This is a descriptive study of factors that influenced search committees to recommend a candidate as president of a higher education institution. Chairpersons were asked, by means of a written survey, to indicate why their committee selected the individual to nominate as president as opposed to other finalists. Each chairperson classified one's response as being in one of the following categories: personal, performance, participation, or friendship.

This research grows out of an interest in what scholars commonly call the wisdom tradition of the ancient near east. This tradition or movement involved groups of thinkers and writers, known collectively as scribes, who were concerned in a philosophical way with the problems of living, and with principles of living well. Such communities are known to have flourished in Egypt, the various kingdoms of Mesopotamia, and western Asia, from at least the middle of the third millennium B.C. These scribal communities are also known to have sponsored schools, intended primarily for training in statecraft and the professions, but also for training in the scribal profession per se. The documentary and historical record indicates that such schools provided education from the most rudimentary level of literacy and writing to the most advanced levels of scribal scholarship. These advanced levels of training were functionally equivalent to what is nowadays known as higher education; and the ideals, the philosophy, which guided this enterprise found expression in a corpus of literature bearing the name "wisdom." The problem for this dissertation is whether or not there was in ancient Israel, specifically in the Solomonic era (10th century, B.C.), such an advanced scribal school associated …

The problem addressed in this study was to determine if a significant association exists between attributions and academic achievement among students in a program of religious training at a Bible college. The research was designed to ascertain if optimistic attributions are more frequently associated with students in programs of religious education than with students in a public state-supported university environment. No significant correlation was found between optimistic explanatory styles and the academic achievement of Bible college students. A significant positive difference was found to exist between the explanatory styles of students at The Criswell College and students at the University of North Texas. Students in religious courses of study tended toward attributions for negative events that were external, unstable, and specific. The University of North Texas students tended toward attributions for negative events that were internal, stable, and global.

Since the birth of the United States in 1776, Greek-letter societies have been an integral part of American higher education. Research on the impact of Greek membership varies at best, and often is in conflict from study to study. This study surveyed students affiliated with Greek-letter organizations at the University of North Texas. The research examined the college adaptability of Greek students by gender in five areas: Overall adjustment, academic adjustment, personal-emotional adjustment, social adjustment, and attachment to the institution. The study, conducted in the spring of 2006 at the University of North Texas had 80 respondents. The Student Adaptability to College Questionnaire (SACQ) consisted of 67 items on a 9-point scale. The SACQ is designed to assess how well students adapt to the demands of the college experience. Raw scores and percentile rankings were determined by t-test calculations. Test scores were expressed through t-scores in relation to the standardized sample. Data show no statistical significance in any of the five areas studied: Overall adjustment, academic adjustment, personal-emotional adjustment, social adjustment, or attachment to the institution. Female participants scored higher on all scales than male participants, indicating a slightly higher level of adjustment, though not enough to be significant. Both …

The purpose of this study was to compare the avowed beliefs and reported practices of Southern Baptist pastors based upon their level of attainment in higher education and their choice of theological seminary.

The researcher examined a relatively unexplored and limited territory dealing with higher education organizational pluralism pertaining to particalized substance abuse programs in private sectarian institutions of higher learning with student populations of under five thousand. The conceptual framework, which was a recapitulation of Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal's (1984) "multifaceted lens," applied to the human resource framework, the structural framework, the symbolic/cultural framework and the political framework in the administration of these selected substance abuse programs. The frames under which the respective substance abuse programs operate were identified by utilizing a semi-structured interview protocol. The study found usage of management frames by substance abuse program administrators to be in agreement with Bolman and Deal's "four frames theory," with the preferred management style consistent across the frames. The administrators of the substance abuse programs prefer the human resource frame almost categorically. Each institution places a strong emphasis on recruitment of an ideal type of student, modeled after a very clear and concise institutional mission statement. The pervasive theme of the mission message seeks potential Christian leaders only. Almost exclusively, the institutions studied do not tolerate substances of any sort. The administrators interviewed were knowledgeable about the various organizational frames …

The application of Gowin's knowledge vee as a means to design instruction for adult Bible study was investigated in this study. The study was designed to determine whether subjects using this instructional approach differed from subjects using traditional instructional materials regarding their attitudes toward Bible study, attendance, knowledge retention, application of study materials to life, and recruitment of new class members.

