Education Commons^™

The Co-Curriculum Of College Student Employment: Perspectives From Supervising Practitioners, Brittany Begley Wildman

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

College student employees are not only serving the overall mission of their institutions, but also developing career readiness skills through daily interactions while at work. In this study, I explore the perceptions of the supervisors of student employees as both managers and student affairs professionals. Through one-on-one interviews with supervisors, discussing their interactions with students, I explore the implicit and explicit curricula they provide to their students using a curriculum analysis framework. I then compare the resulting learning outcomes against those identified in industry standards. The supervisors described supporting student employees' personal development during the student employment experience as well …

A Change Of Character? Exploring The Possible Effects Of Non-Tenure Track Faculty At Liberal Arts Colleges, Robert Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Research on liberal arts colleges (LACs) has yet to consider possible effects of using Non-Tenure Track Faculty (NTTF) on the character of LACs. LACs are characterized by their strong academic ethos, collegial faculty-student relationships, all at a sanctuary-like setting. Tenure Track Faculty (TTF) and administrators at three LACs were interviewed in a case study format at an urban, suburban, and rural LAC to consider whether NTTF are affecting the character of such institutions. NTTF, especially when full-time faculty, support the academic ethos, foster strong student faculty relationships, and help maintain the sanctuary like setting. NTTF use by change agents is …

Wha Up Bruh, You Good: A Critical Analysis Of Mentoring Programs For African American Males In Community College, Taran Landell Mczee

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

This qualitative case study used a phenomenological research approach to explore the lived experiences of African American male community college students who participate in mentoring programs. Mentoring programs for African American males in higher education have been implemented to help improve retention, academic performance in the classroom, sense of self, intention to complete, and graduation rates (LaVant et al., 1997). Critical race theory (CRT) informed the use of qualitative interview methods to represent the lived experiences of the participants and to elevate the knowledge of young African American men in research on higher education mentoring programs. Research participants were 8 …

Embracing Rural First-Generation College Student Scholar Identity: Wading Waist Deep In Unfamiliar Waters, Robert Hayes

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

First-generation college students do not persist to degree completion at the same rate as their continuing generation peers. There is a wide range of research focusing on the challenges and opportunities that first-generation college students experience, ranging from pre-matriculation factors, the transition period to college, and throughout the undergraduate years. The achievement gap, in terms of persistence to degree, has been a consistent focus of research as first-generation students routinely do not earn college degrees at the same rate as their continuing generation peers. This research takes a holistic approach to understanding the first-generation college student experience that does not …

Student Involvement & Growth: A Case Study On Student Stories Of Agency & Adulthood, Jamie Nicole Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Often students face their most challenging life decisions and periods of growth during college. Engagement and involvement with their institution helps students develop socially and academically; some research shows that involvement can support other students’ needs as well. The goal of this project is to explore the ways in which students perceive their agency or sense of freedom of choice relative to their college engagement. Using multi-level data collection, consisting of a background recruitment survey and two interview sessions, the data generated in this layered approach came from the third-year student cohort at one state university in the southeastern US. …

Pray And Play: The Impact Of Fellowship Of Christian Athletes Among Di African American Collegiate Football Players In Kentucky, Rasheed Flowers

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Participation in athletics provides student-athletes with opportunities to further themselves outside of athletics through academic assistance, educational opportunities and experiences, physical wellness, and personal/professional development. One often overlooked portion of this holistic development is spiritual development. As demonstrated in the name student-athlete, it implies a dual identity. Few student-athletes navigate multiple identities and a myriad of additional challenges in their collegiate journey than African American football student-athletes (AAFSAs). Spiritual development is vital for student-athletes; the literature validates that student-athletes growing in their faith may be better equipped to navigate the tension of multiple identity roles and cope with various circumstances. …

Authorship & Agency: Exploring Coaching As A Tool For Student Success, Allison Rebecca Lake

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Coaching has emerged as a new, innovative practice within higher education. However, we have only begun to understand the true impact of coaching for college students. Research from individual coaching programs has shown that students who participate in coaching sessions are more likely to be retained, have higher GPAs, and engage in self-regulated learning. However, little research has been done to explore coaching from the student perspective. We do not yet understand how students utilize coaching as a tool to optimize their student experience. The goal of this project was to explore how coaching impacts the student experience and to …

Retention Of First-Generation College Students At A Four-Year Regional Public Institution, Matthew Andrew Schumacher

