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Community colleges have long been recognized as pivotal institutions for broadening educational opportunity for a variety of marginalized populations, including first-generation students. These institutions are also an important starting point for students desiring to eventually earn a bachelor's degree in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics discipline. Our qualitative study explores the experiences of 15 first-generation community college transfer students majoring in engineering. We use the theory of community cultural wealth and the concepts of experiential capital and transfer student capital as lenses for analyzing and interpreting our semi-structured interview data and for formulating recommendations to improve the transfer experiences and educational outcomes of this population. This sample of students enacted several types of community cultural wealth and experiential capital when navigating the engineering transfer pathway and in their engineering studies. They were less likely to enact the elements of transfer student capital, however. Instead, our results indicate that the participants attribute their successful transitions to their self-motivation and initiative associated with community cultural wealth and experiential capital, rather than institutional interventions associated with transfer student capital. We conclude with recommendations for strengthening institutional programs directed at first-generation engineering transfer students.

Military student veterans' distinct life pathways often make it difficult for educational researchers to adequately capture and represent the challenges and opportunities they face in college. Thus, student veteran educational programs and policies are often built on inaccurate notions about their experiences and identities. Using Veteran Critical Theory as an organizing framework, this article describes two qualitative methods used in a study of student veterans: the key event timeline and the identity circle. The resulting data offer rich, thick description beyond what is typically captured through standard in-depth interviews. Student veterans construct their own narratives and offer counter-narratives that challenge prevailing assumptions about what it means to be a veteran in higher education. This qualitative approach could help veteran studies move from a deficit-based focus to an asset-based framework, and may be useful to educational researchers studying other marginalized populations.

In recent years, many students have faced economic hardship and experienced food insecurity, even as universities strive to create more equitable pathways to college. There is a need for a more holistic perspective that addresses the complexity of food insecurity amongst college students. To this end, we examined the relationship between the social determinants of health, including college food insecurity (CoFI) and childhood food insecurity (ChFI), and their relationship with well-being measures. The study sample was a convenience sample that included 372 students at a public university who responded to an online survey in fall 2021. Students were asked to report their food security status in the previous 30 days. We used the following analytical strategies: chi-square tests to determine differences between food secure (FS) and food insecure (FI) students; binary logistic regression of CoFI on student demographics and ChFI; and ordinal or binary logistic regression for well-being measures. Black students, off-campus students, first-generation students, in-state students, and humanities/behavioral/social/health sciences majors were more likely to report CoFI. FI students were more likely to have experienced ChFI and to have lower scores on all well-being measures. ChFI was associated with four well-being measures and its effects were mediated by CoFI. College student health initiatives would benefit from accounting for SDOH, including ChFI experiences and its subsequent cumulative disadvantages experienced during college. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Career-focused education offered through programs of study (POS), career pathways, and career and technical education (CTE) can provide students with opportunities to engage in career exploration and development, to establish career goals, to increase academic knowledge and skills, to test career preferences in applied settings, and to make links between coursework and postsecondary careers and education. Given the potential of these types of education reforms, federal and state legislation has been enacted to foster their development. In South Carolina, the state's Education and Economic Development Act (EEDA) has been integral in the implementation of POS and other career pathways. EEDA is one of the most comprehensive career-focused school-reform mandates in the country. Researchers are investigating how components of EEDA are helping to build the foundation and framework for successful POS implementation. In this article, the authors provide insights into how several key elements of the South Carolina policy are helping sample schools lay a foundation for POS and POS-like educational components for all students.

Our study is part of a broader longitudinal study of a state-mandated career-focused school reform policy. We investigate whether career and technical education (CTE) and non-CTE students differed in interactions with guidance counselors, level of participation in career planning and development, and beliefs about the relevance of having a career major to their educational and career goals during early stages of policy implementation. In spring 2011, we surveyed 1,077 seniors in the Class of 2011 from eight high schools located in economically and culturally diverse regions of South Carolina. Results indicated statistically significant differences in student responses: CTE students reported higher levels of involvement in career planning and careerrelated activities than non-CTE students for most measures; however, in other areas, their responses were similar. Results show that EEDA may lead to positive changes in the relationship between counselors and all students and influence student expectations for future education.

Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with student veterans in the United States pursuing Bachelor's degrees in engineering across four institutions, we present findings relating military leadership and its application to engineering education. Our findings address three themes: (1) how leadership skills are learned, (2) motivation to be a leader, and (3) translation into, and enactment of military leadership skills in, engineering education. The interviews show that leadership skills and experiences acquired in the military play an important role in the academic experiences and success of student veterans in engineering (SVEs). Findings can help inform strategies and programs to encourage more SVEs to translate their leadership skills to an academic setting in an asset-based framework. Providing leadership opportunities for SVEs in the classroom has the potential to increase their engagement in engineering, strengthen their pathways to professional engineering practice, and provide important role models of servant leadership for the other engineering undergraduates who work with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"A Longitudinal Study of the South Carolina Personal Pathways to Success Initiative" (see Hammond, Drew, et al., 2011) follows the implementation of a statewide mandated career-focused school reform policy in one U.S. state. The research focuses on eight diverse high schools in the state, personnel at those schools, and approximately 6,200 students across three cohorts, with varying amounts of exposure to the policy. In the longitudinal study, we investigate whether the number of highly developed career-focused programs of study available to students increases under the policy and whether targeted student and school outcomes are affected. Findings are presented here as related to overall policy implementation, differences in student experiences, changes in the roles of guidance, and changing attitudes toward career and technical education.

