Education Commons^™

Naturally Occurring Mentorship In A National Sample Of First-Generation College Goers: A Promising Portal For Academic And Developmental Success., Veronica Fruiht, Thomas Chan

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Attending college is increasingly important to compete in this global world; however, young people whose parents did not attend college are significantly less likely to enroll in and finish college. Formal programs to support first-generation college goers are common, but not scalable to provide support to all young people who need it. Instead, mentoring that naturally occurs on these students' journeys into and out of college may be a more practical avenue for supporting their success. This study investigated the role community members, relatives, and educators play in first-generation college goers' educational outcomes. Data from 4,181 participants of the National …

The Small College Imperative: From Survival To Transformation, Mary B. Marcy

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Small colleges and universities serve a profoundly important role in American society. They provide the rigorous, personalized experience that is the hallmark of the best of higher education. In the process, they build opportunity and encourage civic engagement among a new generation of citizens.

The landscape for these institutions has changed dramatically in recent years. Declining numbers of traditional college-age students have coincided with a shift in populations moving away from areas with a large number of small private institutions. The high-tuition and high-financial-aid model of funding private colleges and universities is generating less net-tuition revenue, while tuition-discounting rates continue …

An Innovative Behavioral Interview For Pre-Admission Selection Of Occupational Therapy Students, Kitsum Li, Julia L. Wilbarger, Shad St. Louis

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The goal for pre-admission interview is to identify students who will be successful both academically and professionally. The traditional structured pre-admission interview has not been shown to be effective in predicting students’ success in academic and fieldwork performance. This article describes an innovative behavioral interview process during which applicants interviewed simulated clients as part of the preadmission selection process. The goals of the pre-admission behavioral interview were to observe applicants’ behavior as team players, and to assess their interpersonal communication skills, capability to be reflective, and professionalism. During the behavioral interview, faculty interviewers assessed the applicants’ performance in the planning …

Open Educational Resources: Solving The Textbook Cost Crisis, Michael Pujals

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

A presentation on Open Educational Resources and how the can be used to ease the cost burden of textbooks for students at Dominican University of California.

Service-Learning At Dominican: Education In Action, Julia Van Der Ryn

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

What is Service-Learning at Dominican?

Service-Learning (SL) puts education into action by engaging with the community and experiencing the relevance of coursework first-hand. SL expands the classroom into the local community, providing the opportunity to apply classroom content to work with local community organizations and schools, learning about the lives of others, developing awareness, enhancing one’s understanding of how we can contribute to social justice issues that ultimately impact us all.

Through SL, students develop practical, transferable skills, explore career and personal interests, and expand their networks and sense of self while connecting with other students, faculty, and community mentors.

A Comparison Of Skills Competency Test Scores Among Philippine-Educated Nursing Students After An Intensive Medical-Surgical Course, Margaret Fink, Debbie Daunt, Patricia Harris, Barbara Mccamish

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Objective: This study examined the effect of a 10-week intensive medical-surgical course on ability to perform 16 common, acute care skills among Philippine educated nursing students seeking licensure in California. The aims of the study were to (1) determine competency in performing skills at the start of the medical-surgical course and (2) evaluate the effectiveness of the medical-surgical course in improving skill competency.

Methods: Twenty-three Philippine educated nursing students participated in a 4-hour skills competency test procedure that involved 4 patient care stations and 16 common acute care skills. During the last week of the 10-week medical-surgical course that included …

Challenging Existing Paradigms: Critiques Of Internationalization, Kati Bell

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Universities are now more globally connected than ever before through technology, partnerships, and student mobility as teaching and learning increasingly moves beyond borders into a transnational realm of global education. In response to this globalization of higher education, universities around the world are feeling the pressure to intentionally develop and implement comprehensive internationalization policies, further motivated by a variety of factors including competition and financial growth. However, after nearly a decade of uncritical acceptance and support for the positive merits of the internationalization of higher education, internationalization is recently experiencing an emerging backlash of criticism. The publications presented in this …

Collection Development Policy For Dominican Scholar, Michael Pujals

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The purpose of Dominican Scholar is to collect, store, showcase, and to make freely accessible, the academic output of the University’s students and faculty in a single online open access environment.

Primary Objectives

• To collect and make accessible Dominican University of California (the University) research and creative works – e.g. journal articles, working papers, presentations, media - in a centralized online repository.
• To organize the University’s research and creative works, and to share them with the community – locally and globally.
• To disseminate the University’s research and creative works through open availability on the Internet.

