This study focused on how Title IX and sexual misconduct discourses on campus reflect a gendered campus environment. It employed critical discourse analysis as a framework for understanding the relationships between language in use on campus and the social structures, power relationships, and identity work represented within that language. The…

This study explores the effect of economic and military crises on federal policy growth in higher education from 1932 to 1963. By analyzing federal records, campus materials, newspapers and educational association journals, the papers demonstrates that economic crises led the federal government to institute decentralized state building efforts to…

This study was primarily a multiple-case study that incorporated descriptive statistical analysis to examine the contributions that three niche institutions play in the diverse democracy of the U.S. A "niche institution" is a college or university whose role in U.S. higher education is to meet the needs of a specific group and whose…

To better understand how White college women understand and are influenced by whiteness, we discursively analyzed data from interviews and focus groups with 25 White seniors at two Catholic women's colleges. Findings suggest that participants understood whiteness through discourses of insignificance, nominal difference, responsibility, and…

Given the complex and gendered messages college women receive about their future professional and personal lives, a woman's college experiences play an important role in helping her make difficult life choices. In this article, we present a narrative analysis of the envisioned futures of students at two Catholic women's colleges in the Midwestern…

Incoming first-year college students completed a leadership survey prior to any formal leadership education. These students were reassessed during the spring of their senior year; 386 students completed both surveys. The differential effect of 33 leadership and demographic variables on change in hierarchical and systemic leadership beliefs were…

Saint Mary's College, a single-gender Catholic institution in northern Indiana with approximately 1,600 students, has just revised a general education curriculum that had been in place for nearly forty years. The board of trustees unanimously approved the new curriculum in April 2010. In this article, the author discusses seven key lessons learned…

Many undergraduate liberal arts institutions offer computer science majors. This article illustrates how quality computer science programs can be realized in a wide variety of liberal arts settings by describing and contrasting the actual programs at five liberal arts colleges: Williams College, Kalamazoo College, the State University of New York…

This article examines the network of women's colleges which emerged in Ireland in the latter half of the nineteenth century in response to women's exclusion from the realm of the university and their desire to participate in higher education. These colleges, run largely along denominational lines, were situated in the major cities with the…

Examines circumstances leading to the transition of Webster College, Missouri, from a Catholic women's college to a secular, co-educational university. The issue of identity was re-addressed at a critical juncture in Webster's history, as it dealt with its financial and enrollment difficulties. The study shows that influential role of leadership…

Offers an historical overview and analysis of Catholic women's colleges, including their faculty and curriculum, asserting that the distinctive history and mission of these colleges give them a unique capacity to bring future generations the finest Catholic higher education has to offer. (EV)

Presents interview with Sister Joel Read, who offers candid, insightful, and provocative perspective of unique role of Catholic women's colleges and how their history and tradition of social action and service and their urban base distinguish them from 50% of non-Catholic women's colleges. Describes Alverno College's unique model of self-directed,…

Presents an address to the annual meeting of Neylan colleges, Catholic colleges founded by religious women, that retain some relationship to the religious community. Drawing on survey data, the presentation briefly chronicles the origins and history of the colleges, changes in them since the 1960s, and salient issues that have arisen in recent…

The origin and development of two women's colleges, Mount Holyoke of Massachusetts and Meredith College of North Carolina, are compared, illustrating some of the early chapters of American higher education, when religious purposes for schools were common, but when schools for women were not. The social, historical, and religious contexts of the…

The history of Spelman Seminary (Georgia) for African-American females is reviewed as an example of education as an instrument of socialization for southern women to their prescribed roles. The discussion covers the missionary role, Georgia in the 1880s, the institutional mission, school founding, debate over classical versus industrial roles of…