Although Assembly Bill 705 has done much to increase completion of transfer level math in the California Community College system, historically marginalized students including the Latina/o/x student population continue to experience equity gaps in transfer-level math completion. This qualitative case study investigated the experiences of Latina/o/x students at a community college that fully implemented the legislation by the Fall 2019 deadline by eliminating all prerequisite remediation. The data were collected through student focus groups, one-on-one student interviews, and classroom observations. The findings revealed that students require additional support in the form of career and academic advising to inform their choices of classes including whether to enroll in a corequisite. They also indicated that students experience math anxiety that can be reduced through academic validation from their instructors and would benefit from demystifying resources such as tutoring. Implications included the need to reimagine math instruction in ways that recognize students’ funds of identity through culturally reflective curriculum and peer collaboration and that leverage first generation students’ aspirational motivations for attending college through real life math applications. The experiences and perceptions of these students can be utilized to inform on-going AB 705 implementation efforts.

The purpose of this study was to explore the decision-making processes of Black high school students, regarding their post-graduation plans (e.g. going to college, entering the workforce, etc.).While there is seemingly more attention, research, and money spent on college outreach, preparation, and promise programs (Perna, 2002), recent literature has shown us that higher education institutions target their college access efforts toward white, higher income communities (Jaquette & Salazar, 2018). Thus, as research has shown, urban students possessing the qualifications to enroll into four-year institutions often do not apply or enroll into these institutions (Roderick, Coca, & Nagaoka, 2011). This undermatching of urban students leads to the overrepresentation of low-income, students of color in the community college sector of higher education, and underrepresentation in the four-year sector (Anderson et al., 2015). To remedy this, this study takes a deeper look into not just college access, matriculation, and choice, but further asks what decisions Black high school graduates are making around their futures, and why. While understanding the inequity in K-12 urban schools is important and deeply affect Black student decision making processes, this study expands literature around how, against the odds, students are making informed decisions. Considering the aforementioned, and guided by Social Reproduction Theory (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005), and Black Critical Theory (Dumas & ross, 2016), this study asks: 1) What are Black students from “South LA high school” post-graduation decisions? 1a) Does, and if so how does, antiBlack racism affect their decisions? 2) What other factors influence their decision-making processes? 3) How do Black students from “Henry Lacks High School” make their decisions regarding their futures following high school? 3a) Does, and if so how does, antiBlack racism affect their decisions? Utilizing semi-structured interviews, walking interviews, and photo elicitation interviews this study will provides a number of implications for research, theory, and practice. Most prevalent is the need for researchers and practitioners to understand the political economy and how that affects student behaviors. Accordingly, it is necessary to understand how students recognize the ways in which antiBlack racism permeates through Black communities and schools, and make their decisions accordingly. Additionally, there must be a development of programming and policies that take identity-based approaches, have discussions of race and racial identity, and actually engage in equity work.

There is scant research about Black female students in community colleges. A review of statewide data on Black women in California Community Colleges reflects similar challenges faced by their Black male counterparts. However, there is little attention paid to the experiences of Black women in community colleges. This study examined the experiences of Black female students on a nationally recognized California community college campus, Rose City Community College (RCCC). Specifically, the study centered their lived experiences through a funds of identity ((Esteban-Guitart, 2016; Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014) lens and from a Black Feminist frame. The study included secondary data analysis of research and data about Black female students at the selected college. The study was a phenomenological qualitative study centered on in-depth interviews of 11 Black women who were enrolled at RCCC at the time of the study. Findings from the study revealed that the college had little data available regarding Black women specifically. The interviews illuminated the following findings: Black women use their funds of identity to navigate/survive various forms of personal, educational and societal abuse; conflicting messages and stereotyping effect the experiences of Black women in the classroom and on campus; Black women experience invisibility, hypervisibility, and microaggressions in the classroom and on campus; and the experiences of Black women are not monolithic. This study fills the research gap that exists related to Black female community college students, particularly from the lens of a Black female scholar-practitioner. The study also provides a critical analysis of the efforts made to understand the experiences of Black women by an institution recognized as a leader in equity.

California community college data shows that most community college students will never earn a degree (The Community College Research Center, 2018) or take a long time to do so (Horn & Skomsvold, 2002; Jenkins et al., 2017). Low success holds significant impact for students of color since California community colleges serve 72% of all Latine undergraduates (The Campaign for College Opportunity, 2021b) and 64% of all Black undergraduates (The Campaign for College Opportunity, 2021a). The Guided Pathways framework comes as another response in a chain of completion initiatives. However, most research in Guided Pathways has been done from a bird’s eye view and Guided Pathways has been criticized for its lack of intentionality for students of color (Rose et al., 2019). This case study provides the story of one institution’s attempt to engage Latine and Black students using Guided Pathways as an opportunity to redesign learning assistance centers into Success Centers- physical spaces for an institution's meta majors. Although the study hoped to learn how Success Centers engage with Black and Latine students from the perspective of Success Center faculty and staff, the goal was not to provide a list for institutions to adopt. The case provides a lesson on how an institution with an abundance of ideas and talent struggled to create and sustain change in one area of campus. The Success Centers attempted a formal initiative to engage Black and Latine students, but it faded over time. Currently the centers utilize a mix of informal practices to build community, promote diverse tutor representation, alter their physical spaces, and outreach to other centers and students. Ultimately, due to challenges such as stakeholder involvement, unclear roles, leadership and a lack of community, participants did not feel the redesign has impacted engagement with Black and Latine students but are hopeful it may still succeed to do so. Such findings reflect a need for the adoption of methods of improvement science tethered to an equity framework, a combination of vertical and shared leadership, as well as discussing change in small, informal settings.

