Beyond Giving: Political Advocacy and Volunteer Behaviors of Public University Alumni

College and university leaders have paid an enormous level of attention to one domain of alumni involvement: charitable giving. In light of the decline of state support for higher education and the shrinking ability of families to pay for college, such emphasis is understandable. However, this emphasis has blinded scholars and practitioners to understanding the important non-monetary support roles played by college alumni. Drawing on data from a research extensive university, this study employs a sequential mixed method design (focus groups and confirmatory factor analysis) to demonstrate that non-monetary support behaviors are best understood through the distinct, but interrelated domains of political advocacy and volunteerism. Political advocacy behaviors include contacting legislators, the governor’s office, local politicians and serving on a political action team, while volunteer behaviors include mentoring new alumni, recruiting students, and participating in special events. The study breaks ground for future research on alumni support for higher education, including strategies to recruit alumni volunteers and advocates.     

Differential impacts of academic and social experiences on college-related behavioral outcomes across different ethnic and gender groups at four-year institutions

The results of the study indicated that institutional experiences, academic achievement, and environmental pull factors contributed the most to persistence decisions. Furthermore, analyses revealed that differences in the effects of these factors for different ethnic and gender groups were important in explaining persistence decisions. No precollege factors (educational aspirations, prior academic achievement, attitudes toward learning, and support and encouragement to attend college) were found to improve the overall fit of the models for any of the groups in the study. For minorities, the biggest detrimental effects on dropout behavior were derived from pull factors in the form of family responsibilities and working off-campus. No significant positive effects from informal and formal interactions with faculty, close personal relationships with peers, and academic experiences during their first year in college were found to negate the large negative influences from the pull factors. For females, the most significant positive effect on college persistence came from mentoring experiences in the form of nonclassroom interactions with faculty.     

An Unexamined Life: White Male Racial Ignorance and the Agony of Education for Students of Color1

This article critically analyzes the narratives of 62 White male undergraduates at a single institution about their views on race and experiences with racism. It is framed by Mills' (1997) conception of Whiteness that is founded upon an inverted epistemology or an epistemology of ignorance. Therefore, this analysis centers the ways in which White male undergraduates concurrently downplay the contemporary significance of White privilege while examining the role college experiences have at reinforcing this structured ignorance. The themes from their interviews included: (1) White ignorance and White identity as meaningless; (2) Evasive White racial ignorance; and (3) Racial arrested development and racial regression. These findings emphasize the need to creatively challenge White males to develop their racial selves, especially because their ignorance fuels the linguistic and physical violence Students of Color regularly experience.     

Job satisfaction among Mexican alumni: a case of incongruence between hunch-based policies and labor market demands

Like many other public Mexican universities, the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) has tried to contribute to the national development of Mexico by offering new undergraduate majors presumed to be better attuned to the needs of the labor market, while capping enrollments in traditional majors presumed to be redundant. Using data from one of the most extensive alumni studies in Mexico, we found that BUAP alumni who graduated in traditional majors do not show high unemployment or low satisfaction. On the contrary, the lowest levels of job satisfaction and the highest rates of unemployment are found among the graduates of non-traditional majors.

Training Future Scientists: Predicting First-year Minority Student Participation in Health Science Research

Using longitudinal data from the UCLA Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and Your First College Year (YFCY) surveys, this study examines predictors of the likelihood that science-oriented students would participate in a health science undergraduate research program during the first year of college. The key predictors of participation in health science research programs are students’ reliance on peer networks and whether campuses provide structured opportunities for first-year students even though only 12% of freshmen in the sample engaged in this activity. These experiences are particularly important for Black students. The findings inform efforts to orient students at an early stage, particularly under-represented minorities, toward biomedical and behavioral science research careers.

Fatherhood in the twenty-first century

The twentieth century has been characterized by four important social trends that have fundamentally changed the social cultural context in which children develop: women's increased labor force participation, increased absence of nonresidential fathers in the lives of their children, increased involvement of fathers in intact families, and increased cultural diversity in the U.S.. In this essay, we discuss how these trends are changing the nature of father involvement and family life, and in turn affecting children's and fathers' developmental trajectories. We end with an eye toward the twenty-first century by examining how the children of today will construct their expectations about the roles of fathers and mothers as they become the parents of tomorrow. This life-span approach to fatherhood considers the broader sociohistorical context in which fatherhood develops, and emphasizes the urgent need to consider mothers, fathers, and family structure in future research as we seek to understand and model the effects of parenting on children's development.     

From Comprehensive to Singular: A Latent Class Analysis of College Teaching Practices

While decades of research on college teaching has investigated several forms of classroom practices, much of this research approaches teaching as falling into mutually exclusive paradigms (e.g., active learning vs. lecturing). This paper enters inside the college classroom using external raters to understand patterns of pedagogical practices embedded in heterogeneous groups of courses. The study used quantitative observation and draws on data from a multi-institutional study of 587 courses across nine institutions to understand the patterns of teaching practices within courses. Latent class analyses demonstrated that there were five patterns of seven course practices that cluster around active learning, lecturing, and cognitively responsive practices: Comprehensive, Traditional Lecture, Active Lecture, Integrative Discussion, and Active Only.     

Can a Summer Bridge Program Impact First-Year Persistence and Performance?: A Case Study of the New Start Summer Program

This longitudinal study assesses the impact of the University of Arizona’s New Start Summer Program (NSSP) on participants’ first year GPA and retention, controlling for incoming student characteristics. While programmatic participation significantly predicted first-year GPA and retention, this relationship became insignificant when controlling for first-year college experiences and student development. Programmatic efficacy is largely determined not only by how practitioners develop participants’ cognitive abilities, but also how effectively they connect them to social and academic support networks during their first year of college. Within this context, programmatic impact is likely indirect which poses a number of methodological and resource allocation issues for student affairs administrators and professionals. In addition, it highlights the need to assess the impact of summer bridge programs longitudinally while also having a demographically similar group of students who did not participate for comparison: Two areas generally absent from research on summer bridge program literature. Finally, the study was made possible because of a strong collaboration between the NSSP administrators and the research team, where the goals and needs of each group were supported by the other.     

“If There is No Struggle, There is No Progress”: Transformative Youth Activism and the School of Ethnic Studies

In the wake of the Tucson Unified School District dismantling its highly successful Mexican American Studies (MAS) program, students staged walkouts across the district to demonstrate their opposition. Student-led walkouts were portrayed as merely “ditching,” and students were described as not really understanding why they were protesting. After these events, a group of student activists called UNIDOS organized and led the School of Ethnic Studies. This was a community school dedicated to teaching the forbidden MAS curriculum. In this article we present counternarratives from organizers, presenters, and participants in the School of Ethnic Studies. These narratives demonstrate the transformative resistance of students who created their own form of liberatory education. Our analysis highlights how student organizers led the creation of an autonomous, community-based educational space to allowed young people to engage in political analysis, self-reflection, and strategic organizing. We conclude with the implications for Ethnic Studies, urban education, and counternarrative.