Ryan, M A (2008) Women who build buildings: The experiences of student affairs professionals in constructing student-focused space on university campuses. EdD thesis, University of St. Thomas, USA.
Abstract
This qualitative research examines the lived experiences of ten student affairs professionals who championed a building project on a college or university campus that enhanced the student co-curricular experience. The research resulted in five major themes embedded in the women's lived experiences within those campuses: the status of student affairs and the status of the women; the way things work for the women; the impact of their gender; knowledge and expertise in student affairs and in the context of the women's work; and the building's meaning and legacy. I analyze these themes from the women's stories primarily through Dorothy Smith's women's standpoint theory and Keith MacDonald's research about the sociology of professions. The strategies employed by the women to build their buildings in a patriarchal environment serve as a framework for discussion about implications of status, knowledge, power, and gender in higher education for student affairs practitioners. The women's status as student affairs professionals, their knowledge base, their expertise about students, and their gender contributed to their outsider-within place in the hierarchy. In the most cases, the powerful within the hierarchy acted as obstructionists by inventing rules, changing rules, and imposing unwritten rules. In all cases, unwritten rules impacted the project. These women, standing outside of the dominant discourse, analyzed the hierarchy as they experienced it and developed strategies to define a process to move their projects forward. The conclusions drawn from this study explain how the status of student affairs is determined by most of the women; what strategies the women used to successfully complete their projects; how some of the women rationalized oppression; how their experiences, in some instances, mirrored the profession's status; how the literature regarding caring professions most aptly defines the profession of student affairs; and how, in the public telling of the building's story, the meaning the women assigned to the project is lost. The study will support positive perceptions of women as leaders in higher education and serve to model success strategies for other student affairs professionals.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Fish, T |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | education; gender; higher education; qualitative research; sociology; success strategies; women |
| Index terms: | profession, women, sociology, higher education, qualitative research, practitioner, meaning, strategy, knowledge base |
| Subjects: | management, social theory, sociology, educational institutions, information systems, research design and methodology, practitioner, institututions |
| Topics: | Education, Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Digital Applications |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here