Five Pullias Center research assistants awarded research grants

Congratulations to Pullias research assistants  W. Edward Chi, Jude Paul Matias Dizon, Liane Hypolite, Suneal Kolluri and Marissiko M. Wheaton, recipients of Rossier Research Office Internal Research Grants!

Below are the titles and abstracts of the research papers the grants will support.

W. Edward Chi: School Accountability and Postsecondary Student Outcomes

School Accountability and Postsecondary Student Outcomes consists of two essays that assess the postsecondary educational outcomes from No Child Left Behind era school accountability policies. These studies are relevant in light of the increased flexibility states have over accountability systems under the Every Students Succeeds Act and its focus on college and career readiness. The first essay estimates the effect on college enrollment using national population studies of postsecondary and secondary institutions and difference-in-differences estimation approaches. This analysis led to the second component of the dissertation involving data from multiple national longitudinal studies of individual students and regression models with controls for region and time fixed effects. The paper asks whether other higher education outcomes are related to prior exposure to K-12 school accountability policies. The longitudinal data sources allow consideration of individual specific exposure to accountability policies and a variety postsecondary outcomes.

Jude Paul Matias Dizon: Examining the Impact of Campus Security on Racial Climate for Black Undergraduate Men

Campus racial climate has been extensively studied in order to identify institutional-level explanations for the differences in college experiences among students of color. Scholars have drawn attention to the variety of ways black male college students experience racialized hostility through policing and hyper-surveillance. While researchers have drawn some attention to the criminalization of black male students, the organizational features that result in such criminalization have been unexplored, namely, the campus security context. In this study, I propose considering campus security—personnel, policies, and practices—as a core organizational aspect of the campus racial climate. I ask “How do black undergraduate men experience campus security?” and will investigate this question through qualitative approaches.

Liane Hypolite: “Black Undergraduate Networking: A Relational Understanding of Connections, Constraints and Capital”

Formerly preferred, but increasingly required, a college degree has become a prerequisite in a competitive job market. For black undergraduates who continue to experience disparities in college completion, gaps in hiring are exacerbated by unequal access to leadership positions and professional training, such as internships, during college. Given that informal connections and social networks heavily influence occupational access, this article presents a relational, ethnographic approach to better understand the opportunities and constraints of networking for black undergraduates. This study advances prior social capital research by not only offering where networks exist, but also presenting how they form and develop over time and across various spaces. The findings from this study elucidate how black students at a selective, historically white institution find, form and maintain ties through networking, illuminating the process through which social capital is made.

Suneal Kolluri: Boys Don’t Try? Young Men of Color and Rigorous Learning Opportunities in High School

Though Advanced Placement participation has been expanding rapidly across the United States, the engagement of boys of color in the program remains tenuous. For example, though in 2015, black students accounted for more than 17 percent of all high school students, Black male students took just 5.9 percent of all the tests taken by high school boys. While Latina/o students account for more than 23 percent of all high school students, Latino boys accounted for just 16.3 percent of all test takers who identified as male. Black girls account for 63 percent more AP exam takers than than black boys, and Latina girls take 34 percent more AP tests than Latino boys, according to 2105 statistics from the College Board. In the abundance of scholarship on young men of color, no  studies take as their primary emphasis boys’ participation in advanced courses. In this dissertation, I apply a relational framework to the engagement of young men of color in rigorous coursework. Rather than defining young men by static, essentialist characteristics, I analyze their academic engagement by way of relational networks within and beyond classroom walls. The approach is an underdeveloped line of inquiry that can serve as an important leverage point for enhancing the educational attainment of this marginalized group.

Marissiko M. Wheaton: Consciousness is Power: Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Critical Race Resistance

Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) students are continuing to become an increasingly diverse, complex and stratified population within higher education. Despite substantial research that exposes large inequities within this racial group, there is little work that attempts to understand their unique racialized and politicized experiences. 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of the Asian American Studies Movement. There is much to be learned about the ways in which APIDA political agency and resistance has evolved since this golden era of activism. This dissertation will examine contemporary narratives of APIDA critical race-consciousness and resistance. More specifically, the study will 1) provide rich sociopolitical context to APIDA racial history in the United States, 2) illustrate how APIDA critical race-consciousness informs political engagement, and 3) explore how students navigate racial power dynamics as they engage in varying forms of political resistance.

Chi, Dizon, Hypolite, Kolluri, and Wheaton are among the Pullias Center’s 14 research assistants, who conduct higher education research along with three full-time post-doctoral scholars and eight faculty members.