Shared governance is one of the many distinguishing characteristics of quality in American higher education. As a result, students found their way into the governance structure at many institutions of higher education. No sector was exempt, as students became fairly common features of the landscape of board membership in both public and private,…

Campuses with student trustees often see them as both an efficient way to get a student perspective on issues the board is dealing with and a way to use student trustees' active engagement with student organizations to explain board and administrative decisions to the student body. To maximize the contributions a student member can make on the…

Student governance has existed as an integral part of higher education since the time of the first college in Colonial America. Through a detailed history of each phase of student self-governance--from the earliest literary societies to the present-day student government associations--the struggles of students in higher education to acquire and…

Including students in school governance isn't just a way to teach them about civics, it's a smarter way to run a school. Schools tend to govern themselves as a single-loop learning organization. The better model is a double-loop organization that would promote greater participation, deliberation, feedback and, ultimately, more buy-in from…

Student governance is one way for students to become involved on college campuses. Student government allows participants to represent the needs of the student body and to voice their concerns to college administrators. In a qualitative study, five presidents of community college student government associations were interviewed. The student…

A major component of the college student experience is the engagement with out-of-class activities. This involvement has been linked to a variety of success indicators, including higher levels of academic achievement, high retention and matriculation, and overall collegiate satisfaction. One of the key areas for student engagement is college…

The purpose of this study was to investigate student participation in collegiate student governance, the impact of that involvement and its influence on career choice for African-American participants, and to enlighten educators about role and value of collegiate student government participation. If participation in student government and…

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in 1819 to become a training ground for the leaders of a new republic. The institution has changed a great deal since its founding, but principles connected to "Mr. Jefferson's" legacy abound. One such ideal is student self-governance. Described in institutional literature as a core…

The racial desegregation of the student bodies of historically white universities in South Africa has had significant political implications for student politics and university governance. I discuss two key moments in the governance history of the University of Cape Town (UCT) critically. The first involves the experience of racial parallelism in…

A student sit-in at St. Cloud State College led to a year's experiment in representative government on campus. (Editor/PG)

Tallahassee Community College (Florida) can serve as an example of how a student government failed and was successfully resurrected. The initial problem was in adopting rather than adapting the traditional pattern of student government practiced in 4-year institutions. The failure symptoms were: no real authority for student government;…

The thrust of this paper is that while a great deal is being said about student participation in governance, little is being done to prepare them for such participation. The rhetoric has changed but curriculum has not. Until curriculum demands responsible, creative reactions in the classroom, responsible participation in governance will remain…

Discusses student representation in academic government with particular reference to the academic boards of the 30 designated polytechnics in England and Wales. In addition to discussing underlying principles of student representation, the article gives data for polytechnic university senates. (Author/PG)