The flexibility of mixed methods research strategies makes such approaches especially suitable for multisite case studies. Yet the utilization of mixed methods to select sites for these studies is rarely reported. The authors describe their pragmatic mixed methods approach to select a sample for their multisite mixed methods case study of a statewide education policy initiative in the United States. The authors designed a four-stage sequential mixed methods site selection strategy to select eight sites in order to capture the broader context of the research, as well as any contextual nuances that shape policy implementation. The authors anticipate that their experience would provide guidance to other mixed methods researchers seeking to maximize the rigor of their multisite case study sampling designs. (Contains 4 figures, 2 tables, and 5 notes.)

It is often assumed that individuals who are knowledgeable and concerned about the environment will engage in environmentally responsible behavior (ERB). We use data from a large scale Web survey hosted on National Geographic's Web site in 2001-2002 to investigate this premise. We examine whether reading three classic environmental books ("Walden," "A Sand County Almanac," and "Silent Spring") is associated with the likelihood of engaging in ERB. Conceptualizing this activity as a formative experience and a source of environmental knowledge, we hypothesized that reading such literature would be a stronger predictor of ERB than sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., gender, education, and political orientation), general environmental attitudes (as measured by the New Ecological Paradigm), and concern about specific environmental risks. The results indicated that while reading environmental literature was a stronger predictor of ERB than background characteristics and the NEP, environmental concern was an even stronger predictor. We offer reasons for these findings and make suggestions for environmental education and future research. (Contains 4 tables and 1 note.)

This paper describes a service-learning project designed for an upper-level sociology course in Policy and Social Change. The project, Breaking Ground, had two main goals: to change students' perceptions about persons who are homeless and to increase students' sense of efficacy for engaging in social advocacy. Through Breaking Ground, students formed a partnership with advocates and homeless clients to raise public awareness about homelessness and to organize advocacy and fund-raising events for the agency partner. The research element of the project used pre-tests and post-tests to assess changes in students' beliefs about social justice, self-efficacy, and perceptions of homelessness. When compared to students who took the class, but did not participate in the described service-learning project, Breaking Ground students experienced significant changes in a positive direction in their perceptions of individuals who are homeless. There were also some small changes in student feelings of self-efficacy and opinions on social justice. I explain these results and provide suggestions for implementation of similar projects. (Contains 2 tables and 4 footnotes.)

This paper aims to understand how the experiences of disability such as peoples' sense of autonomy, their perceptions of day-to-day challenges, and access to public spaces, vary depending on the place they live, in the context of Myanmar. Informed by the social model of disability, we investigated how disabling experiences differ between those who live in Yangon, capital city of Myanmar, and peripheral areas, Mandalay, Ayeyarwady and Shan. We conducted focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with around 90 people with disabilities who had challenges in seeing, hearing, and physical disabilities like mobility to report the results. This paper finds that people with disabilities lead more independent lives, were better supported in carrying out day-to-day activities, and had more accessible services and spaces in Yangon than in peripheries. Two notable findings are: (1) accessibility is not just infrastructural, but also attitudinal, more enabling in Yangon than peripheries, and (2) people with disabilities who live in peripheries feel "home-incarcerated" due to infrastructural exclusions experienced in those areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports the results of a national study assessing the impact of community colleges on school-to-work transition and the effects of race, gender, and socioeconomic status on student outcomes. Concludes that several variables, including transfer rate and the availability of career counseling, were related to the effect of gender and class background on wages and use of training on the job. (Contains 62 references.) (KS)

Describes a dual-writing assignment used in two introductory sociology classes in which students write a book review and explore their own career choices through an occupational profile. Discusses the integration of work and career related concepts into the lectures and students' evaluation of the assignment. (CMK)

This study aims to illuminate whether the context of community colleges results in more positive outcomes for students. More specifically, the multilevel analysis aims to predict the race, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) gaps in student outcomes, and how these are impacted by state coordination. Measures of state coordination include level of state funding, years of existence of state community college system, number of local institutions, type of governance board, degree to which the state is involved in program approval and centralization rank. Results suggest that state coordination has influence over wages in that a higher percentage of state funding was associated with a wider gender gap in earnings. Additionally, the variables associated with more positive outcomes in terms of the race gap in wages were program approval by the state and the presence of a coordinating board. This exploratory study demonstrates the potential of multilevel models in examining the school-to-work transition. Future research should be directed toward developing additional models of state coordination.

This article describes the research experience of the author in working with a group of voluntary organizations in Swindon, England, to change policy makers' perspectives regarding the evaluation of local [...]