Building on the recent intensified calls to decolonise the curriculum in higher education in the UK and beyond, and on my modest initiatives amongst some colleagues, this paper explores the impact of the dominant Eurocentric curriculum on minoritised ethnic students, and their perspectives of our decolonising initiatives, with the aim of refining…

Urban community colleges provide access to postsecondary education's most diverse and underserved student populations. Students enrolled in these institutions often face academic, financial, and social challenges that shrink their odds of success. Leaders from three urban community colleges in the Southern United States shared the importance of…

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) students have unique needs when attending American community colleges. The purpose of this dissertation is to identify current policies and practices of community colleges when working with transgender students, explore best practices when it comes to serving…

Black men often enter higher education spaces with two main disadvantages: being Black and Being male. As a result, their journey to earning a degree comes with several challenges, including maintaining their identity and finding that sense of belonging on many college campuses. However, the increase in diverse student bodies across multiple…

LGBTQ students experience a lower sense of belonging at community colleges. The correlation between campus and classroom climate and academic success, campus involvement, identity, level of outness, and well-being for LGBTQ students contributes to their decreased sense of belonging. Non-LGBTQ-affirming and non-inclusive community college campuses…

Higher education has explored student retention and success over time and continues to look for ways to improve in these areas. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the correlation between the feelings of fear of failure and a sense of belonging, and their association with retention and student success. The group that was studied…

The notion of belonging is an often-referenced but under-theorized concept in studies of school organization. The purpose of this study is to examine the politics of belonging in schools and accompanying implications for how schools are organized and led. This research employs an autophotographic methodology. Student participants took photographs…

The purpose of this study was to determine the sense of belonging between low-income scholarship students and non-scholarship students in the independent school setting by examining stories of their lived experience. This study builds on previous research in higher education that examined students' struggles to belong, which are particularly…

Based on the shift in higher education from providing access to improving student outcomes, the purpose of this study was to examine institutional conditions community college students perceived as contributing to success in terms of identifying and making progress toward or achieving their educational goals. Institutional conditions were…

In this work, we explore first-year students' experiences of belonging through the theoretical and methodological lens of nomadism. Specifically, we problematize conceptions of belonging subjects and spaces as bounded and static, instead taking up belongingness as a dynamic process that enfolds complex experiences and spaces. Using feminist…

International graduate students are a unique population that face specific challenges that affect their campus integration (Arthur, 2017; Burdett & Crossman, 2012; Sharma, 2019). The role of student affairs professionals and staff includes developing and integrating all students, including international graduate students, on-campus (Di Maria,…

The purpose of this research was to describe how specific students, impacted by the closure of Mount Ida College, made sense of the closure. Participants included 12 former students who were enrolled at Mount Ida when administrators announced its closure in April of 2018. Data collected consisted of individual interviews as well as written…

It is a common perception among US employers, educators, and policymakers that there is a shortage of skilled workers who meet vacant manufacturing jobs requirements in the current workforce. Although opinions vary on who or what is responsible for this shortage, a bigger question remains: How do we fix the problem? The current study presented an…

COVID-19 threw a curveball to higher education and college athletics during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years. The purpose of this case study was to examine the transitional effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on Division I Men's and Women's basketball student-athletes. The primary goal of this study was to provide recommendations that…

This study tested the mediating role of bullying attitudes and moderating role of school connectedness in the link between sympathy and Chinese adolescents' active defending behaviors in bullying. Participants were 808 Chinese adolescents (53.3% male, M[subscript age] = 12.40, SD = 0.50). The results showed that sympathy was significantly…