The increase in the number of nontraditional aged undergraduate students (25 yrs. and older) and students transferring between post-secondary institutions has raised the question of whether effective instruction is viewed the same by these different groups of students. This study addressed this question by analyzing the responses of these different groups to 23 instructional questions on a standard faculty evaluation form.

This study chronicles the contributions of Bill J. Priest under the headings of Board of Trustees governance model, multi-college district, quality first: facilities and staff, curriculum, counseling, public relations, telecourses and the Bill J. Priest Institute for Economic Development. Data were gathered from personal interviews, primary sources and secondary sources. The study includes an overview of the emergence and evolution of the junior college with specific focus on the conceptual beginnings of the Dallas County Community College District and the selection of its founding president, Bill Priest. Professional and personal profiles of Priest are documented as background for the study. Conclusions are that Bill Priest established the Dallas County Community College District as a national model of a multi-college district, was instrumental in affecting the change from junior college to comprehensive community college as the standard for two-year higher education institutions, played a significant role in setting the national agenda for the community college movement through his long-term participation in a leadership capacity in the American Association of Junior and Community Colleges and through the establishment and selection of leadership of the League for Innovation, was instrumental in the creation of the Associate Degree of Nursing, was a national leader …

This study describes perceptions of the president's role in organizational change in each of ten colleges in two metropolitan community college districts. The purposes included (1) tracing major administrative reorganizations from the fall of 1975 to the spring of 1985, (2) ascertaining perceptions of the reasons for those reorganizations, and (3) obtaining perceptions of the role of the president in those reorganizations.

The problem of this study involved identifying and ranking perceptions of the attributes of exemplary teaching of adjunct faculty of the Dallas County Community College District. Data was collected by a 75 item opinionnaire and a demographic data sheet which was sent to a population of 3,000 employees of the Dallas County Community College District and 100 exemplary faculty from 39 of the 50 United States. The five chapters were titled Introduction, Review of Literature, Methods, Presentation and Analysis of Findings, and Summary, Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations. Revealed through the findings of Chapter 4 was the order of attributes as a Grand grand rank found through the combining of the grand rank order of the Dallas County Community Colleges' employees and the rank order of the nationally recognized exemplary faculty. Findings disclosed that a rank ordering of items represented by Kendall's W at .9654 with a chi-square of 142.8815 at the .001 level of significance. These findings led to the rejection of three null hypotheses and the following related conclusions: (1) perceptions of importance of teaching attributes, can be rank ordered, (2) while a high level of significant values of W may be interpreted as meaning that the observers and …

Student retention is one of the most important issues facing higher education. The demand for accountability of higher education has pushed the issue of student retention to the forefront of its agenda. Increasingly, state legislatures are tying funding to institutional effectiveness, using graduation rates as measures of academic quality. Though there is an abundance of literature of studies conducted at the four year institution, few studies have examined the community college student. This study attempted to identify 4 specific pre-enrollment variables, (1) parent's education, (2) high school senior grade point average, (3) educational goals and (4) racial origin, as predictors of persistence and retention. The sample included 312 entering freshmen at North Lake College in Irving, Texas who were administered the College Student Inventory (CSI) in the fall semesters of 1995 and 1996. The 1995 cohort consisted of 201 entries, 103 (51.2%) female and 98 (48.8) male. The 1996 cohort consisted of 111 entries, 65 (58.5%) female and 46 (41.5%) male. A data base was constructed by extracting selected data elements from the completed inventory. Each student was tracked for one year following the semester they completed the survey. The Pearson Chi-Square Test of Independence with .05 level of significance …

Reorganization efforts within colleges and universities are increasingly considered as institutions look for ways to streamline operations for financial cost savings or competitive advantage. The purpose of this study was to assess a particular change effort in a university library which took place between August, 1996 and July, 1997. A team was formed to manage the change effort, and an outside consultant was hired to facilitate the process and guide the team. Stufflebeam's evaluation model was used as a conceptual framework to evaluate the entire process which included a particular change management model brought in by the consultant. The entire change effort was described by the author as a participating member of the team and assessed by gathering feedback from team members, library staff members affected by the effort, and members of the library administration.