Graduate School of Education Faculty Spotlight
The Faculty Spotlight highlights Graduate School of Education faculty members throughout the academic year. Each spotlight includes the research interests, scholarly accomplishments, and academic courses taught by the highlighted faculty member.
Julia Colyar, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy
477 Baldy Hall
(716) 645-2471, ext. 1086
jecolyar@buffalo.edu
Julia Colyar received her doctorate in educational administration and higher education from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2003. Dr. Colyar started her career in higher education as an academic advisor for teacher education students at USC, and she has worked in a variety of administrative and student services offices. At the USC Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis, Dr. Colyar worked with a team of researchers interested in college access and college preparation programs for underrepresented students. Dr. Colyar completed case studies of several preparation programs in urban communities across the United States. This work resulted in several publications, including two co-edited books related to college access: Preparing for College: Nine Elements of Effective Outreach (2005, SUNY Press, with William Tierney and Zoë Corwin) and Urban High School Students and the Challenge of Access (2006, Peter Lang, with William Tierney). She also assisted in the development of a college preparation program in Los Angeles aimed at supporting high school juniors as they refined their writing and mathematics skills. In addition, she has served as an evaluator and consultant for college preparation programs across the United States.
Dr. Colyar has also been interested in the transition to college for first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students. Understanding these students' experiences is increasingly important in the changing demographics of today's higher education context. She is particularly interested in the ways in which institutions respond and adapt to changing student needs, and the ways in which students negotiate complex environments. Recently, Dr. Colyar has focused on the experiences of undergraduate women in information technology (IT) majors. Though women students comprise more than half of all college students, they are conspicuously underrepresented in computer-related degree programs. Her ethnographic study of IT classrooms was recently published in the Journal about Women in Higher Education, and she has presented her findings at several national conferences. Her work in this area is informed by feminist and sociological theory.
Dr. Colyar also writes about qualitative research and writing. She is particularly interested in the methodologies of portraiture and cultural biography, two methodologies which focus on the contexts in which our research is situated. In an upcoming edition of Qualitative Inquiry, Dr. Colyar discusses the writing process and the ways in which writing itself may be considered an analytic tool for the processing of qualitative data and for establishing trustworthiness in qualitative work.
Dr. Colyar teaches courses in the higher education and student affairs master's programs. She is currently teaching Counseling for Student Affairs and the American College Student. She also teaches Introduction to Student Affairs Administration and Cultural Diversity in Higher Education.
Archived Faculty Spotlights for current GSE faculty are available here.
