Education Commons^™

The Impact Of Sense Of Belonging In First-Generation College Students On Gpa And Retention, Lynda Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this quantitative, correlational study were to (a) understand how the perceived sense of belonging in first-generation students impacts their academic success, as defined by GPA, and (b) to determine how the aforementioned factors impact the students' intention to persist. A survey was distributed to all reported first-generation students at Rowan University with questions including demographics, an adapted sense of belonging index, intention to persist, GPA, and co-curricular involvement (N = 285). Research indicated that 89.8% of students recorded moderate to high levels of sense of belonging. Regression analyses revealed that a positive relationship exists between sense of …

Teaching Lateral Reading With An Online Tutorial: Preliminary Study Findings., Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Challenges to Digital Literacy Education Stanford Cyber Center Policy

The internet is now the most common source of political news for almost half of Americans, and social media is now the primary source of news for those under 30. Yet today’s youth have little capacity to evaluate the credibility of digital sources, with colleges across the country often relying on severely outdated guidelines supporting digital literacy education. Join Stanford’s Sam Wineburg, Washington State University’s Mike Caulfield, and Rowan University’s Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis, in conversation with the Cyber Center’s Kelly Born, about the many challenges and opportunities facing media …

Are We Prepared?: A Quantitative Study Of Elementary School Counselors' Knowledge, Skills, And Dispositions To Working With Lgbtq Youth, Kristina D. Weiss

Theses and Dissertations

It is estimated that there are over three million lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth in the United States. Based on their perceived or real sexual orientation and gender identity, these youth face multiple accounts of bias and discrimination in schools. As a source of solace, many LGBTQ students seek out adult supports in school, namely the school counselor. While extensive research exists about the interactions and capabilities of secondary school counselors to work with LGBTQ youth, there is a limited research surrounding elementary school counselor's competencies with this population. The purpose of this quantitative research was to …

Encountering Ableism In The Moment, Justin E. Freedman, Benjamin H. Dotger, Yosung Song

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

At colleges and universities in the United States, disability is typically addressed as a medicalized identity. Students must self-identify as having a disability to their postsecondary school in order to receive access to accommodations. They are also expected to communicate with faculty members about using accommodations in individual courses. Students report experiencing stigma and discrimination due to being required to disclose a disability status and negotiate with faculty members to use accommodations. This paper uses theoretical frameworks within the field of Disability Studies to investigate how university students engage in conversations with faculty members about accommodations. Students provide insight into …

Adhd And Brain Anatomy: What Do Academic Textbooks Used In The Netherlands Tell Students?, Sanne Te Meerman, Laura Batstra, Justin E. Freedman, Rink Hoekstra, Hans Grietens

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

Studies of brain size of children classified with ADHD appear to reveal smaller brains when compared to ‘normal’ children. Yet, what does this mean? Even with the use of rigorously screened case and control groups, these studies show only small, average group differences between children with and without an ADHD classification. However, academic textbooks used in the Netherlands often portray individual children with an ADHD classification as having a different, malfunctioning brain that necessitates medical intervention. This conceptualisation of ADHD might serve professional interests, but not necessarily the interests of children.

Career-Advising From The Primary Role Academic Advisor's Viewpoint: A Qualitative Case Study, Julia Elizabeth Rey

Theses and Dissertations

The role of today's primary role academic advisor is robust and multifaceted. Advisors must continually provide supportive outreach and engagement to address student interests, develop academic plans, and identify career paths from the time students first enroll, throughout their college experience, and oftentimes, well past graduation. Although meeting with students is at the forefront of expected duties, advisors must also balance working with various data sets and systems, faculty and chairs, and stay abreast of changes in procedures and processes. The purpose of this inquiry was to document and further understand the current career-advising practices of primary role academic advisors …

“It Would Be Simpler To See Success Without Dominating Discourse Of Ability”, Casey L. Woodfield, Katherine Vroman, Jenn Seybert, Sujit Kurup, Jamie Burke, Christy Ashby, Brianna Dickens

