Senior Thesis

1. Cherié C. Dew
Illinois State University
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Fall 2011

2.  Past research has supported the importance of positive
student-faculty interactions for student success
including:
1. Greater satisfaction with college
2. Higher academic performance
3. Student retention
 However, there is limited research focused specifically
on African American college women and their student-
faculty interactions.

3.  Research Gap: African American college women and
their informal student-faculty interactions at
predominantly white institutions (PWIs)
 Need to study African American college women
because of the intersecting role race and gender plays
in their interactions on campus
 In 2007, 43% of the more than 17 million students
enrolled in college were Caucasian women.
 Only 8.2% were African American women.

4.  For the 2003 freshmen cohort, African Americans had
the lowest persistence rates of all ethnic groups: 73%
for those who began at four-year institutions graduated.
 In 2007, 66% of undergraduate degrees were awarded
to Caucasian students.
 There needs to be more information on how to assist
African American college women in an attempt to
increase graduation rates.

5. 1. What are the experiences African American college
women have through informal interactions with their
professors at a predominantly white university?
2. What factors hinder or facilitate these kinds of
interactions for African American college women?
3. Do these women feel that these informal interactions
are beneficial to their academic success at their
predominantly white university?

6.  Kuh et al. (2005) wrote that “meaningful interactions
between students and their teachers are essential to
high-quality learning experiences.”
 Some studies have demonstrated the importance of
warm and supportive relationships with faculty for
African American students’ learning styles (Lundberg
and Schreiner 2004).
 An important factor that deters student-faculty
interactions is the fact that students and faculty only
interact for a few hours a week in classrooms (Cotten
and Wilson 2006).

7.  Love (2009) stated that alienation, racially stereotypical
behaviors of peers and faculty, and unwelcoming social
climates impede graduation success for African
American students attending PWIs.
 African American college women “who experience both
racism and sexism often report exposure to multiple
forms of oppression that differ from their male peers”
(Ancis et.al 2000: 184).

8.  Some studies have found that African American
students experienced differential treatment by faculty in
academic settings including:
1. Professors ignoring their classroom participation
2. Treating them stereotypically
3. Expressing impatience with their responses
(Lundberg and Schreiner 2004).

9.  Data was gathered by conducting semi-structured, in-
depth interviews with five African American senior
college women.
 These college women were contacted through
convenience sampling and snowball sampling.
◦ Appropriate because they are only 3% of the student
population
 These interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim,
and all names and identifying information were given
pseudonyms.

10.  I used comment-by-comment coding during my initial
coding to ensure I looked at my data critically and
analytically.
 Through all my stages of coding, I used the “constant
comparative method to establish analytic distinctions—
and thus make comparisons at each level or analytic
work” (Charmaz 2006:54).

11.  African American college women are having informal
student-faculty interactions with their professors.
 All the students interviewed mentioned e-mailing
professors and visiting professors’ office hours.
 These college women did perceive out-of-class
interactions as beneficial to their academic
performance.
 The office hours visits varied considerably for each
participant because of the reasons that hindered and
facilitated them.

12.  Factors that hindered
these interactions:
1. Circumstances
 Time restrictions
 Large class size
2. Feelings of inadequacy
3. Cultural disconnection
 Lowered expectations
 Inability to relate
 Factors that facilitated
these interactions:
1. Flexibility with office
hours
2. Professors showing
interest in their
students’ well-being
3. Ability to relate

13.  Circumstances that hindered these interactions:
1. Limited time
 Students perceiving professors as too busy
 Students having time-consuming commitments:
 work, family, student organizations, substantial course load
2. Class size
 Large lecture hall classes don’t encourage interactions with professors.
 When asked about her interactions with professors in large classes
Kierra stated:
[Her interactions were] very few and
far in between (laughed)….I guess
with big, big lecture halls you don’t
necessarily feel like the same
connection you do in a smaller
setting….

14.  Feelings of inadequacy—included shame and
feelings of inferiority
1. Shayla’s statement gives insight into the shame she feels
being a first-generation student:
I’m in a place where I have to open up; I
have to ask these strange people for help.
Then you automatically feel inferior,
because you feel like, well, I bet my white
half or whatever they called don’t have
these same questions. Because their
parents went to college.

15.  Cultural disconnection
1. Three out of the five women felt that professors had lower
expectations of them because they were African American
students.
2. Inability to relate to their professors was a major reason given
for not having student-faculty interactions or only having
limited interactions.
Shayla stated: Sometimes it can just be a little nerve racking,
because you don’t know what the person is
thinking. So it’s like I’m [going to] go in here
to his office, you know, you think about this
white male. Sometimes in my mind it’s just like
okay, you are at the top, you are a white male,
like you at the top and I’m [a] black
female….It’s more of a fight for black women,
because I feel like we have to prove ourselves
more.

