Modern chief administrators in higher education are facing a moment of significant crisis. Confidence in higher education decreases yearly, a growing anti-intellectual movement erodes trust, and educators feel ill-prepared for contemporary challenges. The pressures of the role lead to shorter tenures in the chief academic position. So, academic…

This thesis is an historical account of the band program at Auburn University from 1991--2021. The Auburn University Band Program has experienced a long history of rich traditions and continued excellence, so much so that the school's fight song even contains the line "On to vict'ry, strike up the band." What started as a small ensemble…

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided the funding mechanism for the modern land-grant college system. In the over 160 years since its passage, the tripartite land-grant mission of teaching, research, and service has become the most recognizable legacy of the legislation. Recent scholars of land-grant education caution against viewing the history of…

This research paper explores the relationship between dynamic capabilities and innovation performance in research universities in the United States, with a focus on technology transfer as a means of promoting economic and societal development. The study draws on the dynamic capability's theory developed by Teece et al. (2007), which offers a…

The current study examined educators' perceptions of liberatory spaces in higher education. The literature review delves into an analysis of power and oppression in higher education, a description of liberatory spaces in the academy, and outcomes of those spaces, specifically self-empowerment. The methodological approach for the current study was…

This dissertation presents an institutional and historical analysis of the emergence of new graduate schools of education, or nGSEs. A controversial reform in the field of teacher preparation, nGSEs offer teacher preparation, state certification, and master's degrees in a variety of new non-university contexts. With bipartisan support and…

The Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR) defines learning analytics as "the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs" (SoLAR, n.d.). To fully realize the potential of learning…

There has been much written on the topic of higher education in America. All facets from formation to expansion to experimentation to controversial issues in institutions of higher education have been discussed and dissected. However, one of the most compelling higher educational topics is the emergence and development of the junior college. This…

Researchers contend that higher education organizations and systems, no matter their description (public, private, two-year, or four-year), build society. Nationally, many higher education leaders discuss metrics and measures such as graduation rates, class sizes, intercollegiate athletics, famous alumni, and the extent of community engagement, as…

This dissertation argues for an expansive understanding of academic fiction in the postwar period--specifically as associated with the rise and fall of the "Golden Age of the American University"--beyond the conventional forms of the campus and academic novel. Rather than restricting academic fiction solely to types of novels that are…

The global dimensions of knowledge production have shaped internationalization which has greatly impacted U.S higher education. The transformation of higher education heavily influenced by neoliberal globalization, massification, and marketization have diminished the core tripartite mission of the university in teaching, research, and service to…

In the last several decades educational development efforts for faculty at higher education institutions have shifted to be more collaborative in nature, using approaches such as communities of practice and faculty learning communities. Including activities with strong interpersonal components such as communities of practice and faculty learning…

Henderson State Teachers College (HSTC) began operations on the former campus of Henderson-Brown College (HBC) in September, 1929. Founded as a publicly supported teacher training college, the first thirty years of operation of HSTC proved to be full of crises with the institution lurching from one to another while working to establish an…

Engineering higher education is growing rapidly across the world, especially in the Global South. For many of these countries, the dominant engineering university models were imported and established by colonial European empires. These imported systems of higher education and engineering evolved to meet the local contexts of Europe and the United…

This study explored the massification of Saudi higher education by utilizing contemporary Chinese higher education expansion as a framework to identify the drivers of expansion, challenges encountered, and diversification within the massification process. This study employed a qualitative approach of policy analysis of background literature,…