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Every year a significant number of college students stop out of college and fail to persist and complete their degree. First-generation college students are more likely to exit college without a degree than continuing-generation students. The purpose of this quantitative, archival, nonexperimental study was to explore how first-generation college student demographic, academic background, college academic, and student engagement factors were related to and predict first-year to second-year retention at a mid-sized, public regional university. The factors explored were gender, age, race/ethnicity, income status, high school GPA, ACT, cumulative GPA, first term attempted hours, housing, participation in a Living Learning Community, …

Housewives To Heroines: Continuing Education For Women At The University Of Kentucky, 1964-1988, Allison L. Elliott

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Beginning in the early 1960s, the movement for the continuing education for women (CEW) brought together a seemingly unlikely alliance of American activists, educators, philanthropists, and government agencies. Fueled by philanthropic funds, accelerated by the quest for “womanpower” to bolster national defense, and aligned with regional workforce needs as well as the personal goals of individual women, CEW programs pioneered new models of academic advising and student support that continue to influence higher education practitioners today. By studying the experiences of both administrators and students involved with CEW at the University of Kentucky, this study sheds light on how one …

Other People’S Families: How Social Ties Shape Entrance Into The Medical Profession, Lillian Sims

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Not enough members of low-income, rural, and minoritized populations are successfully prepared for and recruited into medical school, exacerbating issues of unequal access to healthcare and limiting access to the profession. While a multitude of factors contribute to this problem, early social exposure to others in a field can act as a key contributor to career interest and a key advantage for entering the profession. Meanwhile, students without early social exposure to healthcare may take unconventional paths to medical school or may struggle to fit into the unique culture of medicine when they do enter training, especially if they belong …

The Efficacy Of Accelerating Underprepared Community College Students Using A Corequisite Liberal Arts Mathematics Course, Drew Wilkerson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Every year, millions of first-time students enroll in community colleges underprepared for college-level work in mathematics. Typically, these students are referred to a sequence of developmental courses designed to remediate their skills and prepare them for college-level work. Recently, educators and policy makers have questioned the efficacy of these courses, especially since most students assigned to remedial courses never complete the sequence and enroll in college-level courses. Calls to reform developmental mathematics have included changes to how institutions determine whether students are college-ready and the elimination of the remedial course sequences themselves. The corequisite model, in which students enroll in …

Orienting New International College Students During A Global Pandemic: Spatiality’S Contributions To Staff Work Practices, Thomas W. Teague Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

U.S. colleges must increasingly respond to a wide range of complex forces and simultaneously fulfill their missions and support students. To address many of these forces, some have turned to internationalization efforts like recruiting and enrolling international students. In light of these efforts, critics have called for institutions to better, more appropriately support these students, given their challenges and needs. This call has amplified during the recent COVID-19 global health pandemic.

Traditional student support services tend to center around Tinto’s Theory of Student Departure. Examples of support programming are frequently shared, yet rarely detail how institutional staff actually perform them …

Adverse Childhood Experience And Undergraduate Student Success: A Longitudinal Investigation Into The Relationship Between Childhood Stress And Success In Higher Education, Sarah E. Cprek

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Institutions of higher education have long worked to understand factors that influence or predict student success and degree completion. Childhood experiences including potential exposure to toxic stress have been found to impact student success in K-12 schools yet have rarely been evaluated among undergraduates. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and undergraduate degree completion among a random sample of 1,894 students at a state-funded university in the US. Participants completed a web-based survey assessing ACEs in spring 2015. Results from the survey were linked to student academic records for each …

Faculty Perceptions Of Accreditation In The Field Of Educator Preparation, Lauren Bell Graves

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Accreditation is a measure the federal government, states, and other stakeholders utilize to determine the quality of an institution or a program. Educator preparation providers in Kentucky are required to obtain programmatic accreditation to offer educator preparation programs leading to certification or licensure. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) is the national accrediting body with which Kentucky has an agreement for joint programmatic accreditation. The Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board (EPSB) adopted the 2013 CAEP initial standards in 2015 and those standards remain in effect today. Faculty in educator preparation programs are largely responsible for carrying out …

Utilizing A Theory Of Change Process To Establish Framework For A Student Success Course, Sy Bridenbaugh

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The student success course has become a staple of the college experience. As the academic and social environment continues to shift with each new incoming cohort, having a designed and evaluated framework to utilize during student success course development can be a useful tool. Research surrounding student success in college is abundant. Having a framework that draws on this research for setting learning objectives and determining high impact practices for a student success course could assist in current and future curriculum development.