16. 1.Flexibility with office hours—all of the students
mentioned meeting with professors outside of scheduled
office hours.
2.Professors showing interest in their students’ well-being
had a significant impact on student-faculty interactions.
Kierra stated:
[When asked how her mentor relationship
started, she stated:] It kind of just got
brought up during one of her office visits;
she was asking me what I wanted to do
with my life and at the time I didn’t know
and…like it just bloomed from there.

17.  Ability to relate
◦ This realization that teachers needed to relate to these
students did not suggest that the professors needed to be
African American and/or a woman to relate.
◦ Lashauna expressed a deep desire to be able to relate to her
professors. When asked if she thought her race and gender
impacted her interactions, she stated:
Oh, certainly, you got to feel
comfortable! Teaching is intimate;
it’s intimate more than anything; it’s
academics, but you got to feel you can
relate to the person.

18.  These factors that facilitated informal interactions for
these African American college women were not
exclusive of one another.
 The students who had professors exhibit these
behaviors had far more interactions with professors
outside of class than the other students.
◦ These college women either had individual mentors, or felt
they had a close connection with their major professors who
demonstrated these behaviors.

19.  Four of the five students had interactions that
benefited them academically because they provided
them with support, encouragement, and advice.
 Even the one student who didn’t have supportive
interactions still felt it was beneficial to meet with
professors.
 The recognition that these forms of interactions could
benefit them academically sometimes outweighed the
factors that hindered student-faculty interactions for
these African American college women.

20.  Some of these college women had negative interactions with
professors either directly or indirectly.
 Lashauna had a significant direct negative informal interaction
with a professor that she proclaimed, “Almost took me out the
game!” *
The discouraging part was, you know, her look. How
she looked at me. How she [said], ‘I don’t know if you
can make it, so it might be best if you dropped,’ so I
dropped, you know. I didn’t feel much encouragement.
[She further explained] I had to tell several people
because I was like, oh, wow, it’s kind of uncomfortable.
It’s kind of really telling me I don’t believe in you. For
you to stop what you’re doing [and say], ’Oh,
Lashauna, I got your e-mail and I really thought about
it, and I think it’s best that you drop and you came all
the way in this bathroom to tell me that….It was kind of
hurtful.

21.  When asked if she had ever had a negative interaction with a
professor, Kierra stated she had not. She then continued to
explain what she had observed and overheard from faculty
members on campus. She stated:
Not directly to me, but just hearing.…I guess people
get comfortable when people don’t think you’re
paying attention; sometimes, you just overhear little
things. Like I was walking on the campus one day, and
two professors were walking in front of me and they
were just talking about how the black community
lacks or we don’t stand for a lot of issues. If we’re not
on an athletic team, then why, you know, why are we
here? What makes us stay, you know?

22.  PESERVERANCE!
◦ It is apparent from the interviews that these five African
American college women have experienced differential
treatment from faculty members, and some have encountered
significant negative interactions.
◦ Each student found inner strength to overcome their hostile
environments and persist to their senior years.
Lashauna stated:
It’s a fight, it’s a struggle, it’s really a
struggle….In my mind, I still got [to] complete
this university. I still got [to] get my grade
right. I still got [to] get that degree. I still got
[to] move on, so I can’t let it affect me. I think
a lot of black females think that same way; I
can’t let it affect me.

23.  The majority of the participants had experienced both
encouraging and supportive informal interactions with some
professors and negative and apathetic interactions with other
professors.
 For these African American college women, they were aware
of the interactions that demonstrated racial discrimination, but
utilized these situations as motivation, dismissed them as
ignorance, or found other avenues around them. *
◦ These findings contradicted Chavous’s (2002) assertion that students
who perceived racial discrimination from peers and faculty would avoid
informal student-faculty interactions.

24.  All the students reported some form of hostile
treatment from at least one of their professors, advisors,
or overhearing racist statements from other professors.
 This reinforces the finding of Ancis et. al (2000) that
African American students reported “greater racial-
ethnic hostility; greater pressure to conform to
stereotypes; less equitable treatment by faculty, staff,
and teaching assistants; and more faculty racism than
did other groups” (p. 183).

25.  This study has illustrated that there are power relations,
based on race and gender, embedded in the student-
faculty interactions of African American college
women who attend a predominantly white university.
 This study is a step in the right direction for addressing
these power relations, because there hasn’t been prior
research on this specific topic.

26.  Future research might focus on studying these forms of
interactions longitudinally. This would allow insight
into the experiences of the African American college
women who do not persist.
 Further research might interview a larger sample size to
see if the findings from my study are relevant for more
than these five African American college women..

27.  Further research may also want to focus on controlling
other variables that may impact African American
college women’s experiences:
 First generation students compared to students from college
educated families
 Traditional students, aged 18-24, enrolled directly from high
school compared to nontraditional students, who may be
older, have children, and didn’t enroll directly from high
school
 Geographic location of university, university size, and
university prestige