Browsing by Author "Collins, Denise"

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    An examination of Academic Integrity Policies, Standards, and Programs at Public and Private Intstitutions
    Johnson, Brian M. (Virginia Tech, 2003-06-23)
    Academic dishonesty is a major dilemma for institutions of higher learning. Cheating behaviors among students have been documented as early as 1941 when Drake conducted a study that indicated that 23% of students cheated. Since then percentages of students involved in cheating and academic dishonesty have increased. Students are now cheating at an alarming rate as evidenced in a study by McCabe and Trevino (1993) where 52% of 6,000 undergraduate students surveyed admitted cheating on an exam by copying from another student. The purpose of this study was to analyze the extent to which academic integrity policies, standards, and programs differ by institutional type. Specifically, the study focused on the academic integrity policy of each institution, the promotion of standards, and the academic integrity program. Data were collected using the Academic Integrity Survey originally developed by Kibler (1993) and modified for use in this study. The survey consisted of 48 questions designed to measure the differences between academic integrity policies, standards, and programs by institution type. The findings revealed significant difference in three of the five areas. These findings suggest that private institutions are developing honor code systems, training faculty more, and seeing better results from their academic dishonesty initiatives than private institutions.
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    Feminist Identity
    Collins, Denise (Virginia Tech, 2001-04-23)
    Establishing a sense of identity is a central task in human development. This research pursued questions about how adult, self-identified feminist women conceptualize their identity, the role of feminism in that conceptualization, and the interaction of feminism with race and sexual orientation. Forty women in five geographic regions across the United States were interviewed. The participants were faculty, administrators, classified staff, and graduate students affiliated with a university in the region. The interviews were completed during a week-long visit to each location; each interview lasted from 45 to 75 minutes. Interviews followed a semi-structured format, using a standard protocol. Questions in the interviews asked about the importance of feminism, occupation, relationships, religion, politics, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation in the women's identities. The connection of feminism to each of the other identity areas was also asked of the participants. The women in this study conceptualized identity as consisting of multiple elements, organized in one of two ways: (a) a whole with multiple parts and (b) a collection of multiple parts. The first is an integrated identity, where all elements are connected to each of the other elements, and the second is a contextual identity, where the connection of elements can depend on situational variables. The multiple identities include traditional categories of occupation, relationships, religion, politics, race, and sexual orientation, but also add other areas such as age, socioeconomic class, avocational interests, and feminism. Women identify themselves as having multiple identities. The way participants in this study view feminism as an identity is organized in four categories: a set of values, a process to make meaning, a contextual identity, and an underlying construct. The categories of feminism vary in the degree to which feminism is connected with other identity elements. Women who view feminism as a set of values speak of it as a set of beliefs or an ideology that may or may not influence other identity areas. The participants who view feminism as a process to make meaning have either an interconnected or contextual view of feminism, with the added element of seeing feminism as a way to understand, interpret, and make decisions about experiences. Feminism as a contextual identity is connected with some parts of identity but not with all elements. For those whose view of feminism is as an underlying construct, feminism is interconnected and interactive with all of the other identity elements. This study adds to the literature about feminism and feminist identity in three ways. First, it suggests that for women who identify themselves as feminists, feminism is not only an ideology but also an important element of their identity. Second, it asserts that a shared definition of feminism is not critical to determining its role in identity. Third, this study's findings challenge the Downing and Roush (1985) model of feminist identity as the principal model. The Downing and Roush model focuses on feminist consciousness rather than identity; it employs a singular, liberal definition of feminism; it ignores multiple identities and their interactions; and it hinges its highest achievement on activist participation. Each of these assumptions of the Downing and Roush model are contradicted by the findings of this research. This study adds to the previous literature about identity in two ways. First, it expands the knowledge about adult women's identity by proposing a definition that takes into account the multiple identities that women have. Second, the findings challenge the limited areas by which identity has been traditionally defined. This study challenges the notion that identity is a singular, core construct based on traditional elements. Individuals must be allowed to identify the elements that make up their own identities. The results of this study also suggest that multiple identities, including race/ethnicity and sexual orientation, are mutually influencing and interconnected rather than independent or singular. Identity is constructed of multiple elements that must be examined together to understand the individual's own definition of self.
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    Perceived Impact of Institutional Culture on Advanced Degree Aspirations of Students Attending Two Southern Women's Colleges
    Ridgwell, Diana M. (Virginia Tech, 2002-07-22)
    Women's college culture has been found to have qualities that promote the success of the women who graduate from these institutions. This research sought to identify aspects of women's college culture that students perceive as having impacted their aspirations for an advanced degree. Fifty-eight women at two southern women's colleges were interviewed. The participants were members of each college's senior class and had spent their entire undergraduate years at the same institution. After an email solicitation was sent to all members of the senior class, participants were accepted until there were eight women in each of the three categories. These three categories; Keepers, Droppers, and Aspirers; were developed in order to study participant perceptions by whether they maintained or dropped their previous educational aspirations or had developed new aspirations for an advanced degree while attending a women's college. The interviews were completed over a two-month period with each interview lasting from 45 to 60 minutes. Participants were asked about the importance of aspects of women's college culture on their aspirations for an advanced degree as well as other factors that they perceived as having influenced their decision whether or not to pursue an advanced degree. The majority of the White women in this study confirmed the positive impacts of women's college culture including high academic expectations, a mission and history that supports women, more female role models, a caring, supportive environment, and an abundance of opportunities for involvement and to learn about oneself. In addition, participants confirmed the importance of peer relationships and romantic relationships on their educational aspirations. Some women, however, perceived these same factors as having a negative impact on their degree aspirations. These negative impacts included the Bubble effect, in which women felt that the women's college experience had sheltered them from the realities of the world outside of their present environment, the Burn-Out effect from over involvement in extra-curricular and academic activities, and confusion over field of study interest due to the many opportunities to learn about oneself offered by a liberal arts curriculum. Other findings indicate that despite the supportive environment of women's colleges, women's college students still perceive romantic relationships as negatively impacting their or their friend's aspirations for an advanced degree. In addition, the need to be taken seriously, whether their families are supportive of further education, and how well informed they are about financial aid issues, all were reported to impact educational aspirations. Unexpectedly, male role models were found to have a positive impact on women's aspirations despite the many female role models at women's colleges.The African American women college students in this study reported their experiences of attending a women's college much differently than did the White women. Although they felt they had received a quality education, the African American women were dissatisfied with the lack of representation of the African American culture at the women's college they attended. They felt the women's college culture had negatively impacted their aspirations for an advanced degree because of the lack of representation of African American culture in the women's college environment. Almost all African American women in this study dropped their previous aspirations for an advanced degree because of the discouraging effect of the overwhelmingly White culture of the colleges they attended.Overall, this study found that college culture was perceived to have a clear positive impact for one group of students, no significant impact for another, and a negative impact for the third group of students. In addition, based on the perceptions of the students and the researcher's limited observations, the two colleges were found to have institutional cultures that differentiate themselves from each other. This finding challenges previous researchers' assumptions that all women's colleges share a single culture.This study adds to previous literature about women's college culture and aspirations for an advanced degree in a number of important ways. Key findings include the identification of negative, as well as positive, impacts of women's college culture for some women, the importance of male role models for women's college students, and the dissatisfaction of the African American women in the study with their experience at a woman's college.