Understanding students' progression to major choice, expected career outcomes, and further study has become a central challenge for leaders at higher education institutions as the nation struggles with worker shortages in critical areas. For queer and trans students, there are significant differences compared to their heterosexual/cisgender peers…

Accreditation is one mechanism to review the quality of higher education institutions and programs. Having accredited programs can differentiate programs and provide opportunities to increase student enrollment and signify program excellence. Additionally, accreditation can be a forcing function for continuous improvement and program assessment.…

This article presents a constructivist writing placement framework, developed from the study of two pilot iterations of a local writing placement mechanism at a large public research university. Through preliminary analysis of data from these pilots, we present a model of constructivist writing placement and demonstrate how it helps move…

Co-location tools of urban economic development, such as accelerators and incubators, can facilitate entrepreneurship. Of these tools, accelerators have proliferated in number and variety over the past couple of decades. However, growing evidence suggests that these programs are not equally effective, varying in form and function with disparate…

The author explicates the cultural DNA and take-off trajectory of an exemplary entrepreneurial university and its emerging focus on sustainability. Entrepreneurial initiatives, emanating from the engineering school in the late 19th century, spread to the physical sciences in the 1930s and to the biological sciences and medicine by the 1970s. A…

In recent years, adult education program closures have led to a historically low presence for adult education in U.S. research institutions. For a research-to-practice field, the implications of this are considerable. One reason for this development is the field's abandonment of what McIntyre calls the scientific attitude: a commitment to evidence…

Academic structure shapes and reflects institutional behaviors as well as the work done in, and outputs of, higher education organizations (HEOs). Despite this critical role, research on boundaries within academic structure is limited, even in work focusing on the relative presence of core and peripheral disciplines. We thus lack an understanding…

There is a popular perception that interdisciplinary research collaboration can yield benefits to knowledge production, from improvements to creativity to advances in addressing real-world problems. However, studies into interdisciplinarity frequently point to material obstacles, such as burdensome time and resource requirements, difficulties in…

This paper argues that the infiltration of market forces and neoliberal policies into higher education has significantly undermined the core teaching mission of universities, leading to a devaluation of teaching, an overemphasis on research productivity, and a reliance on contingent faculty that ultimately compromises the quality of education and…

In this collaborative autoethnography, we, two early career academics used arts-based methods to explore and transform our understanding of scholarly impact. We began by narrating the disorienting dilemma we experienced while preparing our review, tenure, and promotion portfolios. After a brief review of Mezirow's transformative learning theory,…

Black male retention rates in college tend to be lower than they are for Asians, Whites, and Latino males as well as their gendered counterparts in college. Various factors play a role in the higher attrition rates of Black males in higher education. However, there are programmatic initiatives that can contribute to the academic and career success…

This article utilizes anthropological theory to examine the existing body of ethnographic research in colleges and universities, which remains underdeveloped compared to K-12 ethnographies. I identify two parallel developments in this field: a micro-level ethnography of college and university sub-cultures and a macro-level ethnography of…

Meaningfully engaging faculty in assessment presents a continual challenge for general education administrators. Faculty perceptions of assessment--including that assessment serves no purpose other than "checking a box" for accreditation and that it conveys little benefit to the instructor--often hinder instructor engagement. A low-cost…

Intellectual humility, an awareness and ownership of one's intellectual limitations, is argued as a fundamental component of undergraduate education that influences how individuals process new information, remain open to new experiences, and admit the fallibility of their thinking. This study presents a grounded theory analysis of intellectual…

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research…