Developing Compassion Through Travel, Leeann Bartolini

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Embedding Information Literacy Skills In Undergraduate Research Studies, Madalienne F. Peters, Suzanne Roybal, Atria Romero, Alexandra Rovira, Kimberly Ann Harris, Heidi Samayoa, Kristen Ozorio, Alejandra Vazquez

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In any academic context, when one mentions the term research, students immediately panic and assume this research is something they cannot do under any circumstances. This response seems fairly common among students new to undergraduate and graduate level research. The tendency on the part of the students is to make this a daunting project, impossible to complete. The faculty leaders know how to conduct research. The goal is to describe the research steps, have students practice each step, and then have them build their research work in stages. Collaboration between and among faculty in exploring and teaching research tools helped …

Education In Action: Service-Learning Celebrating 10 Years, Julia Van Der Ryn

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The mission of the Service-Learning (SL) Program is to centralize resources and support for faculty, students, partner organizations and the diverse communities they serve to advance education and social justice through shared learning and collaborative action. The SL Program seeks to manifest the Dominican ideals and mission to educate ethical leaders and socially responsible global citizens through the creation of intentional, collaborative, mutually beneficial partnerships and relevant teaching/learning practices. Service-Learning integrates meaningful community engagement with academic curriculum, enriching learning through experience and intentional reflection on the interface between theory and practice.

Slimmer, Brighter, And Nearly Perfect: The New Big History Textbook Is Here, Mojgan Behmand

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Rarely has the appearance of a new textbook been the cause of such delight as broke out amongst the First Year Experience faculty at Dominican University of California in August 2013. The book that triggered such reaction is a seemingly unassuming volume, Big History: Between Nothing and Everything (2013), written by historians David Christian, Cynthia Stokes Brown, and Craig Benjamin, and published by McGraw-Hill. Why was the book greeted with such enthusiasm, you might ask? Was it that the world needed another textbook on history? That the Dominican faculty felt a special bond with one of the authors, Dominican professor …

Faculty And Student Perceptions And Behaviours Related To Information Literacy: A Pilot Study Using Triangulation, Barbara Jean Ganley, Amy Gilbert, Dianne Rosario

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This pilot study was developed to determine if the University’s students were proficient in IL based on the requisite skills defined by ALA (2000), to define faculty and student perceptions and behaviours related to information literacy (IL) and to test an evaluation rubric using empirical inquiry and triangulated methods. Findings suggested that not all students (n=164) had satisfactory IL skills even at the senior student level. While 4th year college students (seniors n=91) fared better on an IL survey when compared to 1st year college students (freshmen n=53), analysis of the senior students’ theses led researchers to believe that students …

A Transformative Experience For Occupational Therapy Students In A Simulated Learning Environment, Kitsum Li, Barbara Mccamish

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Simulation is being integrated into nursing and medical curriculum nationally and it is well integrated into the Nursing program at Dominican University of California, However, use of simulation in allied health professionals is only an emerging practice. The aim of this program is to integrate simulation into the OT curriculum in order to facilitate the development of therapy foundation skill.

The Pedagogical Value Of Polling: A Coordinated 2012 Exit Poll Project Across Diverse Classrooms, Jennifer Kelkres Emery, Alison D. Howard, Jocelyn Evans

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Several previous studies have demonstrated that student exit polling has educational value and promotes civic engagement (Berry and Robinson 2012, Evans and Lagergren 2007, Lelieveldt and Rossen 2009, and others). The authors of this paper have created assignments and an instructor's manual on running student exit polls in undergraduate courses. Three institutions used these assignments during the fall 2012 semester. Working together, these instructors created an opportunity for their students to participate collaboratively with others in survey design and data analysis. This effort further provided assessment data on the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach for student engagement outside of the …

The Dominican Big History Summer Institute: A Story Of Collective Learning, Mojgan Behmand

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Policy And Practice: The Influence Of Participation In The Vote Smart Challenge On Teacher Credential Candidates, Elizabeth Truesdell

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This Roundtable Session allows participants to explore how teacher credential candidates may increase their knowledge of policy as it affects their profession, specifically through participation in the Vote Smart Challenge.

Poster Presentation: Big History: From A History Course To A First Year Contextualization Of The Whole Person, Mojgan Behmand

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sin Boldly! Or, First-Year Experience ‘Big History’ In 21st Century Liberal Education, Mojgan Behmand

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Big History is rapidly emerging as a new global discipline! whose adoption into diverse educational models is advocated by a rich array of voices, from those of educators and artists to industrialists" and spiritualists. Of those voices, some concern themselves primarily with higher education and, in turn, almost unanimously

advocate for the inclusion of Big History into general education programs or core curricula. Unfortunately, the unanimity ends there. Bemoaning the politics and territoriality of higher education, many of these advocates feel forced to bow to institutional realities and the ever-continuous competition for turf and resources; and thus aspirations and hopes …

Embedding Information Literacy In Educational Research Graduate Classes, Madalienne F. Peters, Suzanne Roybal

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Teaching students how to conduct research that helps them develop a scholarly work is often a daunting task. A fortuitous collaboration between faculty members in the School of Education and the academic library led to the development of strategies for teaching graduate students how to conduct quality research. Over the course of four years, faculty worked to include library search tools and strategies into graduate research classes.

