"...provides long-awaited answers to critical questions regarding how college impacts students' lives. Through an accomplished interview technique, the author provides us with an inside tour of the lives and minds of hundreds of college graduates. The longitudinal design allows us to comprehend more fully the lifelong impact of higher education. The author weaves these stories into a highly usable framework for educational improvement. Her concrete suggestions help the reader transform insights gained from the interviews into current college curricular and co-curricular practices. This book will be immediately useful for anyone connected to the college experience." -- AAHE Bulletin

"...strongly recommended reading for educators concerned with the holistic development of their students and higher education's role in fostering critical thinking, citizenship, and civic leadership." --
Wisconsin Bookwatch

WINNER OF AERA’S "NARRATIVE & RESEARCH SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP 2003" BOOK AWARD

is Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership at the Miami University of Ohio and a nationally recognized author and speaker on student development and learning. In 2007 she received the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Research Achievement Award for her outstanding contribution to advancing student learning. Her scholarship addresses the evolution of learning and development in college and subsequent adult life, and educational practice to promote self-authorship. Her seventh and eighth books respectively are Authoring Your Life and Development and Assessment of Self-Authorship.

"[This book] is strongly recommended reading for educators concerned with the holistic development of their students and higher education's role in fostering critical thinking, citizenship, and civic leadership." -- Wisconsin Bookwatch

"(This book) provides readers with long-awaited answers to critical questions regarding how college impacts students' lives. Through the use of an accomplished interview technique, the author provides us with an inside tour of the lives and minds of hundreds of college graduates. The longitudinal design allows us to comprehend more fully the lifelong impact of higher education.
The strength of this work lies not in the stories themselves, however. Rather, the merit lies in the way the author weaves these stories into a highly usable and sensible framework for educational improvement. Her concrete suggestions help the reader transform insights gained from the interviews into current college curricular and co-curricular practices.
Baxter Magolda also recognizes that a college education is more than the classroom experience. Although there is a strong focus on disciplinary education, her inclusion of chapters on work settings and co-curricular learning remind us of the holistic nature of higher education. Again, practical suggestions for using these additional learning opportunities to promote what the author calls " self authorship" are extremely useful and thought provoking.
This book will be immediately useful for anyone connected to the college experience. It also makes for interesting reading for anyone who attended college years ago and is interested in reflecting on his or her own "self-authorship" since graduation." -- AAHE Bulletin

"This is a rare treat in the scholarly literature. Marcia Baxter Magolda has conducted ground- breaking research in this longitudinal study. She not only builds on her prior work on students' collegiate experiences, but truly extends it into new dimensions. The most significant of these is exploring and convincingly documenting what has heretofore been a largely unexplored theoretical claim, that epistemological, interpersonal and intrapersonal aspects of development are interrelated. This is a truly significant accomplishment, and one that has the potential to make many scholars and educators reconsider their own basic assumptions about late adolescent and adult development. In addition, reading about these people's lives was like reading a novel. I was always eager to learn what was going to happen in the next chapter! In short, this is 'a good read.'" -- Patricia M. King, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Some reviews of her first book:

"a significant addition to understanding the development of college students." -- Contemporary Psychology

"excellent, well-written and highly informative." -- NASPA Journal (National Association of Student Personnel Administrators)

"[These] rich and vivid descriptions can only help educators be more sensitive and learn to listen more carefully to how students talk about [their] experiences." - Patricia M. King, Journal of College Student Development