Beyond the Classroom - 2015

Denisa Gándara has been awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation fellowship. The award is given to individuals who have demonstrated superior academic achievement, are committed to a career in teaching and research at the college or university level, show promise of future achievement as scholars and teachers, and are well prepared to use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students. Gándara’s dissertation research is on representation and under-representation of various stakeholders in the process of designing performance-funding policies at the state level. She recently completed her term as AERA Division J Graduate Student Representative, presented six papers at the 2015 AERA conference, received an AERA Minority Dissertation Travel Award (to attend the 2016 conference), and has begun a clinical assistant professor position in the Department of Education and Leadership at SMU while fulfilling the terms of the Ford fellowship.

Over the past year, Jarrett Warshaw has worked as a consultant with Professor Jim Hearn on a two-phase research project with the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC). Through survey and case-study analyses, they are examining mission-driven strategic change and innovation in the liberal arts sector as part of CIC’s Lumina Foundation and TIAA-CREF institute-funded work. A report from the first phase of the project was released in July, and a follow-up report, which includes research collaboration with Erin Ciarimboli, is due later in the fall. In February, Warshaw received the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award from the Standing Committee for Graduate Students and New Professionals at ACPA’s annual meeting in Tampa Bay, FL. He participated in the Emerging Scholars’ Workshop for Division J at AERA in Chicago in April. Jim Hearn presented their conference paper in April at the Arizona State University Institutional Design Frontiers: Higher Education conference. At the ASHE meeting in November, Warshaw will present two papers: one based on his dissertation research on emerging organizational forms in STEM in research universities, and the other on work related to organizational adaptation of independent colleges. Several co-authors along with Warshaw have manuscripts under review for publication. This academic year he plans to defend his dissertation, which focuses on research policy and organizational change. He holds a presidential fellowship from the UGA Graduate School.

Lucia Brajkovic currently serves as a consultant at the American Council on Education (ACE). She is also a recipient of the 2014-15 IHE Miller Graduate Fellowship. Brajkovic presented a paper at the 2014 ASHE annual meeting on academic marginalism in Croatia, and two papers at the 2015 AERA annual meeting–on academic marginalism in post-transition European countries and on transnational corporations and their connections with the elite AAU universities. She has a forthcoming co-authored book chapter in Stratification, Privatization and Vocationalization of Higher Education in the US and EU: Competitive Advantage, (Springer Series: Higher Education Dynamics, Sheila Slaughter and Barrett Taylor, Eds.) and two forthcoming ACE research reports: “Internationalizing Higher Education Worldwide: National Policies and Programs” and “Internationalizing U.S. Higher Education: Toward a National Policy?” For the past year Brajkovic has worked as a graduate research assistant at UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government collaborating on a state-funded 12-month research project conducting analysis of declining undergraduate enrollments, as well as analyzing the potential impacts of policy changes, economic conditions, and demographic changes within the University System of Georgia. She accepted a senior research associate position with the ACE’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement starting this fall.

Lori Prince Hagood recently started a graduate research assistantship in the University System of Georgia’s Office of Research and Policy Analysis. Last spring she joined a grant-funded research project on the role of intermediary organizations and research utilization in college completion policy activity in five states (PI: Erik Ness, Co-PI: James Hearn). This past fall she presented a paper at ASHE, which investigated issues related to undergraduate degree completion. Hagood will present three papers at ASHE this coming November: an examination of outcomes-based funding policies using a quasi-experimental method; a qualitative analysis of Georgia’s college completion efforts, with fellow IHE student Kristen Linthicum; and a team paper on the role of state cultures in college completion policy debates (a part of the grant-funded project mentioned above).

Erin Ciarimboli presented papers on both net price calculators and gender and trusteeship at the ASHE and AERA annual conferences in 2014-15. She assisted Angela Bell of the University System of Georgia in a recent project estimating aggregate student unmet need at public institutions in Georgia. Ciarimboli has also co-authored an ASHE-CIC white paper on strategy and adaptation in independent colleges with Jim Hearn, and is partnering with Hearn and IHE colleague Jarrett Warshaw in a case study analysis of mission-driven innovation in the CIC sector.

Jason Lee published an article, Student Loan Debt Literacy: A Comparison of First-generation and Continuing-generation Students,” based upon the work done for his master’s thesis in the October issue of the Journal of College Student Development. He also presented at ASHE and AERA this past year on the institutional responses to federal mandates that were passed into law as part of the HEOA in 2008. Finally, Lee had two papers accepted for the upcoming ASHE conference, both of which attempt to measure the impact of various federal, state, and institutional policies on student borrowing utilizing quasi-experimental methods.

After completing a yearlong fellowship as a graduate research associate with the Center for Policy Research and Strategy at the American Council on Education (ACE) in Washington, D.C., Jonathan Turk accepted a permanent appointment at ACE as a policy research analyst. In his new role, Turk is responsible for managing independent research projects, providing research support to ACE’s federal relations team, and presenting reports to outside stakeholders in support of ACE’s mission. In addition to presenting at multiple professional conferences during the 2014-2015 school year, Turk was the lead author of a Lumina Foundation-funded study exploring the application of state policy as a tool for postsecondary curricular change, particularly around developmental education. To coincide with the release of this study, Turk will moderate a panel discussion on the dynamics of state policy surrounding developmental education reform, at release convening to be held in Washington, D.C., later this fall. He and his co-authors will also be presenting this work at the ASHE 2015 annual meeting.

Jeremy Daniel served as a cluster facilitator at the LeaderShape Institute at the National Boston session from May 17-22, 2015. He will conduct a roundtable presentation at the Educational Law Association in Cleveland, OH in November, and he was also nominated for the Leadership Georgia Class of 2016. The purpose of Leadership Georgia is to prepare strong and effective leaders for the future development of the state.

Paul Rubin is working on a five-state W.T. Grant-funded project investigating the role of intermediary organizations in fostering the use of research in the college completion policy process (PI: Erik Ness, Co-PI: James Hearn), which is now entering its second year. Findings from this study were presented at a conference held by Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design, and were part of an AERA symposium in the spring. He also contributed to two research papers that will be presented at ASHE this November, and completed his coursework during AY14-15.