Higher Education in CSHPE: Research and Development Initiatives
The Educational Value of Diverse Learning Environments
Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education
International Higher Education
Institutional Transformation in Higher Education
For additional research summaries, please see our Features.
The Educational Value of Diverse Learning Environments
“Diversity is more than just a social or moral good. It has educational value.” – Eric Dey, Associate Professor, CSHPE
The Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education (CSHPE),
which has long been recognized for excellence in academic circles, was
recently thrust into the
consciousness
of the media, the public, the U.S. Supreme Court, and national policymakers.
Research conducted by CSHPE faculty member Dr. Eric Dey and former faculty member Dr. Sylvia Hurtado, which found that diverse environments lead to better education for students, was critical to the University of Michigan’s affirmative action cases argued in 2003 before the US Supreme Court.
“Most of us operate on the basis of what we already know, and we need to be placed in an environment that challenges our theories and assumptions in order to learn,” said Eric Dey, CSHPE professor and associate dean for the School of Education. “Diversity is more than just a social or moral good. It has educational value.”
This type of research, however, is not new to CSHPE. Researchers at the University of Michigan began studying the experiences of minorities in higher education in the 1970s.
To learn about this diversity focused work, see Dr. Dey’s most recent publications:
Gurin, P.Y., Dey, E.L., Hurtado, S., & Gurin, G. (2002) Diversity and higher education: Theory and impact on educational outcomes. Harvard Educational Review, 72 (3), 330-366.
Gurin, P., Dey, E. L., Gurin, G. & Hurtado, S. (2004). The educational value of diversity. Defending diversity: Affirmative action at the University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Gurin, P.Y., Dey, E.L., Gurin, G., & Hurtado, S. (2003). How does racial/ethnic diversity promotion education? Western Journal of Black Studies, 27 (1), 20-20.
The Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNSLAE)
The Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNSLAE) is a large-scale, mixed methods, longitudinal study to investigate critical factors that affect the outcomes of liberal arts education. This is one of the most comprehensive national studies of the effects of American higher education on student learning and development ever conducted. The University of Michigan research team is lead by Dr. Patricia King.
This study focuses on the development of seven outcomes associated with undergraduate liberal arts education and the educational conditions and experiences that foster these outcomes. Through a combination of surveys and in-depth interviews with students at several points throughout their college enrollment, we are able to explore not only the development of students as a result of their collegiate experiences, but also why and how this development takes place. Our research will help faculty, staff, and administrators more effectively align educational programs and experiences to processes underlying student learning and development.
Web site: http://www.soe.umich.edu/liberalartstudy.
International Higher Education
CSHPE faculty and students continue to be actively involved in higher education in international contexts through both training and research endeavors.
The Democratization of Higher Education Administration in Kyrgyzstan
Associate Professor Janet Lawrence has implemented a USIA-supported project designed to foster collaboration among scholars and administrators from Kyrgyz universities undergoing major organizational transformations and higher education researchers in the United States for the purpose of understanding and assisting with the change processes. In particular, she is examining how faculty and administrators are experiencing recent changes in the emphasis placed on technical assistance to their country by both Russia and the United States.
Training of University Administrators from China
For
the last five years, senior administrators from universities in China
have taken workshops conducted by CSHPE faculty. This initiative
has been coordinated by Dr.
Janet Lawrence in cooperation with the Tianjin Educational Commission. In
the last five years, over 70 Chinese administrators from colleges and
universities within Tianjin and the Educational Commission have studied
higher education at the University of Michigan. Through this
experience, the Center has offered its resources to help meet the
needs of a dramatically changing higher education enterprise in China.
Professor Marvin Peterson has had a relationship with the Institute for Higher Education and The Ministry of Education in the People’s Republic of China. He recently was part of a ministry sponsored presentation for 90 presidents of top Chinese Universities.
Training Russian Administrators
Professor John Burkhardt and Professor Marvin Peterson have been faculty members at the Salzburg Seminar’s Russian Universities Project in addition to participating in annual seminars for top administrators from Russian universities. They have participated as special advisors to several Russian universities attempting to guide strategic institutional change.
Visiting Scholars
The Center has regularly sponsored Visiting Scholars from around the world, including scholars from China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Kyrgyzstan, and Australia. These scholars work with CSHPE faculty on projects of mutual interest, and contribute to the vitality of the Center and its role in both national and international arenas in higher education.
Institutional Transformation in Higher Education
Cross National Studies of Transformation
Professor
Marvin Peterson directed the Kellogg Forum on Higher Education 
Transformation
and the Center’s participation in the National Center for Postsecondary
Improvement. Both of these projects focused on institutional
change and transformation. In the past five years Dr. Peterson
has also assisted universities and national systems in adapting and
planning for changes associated with recent economic and political
developments throughout the world. He currently serves as a
member of the Salzburg Seminar’s Russian Universities Project
and is involved in the redesign and reorganization of Qatar University
for the government of Qatar. He has recently been part of
national training programs for university administrators through Dr.
Janet Lawrence's projects in Kyrgyzstan and China. He
has also worked with national system reform in Hungary.
Through these US and international activities, Professor Peterson offered his expertise to administrators in these countries and been involved in guiding complete institutional and national system transformation. He has use it as a focus for his current scholarship on transformation and brought these experiences back to students and colleagues at the Center, thus enriching the climate for learning and expanding the many ways Center faculty make a positive difference in improving higher education.
The National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good
The National Forum on Higher
Education for the Public Good (formerly, The Kellogg Forum
on Higher Education for the Public Good) is designed to significantly
increase awareness, understanding, commitment, and action relative
to the public service role of higher education in the United States. Its
Director is CSHPE Professor John
C. Burkhardt.
In pursuit of its mission, the National Forum seeks to foster a renewed sense of common purpose among all those who are stewards for the values and responsibilities of higher education in our society through something of a social and professional "movement”. It seeks to align and amplify the efforts - those of scholars, teachers, practitioners, and students - whose work is directed toward achieving the public service mission of higher education, to expand, deepen and promote the application of scholarship that will lead to a clearer understanding of the public service role of U.S. colleges and universities, and to enhance the level of understanding within the general public about the contributions higher education makes to the improvement of our lives, the defense of our freedoms and the practice of democracy in a diverse society.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which established the Forum in 2000, has extended its funding through 2006 and has recently awarded the Forum two new grants to support its work. Early this spring the National Forum announced a ground-breaking initiative, “Access to Democracy” which focuses new attention on the important relationship between higher education and the U.S. public.
