Education Commons^™

A For Academics Or Athletics: A Critical Look At African American Male Student Athletes In Search Of Identity, Tamekia Bush

Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how African American male student athletes developed their athletic and racial identity and how this impacted their academic identity. I conducted two in depth interviews with 6 African American male current or former student athletes who played basketball or football in high school but were not eligible to be a NCAA qualifier for an athletic scholarship. I sought to investigate the point when the student athletes began their career in athletics and when athletics began to impact their academic performance and why it impacted academic performance. I also investigated how the …

Providing Equitable Access To Education For African American Students: The Journey Of One Administrative Team, John P. Raimondo

Dissertations

This study explored the journey of one administrative team in a Midwestern suburban high school in their efforts to provide equitable access to education for African American students. It examined the high school administrative processes, and the perceived impacts of these processes in identifying, addressing and removing the institutional barriers to academic success for African American students. I focused on an initiative developed by members of this administrative team that is an intervention designed specifically for African American students and articulated as such. As both an insider to this school’s administrative team and a veteran administrator, and as an outsider …

Meeting Yourself Without Rose Colored Glasses: An Urban Public School, Shenelle Dubose, Apryll Mendez

Dissertations

The impact of a culturally relevant professional development series on classroom teacher’s cultural lens was determined. Fifty teachers from two different school districts participated in 16 hours of professional development in an attempt to impact their understanding of how culture and instruction are connected.

During the professional development, participants took part in activities, dialogues and reflections designed to impact their cultural competency. The content of the four professional development sessions included (a) videos on culturally relevant teaching; (b) discussion of cultural identity of participants and how it surfaces in the classroom; (c) discussion of the culture, values, and beliefs of …

A Study Of Digital Communications Between Universities And Students, Perry D. Drake

Dissertations

This study examined the digital and social media communication practices of nine urban universities including UMSL and compared those to known corporate best practices.

The purpose of this study was to (1) research how these universities are using social/digital communications to engage with students and prospective students; (2) compare the executional tactics of universities to corporate best practices; (3) determine if by applying corporate best practices universities reap the same benefits as corporate in terms of higher engagement rates with their customers; and (4) determine if a correlation exists between a university’s Forbes ranking and its use of social media …

The Missouri Student Transfer Program, Howard E. Fields Iii

Dissertations

In 1993, the state of Missouri passed the Outstanding Schools Act. This law was created as a means to ensure that “all children will have quality educational opportunities, regardless of where in Missouri they live.” Section 167.131 of this law states that an unaccredited district must pay the tuition and transportation cost for students who attend an accredited school in the same or adjoining district. This portion of the law became known as the Student Transfer Program.

The Riverview Gardens School District (RGSD) was one of three unaccredited school districts in the state of Missouri in 2013. With close to …

An Inventory Of Selected Mentor And Protégé Motivational And Effectiveness Characteristics At The United States Air Force Academy (Usafa), David Huston

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the mentoring culture at USAFA in terms of selected mentor and protégé motivational and effectiveness characteristics of faculty and administrative personnel (referred to as permanent party members) (mentors) and cadets (protégés). Results offer evidence which support the presence of a somewhat healthy culture in that those who indicated they were currently mentoring cadets were more generative, altruistic, and wanted to mentor cadets more compared to those who indicated they were not mentoring cadets. However, those who were currently mentoring cadets did not necessarily possess better emotional intelligence compared to non-mentors. Also, cadets …

Transformational Leadership: An Urban Leaders' Autoethnography, Joyce M. Roberts

Dissertations

My story of lived experiences is told through a transformational leadership lens whereby the leader is charged with identifying the need for change, creating the vision to guide the change through inspiration and executing the change in tandem with committed members of the group. An autoethnography is a style of autobiographical writing that explores an individual's unique life experiences in a natural setting. The researchers' lived experiences are scholarly and justifiable interpretations supported by multiple sources of evidence and artifacts.