Award Date

5-1-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Educational Psychology, Leadership, and Higher Education

First Committee Member

Stefani Relles

Second Committee Member

Blanca Rincon

Third Committee Member

Doris Watson

Fourth Committee Member

Starr Hoffman

Number of Pages

187

Abstract

This dissertation project addressed the gulf between the persistence rates of students in underrepresented minority (URM) and non-URM communities. To this end, a multisite exploratory qualitative case study focused on the experiences of students in academic libraries was conducted. The project applied a sense of belonging as an interpretive framework based on prior research which relates belonging to improved academic success outcomes among URM students. Previously, libraries’ capacity to support URM students’ sense of belonging had not been systematically analyzed. The three articles that constitute this dissertation, a literature review and one article on each of the two sites, a university pseudonymously referred to as Southwestern University (SWU) and a community college referred to as Southwestern Community College (SWCC), described the interplay of institutional context and student characteristics in the dynamics of URM students’ belonging. They each support the overarching finding that academic libraries are a retention resource by fostering URM students’ sense of belonging.

Keywords

Academic Libraries; Belonging; Equity; Retention

Disciplines

Community College Education Administration | Community College Leadership | Education | Library and Information Science

File Format

pdf

File Size

2000 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Download

Available for download on Saturday, May 15, 2027


Share

COinS