Nathaniel J. Bray

University of Alabama | UA · Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research Methodology, and Counseling

The assumption that honors programs are more academically challenging is rarely interrogated. Using multi-institutional, longitudinal quantitative data from a larger study, we use quasi-experimental methods to examine students’ experiences of course rigor, including workload and cognitive challenge, for honors participants compared to non-participa...

The value of articles published in journals devoted to the scholarship of teaching and learning constitutes a relatively unexplored topic of inquiry within the broader field of inquiry on the scholarship of teaching and learning. This article addresses this topic using citations and four types of altmetrics as indicators of value. We used a sample...

This article explores how well bibliometrics and altmetrics reflect research impact in relation to Boyer’s Model of the Scholarship. Indices used for both types of metrics are explored and discussed while including an analysis on primary methodological works performed on each in the literature to date. As confirmatory in nature, we chose as our foc...

How should we account for and assess the work of the public intellectual? This chapter unpacks approaches to the assessment of the public intellectual to broadly consider the roles and functions of the academic public intellectual, examine how their roles fit within Boyer's domains of scholarship and how institutional structures both support and im...

Research has shown that linear relationships do not adequately represent publication and citation measurement behavior. They are much more curvilinear than that. However, we tend to try to look to citation counts linearly to draw outcomes about productivity. This study examines bibliometric and altmetric measures for emerging and senior scholars to...

The focus of this work is to examine the relationship between subjective and objective measures of prestige of journals in our field. Findings indicate that items pulled from Clarivate, Elsevier, and Google all have statistically significant elements related to perceived journal prestige. Just as several widely used bibliometric metrics related to...

In this article, we consider faculty perceptions of journal prestige specific to the field of higher education administration research. Findings indicate stability in journal prestige rankings over time, and highlight journal criteria that faculty find most important to prestige.

Differences in funding mixtures across the United States create widely variant levels of unmet need for students. This research examines gaps of unmet need between 2003–4 and 2013–14, particularly considering the presence of any local funding provisions and Pell Grant funding changes. These findings are also considered across state, community colle...

This secondary data analysis of federal budget data sought to understand the impact of U.S. Senate reconciliation measures on higher education funding. Reconciliation is a process by which the U.S. Senate passes budgetary measures by only requiring a simple majority. Using data from federal budgets that stretched from the end of the Carter administ...

Persistence in college among African American students continues to remain low compared to persistence among White students. Often, the focus in examining this issue has been on institution-wide retention efforts, which can ignore socio-cultural elements that can influence the decisions of individual students to persist at an institution; however,...

This chapter reviews multiple variables across all public community colleges, and unveils marked disparities in public funding between and within the states at community colleges of different sizes and geographical settings.

This study examines patterns of state financing in public community colleges. The focus of the study is to not only show the disparities that exist across the 50 states in terms of fiscal capacity to provide funding for community colleges, but also in the effort that is exerted to fund community colleges. The study combines the Bureau of Economic A...

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of a professional development-based effort at one of the nation’s 14 federally designated Historically Black Colleges and Universities community colleges. Course revisions included introductory courses in its Natural Sciences department. The goal was to improve students’ critical-thinking and...

This study undertook an empirical examination of those institutions identified as “invisible” in The Invisible Colleges: A Profile of Small, Private Colleges With Limited Resources. As of 2012 to 2013, 354 of the original invisible colleges continued to operate as accredited private, 4-year institutions. However, 80 of the invisible colleges had cl...

This article categorizes institutions under both the 2015 Carnegie Basic Classification system and the mission-driven classification system, and further analyzes both by the presence of a collective bargaining agreement. The goal of this article was to use the presentation of data on revenue, employment numbers, salary outlays, and the presence or...

This study explored institutional governance in an Alabama public two-year community college and investigated the perceptions of faculty and administrators within this sector. To answer the research questions for this study, a quantitative cross-sectional survey utilizing inferential analysis of the collected data was employed. To analyze the perce...

This study examined communication satisfaction and organisational commitment for professional staff at an American Master’s institution using two quantitative surveys: Downs and Hazen’s Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire and Meyer and Allen’s TCM Employee Commitment Survey. One hundred and sixty-eight full-time and part-time staff participate...

This study explores the usability of community college websites. The value of a college’s website has been well established, as have accepted standards for basic website design. However, current usability standards are less clear and in various stages of acceptance. To consider this question, standards of usability were applied to all community col...

