Assistant professor of Adult Education and High Education Leadership, Dr. Lucy Arellano’s research examines Latinx success through qualitative and quantitative methods. Her research focuses on the influence of the institutional environment, college capital, peers, and public discourse in perpetuating racial violence. For Dr. Arellano, a focus on student success is the undergirding to her research. Dr. Arellano’s article “Transforming campus racial climates: Examining discourses around student experience of racial violence and institutional “(in) action” was published in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.
Dr. Arellano has also completed a national, longitudinal, quantitative study on Baccalaureate degree completion of Latinx college students. This study covered 459 US institutions and followed 15,745 Latinx students for six year from college entry. It examined the impact of different institutional contexts while taking into account individual characteristics in relation to student success. The results found distinct predictors of success in the different ethnic subgroups. This study will be published in the Journal of Higher Education in Fall of 2019.
In addition, Dr. Arellano has studied why Latinx college students join Greek organizations and their role in Latinx student success. The study found that, by embodying the intersectionality of academics, social interaction, accountability, community service, cultural congruency, and brotherhood/sisterhood, Latinx Greek organizations foster student success. This study was published in the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education in May of 2018.