Digest No. 01 – November 2016 – CIC Digest of Recent Research

Digest No. 01 - November 2016

Connecting in Class? College Class Size and Inequality in Academic Social Capital

Irenee R. Beattie and Megan Thiele ask an important question: Does class size affect the academic interactions of students of color and first-generation students? They posit that larger classes hinder student interactions focused on academic and career matters with professors and peers. Beattie and Thiele view such interactions as forms of academic social capital. Social capital constitutes a resource that individuals acquire through their interactions and relationships with other individuals within one’s social network.

Settling in: The Role of Individual and Departmental Tactics in the Development of New Faculty Networks

Faculty members new to a college or university adjust to its organization through the process of organizational socialization. More specifically, organizational socialization entails the acquisition of attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge needed to participate as a member of the organization (Feldman 1976; Van Maanen and Schein 1979). Increased job satisfaction (Ashforth and Saks 1996) and greater levels of role performance (Lee, Mitchell, Sablynski, Burton and Holtom 2004) or productivity (Dess and Shaw, 2001) constitute positive effects of successful organizational socialization in contrast to employee turnover as a consequence of ineffective organizational socialization (Fisher 1986). As a result effective organizational socialization stands as an important matter for campus leaders especially for those colleges and universities that are able to hire new faculty members.

How Many Credit Hours Should an Undergraduate Take?

Paul Attewell and David Monaghan attend to an important public and institutional policy question pertinent to low college completion rates and the increased time to earn a degree. What mechanisms exist to boost college completion rates and reduce the time to earn a degree? Attewell and Monaghan point to increasing the number of credit hours taken in the first semester of college from 12 to 15 credit hours as one such mechanism.

Bounded Aspirations: Rural, African American High School Students and College Access

Darris R. Means, Ashley B. Clayton, Johnathan G. Conzelmann, Patti Baynes, and Paul D. Umbach assert that few studies have focused on the college choice process for rural African American high school students despite the fact that more than half of the school districts in the United States are considered rural and about one quarter of all public high school students are enrolled in a rural school (National Center for Educational Statistics 2013, p.1). To address this gap in knowledge of the college choice process, Means et al.’s study seeks to identify common themes regarding the college choice process for rural, African American high school students.

Trademark Trends and Brand Activity in Higher Education

Jacob H. Rooksby and Christopher S. Collins view slogan trademarks of colleges and universities as a form of intellectual property. They contend that the brand of an institution represents its efforts to embody the identity and aspirations of the focal college or university. Put differently, according to Rooksby and Collins, brand connotes reputation, quality, and values. Trademarks and slogans function as instruments to create memorable identities for an institution. Brand manifests itself in the form of trademarks.

The Impact of Diversity Courses on College Students’ Moral Development

The creation of inclusive and affirming campus environments constitutes an important issue confronting college and universities in general and independent colleges and universities in particular. The values of equity and inclusion stand as instrumental to the formation of an inclusive and affirming campus environment that improves the campus racial climate. The requirement of diversity courses as a part of the general education component of the undergraduate college curriculum constitutes an approach to improving campus racial climates.

The Influence of Campus Climate on the Academic and Athletic Success of Student Athletes: Results from a Multi-Institutional National Study

In the abstract to this article, Susan Rankin, Dan Merson, Jason C. Garvey, Carl H. Sorgen, India Menon, Karla Loya, and Leticia Oseguera state that student athletes experience college life in a unique way. Accordingly, this article reports the findings of the Student-Athletes Climate Study (SACS). This study focused on the influence of the characteristics of students and their perceptions of the campus climate on academic success, athletic success, and athletic identity. Of these three outcomes, the academic success of intercollegiate athletes holds particular significance for CIC member institutions because of the role intercollegiate athletics plays in the fabric of small and mid-sized colleges and universities. Likewise, faculty-student interactions, one of the seven dimensions of campus climate of interest to Rankin et al., looms as important to CIC member institutions because of the institutional emphasis placed on such interactions.