Learning styles and readiness for self-directed learning were identified for 125 adult employees enrolled in self-paced training courses. The success of the self-paced instruction was measured by confidence to perform learned skills on the job. Confidence scores were compared across learning style types and self-directed learning readiness. It was concluded that self-paced training programs can be effective for a variety of learning style preferences. Additionally, adult employees who are highly self-directed will experience greater success in self-paced instruction than those less self-directed. The implication for businesses and academic institutions seeking to employ technology based, self-instructional programs is that a return on investment can be maximized by an examination of the target audience. Training programs which are self-paced may not generate the desired success which will translate into effective job performance for those adults who are not ready for self-directed learning.

This study tries to delineate the paradigms of opinion among Colombian Computer Industrialists with respect to the role of informatics in national development especially (1) their estimation of the performance of the informatics in the modernization process, (2) the perceptions on which this attitude was based, (3) their ability to integrate the informatics instruction into the development process, (4) their ability to establish the need of doctoral programs in informatics into the development process, and (5) their ability to recognize the importance of the network communication as a medium of knowledge exchange among higher education institutions.

The study of leadership in education, business, industry, government, and other organizations has evolved over time. Early studies focused on leadership traits and behavior. Currently, researchers and theorists have concentrated on the interaction of leadership styles and situations. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the predominant leadership style of a group of senior administrators of public universities in Texas.

Although it is widely assumed that listening is among the most important learning skills (Wolvin & Coakley, 1988), an examination of the literature indicates that it has been woefully neglected as subject matter in schools. Listening has also been neglected as an area of research. Surveys have been conducted to see if listening is being taught or can effectively be taught, but little evidence exists to suggest that effectively teaching listening improves students' academic performance. This study investigated the relationship between listening skills instruction and academic performance among university students. The purpose was to determine if teaching university students comprehensive listening skills improves their academic performance. It was assumed that listening can be effectively taught. The goal of the study was to compare 75 students who were enrolled in a listening course to a similar group of 75 students not enrolled in a listening course. The students were compared on the basis of grade point improvement the semester after the experimental group had completed the listening course. The t test was chosen because it can be used for testing the significance of the difference between the means of two independent samples. The grade point averages of the two groups were …

This study examined international education (IE) programs in Texas community colleges to determine how they compare to a general, theoretical model of IE programs discussed in the literature. The study proposed: (a) to describe, through a review of literature, the components of IE; (b) to describe the administration of IE within the Texas community colleges; (c) to identify existing IE instructional activities; (d) to describe the student support services related to IE which are in practice; (e) to describe what community and out of country outreach components are in operation; and (f) to determine how the IE programs in Texas community colleges compare to theoretical components of IE programs as identified in the literature.

The overall purpose of this study was to identify the major factors and events that led to the establishment of the Federal Universities of Technology in Nigeria. The study examined and analyzed the growth and development of the three Nigerian Federal Universities of Technology at Owerri, Akure, and Minna.

A Faculty Orientation and Design for Writing Across the Curriculum is a case study of the work done to introduce the concept of writing across the curriculum at an urban community college. Emphasizing the related processes of learning, thinking, and writing, the researcher describes private interviews and analyzes transcriptions of small group meetings designed to discuss ways to encourage increased quantity and improved quality of writing in vocational and university-parallel courses on the campus. The focus of the study is the transcription of the faculty meetings where teachers reveal their methodologies and educational philosophies as they discuss ways to provide increased writing opportunities to large classes of open-door students. The culmination of the orientation project is a faculty booklet of ways to increase writing. The researcher concludes that although a writing "program" is not in place as a result of the year's work, essential groundwork for such a program is laid.