Beyond the Classroom - 2018

Papers, Presentations, and More Activities

 

ANDREW CRAIN presented a paper on racial equity and a poster on the financial impact of Hurricane Katrina within higher education at ASHE 2017. In June 2018 Crain wrote an article on “Serving Rural Students,” which was the feature story in the NACE Journal, the magazine of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, and he has conducted presentations on the same topic for the Mountain-Pacific Association of Colleges and Employers (MPACE) and the UGA Engage! Student Affairs Conference.

Crain also presented a recruiting workshop for the Council of Advancement and Support of Education’s (CASE) “Strategic Talent Management” conference and served as a guest speaker on internships and recruiting on both the University of Melbourne’s “Starting Somewhere” podcast (Ep. 9) and NACE’s podcast on “Looking Beyond College Majors.” Along with Josh Patterson and Melissa Whatley, he will present at ASHE 2018 on the geography of intercultural opportunities within higher education. In November 2018, Crain will also present on the impacts of rurality on the STEM pipeline at the AAC&U Transforming STEM Higher Education conference in Atlanta (with Karen Webber and Rebecca Perdomo). Crain currently works full-time as a talent acquisition specialist for UGA’s Division of Development & Alumni Relations.

 

ALEX CASSELL served as an intern in the Georgia Governor’s Office of Policy and Legislative Affairs this summer. As a master’s student, he represents that constituency on the Higher Education Student Society (HESS).

 

LINDSEY HAMMOND is a third-year doctoral student and a graduate research assistant. funded by UGA’s competitive Graduate School Research Assistantship award. She provides research support to Erik Ness and also works frequently with Jim Hearn. She participates in projects related to public policy, college completion, information utilization in the policymaking process, intermediary organizations, and higher education governance changes.

She presented a co-authored paper at the 2017 ASHE Council on Public Policy in Higher Education Pre-Conference in conjunction with Philip Adams, Paul Rubin, and Erik Ness. At the 2018 ASHE Annual Conference, she will present a solo-authored paper and serve as a session chair and program reviewer. Hammond also served as a co-author on papers related to policy networks in the college completion sphere presented at both the 2018 AERA Annual Meeting and the 2017 APPAM Fall Research Conference.

 

HEE JUNG GONG works as a research assistant for Robert Toutkoushian. During her second year of doctoral coursework, she presented four different studies at various conferences.

At the 2017 ASHE conference, she shared her research on educational aspirations and expectations of high school students. She presented a paper on “The Effect of Postsecondary Education on Political Efficacy in OECD Countries” at the 2018 AERA conference. She presented two sessions at UGA. One on federal policy toward TRIO student support service and practices in southern universities at the 2018 IRIS symposium and a case study on the Peer Learning Assistance learning environment in undergraduate STEM education at the 2018 SEER Symposium.

Additionally, she has been invited to serve as a reviewer for the 2019 AERA annual meeting for Division J (Postsecondary Education-Assessment and Outcomes) and four SIG sessions. She will serve as a member of the International Student Advisory Board (ISAB) at UGA for the 2018-19 academic year.

 

ADRIANNA GONZALEZ served as a graduate assistant for the Division of Academic Enhancement during the 2017-2018 academic year. In that position, she assisted with program development and execution for firstyear, first-generation scholars. This included establishing a peer mentor program, teaching financial literacy workshops, and supporting students with one-on-one guidance.

During her first year, Gonzalez enjoyed exploring new research agendas and completed projects regarding transfer students, the development of minority students at PWIs, and a historical analysis of female students at UGA in the late 1960s, among others. This summer she joined Tim Cain on a project examining student protests of the 1960s and 70s here at UGA. This fall, she will present papers at the 2018 ASHE conference and at the 2018 HES (History of Education Society) meeting. Additionally, she has been invited to attend the 2018 NASPA Escaleras Institute, a national symposium for emerging LatinX leaders in higher education.

 

HOLLY HAWK is an adjunct instructor in the J.M. Tull School of Accounting at UGA. At the Innovation in Teaching Conference in Athens, GA in fall 2017, she spoke on her use of hands-on practice with enterprise resource planning systems and auditing software. At the American Accounting Association (AAA) 2017 Accounting IS Big Data Conference in Brooklyn, NY, she presented on NetSuite curriculum development. In April 2018, she presented with a colleague at the University of Delaware at the AAA Southeast Region Meeting. The session provided guidance to educators on how to incorporate big data work and data analytics into their classrooms. She also presented at the KPMG Masters of Accounting Data and Analytics Leadership Conference in Orlando.

 

JUSTIN JEFFREY, UGA’s director of international student life, presented his paper, “Factors Influencing International Branch Campus Strategies for Four-Year Public and Private Notfor- Profit Institutions in the United States,” at a roundtable during ASHE 2017. This coming November, he will co-present with fellow IHE student, Melissa Whatley, a study of factors that affect student participation in study abroad opportunities at public flagship institutions in the United States.

 

JENNIFER MAY-TRIFILETTI presented papers at both ASHE 2017 and AERA 2018. At ASHE, she presented with Rob Toutkoushian and Ashley Clayton (LSU) on variations in college completion among first-generation college students when using alternative definitions of “first-generation.” At AERA, she presented with recent IHE graduate Samantha Rogers on the relationship between academic advising and different types of outcomes for community college students.

Also this year, May-Trifiletti co-authored a report with Jim Hearn and Welch Suggs (Ph.D. 2009) for the Council of Independent Colleges. The report examined longitudinal trends in intercollegiate athletics offerings with an eye toward strategic financial and enrollment management. She was selected to participate in the Association for Institutional Research/National Center for Education Statistics Data Institute. May-Trifiletti will present a paper at ASHE 2018 looking at educational expectations for traditional and nontraditional students attending community colleges.

