finish to determine the impact of the research experience on teachers in the classroom. The sample for the study was the 2010 cohort of eight high school science teachers. Erickson's (1986) interpretive,…