Highest Degree:
Ph.D., Higher Education, Indiana University, 1997

Other Credentials:
MA, Student Affairs in Higher Education, The Ohio State University, 1987

Dr. Branch’s teaching and research interests center on adult development and learning in relationship to participation in higher education, environmental theory and assessment in higher education, and college student retention and educational attainment. Much of her work is particularly inclusive of students from non-dominant groups and strives to be grounded in multicultural perspectives. She has expertise in qualitative inquiry, including using photography as an alternative form of data representation.

She has served as a member on the College Personnel Association of Rhode Island’s (CPARI) Executive Board and currently is serving on the directorate of the American College Personnel Association’s (ACPA) Commission XII: Professional Preparation. She has been recognized by Commission IX: Assessment for Student Development for her presentations at ACPA’s national conventions. Dr. Branch also is active in the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA), the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), and Division J (Postsecondary Education) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and she is a manuscript reviewer for the Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, & Practice. She is a URI Multicultural Center Faculty Fellow and is one of the co-chairs of the university’s Diversity Week 2000.

Dr. Branch’s has pre-professional and professional experience in the following functional affairs of college student affairs: housing and residential life, multicultural affairs, academic advising, orientation programs, international student services, student financial aid, and women’s services.

Selected Publications:
Branch Douglas, K. (2000). Less drinking or professional sinking? In F. K. Stage & M. Dannells (Eds.), Linking theory to practice: Case studies for working with college students (2^nd ed.). Muncie, IN: Accelerated Development.

Branch, K. (1998). Impressions: African American first-year students’ perceptions of a predominantly white university. The Journal of Negro Education, 67, 416-431.

Branch, K. (1998). [Review of the book The senior year experience:

Facilitating integration, reflection, closure, and transition]. Journal of College Student Development, 39, 529-532.

Kuh, G. D., Blake, J. H., Branch, K., & Ramin-Gyurnek, J. (1995). Undergraduate student life at the University of Western Ontario [Canada]: Perceptions and paradoxes (Tech. Rep.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, Center for Postsecondary Research and Planning.

Kuh, G. D., Branch, K., Lund, J. P., & Ramin-Gyurnek, J. (1994). Student learning outside the classroom: Transcending artificial boundaries (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 8.). Washington, DC: The George Washington University, School of Education and Human Development.