 

JILLIAN MORN presented as a co-author on two conference presentations at Southern Association for Institutional Research in Fort Worth, Texas, in October 2017 and at the AIR Forum in Orlando, Florida, in May 2018. The presentations addressed applying concepts of organizational theory and project management to institutional research offices and cognitive science limitations and best practices in data visualization of higher education data. She was also promoted to research associate rank II in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech as of July 2018.

 

JOSHUA PATTERSON won a research grant supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study curricular engagement around religion in the Integrated Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey. He is part of a team that will present their research at an IDEALS symposium in September. Patterson presented a paper at the 2018 AERA Conference investigating the relationship between institutional religious affiliation and graduation rate. Patterson was published in the Bulletin for the Study of Religion’s blog series “What’s in Your Religion Syllabus?”

In June 2018 he began as a research fellow for the American Academy of Religion where he will work to collect and analyze trend data on the field of religious studies. Along with IHE students Melissa Whatley and Andrew Crain, Patterson will present research at the 2018 ASHE conference. He will convene a panel, discussing religious studies in the higher education context, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and present a paper investigating patterns in religious studies learning goals.

 

REBECCA PERDOMO is a graduate endowed scholar through UGA’s Alumni Association and is a research assistant for the UGA Carl Vinson Institute of Government, under the direction of John Barner and Theresa Wright (Ph.D. 2011), where she engages in survey research and data evaluation and has developed instruments assessing organizational climate. Working with Karen Webber, Perdomo used national data to address issues affecting student retention in the STEM pipeline.

She presented their preliminary analysis of STEM oriented extra¬curricular activity on college major choice at the Interdisciplinary STEM Teaching & Learning Conference in Savannah, GA in March 2018. Perdomo presented her research with Linda Renzulli (IHE Fellow) on immigrant generation status and college enrollment at the Southern Sociological Society Conference in April 2018. She also presented at Cambio de Colores in June 2018. Perdomo and Webber have a paper accepted for the ASHE 2018 conference, and they will present with IHE doctoral student Andrew Crain at the AAC&U STEM conference in November 2018.

 

DOMINIQUE QUARLES wrote Georgia Southern University’s successful grant proposal for the Ronald E. McNair Post baccalaureate Achievement Program, a U.S. Department of Education Federal TRIO program initiative. With a perfect score of 110/110, he secured $1.1 million in funding over the next five years for first-generation and low-income undergraduate students at Georgia Southern University who wish to pursue a Ph.D. Quarles currently works for the UGA’s Office of Institutional Diversity as director for diversity and inclusion. His research interests include higher education policy, college completion, equity in higher education, and institutional leadership.

 

KARLEY RIFFE received the Institute’s J. Douglas Toma Excellence in Scholarship and Service Award this past year, for her academic achievements and institutional engagement. Additionally, Riffe co-authored two publications with IHE colleagues. First, she co-authored a peer-reviewed journal article with Sondra Barringer (SMU) entitled “Not Just Figureheads: Trustees as Microfoundations of Higher Education Institutions” in Innovative Higher Education.

Second, Riffe co-authored a report for the TIAA Institute with Toutkoushian and Ness that addressed how faculty members make decisions about their financial retirement plans. Riffe will also contribute to two research presentations at the ASHE annual meeting this November. After successfully defending her dissertation, Riffe has accepted a position as an assistant professor of higher education at Auburn University.

 

MELISSA WHATLEY is a 2018 co-recipient of the Harold Josephson Award for Professional Promise in International Education, awarded annually by the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA). This award recognizes emerging leadership in international education, evidenced by a number of activities, including research. Over the course of the past academic year, Whatley authored a journal article in Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad and a book chapter in an edited volume titled Study Abroad Opportunities for Community College Students and Strategies for Global Learning. Both will appear in fall 2018. She also reviewed an edited volume, International Education at Community Colleges: Themes, Practices, and Case Studies, for Frontiers.

Whatley co-authored a journal article that appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, and she co-authored the Forum on Education Abroad’s 2017 State of the Field Report. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Whatley presented her research at numerous academic conferences, including ASHE 2017, AEFP 2018, and AERA 2018. Whatley was also an invited presenter at the 2018 Summer Institute at Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education, where she discussed her research examining community college study abroad. She will present several examples of her recent work at the 2018 ASHE meeting in November.

Whatley served as the graduate assistant to the International Partnerships division of UGA’s Office of International Education, 2017-2018. In this role, she produced white papers documenting UGA’s connections and collaborations abroad and assisted in the writing and design of UGA’s international engagement materials. She worked on an award-winning application for NAFSA: Association of International Educators’ Simon Spotlight Award, which was awarded to UGA’s research partnership with Minas Gerais (Brazil) in March 2018. Whatley recently transitioned to a graduate assistantship in UGA’s Survey Research and Evaluation unit, housed in the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. In this role, she designs and implements surveys, and evaluates their resulting data, on a broad range of topics. Whatley served as an instructional assistant to IHE faculty members in two courses during the 2017-2018 academic year: Introduction to Research in Higher Education (with Karen Webber) and Advanced Social Theory (with Sheila Slaughter).

She additionally served as an AP Research Expert Advisor to a high school student investigating factors that influence career continuation among Latina immigrants in the United States. Her dissertation research employs advanced quantitative research methods to explore the institutional stratification of study abroad opportunities.