This chapter delineates six tenets for a code of conduct to guide the behavior of academic deans.

This chapter discusses asymmetries that exist in both positional and professional authority, the relations between main campus stakeholders, and the vulnerabilities that are presented by such power differentials. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the deterrence, detection, and sanctioning of violations of tenets of codes of conduct.

This chapter emphasizes the importance of codes of conduct to guide the professional role performance of presidents, academic deans, admissions officers, fund‐raising professionals, and faculty who teach undergraduate and graduate students.

This chapter addresses such topics as organizational principles underlying the development and functioning of codes, organizational constraints to the promulgation of codes, and organizational possibilities for the development of codes of conduct in higher education.

attempting to draw them in different directions, from faculty and students to alumni and boards

This study compares the impact of timing of registration on the student learning outcomes of students taking courses at three rural community colleges in the southeastern U.S. during the school years 2001–2003. Findings from this study indicate that early registration has a positive influence on students' grades and course completion rates. Also co...

:The quality of a journal can have a profound influence on reading and submission patterns as well as impact promotion and tenure decisions. This article presents the perceived quality of 50 different publications in higher education and how often they are read and cited.

This study presents research comparing faculty-held norms for academic deans' behavior to Mertonian norms of science. Findings indicate that while some elements of Mertonian norms hold true, it is not the best pattern of grouping faculty expectations for deans. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This chapter builds on previous work of the authors by examining a much underexplored limitation to effective shared governance in higher education—the fragile relationship between faculty and administrators. An assessment of the literature was undertaken to uncover evidence of the sources of tension in the relationship in three academic contexts w...

The purpose of this article is to provide an exploratory analysis of the current context of general education at top liberal arts and doctoral-granting institutions in the United States. Through this analysis, we highlight the changes to general education as they fall into two camps: core curricula and distribution requirements.

This study examines norms faculty members hold for academic deans' behavior. Using a national survey, responses from faculty at Research and Liberal Arts institutions are analyzed. Results indicate eleven norms across three levels of inappropriateness dealing with issues like information sharing and responsiveness. Implications for research and pra...

Campus-based urban legends have the potential to convey and construct student culture in higher education. Basic qualitative and humanistic research methods were used to collect, analyze, and interpret legends related to the academic experience of collegiate life.

While there continues to be a proliferation in the number of studies conducted on various aspects of distance education, we are often left with little understanding of the holistic planning and effects of it. This paper draws lessons learned from the literature on distance education over the past five years. This review did not seek to be exhaustiv...

The book, Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline, is the first work produced through the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID). Arguing that the role of doctoral education is to prepare stewards, that is, to "educate and prepare those to whom we can entrust the vigor, quality, and integrity of the fi...

The level of faculty research activity is widely believed to have a detrimental effect on faculty attitudes toward the improvement of undergraduate education. The authors report findings to the contrary.

Pascarella and Terenzini's How College Affects Students, published in 1991, has been a staple of courses on college student development and trends for the past decade. The authors' original effort seeks to encompass empirical studies and the major theoretical approaches that have been used to consider the issue of the impact of colleges on students...

To understand the current apparent upsurge in classroom incivility, the authors turn to the literature for possible causes and solutions.

In this article the authors examine characterizations of faculty-administrator relationships, in particular as related to shared governance. Two primary perspectives guided the study. The first perspective focused on the fragile nature of shared governance, characterized by a lack of harmony and mistrust. The second perspective focused on the root...

Building on Tinto's internationalist theory of student departure, this study examines student perceptions of faculty teaching skills as a precursor to student persistence. Using path analysis to consider this link, the findings demonstrate a significant influence of faculty teaching skills on student persistence. Theoretical and practical implicati...

This study elaborates on Tinto's (1975) theory of student departure by focusing on the concept of social integration. Examining freshmen at a Research I institution using three quantitative instruments, this study finds that how students deal with stress impacts their level of social integration, institutional commitment, and intent to reenroll.

Building on V. Tinto's (1993, 1986) interactionalist theory of student departure, this study examined student perceptions of faculty teaching skills as a precursor to student persistence. Ss were 696 college freshmen. Using path analysis to consider this link, the findings demonstrate a significant influence of faculty teaching skills on student pe...

This study elaborates on V. Tinto's (1975) theory of student departure by focusing on the concept of social integration. Examining college freshmen at a Research I institution using 3 quantitative instruments, this study finds that how students deal with stress affects their level of social integration, institutional commitment, and intent to re-en...