Book 16

Student departure is a long-standing problem to colleges and universities. Approximately 45 percent of students enrolled in two-year colleges depart during their first year, and approximately one out of four students departs from a four-year college or university. The authors advance a serious revision of Tinto's popular interactionalist theory to account for student departure, and they postulate a theory of student departure in commuter colleges and universities. This volume delves into the literature to describe exemplary campus-based programs designed to reduce student departure. It emphasizes the importance of addressing student departure through a multidisciplinary approach, engaging the whole campus. It proposes new models for nonresidential students and students from diverse backgrounds, and suggests directions for further research. Academic and student affairs administrators seeking research-based approaches to understanding and reducing student departure will profit from reading this volume. Scholars of the college student experience will also find it valuable in defining new thrusts in research on the student departure process.

In his influential book Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Ernest Boyer (1990) proposed that the definition of scholarship be broadened beyond the predominant emphasis on the scholarship of discovery to encompass the scholarships of integration, application and teaching. Boyer's formulations have sparked considerable scholarly attention, including appraisals of Boyer's arguments by contemporary scholars and efforts to clarify the meaning of the domains of scholarship described by Boyer. This volume reviews the major scholarly works on these topics.