Digest No. 10 – March 2022 – CIC Digest of Recent Research

Digest No. 10 - March 2022

Frozen and Failing: Administrative (Non)Response to DEI Incidents

How do university administrators think about and conceptually frame their institutions’ responses to hate speech on campus? How do they negotiate the tensions between legally protected free speech and their imperative to protect students from harmful speech? This embedded single-case study examines the responses of 16 administrators at the University of Texas at Austin in the context of the post-2016 election hate speech environment and several free speech lawsuits faced by the university. Leveraging a conceptual framework that spans organizational theory, cultural analysis, and several forms of legal theory, the scholars forward the argument that a form of “repressive legalism” overdetermined the university’s responses to controversial speech and resulted in preventing it from pursuing inclusive practices.

It’s Not Just Exposure: Adjusting Institutional Engagement and Behavior to Improve Transfer Student Enrollment and Success

Although many community college students desire to transfer to a four-year institution and earn a baccalaureate degree, less than one in five fulfill this aspiration—prompting questions regarding how receiving institutions can mobilize their resources to support transfer student retention. This longitudinal study was conducted at three Midwestern community colleges and focused on 860 transfer students who had received STEM training. The scholars reported that community college students who had early exposure to faculty members and/or advisors from a baccalaureate institution were almost twice as likely to transfer successfully over the next three years, even when accounting for other methods of interacting with baccalaureate institutions and personnel.

You Belong with Me: Helping First-Gen Students Find Their Place at Your Institution

How do educators create belonging on campuses for first-generation students? Defined as “those reporting that no parent attended college” (p. 368), first-generation college students (FGS) have been identified as an important social identity group for consideration, with a number of empirical efforts documenting their distinctive experiences before and during college. In addition, sense of belonging has been routinely identified as critical for retaining students from minoritized identities (see Strayhorn, 2018).

Controlling for a host of theoretically justified covariates (race, age, living situation, and employment status), the authors found that the more campuses were able to validate these students regarding their backgrounds and identities, the more likely the students were to feel that they belonged on campus.

Why Mental Health Matters: Factors Impacting Retention Across the Student Lifecycle

The purpose of this study was to examine the attrition of over 10,000 students who participated in a longitudinal study from 2011 to 2014 at a large urban institution. Cohorts of students were followed to determine the social, behavioral, and interpersonal factors related to retention over time. Findings suggested that attrition was related to behavioral health factors, including “increased depressive symptoms, antisocial behaviors, exposure to stressful events, and substance use” (p. 2). The authors also explored a variety of protective factors related to student involvement and concluded that their occurrence during the students’ early years was critical for deterring drop-out during college.

The Duopoly of Diversity Data: Using Nuanced Data to Understand Diversity

This article explores the intricacies of studying diversity climates at institutions and extends conversations of diversity climate beyond simple dichotomies of good or bad, positive or negative, productive or unproductive. The authors argue that diversity climate information is highly complex, pushing scholars and leaders beyond the comforts of arbitrary—however, efficient—labeling practices that may do more harm than good. In the context of this study of religious, spiritual, and secular diversity, the authors suggest that some climates may inspire the type of diversity experiences that optimize student learning.