Education Commons^™

Graduate Student Experiences With Food Insecurity, Melanie Ibarra

Theses and Dissertations

This research study aimed to examine and analyze food-insecure graduate student experiences at Rowan University. Graduate student experiences are often left out of current literature and this study was conducted to uncover and discuss how food insecurity affects this population and provide recommendations through nuanced food-insecure graduate student experiences. This study used a qualitative phenomenological approach including semi-structured interviews with five participants. A thematic analysis was used to categorize the findings of five themes: Stigma, Academic Engagement, Physical and Mental Health, Coping Mechanisms, and Food Resources. The findings of this study allowed for the transition into further recommendations for practice …

Discrimination, Acculturative Stress, And Academic Achievement, Rebecca A. Steele

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers report an association of racial discrimination to academic achievement for racial/ethnic minority students. Racial discrimination is manifest on multiple levels, including interpersonal discrimination, discrimination in schools, and societal and cultural discrimination. Researchers have generally focused their efforts on examining the effects of one type of discrimination on academic achievement. Further, mediators of this relation have not been fully explored. In a sample of 78 college students, only interpersonal racial/ethnic discrimination, and not school-based or societal discrimination, was negatively associated with GPA. However, the effects did not hold once controlling for demographic factors. Two potential mediators of the relations of …

Udl: Practicing What We Preach, Peter E.L. Temple

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of UDL in a special education program’s coursework and analyze how it affects college students outcomes beyond their classrooms. Past research has suggested that UDL has been increasingly used in college-level coursework design, and courses designed with UDL have higher reports of college student achievement. Based on the principles of UDL and andragogy, this study identified four central research questions. Specifically, a small qual/large quant mixed-method research design was used to investigate instructor utilization of the UDL principles, teacher candidate corroboration of UDL elements in their coursework, and an exploration …

Emotional Support Animals On Campus: An Analysis Of Student Experience, Timothy Alexander Lauth

Theses and Dissertations

This is a study of student interactions and opinions regarding emotional support animals (ESAs) or service animals in on-campus residential housing. Specifically, this study was designed to garner the opinions of residential students who live in close proximity to an ESA or service animal but do not have one of their own, essentially the roommates of an approved animal owner. An online survey was distributed to students at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ during the 2019-2020 academic year. All participants were enrolled students who resided in on-campus housing in close proximity to an ESA or service animal.

The results of …

Black Male College Students' Perspectives On The Contribution Of Black Student Organizations To Their Development Of Soft Skills, Shanice Angela Glover

Theses and Dissertations

The following study is an exploration of the views Black male college students have of the soft skills they have developed through participation in a predominately Black student organization. I used a focus group moderator guide with questions, adapted from Stansberry and Burnett (2014) and modified from Evans (2016) and Saraceno (2019) to serve as the instrument for this qualitative study. I gathered data from a focus groups consisting of Black male college students who are enrolled at Rowan University and participate in Black student organizations on campus. The focus group discussion pertained to the participants' experiences with predominantly Black …

Books Or Food? Food Insecurity And The Rise Of Campus Food Pantries, Sonya Sharififard

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a quantitative study of campus food pantries located in public four-year colleges and universities in the United States. The research aims to explain relationships among campus food pantries and surrounding neighborhood characteristics affecting local food environments. There are two parts to the study: (a) the quantitative analysis through responses from a participant questionnaire; and (b) a case study analysis to accompany the quantitative analysis. The researcher identified three metropolitan counties within U.S. census tracts, to determine the relationship between neighborhood demographics, the local food environment, and the impact on campus communities. The researcher explored food accessibility within …

The Continuum Of Support For Building Intimacy Knowledge In College For Students With Intellectual And Developmental Disability, Chelsea Vanhorn Stinnett

Theses and Dissertations

Adults with intellectual disability report the same relational and sexual intimacy needs as those without disability, yet experience barriers in accessing intimacy education and engaging in intimacy. Postsecondary education (PSE) programs for students with intellectual disability allow for college students to experience a higher level of autonomy in choice-making they may not have experienced in their family home. The Continuum of Support for Intimacy Knowledge in College Survey (CoSIK-C) was used to examine how PSE programs support college students in building their intimacy knowledge, intimacy education professional development opportunities for PSE staff members, and staff perceptions on factors that could …

