Dr. Amaury Nora

Dr. Amaury Nora is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Center for Hispanic Student Success in the College of Education at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas. His research focuses on college persistence, the role of college on diverse student populations across different types of institutions, the development of retention models that integrate economic theories and college persistence theories, graduate education, and theory building and testing. His inquiries have not only contributed to traditional lines of research on college persistence but have opened research on women and minorities in community colleges. Nora has served on the editorial boards of Research in Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, The Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Hispanic Higher Education and The Journal of College Student Retention: Research and Theory and is currently the Editor of The Review of Higher Education, the journal for the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE)..

Dr. Nora has also served as Research Associate for the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning and Assessment (NCTLA), funded by the U.S. Department of Education, consultant to the American Council of Education, National Advisory Board member for the evaluation of GEAR UP, reviewer for the National Research Council in Washington, DC., and evaluator for two major projects, the National Center for Urban Partnerships (NCUP) and the Houston Annenberg Challenge project. He has served as Content Expert on Higher Education, ERIC Steering Committee, Department of Education, 2004-2006; as a panel member on the National Research Council of the National Academies, Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowships Program, 2005, 2006; a consultant on outcomes assessment for the Title V Project, Houston Community College System, 2004-2009; as consultant for the NPEC Project on Student Success funded by the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, 2003; advisor to the Task Force on Student Enrollment at California State University-Long Beach, June 2002; advisor on standardized testing and minority college admissions and data analysis, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, New York, February-April, 2000; and has provided testimonial on factors affecting the retention of minority students before a panel for the Southern Education Foundation, State Capital, Austin, Texas, February, 1994.

Dr. Nora has made numerous research paper presentations at professional conferences including the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE), the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), the Annual Meeting of the Noel-Levitz Retention Conference, Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) and invited colloquia to organizational and institutions such as the National Meeting of NASME, the Chicano and Latino Access and Retention and Graduation Symposium, CSU-Long Beach, the Gulf Coast Consortium of Instructional Administrators, Transfer Project, the Ministerio de Cultura y Educacion, Seminario: Indicadores Universiarios, Tendencias y Experiencias Internacionales (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Tribally-Controlled TRIO Programs, U.S. Department of Education.

His recent works include The Role of Habitus and Cultural Capital in Choosing a College, Transitioning from High School to Higher Education, and Persisting in College Among Minority and Non-Minority Students (2004); The Depiction of Significant Others in Tinto’s “Rites of Passage:” A Reconceptualization of the Influence of Family and Community in the Persistence Process (2002); How Minority Students Finance their Higher Education (2001); Access, Choice, and Outcomes: A Profile of Hispanic Students in Higher Education (1999); The Current Status of Undergraduate Latina/os in Four-Year Colleges and Universities (2005); and Access to Higher Education for Hispanic Students: Real or Illusory?(2003)