Conventional wisdom holds that research-productive faculty are also the finest instructors. But, is this commonly held belief correct? In the current study, the notion that faculty scholarship exhibits a positive association with teaching evaluations is investigated. Reflecting the data structure of faculty nested within university, the current…

Students' learning goals demonstrate much stronger variety than traditional goal orientation models for classroom learning assume, especially when the educational context allows so. In this empirical study we will investigate the richness of students' goal orientation in a collaborative learning context. We do so with the help of a goal…

With the ever-increasing availability of online education opportunities, understanding the factors that influence online student satisfaction and success is vital to enable administrators to engage and retain this important stakeholder group. The purpose of this ex-post-facto, nonexperimental quantitative study was to investigate the impact of…

The study reported here examines the learning approaches adopted by students enrolled in introductory chemistry at a public university. To evaluate learning approaches, a group of 61 students enrolled in the course were interviewed at three time-points during the semester, specifically to ascertain how they prepared for the exams. From these…

Openness to diversity and challenge (ODC) constitutes an integral outcome of the undergraduate experience. However, ODC may also serve as a form of generalized openness to experience; if so, then it should be positively related to a host of college experiences as well as student success. The study reported here explored this possibility within a…

The purpose of this study is to assess how studying abroad impacts the development of intercultural competence and the moderating role of student's personality. This research uses a pre-post design with a sample of 264 undergraduate students from four Colombian universities; it includes a group of students who participated in a one semester…

National efforts to transform undergraduate biology education call for research experiences to be an integral component of learning for all students. Course-based undergraduate research experiences, or CUREs, have been championed for engaging students in research at a scale that is not possible through apprenticeships in faculty research…

Using data from the first National study on high school preparation for college calculus success, the Factors Influencing College Success in Mathematics (FICSMath) project, this article connects student high school instructional experiences to college calculus performance. The findings reported here reveal that students were better prepared for…

Among the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), much attention has been paid to the influences of math- and science-related learning contexts on students' STEM major selection. However, the technology and engineering learning contexts that are linked to STEM major selection have been overlooked. In response, a…

This paper delves into a facet of socioeconomic diversity relatively unaddressed in the literature: student reports of cross-class interaction ("reported CCI"). Previous research has found that student interaction across social class is a significant predictor of cross-racial interaction, but it is unknown whether the actual…

School counselors are the primary facilitators of college transition for many students, yet little is known about their influence on college-going behavior. Analyzing data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, this study employs coarsened exact matching and multilevel modeling to examine the effects of student-counselor visits on…

This study tested a hypothesis derived from Holland's (1997) theory of personality and environment that congruence between person and environment would influence satisfaction with doctoral training environments and career certainty. Doctoral students' (N = 292) vocational interests were measured using questions from the Interest Item Pool, and…

Empirical studies of personality traits in creative writers have demonstrated mixed findings, perhaps due to issues of sampling, measurement, and the reporting of statistical information. The goal of this study is to quantify the personality structure of aspiring creative writers according to a modern hierarchal model of trait personality. A…

Clustered data (e.g., students within schools) are often analyzed in educational research where data are naturally nested. As a consequence, multilevel modeling (MLM) has commonly been used to study the contextual or group-level (e.g., school) effects on individual outcomes. The current study investigates the use of an alternative procedure to…

Community colleges are an integral part of the postsecondary education system in the United States. Unfortunately, college completion rates continue to decline. Additionally, median income in the United States is also declining. The idea that each successive generation of students will do better than the previous one is quickly becoming a fantasy.…