Education Commons^™

The Effectiveness Of The University Of Southern Mississippi's Marketing And Branding Efforts Among Prospective Students, Amy Clevenger

Honors Theses

With enrollment rates expected to surge over the next decade, the competition

between institutions of higher learning will also increase. Because of this, marketing

material produced by all institutions will need to adjust to become more effective at

establishing brand identity to attract the attention of prospective students. Using Aaker’s

brand identity model as a framework to understand branding methods, this research aims

to identify marketing communication strategies that are more effective in a prospective

student’s decision-making process. The thesis also investigates prospective students’

recall and perception of marketing material produced by USM to determine its overall

effectiveness and differences …

Impact Of Organizational Structure On Community Engagement Outcomes, Christy Arrazattee

School of Education Doctoral Projects - Higher Education

Community engagement has been embedded into higher education institutions since the early 1990s, yet scholars and practitioners still debate if there is an ideal reporting structure for coordinating offices (Jacoby, 2014). This study involved a quantitative analysis of 72 institutions who submitted information to the National Inventory of Institutional Infrastructure for Community Engagement survey (NI³CE – pronounced “nice”) between 2017 and 2020. Institutions were categorized by organizational structure (centralized vs. decentralized) and by reporting line (Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, Joint Academic Affairs/ Student Affairs, Outreach, and decentralized). Using the NI³CE inventory and scoring system, points were awarded to institutions based …

Disability Disclosure And Academic Advising: Factors That Influence Disability Disclosure To An Academic Advisor, Autumn Grant

School of Education Doctoral Projects - Higher Education

The National Center for Education Statistics revealed that in 2015-2016, 19.4% of undergraduate students reported having a disability. Further data convey that students with disabilities have lower graduation and retention rates than their non-disabled peers. Academic advising has a long-standing linkage to retention and success; however, academic advisors frequently feel that they are in a better place to support students with disabilities if they understand the impact of the disability on academic life. Existing literature focuses on factors that influence students to disclose a disability to obtain reasonable accommodations from an institution's disability/accessibility office and disclosure to faculty members. This …

Boosting Degree Attainment: A Mixed Methods Examination Of An Adult Degree Completion Initiative, Hannah Harrison

Dissertations

Higher education has increased its focus to national degree attainment, especially among adults who have some college education (Hardin, 2008; Nettles, 2017). Research from these entities identifies future economic growth and the strength of the United States economy requires a more highly educated society (Carnevale & Rose, 2014). As a result, Federal and institutional initiatives seek ways to increase the retention rates of current students while also incentivizing students to return to school to complete their degrees (Markle, 2015). A review of the related literature identified economic and social benefits exist for individuals who obtain a postsecondary degree (Chan, 2016). …

Faculty Job Satisfaction Related To Online Course Design, April Marie Hixson

School of Education Doctoral Projects - Higher Education

Online education has expanded and evolved slowly through the decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 put online education at the forefront of teaching and learning worldwide and sped up the design and delivery of online courses. This study sought to examine faculty attitudes and opinions (amid a global pandemic) toward online course design that may affect their job satisfaction levels. Specifically, it explored factors that could inhibit or contribute to faculty job satisfaction during their engagement in online instructional design. Further, the study was designed to gain an understanding of how pedagogical and technological changes influence the degree of …

Exploring How Popular Media Affects The Motivations And Hesitations Of Women Who Go Through Sorority Recruitment At The University Of Southern Mississippi, Whitley W. Howell

Honors Theses

Fraternity and sorority life is an important part of many college students’ experiences. Sororities provide college women with many opportunities for leadership, service, academics, and growth. Even though sororities have many benefits, they often have negative connotations in popular and social media. Often, these negative stereotypes affect people’s perception of sororities, and many women have hesitations about joining a sorority because of the way sororities are portrayed.

Sorority women express concern with the media’s negative representation of Greek life. The negative connotations affect how people see the sororities. Recruitment of new women into the chapters is an important part of …

Identifying Characteristics That Influence First-Time, Full-Time Freshmen Persistence And Exploring Effective And Strategic Retention Initiatives For An At-Risk Student Population, Erin Lambert Dornan

Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to understand background and behavioral characteristics that influenced student persistence of first-time, full-time, freshmen at a four-year public institution, The University of Southern Mississippi (USM). This study provided an outline for institutions of higher learning to create a profile assessment on their campus and identify students that were more likely to need additional support in order to be successful. Research has shown that understanding students’ needs can increase student retention on campus (Gerdes & Mallinckrodt, 1994; Briceño-Perriott & Mianzo, 2006; O’Keefe, 2013). Coll and Stewart (2008), explained that research in this field was more …

Legal Discourse, Conceptual Metaphors, And Basic Writing Programming: A Study Of Ayers V. Fordice, Joyce Olewski Inman

Dissertations

In what ways does legal discourse influence our perceptions of students labeled as basic writers and these students’ perceptions of themselves? How does standards-based discourse affect student writers’ abilities to define themselves in academe? This dissertation involves an examination of legal and public discourse surrounding Ayers v. Fordice, one of the most prominent desegregation cases in higher education, in an attempt to answer these questions. Its intent is to explore how conceptual metaphors prevalent in these discourses affect our understandings of basic writing programming in the state of Mississippi but also in the field of composition more globally.

My …

Source-Message-Receiver In Integrated Marketing Communication: A Study Of U.S. Institutional Advancement, Sharee Leblanc Broussard

Dissertations

Because integrated marketing communication (IMC) research has traditionally been problematic, this study used an existing scale to determine that higher educational institutional advancement (alumni, marketing-communications, development) is an appropriate venue to study the process model. Responses from practitioners representing every department within advancement, every regional accrediting body and each of the baccalaureate to doctoral Carnegie Classification levels indicated the IMC process model is both understood and its tenets practiced by practitioners at all sizes and levels of institution. The study was of interest to the practitioners as more than half of the respondents requested a copy of the results. Additionally, …