Despite its presence on many colleges and universities and substantial financial investment in higher education, very little research has explored whether and how participation in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) shapes college students' experiences and development. Using data from interviews with 20 cadets in one U.S. Army ROTC…

We describe relationships among epistemological, interpersonal, and intrapersonal development in Chinese college students from the perspective of self-authorship theory. The themes that emerged from interviews with 13 junior or senior students offer insights into unique aspects of self-authorship development in the Chinese higher education context…

The study of student development has long been considered a cornerstone of the higher education and student affairs (HESA) profession. However, perspectives on what constitutes student development have evolved as scholars continuously embrace more critical frameworks to implicate systems of power and oppression--what scholars have termed the third…

Following Jones and Stewart's (2016) organization of student development scholarship into three waves, researchers have advanced understandings of learning and development using critical and poststructural frameworks. Though many scholars understand what scholarship fits under this third wave, less guidance is available to shape studies of…

In this qualitative study, the spiritual experiences and leadership of 15 Black collegiate men enrolled at higher education institutions were examined. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand how Black men student leaders make meaning of spirituality. The first finding described how Black men students make meaning of…

Given the rapid increase in tertiary enrollments in Trinidad and Tobago over the past 2 decades, there is a critical need for locally based research to guide practice in student support services. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the work of student support services--in particular, students' interactions with…

The 60th anniversary of "The Journal of College Student Development" presents an opportunity to examine the changing landscape of a subsection of the scholarly discourse in student affairs as reflected in the articles published in JCSD. I traced highly cited authors and conversations through network-based citation analysis from 1959…

Using intersectionality as a framework, we examined how queer Students of Color at historically white institutions explored and made meaning of their intersecting identities in college. This research employed constructivist grounded theory to understand how 20 queer Collegians of Color at various HWIs explained the process of identity exploration…

Wading into the third wave of student development theory, we used crip theory to reimagine nonableist student development theory. Based on data from an intersectional study of college students with physical disabilities, we analyzed the narratives of two participants. Cripping these narratives revealed how framing student development theory…

Higher education and student affairs (HESA) faculty members who teach student development theory (SDT) courses are integral to socializing future professionals to SDT and to the organizational culture, or the norms, behaviors, and values, of HESA. Although faculty members are important socializing agents, how they teach SDT courses and the ways…

With intersectional frameworks gaining in popularity within higher education scholarship, we explored the potential of intersectionality to produce nuanced understandings of college student identity without obscuring its mission to examine overlapping axes of power. This article highlights significant areas for consideration for qualitative…

This essay advances discussion of the evolution of student development theory as foundational knowledge for student affairs practice and the role theoretical consensus plays in the application of theory to student affairs practice. We located our discussion within the context of student affairs as a low-consensus field and address 2 related…

Theoretical modeling has been a widely used tool in the student persistence literature for many years; however, only recently has it been applied to the Historical Black College or University (HBCU) context in an intentional way. We investigated a theory of student persistence in commuter institutions at 2 commuter HBCUs (N = 147 students).…

Student Conduct Administration (SCA) is one of many names for the processes and procedures through which colleges and universities manage student behavior. Despite the accessibility of quasi-experimental design (QED) in the study of education (Schlotter, Schwerdt, & Woessman, 2011), the existing scholarship has yet to generate strong empirical…

We used queer theory to encourage readers to think differently about previous theories about Black racial identity development. Queer theory facilitates new and deeper understandings of how Black people develop their racial identities, prompting more fluidity and nuance. Specifically, we present a queered model of Black racial identity development…