Access and Opportunity at American Women’s Colleges: Contemporary Findings

American women’s colleges were founded to create access and opportunity for women in higher education, and 36 continue to operate toward that mission in 2020. While historical and anecdotal evidence shows the value of women’s colleges, contemporary research about student demographics and outcomes at American women’s colleges is limited. This study is designed to fill this gap in literature. It uses quantitative research methods to compare access and opportunity at American women’s colleges to liberal arts colleges and public universities. The findings reveal that women’s colleges are enrolling students similar in demographic profile to public universities (enrolling those who have been historically less well served by higher education) and achieving completion rates like liberal arts colleges (statistically higher than public universities). Women’s colleges, then, continue to advance women’s social and economic opportunity by providing access and achieving positive outcomes for women who are often underserved by higher education

Identities, intentionality and institutional fit: perceptions of senior women administrators at liberal arts colleges in the Upper Midwestern USA

This qualitative study engaged women senior administrators at liberal arts colleges in the Upper Midwestern USA to better understand how their intersecting identities mediate their enacted leadership. Data were collected from eight participants via a questionnaire, document review, one-on-one interviews and observations. Positionality theory informed the study design and inquiry. Data analysis using the constant comparative method revealed that women leaders\u27 positionality is intentionally monitored and constantly negotiated in the liberal arts college context. Participants described that they had to be more intentional about revealing or displaying traits associated with those identities that did not fit their institutional environment. This study was an important step in broadening understandings of the complex ways in which leaders\u27 multiple identities interact to shape women\u27s leadership

Sexual Misconduct Discourses within a Gendered Campus Environment

Using data from focus groups, class papers and institutional documents, this project for the HLC Quality Initiative examined discourses around sexual misconduct at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University and considered how these discourses reflect a gendered campus environment. The research aimed to inform the national conversation on sexual misconduct on college campuses and to suggest specific recommendations for implementation at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University

College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University HLC Quality Initiative Summary Report

This Quality Initiative (QI) sought to identify more systematically how the College of Saint Benedict (CSB) and Saint John’s University (SJU) structures, programming, curriculum, and environments promote or inhibit healthy gender development among CSB and SJU students. CSB, a Catholic Benedictine residential liberal arts college for women, and SJU, a Catholic Benedictine residential liberal arts college for men, share a common academic program, while maintaining separate residential life and student development offices. Gender is a central component of our missions. As single-sex institutions working in partnership with each other, we have a unique obligation and opportunity to focus on gender development. The project sought to 1. Examine the current status of gender development on campus; 2. Examine the impact of gender-related policies (or lack thereof) on gender development and gender inclusion on campus; and 3. Examine the gender development impact of several high impact academic programs. The project involved hundreds of CSB and SJU faculty, staff, and students across multiple disciplines and institutional areas in designing and conducting six distinct projects to address the research goals. The Primary Investigators (PI) established connections among the various projects and shared findings with internal and external communities throughout the course of the QI project

Catholic women\u27s college students\u27 constructions of identity: influence of faculty and staff on students\u27 personal and professional self-understanding

This article investigates the influence of faculty and staff on women student\u27s constructions of their personal and professional identities. Situated in two Catholic women\u27s colleges, this qualitative study analyzes the ways in which in-class and out-of-class interactions among students, faculty, and staff helped students envision their future intentions. Students described ways in which college personnel served as career role models, modeled a work/family balance, and advised them as they planned for their futures. This study\u27s implications for the empowerment of women at both Catholic women\u27s colleges and nonreligiously affiliated coeducational institutions relate to the benefits of college personnel who model a personal and professional life balance, the need to consider both service and leadership in learning experiences, and the ways in which Catholic women\u27s institutions articulate their missions to students

Gender, spirituality, and community engagement: complexities for students at Catholic women’s colleges

In this research, we explored the ways that junior and senior students at two Catholic women’s colleges in the Midwestern United States understand community engagement, and we examined how they came to know and understand their gender and spiritual identities in relation to their engagement activities. Participants seemed to draw on both an ethic of care and an ethic of justice (Gilligan, 1982) when framing their motivations for doing community engagement work. The findings enhance what is known about how students experience and make meaning from structured programs that encourage community engagement

Farmwomen in the academy: rurality and leadership in higher education

Using collective biography, this paper examines the ways that rural identity mediates the leadership of two women working as administrators in higher education in the United States. We, the authors, examine our own leadership, as college administrators raised in rural environments, and seek to describe how the notion of rurality manifests in our administrative roles. Our collective biography reveals that rural identity influences our definitions of home, fear of irrelevancy, relationships with others, and work ethic. At the same time, our interesting identities as rural, women leaders are fluid and constantly shifting, manifesting themselves in both implicit and explicit ways. As women from rural America, we find our own geographic identities under-researched and under-theorized within our own field. This research bridges the gap between the intellectual work we do, the identities we hold, and the physical spaces we inhabit, addressing a void in current higher education research and providing an opportunity to weave our scholarship with practice for leaders in higher education

Defining and achieving success: perspectives from students at Catholic women’s colleges

This paper explores the concept of success, as defined through interviews with 26 senior students at two Catholic women’s colleges in the Midwestern United States. Participants described success in expansive ways, grouped into five themes: (a) success is subjective and internally defined, (b) success involves finding a balance between work and family, (c) success involves contributing to a community, (d) successful women are goal-oriented, and (e) successful women do not impede their own success. The findings suggest that if college leaders are to help develop successful women graduates, they must listen to how their students define success

Creating my own story: Catholic women’s college students narrating their lives

Given the complex and gendered messages college women receive about their future professional and personal lives, a woman’s college experiences play an important role in helping her make difficult life choices. In this article, we present a narrative analysis of the envisioned futures of students at two Catholic women’s colleges in the Midwestern United States. Participants drew on a number of narrative themes when creating their rhetorical future lives, including sequencing or juggling multiple priorities, opting out of future work or family roles, using overarching principles to make decisions about future roles, and maintaining resistance to planning. Our findings suggest that holistic understandings of students’ experiences must consider the complex ways in which identities, such as gender, are positioned within social narratives