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

This paper engages with and reflects the college experiences of three college students/graduates who type to communicate, chronicled through ongoing conversations with one another and a group of co-inquirers, focused on understanding experiences in higher education. Grounded in a disability studies in education framework, this work draws on narrative inquiry and collaborative qualitative analysis of discussions over three years in a co-constructed digital interspace. Key findings include: the role of mentorship and connection; navigating the system; controlling the narrative; and traversing new methodological and relational landscapes. Together, these conversations about neurodivergent communicative experiences in higher education tell stories of agency, …

Barriers That Impede Foreign-Born And Educated Male Nursing Students' Success In A United States Nursing Program: A Case Study, Lisa Marie Dunn

Theses and Dissertations

The United States has a 36% shortage of full-time nurses. This is projected to worsen. There will be a need for 260, 000 more nurses by 2025 and more than 581,000 new nursing positions will be created through 2024 (American Association College of Nursing, 2011; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). By 2030, New Jersey's shortage of nurses will exceed 43% (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2017). If a diverse population of students complete a nursing program and become nurses working in the field, the literature reports that there are better client outcomes when the healthcare industry mirrors …

A Grounded Theory Of The Impact Of Teachnj On The Instructional Leadership Of Superintendents, Russell Matthew Lazovick

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to develop a theory, grounded in data obtained by interviewing current superintendents on how TEACHNJ has impacted their ability to improve student performance. TEACHNJ is a law enacted by the state of New Jersey to improve teacher quality and raise student performance by changing evaluation and tenure processes in order to create greater transparency, equity, consistency, and accountability across districts. This study examined the law's impact on five specific actions superintendents can take that have been found to enhance student performance. The study found that TEACHNJ served as a punctuating event, sending …

Creating And Teaching An Annotated Bibliography Class To Medical Students, Kevin R. Block

Libraries Scholarship

Background: A new curriculum implemented at the medical school for the 2019/2020 academic year includes a medical scholarship requirement. The scholarship course designed to support this requirement runs throughout the 4 years of medical school and culminates in a Capstone project. Goals for the course include exposing students to scientific inquiry, developing scientific literacy, and cultivating basic competency in written and oral scientific communication. In support of these goals Librarians were tasked during the first semester with teaching students sessions on formulating research questions, selecting and searching appropriate databases, using EndNote, and creating an annotated bibliography on a preselected topic. …

Review Of Communication Alternatives In Autism: Perspectives On Typing And Spelling Approaches For The Nonspeaking, Casey L. Woodfield

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

This manuscript reviews Edlyn Vallejo Peña’s edited volume, Communication Alternatives in Autism: Perspectives on Typing and Spelling Approaches for the Nonspeaking (2019). The volume includes ten chapters by autistic authors active in the field as activists, self-advocates, artists and leaders, along with Peña’s experiences as a parent and original research.

Student Involvement As A Predictor Of Alumni Engagement, Ryan J. Aloi

Theses and Dissertations

The role of this study is to research the role that student involvement plays on alumni engagement. In an attempt to answer the following questions, a case study was conducted looking at the engagement and giving records of 10 randomly selected profiles from the graduating classes of 2016 through 2019 (N = 40) as well as reviewing the involvement patterns of the general qualifying student population within the ProfLink student involvement platform (N = 4237) and the qualifying engaged population (N = 805). What is the relationship between undergraduate co-curricular experiences and a student's engagement as alumni? What types of …

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 …

The Experiences Of First-Generation Master's Students, Dominique A. Pierson

Theses and Dissertations

First-generation college students are a heavily researched student population who are represented as being first in their family to go to college and graduate. Scholars suggest there are many barriers impacting their college accessibility, affordability, retention, and overall success, therefore, have called for specific services and interventions of support within higher education to help first-generation students persist. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of first-generation students who do persist and pursue advanced educational aspirations. Specifically, first-generation master's students are the subject of this phenomenological study designed to explore the experiences of eight students through one-on-one interviews. …

Women Of Color In Higher Education, Melissa Minaya

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to capture the essence of the stories of women of color at Rowan University. Additionally, the study would capture how women of color in their junior or senior year feel about institutional support. The combination of both the essence in their story, in other words, the importance behind their experiences, and their perception of institutional support will lead to recommendations to Rowan University.

