Education Commons^™

Project Cems: Cost Efficient Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses, Wendy Brown Dellinger

Education Dissertations and Projects

The goal of any organization is to find cost efficient marketing strategies to promote their business. Project CEMS provided a template for the partnering organization to utilize for the improvement of their customer service and public image. This marketing plan consisted of four distinct yet coinciding stages, each focusing on the goals of the project. In Stage I, an interactive website was built to provide potential clientele with essential company information. During Stage II, high impact and detail oriented presentation packets were created. The focus of Stage III was on customer care which included correspondence, branded promotional items, satisfaction survey, …

Universal Diversity Training, Masonya N. Ruff

Education Dissertations and Projects

The Cleveland County Schools (CCS) district has more minorities and children living in poverty than in past years. With this increase in diverse cultures, teaching and teachers have remained the same. As a result, the achievement gap has not gotten smaller. White students are not growing and achieving as they should. There is a need now more than ever for teachers to step outside the box and do things differently. Not only must they do things differently, but they must also “see” things differently. This requires a paradigm shift.

The purpose of this project is to develop a framework for …

Reinvention: The Reimagined And Continued Evolution Of A Housing Program, John Johnson

Education Dissertations and Projects

A successful housing and residence education program is a vital component of a university’s traditional undergraduate program. Such programs assist in the recruitment and retention of students as well as a serve as a significant source of revenue. Furthermore, such programs are conducive to the ongoing spiritual, academic, and social development of the students who reside in residential communities; however, for such programs to effectively accomplish their respective missions, they must focus on their core mission and goals, effectively manage their occupancy, effectively train their staff, effectively maintain their facilities, effectively market the experiences they offer, and effectively assess their …

Sustaining A Competitive Edge Through Transforming Organizational Culture In A K-12 Setting, April Butler-Mcconneaughey

Education Dissertations and Projects

This project addressed how a program of curriculum development and professional support helped a K-12 tuition-based school transform its culture and create and sustain a competitive edge in a private school market.

Because of the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of a new 21st Century Literacy/Language Arts Curriculum Support: Professional Development Program at the elementary level, this school has been able to create and maintain a high-performance culture and increase market share and student growth and proficiency.

One of the objectives of this project was to develop and implement systems and processes that would foster a collaborative culture and increase student …

University Academic Program Cost Modeling: A Roadmap To Fiscal Sustainability, Patrick Biggerstaff

Education Dissertations and Projects

Fiscal sustainability has plagued institutions of higher education for as long as universities have existed. Colleges and universities must gain a better understanding of the cost to teach our students and the fiscal performance of our academic programs to survive. Understanding how we construct and arrange resources around the essential academic delivery will allow university leadership to better align program decisions with financial sustainability. This project outlines a financial analytics dashboard showing the fiscal impact of academic programs for strategic operational planning and design at institutions of higher education. The dashboard developed was built on a common unit of measurement, …

The Formation Of A Distance Learning Institute: Transforming People, Process, And Product, Martha Eddings

Education Dissertations and Projects

The Distance Learning Institute (DLI) was formed in response to decreasing enrollment and increasing attrition rates ("White Paper: Research in Online Learning", n.d.), to provide another educational option for students, and to compete with other online educational institutions (“The Attack of the MOOCs,” July 2013). This consultancy project documents the initiation of a DLI from proposal to implementation, to offer complete online degrees and certificates. The DLI was planned in four phases with milestones and projected completion dates as follows:

Phase 1: Established the Oversight Committee, researched best practices, determined the need for the DLI, anticipated and actual completion date …

Risk Factors And Interventions Associated With Sophomore Retention At A Small, Private Institution, Michael Reynolds

Education Dissertations and Projects

Analyzing the “sophomore slump” has plagued researchers for decades. This consultancy project analyzed some quantitative and qualitative data from a small, private university and developed key recommendations to help address sophomore attrition. The analysis contained a quantitative component which led to the collection of student profiles that were used to examine specific phenomenon from a more qualitative perspective. Through the process, the project underwent constant revision but maintained the initial scope and boundaries. Work plans, financial assessments, and risk mitigation plans were developed throughout the lifecycle of the project and communicated to key stakeholders. Several challenges included the collection of …

Creating Our Future -- Transforming A Traditional Non-Profit Into A High Performing Organization, William Weller

Education Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of the project was to transform the Boys & Girls Club of Cleveland County Board of Directors (the Club) from an executive-directed organization to an organization that encouraged Board member involvement. Our goal was to serve more kids every day, expand facilities, take functional responsibility of the operation of the Club while finding more funding sources to meet the budget. The organization needed to change or it would not be in existence. Using Kotter’s Eight Step Change Model, the leadership team worked to create a sense of urgency for the change process. Strategic planning sessions established goals and …

Project Achieve: A Literacy Program For Excellence, Deitra Johnson

Education Dissertations and Projects

The South Carolina 2013 PASS and HSAP scores indicate students in third through eighth and eleventh grades were below national averages, the achievement gap between subgroups were increasing, and the infusion of STEMs education will encourage student interest. In this project, The Read to Succeed program was incentivizing quarterly after each STAR Reading literacy assessment. The challenge with low-poverty, low-achieving students is student efficacy. The program’s goal was to develop student efficacy in our school. The South Carolina state curriculum was utilized with the infusion of literacy across the curriculum and STEMs education. Educators established relationships with students focusing on …

Incorporating Renewable Energy Resources Into Workforce Development For Technical Programs, Stanley Oswald

Education Dissertations and Projects

As renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic and wind turbines are becoming more prevalent in the generation of electrical energy, it is imperative to have a trained workforce familiar with theory, installations, troubleshooting, and maintenance of renewable energy systems. It is this reason an undertaking is in place to develop a program to train individuals in the Fairfield, Lexington, and Richland County areas of South Carolina to provide entry level training in renewable energy solutions. The reason this project was undertaken hinged on several key factors; one of them being the availability of an untapped resource readily available in South …

Observing The Effectiveness Of Secondary School Science Instructors And The Instructional Climate Through The Analysis Of Student Performance And Feedback, Keesha D. Lewis

Education Dissertations and Projects

The relationship between student performance and instructor effectiveness has been the subject of pedagogical studies for numerous years. The purpose of this project was to determine the extent to which student feedback could positively impact instructor performance, thus influencing student performance and achievement. Additionally, North Carolina instructors are evaluated based on student performance. The evaluations are represented by three colors: red, green, and blue. Instructors who are assessed as “red” are ineffective. Instructors who are assessed as “green” are minimally effective. Instructors who are assessed as “blue” are exceedingly effective. For a minimum of 3 consecutive school semesters, I provided …

The Reinvention Of The Gaston County Animal Control, Jay W. Human

Education Dissertations and Projects

In the fall of 2014 after the retirement of the longtime director, it became apparent that the conditions within the Animal Control Division of the Gaston County Police Department were far from what had been portrayed for years. Facing the department was an antiquated records system, staff with limited training, a lack of supervision resulting in lengthy response times, and a subculture existing independent of the department’s culture.

Utilizing Morgan’s (2006) storyline to determine what forces were influencing the current and future conditions within the division, I identified that the Cultural Metaphor was the dominant frame. As Morgan (2006, p. …