The Impact of Race and Interactions Between Student-FacultyPaperback, 21 March 2012

As enrollment of minority students and recruitment of minority faculty in higher education increase, opportunities for students to interact with racially and ethnically different faculty will become more frequent and pronounced. Also, there may be expectations that these interactions will produce greater educational gains and sensitivity to racial issues. A quantitative research methodology was employed to measure the nature of the student-faculty interactions across race and to explore factors that influence undergraduate students' GPA and multicultural perceptions in order to identify ways in which student-faculty interactions might better serve the students.Data collection consisted of surveying students and faculty members via email. The researcher found that only the quality of student-faculty interactions, which belongs to the quality of interactions, had a positive impact on students' GPA (.06) and their multicultural perceptions (.18). A better understanding of factors influencing students' GPA and multicultural perceptions would be beneficial for both teachers and undergraduate students at VCU.