Patricia M. King

Dr. Patricia M. King is a professor of higher education in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. Her teaching and research focus on the learning and development of college students and other adults in educational settings. She is interested in approaches to student learning that explore the interactions between student characteristics (such as their expectations, social identities, and developmental capacities) and features of their learning environments (such as the nature of the challenges and supports educators offer) in curricular, cocurricular, and personal contexts.

In studying student development, she is also interested in the intersections among developmental domains, such as intellectual, identity, and social development, and examines how these affect a range of collegiate outcomes, such as intercultural maturity, citizenship, and moral character. Her current work focuses on the development of self-authorship, especially as it relates to collegiate learning outcomes and ways educators can assist college students develop the skills and capacities to become self-authoring.

She is a co-PI on the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education. She has co-authored two books, Developing Reflective Judgment (with Karen Strohm Kitchener) and Learning Partnerships: Theory and Models of Practice to Educate for Self-Authorship (with Marcia Baxter Magolda) and a monograph, Assessing Meaning Making and Self-Authorship (also with Marcia Baxter Magolda). She served as a founding co-editor of About Campus: Enriching the Student Learning Experience, the national magazine sponsored by the American College Personnel Association. She has served on several advisory boards for the American Association of Colleges and Universities, including the Research and Educational Change Collaborative, part of the Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility Project. She is a graduate of Macalester College (St. Paul, Minnesota) and completed her doctoral studies in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota. Dr. King is active in the Rackham Graduate School’s Faculty Allies for Diversity program at the University of Michigan.