Dark On Campus: A Phenomenological Study Of Being A Dark-Skinned Black College Student, Kiara Lee

Theses and Dissertations

As recent research finally starts to recognize colorism, a form of discrimination where light skin is valued over dark skin within an ethnic group, as a legitimate form of discrimination in the Black community, research on colorism in higher education still wanes. A limited amount of scholarship focuses on the manifestation of colorism in education and even less research examines the implications of complexion on Black college students and their intersectional identities. As empirical studies describe how complexion often denotes institutional degradation for dark-skinned Black students in K-12 and beyond -- from teacher perceptions, to the school-to-prison pipeline, to social …

Examining The Role Of Professional Orientation In How Trustees Of New Jersey's State Colleges And Universities Experience Their Fiduciary Responsibilities: A Mixed Methods Study, Brittany Ann Williams-Goldstein

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this sequential explanatory study was to examine, through the lenses of sensemaking theory and professional authority, the relationship between how largely non-educational professionals in New Jersey experience their fiduciary responsibilities as trustees of the state's public colleges and universities and to what extent their professional orientations influence their oversight.

Trustees draw from a continuum of orientations to navigate their responsibilities and chief among them are professional orientation, institutionally-rooted orientation, and orientations as members of traditionally underrepresented populations. Trustees frequently engage in deferential activities with their fellow board members whose professional or other orientations provide needed context for …

An Examination Of Physical Exercise And Its Impact On Augmenting Self-Determination Levels Of College-Aged Students, Kenneth William Kirsch Jr

Theses and Dissertations

Research has demonstrated a positive link with motivation, physical exercise, and academic success. A current trend within higher education has been to increase student retention as well as deemphasize physical education. Students, who possess a higher degree of self-determined behavior, sustain greater overall success. Administrators have intensified efforts focusing on student retention; however, little research exists connecting physical exercise with self-determination and how these elements could provide solutions to address this problem. Motivation is an element, which drives people to accomplish a task and has the propensity to change when engaged in physical exercise. The motivational reasons why people participate …

The Impact Of Hip-Hop Culture On Freshman Student Identity, David Shanks

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation is to explore the impact that hip-hop has on the identity of freshman students at Rowan University during the spring 2017 semester. The survey questions were geared toward answering the primary focus. The survey has 34 items, the first five questions were used to collect demographic information from the students including Gender, GPA, Ethnicity, Class rank, and Age. The next 29 questions divided into three factor groupings, these groups were used to investigate the identity of select freshman, what students believe about their knowledge of hip-hop culture, how committed these students are to hip-hop culture, …

The Relationship Between Mindfulness And Stress Among College Students, Elizabeth Marie Vonderheyde

Theses and Dissertations

College students who have high levels of stress have reported difficulties with functioning on a daily basis, whether it be high anxiety due to classes or an increase in unhealthy habits like smoking or overeating. Studies have shown that those who practice mindfulness every day learn how to live with accepting the stresses in their lives (Siegel & Allison, 2016). This study explored the relationship between mindfulness and stress in college students from a medium size public university in the northeast. Two self-report measures were used to collect data though an online survey. Data were subjected to descriptive and inferential …

College Student Attitudes Toward Intercollegiate Athletics At Rowan University, Donald Nathanial Parsley

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this study were to (a) analyze undergraduate residential student attitudes towards athletics at Rowan University; (b) discern differences between self-identified student-athletes and non-athletes with respect to athletic programs at Rowan University in regards to resource allocation, corruption, relevance of athletics to the college experience, and academic matters of student-athletes; and (c) examine differences in attitudes of the student sample at Rowan University with previous studies. The survey tool that was utilized consisted of 44 items, which collected demographics and employed a series of Likert-style statements. The subjects consisted of 431 residential, undergraduate students at Rowan University enrolled …

Strategies For Teaching Developmental Mathematics Students At The College Level, Natalie Lynn Kautz

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation was to identify strategies used by effective instructors of developmental mathematics, and to discover the perceptions developmental mathematics students have about these strategies. While there are research projects focusing solely on developmental mathematics achievement, this study fills a need by incorporating views of teaching effectiveness from multiple viewpoints.

In this research project, college-level instructors of developmental mathematics students were recorded on video before, during, and after the teaching of an algebraic concept. Students were given a pre-lesson survey and post-lesson survey to see if there were gains in their learning. Students completed a survey about …