Beyond the Classroom - 2014

Robert Anderson, a PhD student finishing his dissertation, was named vice chancellor for Educational Access and Success for the University System of Georgia (USG) in June. In his new role, Anderson will work with all 31 USG institutions on initiatives designed to increase college access and support student success. He will have oversight of a wide range of key initiatives, including Complete College Georgia, teacher educator preparation programs, and the USG STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) initiative. Before returning to Georgia, Anderson was executive vice chancellor for Administration for the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.

Lucia Brajkovic served as a summer 2014 research associate at the Center for Policy Research & Strategy and the Center for Internationalization & Global Engagement, American Council on Education. Brajkovic presented papers at the 2014 annual meetings of AERA (on state retention and mobility tendencies of college students) and the International Network for Social Network Analysis (Using Text Network Analysis to Model University Peer Groupings). She will present “Academic Marginalism in the Post-Transition European Countries: The Case of Croatia” at the upcoming ASHE conference. Brajkovic has two forthcoming chapters in Stratification, Privatization and Vocationalization of Higher Education in the US and EU: Competitive Advantage, (Sheila Slaughter and Barrett Jay Taylor, Eds.), Springer Series, Higher Education Dynamics. She also has a publication to be jointly published by ACE and the Center for International Higher Education on national and regional internationalization policies.

Lindsay Coco was the recipient of the 2013 Marjorie Peace Lenn Research Award by the American International Recruitment Committee for her dissertation work examining the use of private third party agents in international student recruitment. She works as a research assistant with her advisor Dr. Sheila Slaughter, IHE Alumni Dr. Barrett Taylor, and IHE post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sondra N. Barringer on the National Science Foundation grant The Executive Science Network: University Trustees and the Organization of University Industry Exchanges. Lindsay, along with IHE Fellow Dr. Ilkka Kauppinen and fellow IHE students Hyejin Choi and Lucia Brajkovic, has recently completed a book chapter entitled “Transnationalizing AAU Institutions—Corporate World Network and University Rankings” accepted to an edited volume entitled Stratification, Privatization, and Vocationalization of Higher Education in the US and EU: Competitive Advantage.

John Cooper, a PhD candidate in the higher education program, is the associate director of institutional assessment at Clemson University. This past spring he presented ‘Capacity-building in Higher Education’ at the South Carolina Association for Institutional Research Annual Conference, and serves as co-principal investigator on a USDA grant in Clemson University’s College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Life Sciences.

Denisa Gándara started work managing a five-state grant-funded project on the role of intermediary organizations in college completion policy activity in the U.S. states (PI: Erik Ness, Co-PI: James Hearn). She was also published in Educational Policy for her work with Professor Erik Ness on ideological think tanks in the states. In the summer, Gándara successfully defended her prospectus and was invited to join the Scholars Strategy Network (http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/scholars-research). She continued her work as a consultant for the Tennessee Higher Education Commission examining campus responses to the Complete College Tennessee Act. She presented three papers at AERA in the spring and will present a paper and participate in a symposium at ASHE in the fall. As the AERA Division J Graduate Student Senior Representative, she is leading several initiatives to engage graduate students and faculty members in scholarly debates on Twitter (#DivJChats) and bringing opportunities to strengthen graduate students’ research skills through an interactive lecture series (Conversations with Scholars).

Kelly Ochs Rosinger is a doctoral candidate whose dissertation research uses a randomized control trial to examine how federal policy efforts to simplify information about college costs and financial aid affects enrollment and borrowing decisions. Rosinger received a 2014-2015 Jack Kent Cooke Dissertation Fellowship Award to support her research. She will present findings in November at this year’s ASHE conference and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. Rosinger also collaborates on quantitative and qualitative projects that consider the equity and efficiency outcomes of federal, state, and institutional policy. Manuscripts from this research will be published in upcoming volumes of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Review of Higher Education and will appear as chapters in two upcoming books.

Drew Pearl had an article titled “Predicting Community Engagement?: The Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Classification” in the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, and was also invited to review the book Learning in the Plural: Essays on the Humanities and Public Life for the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. As a part of his graduate assistantship in UGA’s Office of Service-Learning, Pearl (together with Paul Matthews) co-developed and co-taught an online course for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) focused on service-learning in the STEM fields. He has presented his work at numerous conferences over the past year, including ASHE, the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), and the Gulf South Summit on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement through Higher Education. Pearl has also been selected to participate in the UGA Graduate School’s 2014 Emerging Leaders Program.

Michael Trivette was awarded a grant from the American Educational Research Association for his work focusing on college access for undocumented students. As one of nine education research service projects selected for funding in 2014-15, his research seeks to assist high school counselors and undocumented students in locating postsecondary institutions that offer friendly admission policies and financial assistance. Trivette also recently co-authored a paper with Andrew Belasco and Dr. Karen Webber titled “Advanced Degrees of Debt: Analyzing the Patterns and Determinants of Graduate Student Borrowing.” The paper is featured in The Review of Higher Education, Vol. 37, No. 4.

Jonathan Turk presented multiple papers at ASHE, AERA, and AIR, and completed coursework throughout AY13-14. After a nationally competitive application process, Turk was selected for an eight-month internship as a research associate for the Center for Policy Research and Strategy at the American Council on Education (ACE) in Washington, D.C. Next year, in addition to his internship, he will continue working on an IES grant-funded research study.

Jarrett Warshaw received the 2014 AERA Division J’s 2013 Best Poster award for “Institutional Generativity or Reproduction of Privilege? How an Elite Private University Affects Legacy Students.” One paper presented at the 2014 conference, a study of faculty careers with Professor Rob Toutkoushian and doctoral student Hyejin Choi, was featured in Inside Higher Ed. An article with co-author Professor Jim Hearn, “Leveraging University Research to Serve Economic Development: An Analysis of Policy Dynamics in and across Three U.S. States,” appeared in the April issue of Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management and was featured in the State Science & Technology Institute’s weekly digest. Warshaw will present two papers at the 2014 ASHE conference in November, collaborative projects that examine organizational change in research universities, and he will begin fieldwork for his dissertation on federal science and research policy and structural innovations at elite institutions. A doctoral candidate, Warshaw holds the UGA Graduate School’s Presidential Fellowship.