Xiaodan Hu, assistant professor in the Department of Counseling, Adult and Higher Education, traveled in April to Texas for an impressive honor.
Hu’s dissertation, “The Impact of Performance-based Funding on Community College Retention and Completion in Louisiana,” is the winner of the 2018 Council for the Study of Community Colleges Dissertation of the Year Award.
She received a $1,000 award honorarium/prize from a sponsor of the 2018 CSCC Conference.
Casey Ozaki, associate professor in the Department of Teaching & Learning of the University of North Dakota, informed Hu that her “dissertation has the potential to have a significant impact on the literature and policy.”
“In a year of very competitive nominees,” Ozaki wrote, “the committee agreed that your dissertation was an example of a rigorous and well-constructed research design and critically important findings that deepen the understanding performance-based funding and its impact on community college success.”
Meanwhile, her CSCC Dissertation of the Year award is an invitation to submit an article to the Community College Review. With support from CCR, her submission would go through the peer review process with the hope for publication.
Joining CAHE’s Adult and Higher Education faculty last fall, Hu teaches courses related to community college leadership; finance and policy; and higher education administration.
Her research typically employs quantitative methods to examine the impact of state policies and institutional initiatives on colleges and universities, focusing on educational equity issues of historically underserved students and non-traditional students.