In order to capture the essence of the women of color that participated in this study, I held individual open-ended interviews with each participant. The overall goal was to get three …

University Hookup Culture: Convenient Or A Path To Sexual Assault?, Gabriella Longenbach

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to have a better understanding of the potential impact that hookup culture has on college students today. While this culture can be convenient and the most modern way of getting to know someone sexually, it also has the chance to be dangerous. By learning how this culture works and how college students engage in it, university employees and higher education professionals can support students through sexually related issues that they might come across.

Life Histories Center Performance As Response To Text, Susan Browne, Marjorie Madden

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

Based in anthropology (Cole & Knowles, 2001), life history inquiry into literature emphasizes deep understandings of literary characters that are expressed through dramatic performance. For teachers or teacher-educators, life histories offer a powerful teaching strategy. Life histories support locating readers in a particular pattern or “grammar” of events, situations, and goals while also revealing the subjective worlds of characters who are involved in such events. In an undergraduate Honors Literacies course, life histories performances in response to the young adult novel, The Skin I’m In(Flake, 1998), enabled examinations of the complex interaction of characters, their lives, and particular contexts.

Using Distributed Leadership To Impact Student Achievement, Jeffrey Pierro

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the properties of the distributive leadership scores and to investigate whether the scores predict student test scores. This research was conducted during the 2019-2020 school year at Rowan University. The sample for this study will be selected from the principals from public school districts in New Jersey. Data was collected using one instrument with two parts: a pre-survey and Distributed Leadership Readiness Scale (DLRS) developed by Gordon (2005). SPSS 26 software was used to analyze the data and answer the research questions. While both linear regressions have significant variables impacting the …

Reading Conferences And Impact On Literacy Learning, Ashley Butenewicz Danter

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine how student discussions during reading conferences impact literacy learning in the areas of student comprehension and motivation. Surveys, interviews, audio recorded discussions, and notes in a teacher research journal were all analyzed for emerging themes. The findings show that reading conferences have a positive impact on student literacy learning, specifically that there was an increase in reading comprehension and motivation. The data also revealed the major role that critical, multicultural texts have on reading comprehension and motivation for reading when coupled with reading conferences. Implications for future research are discussed.

The Impact Of Learning Communities On First-Generation Minority Student Persistence At Rowan University, Briana Vogel Collins

Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to analyze Rowan University's Flying First and ASCEND learning communities in regard to first-generation minority student persistence. The study took place at Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ in the spring 2020 semester. The purpose for this qualitative study is to explore the impact that the Flying First and ASCEND/RISE learning communities have on first-generation minority student persistence using an outcomes assessment. Researchers have conducted a plethora of research on learning communities, marginalized first-generation students, and persistence/retention rates. However, there has been little research done on the topic of all three themes and how they …

Effects Of A Well-Being Retreat On College Students, William Wikoff Mcmillan

Theses and Dissertations

Mental health scores on college campuses often seem to be spiraling in a downward trend. College students frequently cite be more depressed and more anxious than the rest of the population, and they are also at a higher risk for suicide than other members of society (Beiter et al., 2016; Davidson, 2016; Henriques, 2014; Holland, 2016; Mey, 2015). Rowan University's recent Rowan Thrive initiative is a cross-campus collaboration that sets out to improve students' well-being through education and programming with a host of programs under its umbrella. One of these programs is the Recharge & Connect Retreat, a 3-day and …

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 …

Decolonizing Inclusive Education: A Collection Of Practical Inclusive Cds- And Discrit-Informed Teaching Practices, Brent Elder

College of Education Faculty Scholarship

In this paper, we present a collection of decolonizing inclusive practices for elementary education that we have found effective when implementing them in postcolonial countries. The choice and implementation of such practices was informed by the intersectional and interdisciplinary theoretical framework of Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Disability Critical Race Theory in Education (DisCrit), and guided by decolonizing methodologies and community-based participatory research (CBPR). The main purpose of this paper is to show how critical theoretical frameworks can be made accessible to practitioners through strategies that can foster a critical perspective of inclusive education in postcolonial countries. By doing so, …

Exploration Of First-Generation Student-Athlete Experiences At A Suburban Division Iii Institution, Mandy Jiang

