The shortage of physicians serving rural communities is well documented. To address the rural shortage, medical schools have developed extracurricular programs, called rural health tracks, with an intent to foster medical students’ interest in serving rural communities. While there has been some research about the effects of these tracks, almost...
Much of our knowledge about transgender (folks who identify as not cisgender) lives in universities centers around barriers experienced, feelings of exclusion, and being victims of harassment and violence. This thesis describes conversations regarding captured gender euphoric moments from five students at a large university. They came together through a...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between student involvement in tutoring and timely completion of an associate’s degree among first-time, full-time students attending Oregon rural community colleges. Timely completion was defined as earning an associate’s degree within three years. Propensity score matching was used to control...
Academic advising is an integral step in a community college students higher education journey, and as such must be supported with any tools available to increase student success. Technology is becoming more highly integrated into the academic advising process as are online tools which provide access to student records, course...
This study frames the problem of needing to better understand retention patterns in Alaska among students from distinct levels of rurality and how those levels of rurality or geographical distance may interact with other variables including race and gender in predicting student retention. Alaska is a highly rural state with...
The purpose of this quantitative study was to identify the combination of factors, both individual and programmatic, that contributed most significantly to the persistence and progression of students enrolled in a public comprehensive community college. As open-access institutions, community colleges cater to students from a broad range of socioeconomic, cultural,...
The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of faculty in Washington State regarding climate for instructional improvement. The Survey of Climate for Instructional Improvement (SCII) was administered to faculty at a community college in Washington State. Through exploratory factor analysis, four factors emerged which aligned with four...
For more than a decade a “community college leadership crisis” has been forecasted and discussed in the professional literature related to community colleges as well as the scholarly literature focused on the study of higher education. The role, perceptions and, to a lesser extent, the effectiveness of community college leadership...
The focus of this single-site case study was to explore how rural dispersed Hispanic-serving community colleges in the Pacific Northwest support the development of Hispanic-Serving initiatives and strategies. The conceptual frameworks of Latino critical theory and the multicultural organizational development model were used to analyze and interpret the data. Interviews...
Community colleges are changing to meet the needs and demands of the 21st century and these changes are also a driving force behind the shifts that are happening to the essential functions of the presidents who lead the community colleges. In order to navigate the complex systems and lead colleges...