Term of Award

Winter 2025

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

Committee Chair

Kip Sorgen

Committee Member 1

Amy Lingo

Committee Member 2

Antonio Gutierrez de Blume

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between trustee orientation and endowment performance at higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United States. Trustees play a vital fiduciary role in managing institutional endowments, which have become increasingly essential due to declining public funding and rising operational costs. Despite trustees’ critical responsibilities, limited research exists on how orientation practices may influence their effectiveness in endowment oversight. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to develop an instrument to assess the scope and quality of trustee orientation processes and then to compare the results of that scale to ratings on the 2022 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments. The study employed a quantitative, non-experimental methodology using a sequential exploratory design. A survey was distributed to CAOs of 689 HEIs who participated in the 2022 NACUBO-TIAA Study of Endowments. A total of 103 complete responses were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and ordinary least squares regression to evaluate the influence of trustee orientation on endowment performance. In the first phase, the researcher developed a new instrument, the Walker Scale of Trustee Orientation Performance, which was piloted and refined to demonstrate construct validity and internal consistency reliability. The researcher initially developed a ten-item scale, but using exploratory factor analysis, reduced it to six items. Results indicated that the scale had high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.83) and explained 55% of the variance. Scale scores were created from the factor analysis and used as the independent variable in the regression analysis. Regression analysis was used to determine the amount of variance in endowment performance is explained by the trustee orientation scale scores. Results indicated that trustee orientation accounted for only 5.2% of the variance in endowment performance. The study offers an empirically validated tool for quantifying trustee orientation performance and demonstrates how it can be used in quantitative analysis.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

Yes

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