For several generations, the educational achievement gap of African Americans has continued to widen in the United States. The current study examined how racial identity influences the relationship between academic motivation and academic stress among African American college students. Participants for the study included 438 African American…

This qualitative inquiry evaluated Colorado Mountain College's (CMC) in-house Mountain Scholars Program (MSP) via semi-structured interviews with five of its Latino alumni. This study's assets-based social justice/transformative philosophical framework included David Fetterman's methodological empowerment evaluation and Tara Yosso's conceptual…

Adult learners from the Caribbean diaspora continue to enroll in American colleges as they seek to improve their academic ambitions. As they do, they utilize varying instructional strategies to assist in achieving their educational goals, one of which is cooperative learning. While cooperative learning is widely used across different age groups…

This dissertation delves into the unique experiences of contemporary polygamist women pursuing higher education, exploring the intersectionality of their cultural backgrounds, educational aspirations, and the challenges they encounter within academic settings. The study critically examines the applicability of equity-centered, trauma-informed…

Federal government policies have shifted the financial burdens of paying for college away from the public (e.g., grants and scholarships) to more onus placed on students and their families (Elliott & Friedline, 2013; Robb, 2011). However, budget cuts due to economic challenges often increase tuition rates (Orfield, 2002) that outpace what…

Historically, racially marginalized communities are less likely to access health care, partly due to structural inequities as well as distrust for white providers. This need for increased racial and ethnic representation is specifically an issue in the pharmacist career, as more than 90% of the United States population lives within five miles of a…

Determining how female Marines currently pursuing a degree in higher education perceive their journey and experiences can provide valuable information for those contemplating pursuing higher education. Additionally, these perceptions can inform the need for modifications to policies at supporting organizations and educational institutions that are…

This research applies the community cultural wealth model to explore how Black and Latinx students experience financial barriers in college from an appreciative lens. The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of how Black and Latinx students use aspirational, familial, social, navigational, resistant, and linguistic capital to…

"Expect Delays: At the Crossroads of Higher Education," analyzes the cultural representations of higher education that shape personhood for minoritized identities. It argues that an emphasis on linear logics, spatial temporalities, and hegemonic visual culture impact self-fashioning for historically marginalized populations. This project…

This study helps advance the understanding of how school experiences relate to Latinx students' college and career aspirations and self-perception. It used a longitudinal, narrative, multiple case studies design to document changes in nine students' academic, social, and identity pathways as they progressed from high school to college and what…

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of how students who are refugees describe their social supports, with a focus on their relationships with those who are supportive of their interest in higher education both within and outside of the school system. Few studies have explored the social capital of these students, and how…

The widening gap between the demographics of faculty and students in higher education is exemplified by the racial, ethnic, and economic disparities in student achievement outcomes. Expecting students to adapt to an unwritten set of rules to successfully navigate higher education is not the solution. Understanding the strengths of students is…

The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether a student's sense of financial security can increase the degree of predictability of retention over and above the more traditional predictors typically found in the literature, and to get a better sense for how student financial security impacts student persistence decision-making in college. To…

The landmark theoretical model of Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) was developed almost twenty years ago as a critique of American meritocracy and the deficit views of Students of Color (Yosso, 2005). Most research on CCW since that point has been qualitative in nature, specifically in-depth interviews to understand how Students of Color exact…

This study was designed to explore, record, explain and describe the lived experiences of African American male students engaged in mentorship programs for post-secondary education. This study takes an exploratory phenomenological approach to research and is conducted at a mentorship program site. The following research questions guided this study…