Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 48, No. 1 - 90

Thematic Analysis of Residential College Conference Programs
Institutions Engaged with
the Professional Associations
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Finally, to answer the third and final research
question, the unique counts of presenters by
their institutional affiliations are presented
in Table 5. Note that if a presentation had two
or more presenters from the same institution,
the presenters' institutional affiliations
were counted independently.
From the CWI analysis presented in
Table 5, it can be seen that there were 18
unique institutions that presented across
the three conferences hosted by the association.
The most frequent presenter affiliations
were Durham University (n = 23), University
of Otago (n = 9), Rice University (n = 8),
Trent University (n = 6), University of Macau
(n = 4), and York University (n = 4). From
the RCS analysis, there were 42 unique institutions
that presented across the seven
conferences hosted by the association during
the study period. The most frequent presenter
affiliations were Southern Methodist University
(n = 47), Baylor University (n = 34),
Vanderbilt University (n = 23), and Virginia
Tech (n = 18).
Overall, the majority of conference presenter
institutional affiliations from CWI
were within Western Europe, Australia,
Southeast Asia, or the United States. CWI
conference attendance seemed to be more
diverse and to attract a diverse presenter
pool. The conference presenter institutional
affiliations from RCS seemed to be predominantly
private schools in Texas and the southeastern
United States. Three of the four most
frequent schools were private universities,
with the exception of Virginia Tech.
Findings from the thematic content analysis
of two professional association conference
materials suggest a number of implications
for practice and future research. First, we recommend
consistency in the number of conference
presentations over time to aid in future
research and professional development.
Next, we discuss the prominent professional
development topics and offer insights to advance
the field, and, finally, we identify key
institutions within the residential college
movement and discuss how to improve diversity
in the field. We connect our findings
and discussion to other discipline-specific
conference material content analyses to support
our recommendations.
Improving Consistency for Posterity
Notably, RCS had only four sessions in its
founding year, 2014, but substantially increased
the number of presentations after
its first conference. CWI exhibited the opposite
pattern. Its founding conference contained
more than 20 presentations, but this
number steadily decreased throughout its
subsequent conferences. This may suggest
more of a desire to target professional development
topics than to increase the number
of offerings. Also, within the United States,
it is common to assign professional development
funding to individuals who are selected
to present at conferences. Thus, the
acceptance of higher numbers of conference
sessions within the United States might be
related to this phenomenon of practice. This
implication reflects the findings of Scherer
(1985), who compared session topics during
two conventions and observed differences
between their contents that may be connected
to historical events, indicating a need
for these historical analyses of conference
90 The Journal of College and University Student Housing
Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 48, No. 1

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