The objective of this study was to examine the methods White women use to navigate race in a student affairs professional setting. White women have a unique lens in interpreting race due to their privileged status as White as well as their subordinate gender status. Using Bonilla-Silva’s colorblind racism and Cheryl Matias’ emotionality of Whiteness framework, this study sought to understand the methods, whether consciously or subconsciously, White women use in their daily encounters with race. A semi-structured interview method was applied to 23 participants at two public institutions of higher education. The interviews focused specifically on how they felt about racial issues in the workplace as well as how participants perceivethemselves as White women in the student affairs profession. A commonality amongst all participants was that their origins of racial understanding began with a colorblind lens. The disruption of the colorblind lens for participants solicited emotional responses to racial discourse and situations. Specifically, anger, avoidance, self-victimization and tears were revealed throughout this study. Additionally, content analysis was used to learn about the campus climate issues at each respective institution.

The themes that emanated from the study were emotional resistance to race, distance from racial terminology, identity as a minimization tool, evolution of awareness, as well as re-centering and challenging Whiteness. These themes describe mechanisms used by participants in professional environments when race was a focus. The emotional aspect of the data yielded examples of White women using emotions to uphold White supremacy through tears, anger, victimization or guilt. These responses refocus the racial conversation on White women and shift the focus away from the issues of People of Color. A maneuver used to avoid race was avoiding racial terminology altogether as well as using other identities such as gender, sexual orientation and ability status to minimize the racial focus. Additionally, several participants encountered racial dissonance and continued to grapple with race as Whites and a few recognize the power there is in being White women in a student affairs organization.

The findings indicate that there was growing awareness among the participants and this journey is highly contradictory. This is highlighted through participant views on affirmative action as well as a vacillation between guilt and self-victimization. This study did highlight the need for more in-depth professional training for student affairs professionals focused on the use of language centered on racial justice, emotions as well as colorblindness.

The purpose of this study was to uncover the role of family in shaping the educational aspirations and trajectories of Latina/x college students. This study focused on interviews with 10 Latina/x first-generation students and 8 of their family members. Several theories helped to guide the framing and analysis of findings including LatCrit in Education, community cultural wealth, and Chicana/Latina feminism. Findings revealed that family members (i.e., parents, siblings, aunts/ uncles, cousins, and grandparents) played an instrumental role in passing along positive messages about education and college. For parents in particular, these messages were often a direct reflection of the messages they themselves received as children (e.g., the importance of formal education and the morals/values they learned in the home). Parents held high aspirations for students to be someone in life and shared their own education and migration stories to motivate children to pursue their education. Furthermore, participant narratives revealed a number of ways that family members and students simultaneously supported one another throughout students’ educational journeys. For family members, this support often took the shape of providing transportation, emotional support, encouragement/moral support, financial, spiritual/religious support, and the act of “showing up.” In the same vein, students supported family members by passing along the navigational and social capital they had acquired from being the first in their family to traverse the U.S. higher education system. Additionally, they provided family members with emotional support, encouragement/moral support, job related assistance, translation support, taking care of bills/paperwork, and looking after their parents’ health. Findings also nuanced research on Latino families by revealing the tensions, challenges, and contradictions that were simultaneously faced by students. Such examples included misunderstandings about mental health, tense relationships, expectations to fulfill household chores, and feelings of disconnection from parents about what it took to get into college and what college was like. Overall, these findings offer a number of implications related to research, theory, and practice. In particular, there are a number of tangible ways that K-12 educators and higher education professionals can outreach to family members as findings revealed just how important students’ families were to their academic success.