This study focuses on a student success course offered through the College of Education at the University of …

“I’M Like Their Gps”: How Mathematics Faculty Support Underprepared Community College Students In Corequisite Courses, Bonita B. Tyler

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

As American community colleges replace prerequisite developmental mathematics courses with corequisite courses, the work of faculty to support underprepared students merits attention. This curricular change means underprepared students are enrolling directly in both college-level content courses with required corequisite support courses for necessary remediation, thus broadening the range of student skills and abilities in the classroom. Faculty work is significantly impacted by this change. Previous research indicates that corequisite course configurations have mitigated some problems with the traditional multi-course sequence of developmental courses. Noticeably, scholars described course structures in detail but failed to describe adequately how students were actually supported. …

The University School: The University Of Kentucky's Role In The Laboratory School Movement Of The 20th Century, Shanna M. Patton

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

This study expands the scope of institution-level research on college and university-run laboratory schools to include the University of Kentucky’s on-campus laboratory school that operated from 1918 to 1965. Specifically, it preserves the institutional history of UK’s laboratory school, which has largely disappeared from local memory; provides a specific case study of a laboratory school in a largely unstudied state and region, namely Kentucky and the South; and contextualizes the role and trajectory UK’s laboratory school played in the larger Laboratory School Movement of the 20^th century. Because of UK’s status as a southern land grant university, this research …

Negotiating My Chineseness In College: The Complexities And Uniqueness Of Being Chinese American, Yan Wang

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Chinese Americans are historically perceived as “perpetual foreigners” in the American political, cultural and racial discourses. People of Chinese descent have long been conceived as sharing a same ancestor as those in China. Situated in the global context of China’s rise in the world, culturally, politically and economically, this research looks at how Chinese American college students negotiate their ethnic identity in the Midwest of the United States. The current Coronavirus outbreak brought new waves of anti-Chinese/Asian sentiment into American political and cultural life. This rhetoric makes the discussion of Chinese American college students’ ethnicity construction crucial.

Using qualitative research …

Improving Retention And Degree Attainment For Underrepresented Students In Stem: Is Experiential Learning The Solution?, Cori Henderson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Experiential learning opportunities, such as undergraduate research, are found to be useful in promoting retention and graduation in STEM majors, and specifically for underrepresented student populations. These opportunities are being implemented throughout the United Stated as a means to improve student learning and persistence. In Kentucky’s strategic plan, experiential learning activities are seen as an avenue to help students persist in college and are key components in helping the commonwealth reach their goal of sixty-percent of adult Kentuckians earning a college credential by 2030.

Mirroring the commonwealth’s strategic plan, Northern Kentucky University (NKU) emphasized the importance for experiential learning opportunities …

An Oral History Exploration Of Change At The University Of Kentucky Following The Virginia Tech Shooting, Marianne R. L. Young

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Following the mass shooting at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, institutions of higher education appeared to restructure themselves and change the way that they worked with students who may pose a risk to self or others. They formed committees, sometimes known as Communities of Concern, to help review these concerns and respond appropriately. The purpose of this study was to examine how the Community of Concern Committee at the University of Kentucky was developed following the incident at Virginia Tech. Particular attention was focused on the change and learning that took place. Using the frames of single-loop and double-loop …

Women Into Advanced Manufacturing: Can Community College Open This Door?, Carissa Bradley Schutzman

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Women still rarely choose to seek employment in advanced manufacturing. Lack of familiarity with manufacturing jobs and education programs, lack of role models, and too few experiential opportunities contribute to women not choosing manufacturing jobs as well as other jobs traditionally held by men (Reha, Lufkin, & Harrison, 2009; St. Rose & Hill, 2013; Starobin & Laanan, 2008). Nontraditional jobs for women often provide higher wages and more opportunity for advancement than traditional jobs for women. This study is a qualitative thematic narrative analysis of factors that influenced women who chose an advanced manufacturing program at a community college to …

It’S Not The Programs; It’S The People: Building Human Levers Of Retention In Community Colleges, Kyle Barron

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Student attrition prior to the completion of a credential is an issue that has increasingly demanded the attention of stakeholders in higher education, particularly in the community college sector, in which less than half of all students complete a credential after six years. The costs of student attrition are high and widespread, ranging from the financial costs for institutions and federal and state governments to the personal and monetary costs paid by those students whose personal and professional goals are not achieved. With the ever-increasing focus on accountability for institutions of higher education and the growing movement toward performance-based funding, …

Soft Skills: Old & New, Kevin Wayne Beardmore

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The problem of a prepared workforce is perennial. Part of the challenge is one of supply and demand, as education systems attempt to produce graduates with the technical competencies required for the current jobs available. In the new service- and knowledge-based economy, however, soft skills are cited as a greater need by today’s employers. Increasingly sought across all industry sectors, these skills allow employees to work independently and interdependently, respond rapidly to customer needs, and adjust to changing market conditions. As a result, institutions of higher education are being called upon to infuse soft skills into their curricula. In this …

