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Hispanic-serving institutions of higher education (HSIs) were created by the United States government in 1992 to offer special grant funding to colleges and universities that met certain demographic thresholds (S.1150 - 102nd Congress (1991-1992), 1992). Today, a diverse group of over 500 colleges and universities carry this designation, including public and private institutions, institutions with a range of religious affiliations, and institutions ranging from community colleges, to small liberal arts colleges, to Carnegie-classified R1 research universities. Many of these institutions originated as predominantly white institutions (PWIs) and took on the HSI designation as demographics changed at the institutions and in the communities they serve (Garcia, 2017). Significant research exists describing the experiences of students and faculty at these institutions (Crisp et al., 2015; Ek et al., 2010; Garcia, 2017; Gonzales, 2015; Gonzales et al., 2013; Hurtado et al., 2011; Musoba et al., 2013; Preuss et al., 2020; Venegas, 2015). This research demonstrates how students and faculty alike must operate in HSIs as white-dominated spaces. This leads to challenges with student identity and belongingness (Bazana & Mogotsi, 2017; Hurtado et al., 2011; Musoba et al., 2013; Yosso et al., 2009) and with faculty being able to pursue research and pedagogical strategies outside of white-normative practice (B.A.L., 2017; Ek et al., 2010; Gonzales et al., 2013; Gusa, 2010). Less is known about the experiences and perceptions of the staff who work directly with students, and much of what we do know focuses on how white, middle class staff members can support students whose backgrounds are different from their own (Preuss et al., 2020; Tevis & Britton, 2020; Zenner & Squire, 2020). This treatise seeks to contribute to existing knowledge of these institutions and the people who learn and work there by examining the experiences and perceptions of academic advisors, student affairs professionals, and related staff members who directly support students. Through document review and interviews, it shows how a case institution communicates its HSI identity to staff, how staff perceive their work, and how participants with different demographic backgrounds describe servingness (Garcia et al., 2019) at the case institution. This treatise paints a picture of a diverse group of staff with strong ideas about both student service and their own roles within the institution. They discuss challenges related to complex organizational systems, struggles to do meaningful work while earning low salaries, excitement about recent changes in institutional leadership, and the ways that the institution succeeds and strives as an HSI. By learning more about the contributions and voices of these colleagues, researchers and practitioners gain new knowledge about how HSI systems operate, how they can grow, and the role that staff play in ensuring that students experience opportunities to grow academically and find belonging at institutions that are federally designated to serve them.

Novice teacher attrition is an increasingly growing phenomenon faced by the modern United States on an annual basis. Moreover, schools with high minority and high poverty characteristics are continuously struggling to not only recruit newer educators, but also retain them in the field of education. On average, high-needs schools spend approximately $70,000 each year to replace teachers, which equates to be roughly $8,750 per teacher (Djonko-Moore, 2016). Educational leaders are now looking toward the application of established organizational systems and processes to provide a resolution to this problem. The purpose of this qualitative study is to analyze how high-needs schools have successfully utilized organizational systems to reduce novice teacher attrition. With organizational theory and the associated sub-framework of general system theory being employed as the driving theoretical framework, the case study approach was used to examine one high-needs elementary school located within a suburban school district in the state of Georgia. The investigation sought to uncover the different, concrete mechanisms that are currently being used to reduce novice teacher attrition in a single, high-needs school and the reasons for their continued success. Data was collected through three distinct methods, including individual interviews, naturalistic observations, and document analysis. All data captured in the interview and observation phases was openly coded using the NVivo software, with the subsequent employment of axial and selective coding to establish connections that addressed the prevailing purpose of the research and guiding questions. The implications from this study will be used to inform educational leaders of the best practices that can be used to effectively address novice teacher attrition and how those practices can be converted into routine procedures that can be used on a daily basis.

Among organizational consultants, human resources practitioners, and organizational leaders, there has been a resurgence of interest in the subject of employee motivation, in part due to the best-selling book, Drive (Pink, 2009). In this book, the author challenged readers to question their beliefs about what motivates employees; this challenge was based on research that questions the validity of widely used management approaches to employee motivation, particularly those based on reinforcement theory. Answering this challenge was difficult, however, given the lack of instruments designed to measure motivation beliefs at all, much less beliefs from a range of prevalent theories. Using principal components and parallel analyses, the 20-item Motivation Beliefs Inventory (MBI) was created to measure motivation beliefs along four theoretical lines: reinforcement theory; expectancy-valence theory; achievement motivation theory; and self-determination theory. The instrument was validated in two tests involving large samples of businesspeople. Validity and reliability analyses revealed the instrument demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties. Four subscales, each representing a single theory, were confirmed and demonstrated alpha coefficients as follows: reinforcement theory, .77; expectancy-valence theory, .71; achievement motivation theory, .82; self-determination theory, .77. The entire Motivation Beliefs Inventory produced a strong alpha coefficient of .77. In addition to validating the instrument, this study generated several significant findings. The first of these revealed that there were statistically significant differences in the distribution of beliefs about what motivates employees; specifically, self-determination beliefs were most strongly held, followed by expectancy-valence theory and achievement motivation theory beliefs. Despite their dominant role in organizational systems, respondents agreed with tenets of reinforcement theory at the lowest level. Furthermore, based on effect size analysis, males were more likely than females to agree with reinforcement theory and achievement motivation theory, while non-managers were more likely than managers to agree with self-determination theory. As expected, the creation of a new instrument like the MBI opens a world of possibilities for both practitioners and scholars. While workplace practitioners now have the ability to actually measure an individual's beliefs about motivation, researchers can use the instrument to test for differences in these beliefs among individuals in different occupations, companies, industries, and countries.