Volume 40, Issue 1

This article presents and assesses a unique cocurricular training program for student personnel graduate students preparing to enter into higher education administration. The FACTS (Future Administrators Cultural Training Seminars) program is run by the staff at the multicultural affairs office at a large, selective, private, urban university in New York City. Responding to requests from primarily white female graduate students for more exposure to diversity and multicultural issues, the program was designed to supplement the students’ classroom learning with practical insights into the nuances of working with diverse student populations. A detailed assessment of the first two years of the program is presented.

This study examined the perceived influence of alcohol advertising in a daily campus newspaper on the drinking behaviors of students at a large midwestern university. Data came from two sources: a descriptive analysis of alcohol ads that appeared during a four-week period in the student newspaper and a survey questionnaire. Findings indicated that college students do perceive that their drinking patterns are influenced by alcohol promotions in the campus newspaper and, furthermore, that self-identified binge drinkers were influenced significantly more than were nonbinge drinkers.

This research assesses whether faculty members and students consider specific behaviors cheating, and why or why not. This study differs from previous research in that it allows students and faculty to indicate conditions that may influence their opinions regarding the integrity of academic practices. It is imperative that faculty members, advisors, counselors, and staff involved in new student orientation address academic honesty issues with students.

The student handbooks of colleges and universities, as well as other documents such as the college or university catalog, housing manual, and now perhaps the institutional web pages, are perceived by most authorities to be part of an ongoing contract between the institution and its students (Buckner, 1988; Correnti, 1988; Shur, 1988; Weeks and Davis, 1993; Kaplin and Lee, 1995; Hoekema, 1996). In these publications, the institution provides information about programs, services, student-institutional obligations, and campus regulations. Students are expected to read these publications and learn the material within. Handbooks today range from traditional rulebooks to institutional efforts to share with students the broad options that are available to them in terms of campus organizations and other co-curricular activities and resources.

Although the impact of the first-year experience has been investigated, there is little information on what this experience is like for Latino students particularly at predominantly White institutions. The primary purpose of this qualitative research study is to understand the first-year experience as recounted by 10 Latino college students. The findings include four major themes. Implications for practice are discussed.

The central purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of how community service involvement affects the development of undergraduate self-concept. The findings from this study suggest that the quality of service involvement is more important than the amount of service performed by students.

This study examines how undergraduate fall-to-fall persistence is related to unmet financial need and amount of gift aid. Unmet need has been calculated two different ways: (1) total unmet need and (2) unmet need with parental, unsubsidized, and private loans removed. For students who received varying amounts of gift aid, persistence is studied as it relates to the percent of the total aid package that is gift aid. Five years of student persistence and financial aid information are examined.

This longitudinal study examined the differential impact of a range of college diversity initiatives on white, African American, Mexican American/Chicano(a), and Asian American college students. The sample included 15,600 students from 365 four-year colleges and universities, who were initially surveyed in 1985 and followed up again in 1989. After four years of college, regardless of the students’ race/ethnicity, their overall level of satisfaction with their college experience was positively influenced by (a) attending racial/cultural awareness workshops; (b) socializing with students of different racial/ethnic groups; (c) taking courses from faculty who use instructional methodology with content on ethnic/racial issues, research, or writing addressing women, ethnicity or race; and (d) campus policies and practices that promote diversity initiatives.

The present study investigated the influence of training modality on attitudes toward lesbian and gay issues. In a short-term longitudinal design (pre-test, post-test, follow-up), 87 undergraduate and graduate students were randomly assigned to one of three workshop modalities (In-Person, Internet, Control) following pre-test. Participants completed a post-test immediately after the training and a follow-up assessment three weeks later. Analyses revealed that both modalities (In-Person Training and Internet Training), when compared to the Control group, resulted in substantial reductions in levels of homophobia following training. Furthermore, these reductions in homophobia remained stable from the post-test to the follow-up testing. Finally, analyses suggest that changes in participants’ levels of positive affect, during and following training, may play a central role in the effectiveness of both training interventions. Implications for student affairs professionals and directions for future research are discussed.This study is supported by a diversity grant from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators and the Ford Foundation awarded to Lorraine J. Guth and David F. Lopez. Special thanks go to Andrea L. Short for providing helpful editorial comments.

This paper uses students’ responses from the dialogues of a town hall meeting to examine the beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge about racial and cultural diversity at a mid-size, predominantly white university in Louisiana. The four major themes that emerged from this experience were: (1) perceptions about race, (2) stereotypical beliefs about cross-cultural interactions, (3) uncomfortable campus climate, and (4) disequilibria associated with prejudicial teaching by parents. Implications and recommendations for increasing positive cross-cultural interactions among members of the campus community are discussed.