Putting John On Trial: Teaching Christology By Using The Classroom As A Courtroom, George Faithful

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

My purpose today is to share the results of an experiment I conducted and to suggest ways it could be improved and reproduced. In a 200-level course called “Christian Beliefs” at a Saint Louis University, a Catholic institution, I staged a mock trial. All students in the class were assigned to read the Gospel of John with an eye for how its author portrayed Christ’s nature. From among the thirty students, I asked for four volunteers, two each for two competing teams, the defense and prosecution. The defense was charged with summarizing John’s Christology and with making the case that …

The Digital Mind And The Future Of Liberal Arts Education, Harlan Stelmach, Martin Anderson

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Today higher liberal arts education is challenged by the continuing emphasis on vocational, business, and science majors among administrators and the decline in the demand for humanities majors among students anxious about their economic future. More fundamental and far-reaching, however, are the historic changes in the physical form in which ideas are preserved and communicated, the time people allocate to contemplating those ideas, and the ways people process them as society shifts from the book age into the digital age.¹ Those who grew up in the book age can visualize the problem by thinking of this question: What is …

Transforming Our Library Reading Room For A Leisure Reading Collection, Suzanne Roybal

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

For our poster presentation, we wanted to highlight the success of our renovated reading room and the addition of a leisure reading collection in an academic library. One of the goals of our library strategic plan is to improve service to our community and to change the philosophical perception of our library so the students would have an inviting place to satisfy both heir educational and entertainment needs. Our drab 1960’s style reading room was the ideal location to refurbish and to locate our new leisure reading collection of books and magazines. To provide a pleasant environment for the students …

College-Prep-For-All Curriculum: Is It An Option For The North Bay?, Edward Kujawa, Madalienne Peters, Elizabeth Truesdell, Suzanne Roybal, Sarah Zykanov

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The report concludes with suggestions for future research. Much of the current research details the successes of high school graduates in attending and completing post-secondary education, but there exists a need for longitudinal studies tracking students from an early age, through their elementary, middle and high school experience, and on to their college attendance and careers. In comparing schools that have implemented strides toward College-Prep-For-All policies versus those that remain status quo, what possible differences develop for students and the local economy? Furthermore, how can the North Bay glean aspects of successful college- and career-ready programs for their schools? The …

Alchemy In Education: Towards A Preschool Model In College Classrooms, Brad Van Alstyne

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Education has long been a necessary, yet standardized procedure with little difference from program to program or school to school. In this paper I argue that more of a creative approach using existing educational models such as preschool education would serve us well in the development of student skills at all levels, including college. I also contend that an alchemical metaphor would be useful in the application and acknowledgement of the value of such an approach.

Alive And Well, Mary B. Marcy

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The liberal arts are higher education’s answer to Broadway, that "fabulous invalid" whose demise is predicted with both certainty and regularity. Claims that the liberal arts are in jeopardy have taken on increased urgency in the current economic climate. As students swell the ranks of community colleges, the presumption is that readily identifiable and employable skills rather than broad and deep learning are the primary focus of their educational ambitions.

But in the case of the liberal arts, conventional wisdom is at odds with what experience and current data suggest. For example, the benchmark freshmen surveys conducted each year by …

Integrating Community Engaged Research Into Existing School Of Education Graduate Research Courses, Madalienne F. Peters, Karey Gauthier

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This article outlines the importance of Community Engaged Research, and how it can be embedded into an existing Master of Science in Education degree program at Dominican University of California. Community Engaged Research rejects the traditional research model, opting instead for a dialogic approach to research. Both the community and the researchers must participate in the analysis process as data is irrelevant without considering the context in which the data was discovered. When evaluating the role of service in education, Community Engaged Research provides a clear connection between educators, students and the community in a service oriented way. An ideal …

Internationalizing A Psychology Department: A Case Study, Leeann Bartolini, Afshin Gharib, W. Phillips

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Thinking And Action: Preparing Students To Engage Complexity Within Themselves And In The World, Julia Van Der Ryn

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This essay explores the dynamic tension between the human need to cultivate an autonomous identity and the desire to be part of a larger reality, suggesting that authentic morality emerges from a person’s struggle with the ever-shifting overlap between these two drives. Creating an intersection between thinking and action, service-learning pedagogy draws us into a creative confrontation with these drives, preparing students to engage complexity within themselves and in the world.

Commencement Address: Time, Noise And God, Philip Novak

Collected Faculty and Staff Scholarship

"A few minutes from now, after the graduates have received their diplomas, and are standing together again for the last time, they will, if the past is any indication, reach to the tops of their caps, flip their tassels from one side to the other and , very likely, raise a joyous shout. Their ling rite of passage will be over. If, at that moment, we feel a catch in our throats, or a familiar melting sensation in our chests, let us know them as reminders of our humanity. Sunt lacrimae rerum, said the Roman poet Virgil: There are …