Shelva Paulse Hurley

Ph.D. Student

Shelva is interested in research that would help understand issues of culture and cognition and how it impacts minority students' educational experiences.

Shelva Paulse Hurley is a Ph.D. student in higher education. She has worked for the McNair Scholars Program assisting minority undergraduate students interested in pursuing a doctorate degree after graduation. She also worked at Riverside Community College teaching a course on the history and contemporary political issues in South Africa.

Shelva recently published a chapter titled “Self Construal and the Culture of Higher Education” in Empirical Research in teaching and learning: Contributions from Social Psychology, Blackwell. This analysis explores how the interdependent cultural theme of communalism informs university students’ educational experiences in South Africa, Barbados and the United States. Recently she spent time working on a project in South Africa, Ghana and Ethiopia investigating the utility of an analysis of communal cultural continuity in educational settings and how this may help understand educational outcomes.

Shelva would like to be a faculty member after graduating and is interested in continuing research that would help understand issues of culture and cognition and how it impacts minority students’ educational experiences.

M.Ed., Child and Family Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
B.Soc.Sc., Psychology, University of Cape Town

Email: shelva.hurley@cgu.edu