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore the experiences of first-generation student-athletes (FGSA) on a college campus. One major goal of this study is to offer new discussion for first-generation student-athletes to increase awareness on this population in current literature. While there is research on first-generation students and collegiate student-athletes as separate identities, this specific population, combining both identities, has not been at the forefront of scholarly research (Oratagus & Merson, 2015). By expanding the current literature with evidence-based research, student affairs professionals and college athletic administrators can better enhance the experiences of first-generation student-athletes on their campuses. …

Understanding The Motivations Of Nonmonetary Young Alumni Engagement, Olivia Rose Bowman

Theses and Dissertations

Universities with influential young alumni connections typically have more productive and prosperous institutions (McDearmon, 2013; Volin, 2016; Weerts, Cabrera, & Sanford, 2010; Weerts & Ronca, 2008). However, alumni who have graduated in the past 10 years are reportedly the least contacted alumni because of their lower response rates (Freeland, Spenner, & McCalmon, 2014; Weerts & Ronca, 2008). This study focuses on the determination of motivations that encourage young alumni to engage in nonmonetary efforts with their Alma Mata Rowan University. In this study, young alumni were defined as Rowan Alumni who graduated since 2010 and have attended one or more …

The Forgotten Voices: African American Male Adult Learners And Their Experiences In Higher Education, Ajeenah H. Nuriddin-Little

Theses and Dissertations

This narrative inquiry research explored the lived experiences of six African American male adult learners enrolled at a four-year public research institution in an urban area located in the northeastern United States. The following questions guided the study: (a) How do African American male adult learners at a four-year research institution describe their experiences? (b) What environmental factors do African American male adult learners feel have shaped their academic success or non-academic success in college? (c) How does the double consciousness framework help to explain or make sense of the narrative of the African American male adult learner? This study …

Until Superheroes Learn How To Use Their Power: Exploring The Triple Consciousness Of African American Male Students Identified As Dis/Abled, Janelle N. Smith-Alexander

Theses and Dissertations

As early as elementary school, African American students are labeled and passed along from teacher to teacher with negative stigma and stereotypes (Wright, 2018). This negative academic self-concept adversely affects and shapes a deficit lens rather than a strength-based perspective and may further perpetuate trauma, mirroring the disproportionate inequities within education (Banks, 2017; Wright, 2018). The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study was to explore how African American males identified as having specific learning dis/abilities understand their triple consciousness and what particular experiences influence their post-high school decisions (Stake, 2006). The study investigated the multidimensional lived experiences of eight …

The Impact Of Residence Hall Construction Type On Student Engagement, Gene Jabar Washington

Theses and Dissertations

College and university student housing has changed dramatically since the opening of Harvard College in 1636. Despite these changes, student housing professionals are still tasked with engaging their students. This can sometimes be difficult depending on outside forces such as the physical structure of a building. The purpose of this study was to determine what physical aspects of a residence hall do students and undergraduate live-in student staff value in terms of engaging their students and building a community. For this study focus groups were conducted for student and staff of traditional residence halls and public-private partnership residence halls. Common …

Sport Clubs And Wellness: Analyzing The Impact Being A Sports Clubs Member Has On The Dimensions Of Wellness, Michael Anthony Brito

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand how a student's wellness is impacted through participation in sport clubs. This was done at a division three public institution with a Campus Recreation department, which offers 45 sport clubs. This study was conducted during the spring 2020 semester at Rowan University by distributing an online survey. The survey focused on gaining information about their sport club experience and the impact on occupational, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical dimensions. As well as understanding the factors that may affect their wellness.

The findings of this study showed a high positive impact to …

New Jersey Community College And High School Concurrent Enrollment Program (Cep) Partnerships Case Study, Darlene Mary Schapley

Theses and Dissertations

Students who are not college ready enter New Jersey Community Colleges placing in developmental education delaying entry into their degree program and possibly ending their aspiration for college completion. Students not completing a college degree cannot compete for livable wage jobs in America. My qualitative multiple case study contributed to the gap in knowledge about New Jersey partnerships offering comprehensive CEP programs including math and English from the participant perspectives. CEP partnerships engaged students in college coursework at New Jersey high schools in collaboration with New Jersey community colleges. These collaborations are great opportunities for community colleges to provide access …