Newswise — Rochester, N.Y.—Preparing children to succeed in an increasingly competitive global economy is a growing challenge that our nation continues to face. Giving every student the opportunity to attend, afford, and be successful at college is critical to meeting this challenge. In stride with President Obama’s higher education reform efforts to make college education more accessible and affordable and to help more students succeed once they get there, several University of Rochester researchers and practitioners, who are also doing their part to improve the landscape of higher education, are available for comment and interviews on issues from college access to college retention.
Douglas Guiffrida, PhD, associate professor at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester, conducts research on advancing college student retention and improving ways in which counselors and other student affairs professionals prepare, support, and retain minority college students. Specifically, his research has explored the impact of relationships with family and friends from home, involvement in student activities, and faculty/student relationships on college persistence. He is also currently studying the value of the cultural/motivational model of college student academic achievement and persistence that he developed, and is developing and researching constructivist methods for teaching counseling theories and supervising counselors in-training. His research on minority college students has appeared in leading counseling and higher education journals and the mainstream press.
Judy Marquez Kiyama, PhD, assistant professor at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester, focuses her research on college access, outreach, choice and retention, with a particular interest on underrepresented students and their families. Her latest research covers three areas: the state of Latina/o K-12 education in Rochester, N.Y. and its influence on college opportunity; the unintended academic and social benefits for peer mentors in university retention initiatives; and how various forms of violence impact Latina students’ opportunities to transition into and through college. Kiyama’s previous research focused on the funds of knowledge, capital, and educational ideologies of Mexican families in a university outreach program. Kiyama, who has worked in the areas of multicultural affairs, summer transition programs, student involvement, and leadership, has developed academic success programs for first-generation and ethnic minority college students.
Stephanie Waterman, PhD, assistant professor at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester, focuses her research on Native American college experiences, the role staff play in student retention, race and gender in higher education, indigenous methodologies/pedagogy, and college transition. As a 2005 National Academy of Education/Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellow, Waterman was able to expand her research on the Haudenosaunee college experience. Along with colleagues Shelly Lowe at Harvard University and Heather Shotton at the University of Oklahoma, Waterman is an editor of Beyond the Asterisk: Understanding Native Students in Higher Education, scheduled to release spring 2012 by Stylus Publications.
Beth Olivares, PhD, associate dean for diversity initiatives in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, creates new programs and initiatives that address retention issues for students. Also serving as director of the University’s David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, she has helped the Kearns Center develop the College’s pipeline programs, assisting secondary school students through to doctoral candidates. The Kearns Center currently serves more than 200 pre-college and 150 college students, including McNair Scholars, Kearns Scholars, and Xerox Scholars, and provides services to all underrepresented minority graduate students in Arts, Sciences, and Engineering.
Some highlights from the University’s pre-college and college programs include:• Upward Bound, the University’s year-round comprehensive programs that support the college aspirations of low-income students through high school, serves more than 115 Rochester City School District students each year. In 2011, the Upward Bound Programs graduated its third cohort of seniors, of which 96 percent graduated on time and 98 percent enrolled in college. • The University’s College Prep Center in East High School, which provides support and outreach to students and their families during school hours, impacted over 150 students in its inaugural year. The Center has expanded its services to serve up to 500 students in the 2011-12 year. • The University’s college program division continues to provide exceptional support and services to students, recently yielding a five-year graduation rate of 100 percent for the classes of 2008-09. Current seniors have been accepted into many of the best graduate schools across country and have earned other honors, including Fulbright and NIH fellowships.
Olivares serves as president of the Association for Equality and Excellence in Education, Inc., an organization of higher education professionals who work in educational opportunity programs in New York and New Jersey, and sits on the board of directors of the Council for Opportunity in Education, a national advocacy council that works to increase educational opportunities for low-income students. She also serves on the Minority Graduate Education Committee of the GRE Board, which considers new program services and long-range planning strategies for minority students, monitors ongoing minority-related programs, and evaluates research proposals and ongoing projects and their potential affect on test-takers from minority backgrounds.
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