This ethnographic case study utilizes intersectionality and sense of belonging to understand students' experiences in a Latino Bible study and how it contributes to their overall college experience. The findings suggest that the Bible study offers a unique space for students to explore faith, ethnic identity, and politics in a culturally…

Issues of race on America's college campuses are increasingly prominent in the current sociopolitical environment. This pilot study sought to understand Asian American students' experience of race in one faith-based university in Southern California. Thirteen participants shared their stories as they experienced race on the university campus. All…

Researchers have suggested that student group involvement during college is beneficial for students on various academic and psychosocial measures. Most research has not focused on how different student groups provide different environments and support that impact students' experience. This ethnography focuses on one Christian student organization…

This study seeks to understand how faith community involvement, specifically faith community harmony (sense of belonging and lack of conflict within one's faith community), and faith community interaction (participation in one's faith community) relates to life purpose, loneliness, and well-being among college students. Participants (n = 1253)…

Grounded in discourse analytic and language socialization paradigms, this dissertation examines issues of language and social identity construction in children attending a Russian Heritage Language Orthodox Christian Saturday School in California. By conducting micro-analysis of naturally-occurring talk-in-interaction combined with longitudinal…

Arming themselves with "manifest destiny" rhetoric, which claimed divine Anglo-Saxon superiority as justification for the conquest of Indigenous and Mexican peoples and the land they occupied, white settlers forcefully pushed into California territory. The two-year-long Mexican-American War resulted in the acquisition of the present-day…

In the past 50 years researchers have identified a number of demographic shifts occurring within industrialized societies that have resulted in changes in the nature of the developmental processes occurring in young adults. Arnett (2000) labels this new, socially constructed time period, between the ages of 18 and 25 years, as emerging adulthood.…

Living and learning in another country, primary conditions of the study abroad experience, are commonly associated with two fundamental outcomes. The first outcome is an increase in "external" connections, manifested through an increased ability to converse in another language and an increased understanding and sensitivity to another…