I want to thank the Lumina Foundation and the Association for the Study of Higher Education for the 2004 ASHE/Lumina Dissertation Fellowship Award. This fellowship provided me with funds to conclude this dissertation and with valuable mentoring and networking opportunities for my career. I also wish to thank all individuals who provided me with thoughtful insights; in particular, I want to thank Juan Pablo Fernandez. Also, I want to thank the participants of this study for their time and collaboration.

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Using a longitudinal, state-wide dataset, this study assessed the effect of financial aid on the persistence of full-time students in associate's degree programs at the Oklahoma community colleges. Three financial-aid sources were examined: the Oklahoma Higher Learning Access Program (OHLAP), Pell grants, and Stafford loans. Results indicate that these forms of financial aid, alone and in combination, were predictors of persistence measured in terms of the student progressing from 1st-year status to 2nd-year status. The effect of financial aid, however, was moderated by ethnicity and income.Access and affordability have traditionally been concepts affiliated with the culture and inherent mission of community colleges (Bragg, 2001;Cohen & Brawer, 1996). Because of their relatively low costs, community colleges have been heralded as a viable path to higher education for many financially challenged student populations

In the 1980s, the US government encouraged the cooperation of industries with universities in order to bridge funding gaps and cope with global competitive markets through legislations that allow universities to start spin-off businesses and to generate profits from patents. At the turn of the century, university partnerships with the private sector have greatly increased through research grants, licensing patents, and in some cases, the formation of new firms-mainly at research universities and in the hard sciences. In response to these entrepreneurial opportunities, university administrators developed intellectual property policies to facilitate the commercialization of research. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences across IP policies among nine research universities as potential sources of influence on faculty engagement in for-profit research ventures according to existing models of faculty role performance and achievement.