This study expanded the understanding of the experiences and perspectives of faculty of color within the community college system. Through a qualitative research design, the study drew insights from interviews with 14 self-identified faculty of color and a review of institutional documents from a single community college. A framework that integrated institutional logics, critical race theory, and resistance theory guided data analysis. Findings revealed that while these faculty members are deeply committed to enacting equity and resonate with the open-access mission of community colleges, their efforts are often voluntary, unpaid, and occasionally overlooked by their peers and administration. The themes that emerged include the misalignment of institutional equity directives, undervalued equity-related labor, and a disparity between the college’s public image and the actual experiences of faculty of color. Findings also highlighted the profound commitment of these faculty to promoting equity; they not only connected deeply with students, fostering an understanding of their unique characteristics, but also aligned their roles with community colleges’ democratic mission by proactively offering opportunities and services. Moreover, faculty members perceived equity as a tool to address disparities, striving to level the educational playing field by employing strategies such as adopting open educational resources (OER), mentoring, spearheading initiatives, and advocating for their adjunct and nontenured peers. However, many of these equity-driven efforts were not recognized in their official job roles, leading faculty members to assume these responsibilities voluntarily, often without due compensation. The findings also highlighted a potential misalignment between the college’s publicized equity directives and their on-ground implementation. Further, the labor associated with these equity-driven initiatives was often undervalued and dismissed, creating a chasm between the public portrayal of WCC and the lived experiences of its faculty of color. Addressing challenges and promoting equity, faculty members employed strategies such as forming support networks for mutual assistance and actively setting boundaries to preserve their well-being. Participants voiced a distinct desire for better recognition from the college’s administrators, emphasizing the importance of resources and compensation for their labor. Through participants’ narratives, they sought to communicate their value, possibly in contexts they felt unable to directly convey to the college’s leadership. The research highlighted the evolving nature of ‘equity’ as a concept, emphasizing the importance of ongoing dialogue, acknowledging faculty concerns, and promoting a cohesive and effective equity approach at the college. The study underscored the need for acknowledgment, compensation, and consistent messaging regarding equity practices at community colleges.

Community colleges play a vital role in our nations system of higher education, enrolling half of the U.S. college going population (Cox, 2009, Deil-Amen, 2011). However, they have long been under researched, specifically little is known about the community college classrooms and the interactions that take place within them. Yet, the classroom is the primary point of contact between the institution and its students. In an effort to better understand student experiences within the community college sector in California––the nations largest higher education system––this study focuses on community college faculty and their pedagogical practices. Through an asset-based lens, this study, Funds of Teaching Identity: Teaching and Learning in California Community Colleges –– examines the community college classroom and the role of faculty in the various forms of student success. This case study of a community college faculty professional development workshop, uses qualitative research methods and multiple points data collection to analyze the experiences and teaching context of community college faculty. Findings from the study reveal a complex context for teaching that at time impedes the implementation of an asset-based pedagogical practices. However, this study also finds that use of faculty’s Funds of Teaching Identity combined with their disposition to express Pedagogies of Cari�o can contribute to transformative spaces for teaching and learning.

By adopting a case study design and a network lens, this exploratory research approached the coauthorship network in the institutional context that is internally multi-layered and externally shaped by national and global higher education. The case used is a national flagship university in China, and its network provides important details of the institutional knowledge production and helps critically assess China’s rise in global science. Analyses were built upon faculty profile data obtained through university websites and the publication data scraped from the Web of science and other academic databases during a five-year window between 2014 and 2018.

The major findings are centered on the network distributions at local, national, and global levels and the variations in network cohesion and performance by sub-organizations within the university. First, the institution’s global publications and ties have increased over the years, which highlights the trend of international collaboration in global science and reflects China’s internationalization strategies. The collaboration is shaped by the hierarchy of global higher education and science publication systems. Most global ties with the university were built by scholars affiliated with institutions in the global north and most national ties were connected by first-tier Chinese universities. Second, local ties built the basic structure of the organizational network. The inter-organizational network is vulnerable and is connected to only a few large schools, whereas schools in the social sciences and humanities are on the periphery of the inter-organizational network. To build a comprehensive university that matches the standards of a world-class university, the local status of the social sciences and humanities need to be elevated. A collaborative institutional climate and organizational resources would foster more collaboration among humanities and social sciences themselves. Third, in comparing intra-organizational networks within the university, network cohesion differed between natural sciences and engineering cluster and humanities and social sciences clusters. Stronger bonds between faculty within the same school are associated to higher organizational external productivity, extensity, and visibility.

As community colleges have often been referred to as the equalizers in the U.S. higher education system, it is important to examine how these institutions reproduce inequities for Black and Latino/a/e students as they navigate their educational journeys. Through a narrative qualitative research design, this dissertation study collected 20 interviews with Black and Latino/a/e current and former students from three community college sites in addition to an analysis of online modalities to explore the structural and procedural challenges that cool-out these students from community college. This study implemented the use of institutional precarity (Hart, 2019) and procedural cooling-out (Anderson, 2015) to examine how the structural and procedural challenges in community colleges directly impact the educational goals of Black and Latino/a/e students. In addition, this study focused on the micro-decisions (Anderson, 2015) of students to explore how students made daily academic decisions as they encountered these challenges. Findings revealed Black and Latino/a/e students experience several structural and procedural challenges that influence their cooling-out. Additionally, Black and Latino/a/e students face unique challenges based on their race and ethnicity which are upheld by placement policies like AB705, the allocation of resources, and disciplinary and advising practices. For this reason, this dissertation study demonstrates that community college attrition rates can be attributed to the structural and procedural challenges along with racialized challenges embedded within the college. Research findings from this study suggest community college scholars should expand this work and focus on practices, policies, and reforms with a racialized lens as they often exacerbate inequities in the community college system. Additionally, this study calls for equitable legislation and practices that promote retention and academic support for Black and Latino/a/e community college students.