Centering Students
University of Valencia
What Do Gen Z Students Think About the Liberal Arts?: Students’ Perceptions of Liberal Arts and General Education Courses at The American University of Sharjah, UAE View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brad Curabba
With the rise in liberal arts universities around the world it is apparent that the value of a liberal arts education is becoming increasingly important in today’s knowledge economy. What is less known are the attitudes towards liberal arts and general education studies that are held by students in countries without a strong liberal arts tradition. By knowing students’ perceptions of liberal arts and general education courses; as well as, understanding their previous educational background, I believe we can then begin to create an academic environment that may help more students persist and succeed in their undergraduate studies. In this mixed-methods study, I surveyed students at the American University of Sharjah in order to (1) gain an understanding of their secondary education experience, and (2) their initial understanding and perception of a liberal arts education and general education courses. As a result of this research I offer suggestions for courses, seminars and faculty development courses in order to both reduce the numbers of students entering into academic probation and to increase the retention rate of our students.
Featured My Sister’s Keeper: Supporting Multicultural Female Students and Leaders in Educational Spaces
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephanie Tilley, Barbara Garcia Powell, Myriah Hampton
As a result of having dual membership within two historically oppressed, but sacred social identities, multicultural women have had a complex and revolutionary history in educational spaces. Although unique in nature and narrative, both multicultural, racial identities and womanhood have been subject to impartiality and marginalition in various educational contexts. For this reason, multicultural women have had to employ a reformative agenda to navigate and advance within educational systems as their treatment as learners, scholars and professionals within the p-20 academic pipeline has been and continues to be a universal concern. With this understanding, a systematic literature review explores various tools and efforts that educators can use to support multicultural female students and leaders at the secondary, university and professional level. A critical global lens and a culturally responsive perspective will be the foundation of this systematic literature review. As a result of our review, we will advance inclusive education by strengthening educational leaders’ strategies and understanding in supporting multicultural women and their heterogeneity and complexity within various educational spaces. We propose specific strategies for educational leaders to use to capture the strengths of minority women as they represent a significant and growing percentage of the educational domain and workspace. For this reason, we will inform leadership and educational preparation programs of ways to structure their preparation to better include and propel multicultural women. In doing so, we acknowledge and normalize the variance, value and impact of multicultural women and their contributions to educational settings.
The Role of Social Capital and Future Orientation in the Job Search Process of Recent University Graduates: A Matter of Opportunities?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maria Elena Esparza
Previous studies have shown a relationship between the characteristics of the first job and the profile of recent university graduates, considering factors such as the university of origin, socioeconomic level, academic performance and skills development. From an approach to the theory of social capital developed by Bourdieu, it is argued that the personal networks built before and during university make informal mechanisms available for job opportunities and, therefore, can establish inequalities. However, graduates do not necessarily activate or mobilize all the mechanisms -informal and institutional- that are available to them, their behavior will depend on the struggle between their driving factors and barriers to the search. This is when Seginer´s concept of future orientation becomes important and it is manifested in the graduates’ vision of his own professional development, but also in the routes that they subjectively avoid. Following those statements, this research focuses on the different paths that recent graduates could take in their job search processes and how these processes are mediated by some important aspects of their profile. This is a quantitative study on graduates of management and economics careers from 2015-2018 at a private non-profit university in Peru and combines data from the university's Graduate Monitoring System and primary sources based on a survey sample of 500 graduates. As it is a single university, any factor derived from prestige or institutional resources is isolated, however, the selected university is characterized by the diversity in the composition of its students, which allows an analysis of different profiles.
