Using survey and qualitative data, this study identified emergent themes that remain consistent across or differentiate among reports of women earning their doctoral degree relatively quickly ("early-finishers") and those taking considerably longer ("late-finishers"). Emergent themes included commitment to timely degree completion, faculty mentoring relationships, funding opportunities, family issues, relevant research experiences, and capacity to "work the system." The article also considers implications and recommendations for doctoral faculty and programs.
Liberal arts institutions are unique in their emphasis on learning and social environments that value diverse interpersonal and intergroup relationships. This case study examines the institutionalization of a faculty-initiated program-the Social Justice Learning Community (SJLC)-at an historically White liberal arts college for women that recently experienced significant change in the race, class, and sexual orientation of its student body. The SJLC served as a curricular response to the tensions surrounding diversity and as a tool for crafting an inclusive institutional identity through its use of a critical multicultural framework grounded in dialogue and social engagement and its strategy of linking institutional mission to programmatic goals to insure sustainability and viability within the institutional structure. We use a framework of phased institutionalization to explore how the SJLC changed and challenged institutional responses to and engagement of diversity on campus. The study poses the following research questions: (1) What were the structures and processes used by the SJLC to respond to student diversity? and (2) How has the implementation of these structures and processes influenced a phased institutionalization of the SJLC as an effective diversity initiative? Our work is supported with the insights of two study participants who served as founding members and as past directors for the SJLC and offers a model of how committed attention to diversity by faculty, staff, and students utilizing a critical multicultural framework as an organizing principle supports the building of a multicultural campus community.
Using first-person accounts of classroom experiences, five professors examine the intersection of social foundations and borderland theory and their efforts to move students through resistance to understanding and affirmation of sociocultural diversity. The authors present this paper in two parts, the first providing examples of using a borderland approach within the classroom and the second providing illustrations moving these borderland strategies beyond the classroom. In each case, authors show the interwoven nature of pedagogy, identity, knowledge, and experience as they work to connect theory and practice. All of the institutions represented have majority white populations, and many do not reflect the diversity of the communities in which they are situated. The need for borderland practices in social foundations courses is urgent in these areas. These pedagogical reflections, although not meant to be recipes for success, provide examples of practices that can serve to meet the growing demands from schools and communities for culturally competent, socially aware teacher-leaders, and reaffirm the critical importance of social foundations in teacher education.
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