Volume 38, Issue 2

The current case study investigates the application of a non-hierarchical leadership model at an urban public research university. Following a review of recent contributions to leadership theory, especially with regard to student development, the authors balance discussions of the values on which the program under review is based with descriptions of the practical structure of the program. In addition, they suggest means by which other campuses can tailor this program to their resources, opportunities, and needs. The case study concludes with a discussion of the program’s effect on students’ cognitive and social development.

This article presents the results of a national study that sought to identify the effectiveness of campus judicial systems in doctoral-granting universities. Student judicial systems were first categorized based on the level of formality present as determined by the terminology, processes, and characteristics of the system. The effectiveness of a system was determined by comparing the formality of the system to five outcomes.

This study examines the program choice of doctoral students in higher education administration. The authors used The Program Choice Questionnaire in a nationwide random sample of enrolled doctoral students. Results indicate influential factors vary according to gender, enrollment status, age, and race. Implications and recommendations are offered as they relate to enrollment management, admission, and recruitment in graduate education.

Developmental orientations as measured by the Dakota Inventory of Student Orientations (DISO) are strong predictors of the social attitudes and commitments that college students make. The aim of this study was to investigate the nature of social beliefs and commitments during the college years in relation to developmental orientations as measured by DISO (Lavelle & Rickord, 1999). Results supported Creative-Reflective scale scores as predictive of commitment to the more humanitarian issues such as race and women’s rights, whereas Achieving-Social scores predicted environmental concern. Interestingly, Reliant scale scores were found to be negatively related to social commitment. Implications include interventions based on the strengths and weaknesses of each orientation and suggestions for further research.

The authors examined the persistence rate and academic achievement of three cohorts of first-time freshmen that had used the recreation complex and those freshmen that had not used the facility.

This manuscript describes a qualitative inquiry that explores the perspectives of 16 senior student affairs officers (SSAOs). The predominance of student learning as an overarching framework for understanding their work is described--included are examples of the kinds of tasks that SSAOs feel support student learning. Further, the implications regarding the emergence of this framework are examined in the context of the literature. The findings suggest that the work of student affairs remains largely unchanged on many of these campuses, except for an increased emphasis on student learning. According to the SSAOs in this study, collaboration with faculty continues to pose a significant challenge. Some SSAOs noted practical, even political reasons to emphasize student learning. However, it is argued that the shift to student learning is more than rhetorical. Even if innovative student learning practices have not yet proliferated, the findings suggest that the work of creating a more integrated approach to student learning is in its early stages.

The purpose of this study was to determine the attributions college students make toward pictures of college campus buildings. Participants were 301 first-year undergraduates (56.2% female, median age = 19.91 years) enrolled in an educational psychology course within a large midwestern university. Students responded to a semantic differential containing 17 bipolar adjectives, each anchored to a 7-point scale, that asked students to attribute characteristics about a college/university (e.g., "difficult-easy," "large-small," "success-failure") to one of 10 photographs. Students were randomly assigned to one of the 10 photograph conditions (i.e., two Collegiate Gothic, two Greco-Roman, one Romanesque, and five modern structures). Factor analysis revealed three primary factors underlie the semantic differential: Evaluation of Individual Success, Potency of the Campus Environment, and Stimulation of the Campus Environment. Students attributed greater likelihood of individual success to pictures depicting modern architecture than they did to those depicting traditional architecture. Regardless of the type of architecture, male students attributed greater likelihood of individual success than did female students.