Endowments Of Higher Education Institutions And Individual Income Tax Policy: Wealth Erosion From A Loss In Charitable Contributions, Jennifer W. Siebenthaler

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The most significant tax overhaul bill in over thirty years was enacted in 2017 and expected to have wide-ranging effects. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act includes numerous policies that directly and indirectly impact the higher education sector and the effect to endowments was not addressed in the public debate leading up to enactment. Unlike expendable gifts, a reduction in endowment contributions has a cumulative effect because a gift to an endowment can benefit all subsequent years. Each year following a contribution, investment income earned on the original gift is available for spending and benefits escalate over time in amount, …

At The Heart Of Policies And Programs: Community College Faculty Members And Peer Mentors As Human Levers Of Retention, Kimberly Russell

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Student attrition prior to the completion of a credential is an issue that has increasingly demanded the attention of stakeholders in higher education, particularly in the community college sector, in which less than half of all students complete a credential after six years. The costs of student attrition are high and widespread, ranging from the financial costs for institutions and federal and state governments to the personal and monetary costs paid by those students whose personal and professional goals are not achieved. With the ever-increasing focus on accountability for institutions of higher education and the growing movement toward performance-based funding, …

Permission To Engage: Examining The Educational Experiences Of Active Duty Army Enlisted Soldiers Enrolled At Hopkinsville Community College, Tracey Y. Folden

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The military has long-standing partnerships with institutions of higher education (Leporte, 2013; Parks, 2015 & Massie, 2016). These partnerships have been significant over time because the United States Army has incentivized civilian education via the Army enlisted ranks and promotional structure (Wilson, Smith, Lee & Stevenson, 2013). Researchers are beginning to recognize service members as adult students who need specific supports in an educational setting (Wilson et al., 2013; Leporte, 2013; Parks, 2015; Massie, 2016). Enlisted soldiers arrive on college campuses with identities ascribed and molded by the military. Thus, their primary identity is soldier not student (Nagel & Kleykamp, …

The Cinematic College Professor: Conceptions And Representations, John C. Fitch Iii

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Depictions of college professors in American films are common, and while a number of studies have investigated various aspects of college life in motion pictures, few have focused exclusively on the cinematic professoriate. In addition to being an indelible part of history, cinematic depictions of college professors are part of the national discourse on the role and function of the faculty and university. An investigation of how college professors have been represented in American films, and how these representations are read and created by real-life college professors and filmmakers may provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between popular culture …

Support Networks Of “Educational Pioneers”: A Methodological Approach For Examining The Impact Of A Residential Learning Community On First-Generation Students, Ryan R. Setari

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the use of social network analysis to examine the peer involvement and supportive relationships of students living within an exclusively first-generation RLC. Using network surveys targeted toward a first-generation population, the networks of first-year residents were visualized and measured. The supportive peer relationships that provided students with encouragement, validation, and academic assistance were identified, as well as the networks for friendship and study partnership. The networks identified for this study were examined to find if change occurred between the start and the end of the semester. Multiple regression QAPs were performed to …

Self-Authoring Gender Performance: A Narrative Analysis Of Gay Undergraduate Men, Casey Shadix

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The perspectives of gay men on college and university campuses is informed by a rich gay social history and extensive roots of community politics. The experiences of gay undergraduate men have been illuminated in segmented ways in scholarly literature to date. This narrative inquiry develops and advances those efforts by exploring how gay undergraduate men construct, experience, and make meaning of their gender as a population ascribing to both liberationist and assimilationist viewpoints. Data for this qualitative study were collected at one public, four-year research university in the southeastern United States in the fall 2015 semester using recorded personal interviews …

The Departmental Work Lives Of Full-Time Non-Tenure Track Faculty, Pamela Jane Clouse

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

This qualitative phenomenological dissertation explored The Departmental Work Lives of Full-Time Non-Tenure Track Faculty (FTNTT) at two public four-year universities located in the Southeastern region of the United States. This study is based on interviews with twelve (FTNTT) faculty members representing departments traditionally associated within the College of Arts and Sciences. This study found FTNTT faculty participants highly credentialed and reasonably satisfied in their positions. This study adds the descriptor heterogeneous to FTNTT faculty members’ job roles, work environments, daily engagements, and work experiences and contradicts existing literature that finds FTNTT faculty positions to be resource deficit and administratively non-supporting. …