Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences approved Certification Standards and the process for Academic Certification of Criminal Justice programs in May of 2005. This paper traces the history of the movement from the late 1970s to present and contrasts the processes and outcomes of academic peer review with those of certification.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study was designed to examine journalism and mass communication educators’ personal epistemology and its influence on their academic work as educators. A case study was conducted that examined nine journalism and mass communication faculty members from varying educational and background experiences. Three separate categories were used to classify the faculty members: academic, industry, and adjunct. The results identified unique epistemologies for the faculty groups. The faculty members in the academic group commonly illustrated epistemological assumptions grounded in contextual relativism, whereas faculty members from the industry and adjunct categories more often demonstrated epistemological assumptions rooted in dualism. The different epistemological assumptions influenced faculty members’ academic work. The implications for journalism and mass communication educations are discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Findings from a larger qualitative study conducted with feminist female faculty in MFT programs will be presented, where they shared experiences in academia relating to their feminist ideology. Emergent themes will be presented and discussed in context of how academic institutions continue to be environments that offer them confirmation and fulfillment and yet oppress them

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Educational researchers have long-ignored the cross-national evidence for the U.S-based findings of the effects of family structure on academic performance. Revisiting the HL hypothesis (Heyneman and Loxley 1983) and Esping-Andersen’s recent re-theorization of family-relevant welfare state regime typology, I found that first GDP per capita has positive effects on academic performance indirectly through sibling size. Second, the maximum degree of familialism in the corporatist regime nation-states has exacerbated the adverse effects of sibling size. However, we need to exercise caution while making statements about how the national economic indicators as well as welfare state regimes affect such an association. Data are from the OECD PISA data base and analyses were based on a multi-level analysis of 31 countries.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: While social scientists are examining native minority students’ academic performance in order to explain the lower performance of African-American and Hispanic college students relative to their predicted college performance based on high school and standardized test performance, the role of academic aspirations in predicting academic performance remains elusive. At the same time, scholars are beginning to ask about the social class and national origins of the ‘colored’ faces on four-year college and university campuses today. As an increasing share of minority students at selective four-year institutions are immigrants, advocates of affirmative action in particular are beginning to question whether admitting immigrants of color provides a shortcut to creating ‘diversity’ on campus without fully confronting legacies of racial inequality within the United States.

Past research shows academic aspirations may be an important factor in predicting academic success. Measuring differences in the academic aspirations of native versus same-race immigrant minority first-year college students enables examination of how native minority status uniquely affects academic aspirations and opens opportunities for further analysis of how aspiration differentials translate into differential academic performance.

Using online survey data from first-year college students (n=5,541) at six universities of varied public/private status, size, and geographic location who are re-interviewed in their third year, initial findings indicate that native minority students—particularly Asian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans—have lower academic aspirations than their same-race immigrant counterparts. The lower academic aspirations of native minority college freshmen in particular may be an important contributor to the phenomenon of minority academic underperformance.