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

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

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

Discourses of whiteness: white students at Catholic women’s colleges (dis)engaging race

To better understand how White college women understand and are influenced by whiteness, we discursively analyzed data from interviews and focus groups with 25 White seniors at two Catholic women’s colleges. Findings suggest that participants understood whiteness through discourses of insignificance, nominal difference, responsibility, and transformation and that these understandings affected students’ college experiences and envisioned futures

Politics versus Policies: Fourth Wave Feminist Critiques of Higher Education’s Response to Sexual Violence

This article uses the lens of fourth wave feminism to examine media accounts of institutional and student responses in two cases of sexual violence at institutions of higher education. Competing discourses reveal a disconnect between what institutions say they do and students’ actual experiences of the institutional handling of sexual violence cases. When policies, actions, and values are not fully aligned, institutions of higher education are unable to respond to societal and institutional injustices. Hence, recommendations for better alignment between institutional values and actions are proposed

Student Change Agents as Citizens in Contemporary Universities: Achieving the Potential of Engagement

This article presents an analysis of student change agents' roles in two university contexts, one in New Zealand and one in the southern United States.  Through interviews with 55 administrators and students, we focus on how students crafted their roles as citizens of their universities and larger communities, and how institutional processes both supported and stymied their development as civic actors.  Our analysis suggests that shifting discourses about students' relationships with their institutions are changing students' abilities to fulfill their civic potential as full members of their institutions.  We urge that administrators, faculty members, and students recognize how discursive shifts related to postsecondary education affect student engagement, and that they work together to develop multiple and clear paths for students to engage in civic action and development

Diversity and interdisciplinarity: Exploring complexities at the intersections of the academy

Book DescriptionThis book brings together scholars who explore the evolving meanings of diversity and how these meanings present new challenges and considerations for collegiate leadership, management, and practice. The book offers empirical, scholarly, and personal space to interrogate the seemingly elusive but compelling challenges postsecondary institutions face in managing diversity. Book chapters are offered in a variety of voices – some detailing theoretical, conceptual, sociohistorical, and globalized meanings of diversity; some highlighting college personnel narratives around social justice and equity; and some illustrating identity politics and provocative topics among students, faculty, and staff that continue to present formidable challenges to collegiate equity agendas. The intent is to both question existing efforts to diversify and make inclusive collegiate contexts; to present new frameworks of thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion; and to identify and detail policy and practice implications