A Three-Article Dissertation on How First-Year Learning Communities Program Faculty Perceive Their Roles in Addressing Diverse Student Needs
Abstract (summary)
This three-article dissertation examines how faculty in a first-year learning communities program at a regional Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) perceive and respond to students’ academic and non-academic needs within a loosely coupled organizational environment. Chapter 2 presents a qualitative study of lecture faculty teaching high-enrollment core curriculum courses and finds that, although instructors recognize similar student vulnerabilities, their responses are more often filtered through academic framing, socialization, and referral processes shaped by class size, disciplinary norms, and structural constraints. Chapter 3 presents a qualitative study examining first-year seminar faculty and finds that, within small, relationally oriented courses, instructors adopt a more holistic view of students, engage in flexible and student-centered practices, and frequently act as institutional navigators connecting students to campus resources. Chapter 4 develops a theoretical framework integrating loose coupling theory, Third Space scholarship, and conceptions of social justice to argue that faculty engagement with student need is structurally mediated and unevenly distributed across instructional contexts. Collectively, this dissertation argues that faculty responses to student need are not merely individual acts of care, but products of organizational design that structure how responsibility for student well-being is interpreted, enacted, and distributed. In this way, servingness at HSIs emerges not simply from institutional mission statements or instructors’ ethical commitments, but as an organizational condition shaped by course design, vertical siloing, and the alignment between faculty roles and everyday classroom practice.
Indexing (details)
Educational administration;
Organization theory;
Higher education
0635: Organization Theory
0514: Educational administration
0745: Higher education
