Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Mental Health Of First-Generation College Students Of Color, Devin Hallquist

Doctoral Dissertations

College students who identify as a person of color and are also the first person in their family to attend college must navigate challenges related to white supremacy, institutional racism, and structural inequality. Though the amount of research on first-generation college students of color is steadily increasing, there remains a lack of research on the mental health of these students. Through an intersectional approach, the current study explored the mental health of first-generation college students of color during their sophomore year of college. Participants in the current study completed questionnaires related to psychological symptoms, experiences of racial/ethnic stress, and ethnic …

Reconciling Self-Censorship: A Qualitative Study Of The Experiences Of University Staff And Administrators, Leigh C. Morales

Doctoral Dissertations

In addition to a global pandemic, the past three years have been marked by racial, social, and political unrest. These circumstances add meaningful context to examine and better understand factors that undermine free expression and contribute to self-censorship among university staff and administrators. To date, few studies have holistically explored the unique experiences of university staff and administrators with self-censorship and how this phenomenon affects their experience on college and university campuses. Understanding why staff and administrators choose to self-censor may allow for a deeper discussion about speech climate and the degree to which colleges and universities implement and uphold …

Learning By Doing: Preparing Student Activists For Democratic Engagement, Marjorie G. Valdivia

Doctoral Dissertations

This study explores how college students' experiences with co-curricular social justice advocacy activities supports capacity-building for progressive, democratic, civic engagement. Given the increasing and widening of economic inequality in the U.S. (Hernandez Kent & Ricketts, 2020), exploring how co-curricular experiences in higher education settings can support students to gain capacities for progressive, democratic, civic engagement. While there is a significant amount of scholarship on how diversity education and service-learning contribute to college students' civic engagement, the literature on student involvement in campus activism on progressive, democratic, civic engagement is sparse (Kezar & Maxey, 2014) Using a mixed methods approach, this …

Enacting A Critical Media Production Pedagogy, James D. Swerzenski

Doctoral Dissertations

This project draws upon earlier calls—particularly in the critical pedagogy, critical media literacy, and cultural production fields—to outline a teaching approach that balances technical media production practices and critical media studies. I refer to this synthesis as critical media production pedagogy. This blending of critical analysis and technical skill, I argue, is especially important at the university level where my research is focused, as students in these courses will likely enter industry fields in which they can influence culture on a mass level. Creating opportunities for a media theory/production synthesis enables students to translate critical ideas beyond the academy and …

How Well Does The New York State Higher Education Opportunity Program Work For Black Men? A Mixed Methods Study, Michael A. Dejesus Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

Previous research trended towards a deficit-oriented approach to understanding and explaining Black male underachievement. The past education research has focused on discussing the underachievement of Black males in Higher education. Finding solutions often were prescriptive in “fixing” behaviors in Black males to improve academic achievement. Additionally, there has been a trend towards race-neutrality in education policies, programs, and admissions criteria. And there is a lack of research on whether race-neutrality further exacerbates Black male underachievement by ignoring key race and gender targeted supports services that could improve Black male academic outcomes in higher education. While Black men have historically struggled …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of The Lived Experiences Of Second-Year African American Male Students On Predominantly White Campuses Through Critical Race Theory, Craig S. Pickett Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Title: A Phenomenological Exploration of the Lived Experiences of Second-Year African American Male Students on Predominantly White Campuses through the Lens of Critical Race Theory

Abstract:

The critical nature of the first year has pushed thousands of colleges and universities across the United States to create intentional programs specifically for first-year students. Less understood are the experiences of students during their second year – a different and, at times, even more challenging period. Second-year students face a myriad of issues, including achieving competence, desiring autonomy, establishing identity, and developing purpose, with many experiencing a phenomenon called the sophomore slump. …

Class, Family Involvement, And Asian American Four And Two-Year College Students’ Experiences Of Advantage And Disadvantage, Blair Harrington

Doctoral Dissertations

While the significance of familial support in college receives substantial and growing attention, Asian American college students’ experiences of such support remain unclear. In a series of three articles that draw on a total of 140 intensive semi-structured interviews, this dissertation explores the effect class has on students’ experiences of three different types of familial support: 1) students’ receipt of parental support, 2) students’ provision of parental support, and 3) students’ receipt of sibling support. The first article “The Power of Class and Not Institution Type: Asian American Four and Two-Year College Students’ Receipt of Parental Support” employs a …

A Three Study Investigation Of Promise Programs In Tennessee: Enrollment Responses, Experiences, And Unmet Needs, Gresham D. Collom

Doctoral Dissertations

Policymakers in the United States are increasingly adopting statewide free college policies - often referred to as promise programs - to address the rising costs of attending college and increase postsecondary credential attainment in their states. Concurrently, policymakers and scholars encourage institutions to increase enrollment among historically underrepresented students, such as non-traditional adult students and students from racialized backgrounds, in order to increase postsecondary degrees or certificates in the coming years. Additionally, there is a growing movement in the United States to promote and support programs focused on postsecondary career and technical education. While there is a growing body of …

Are Some Horizons Broader Than Others? Study Abroad, Inequality, And The Influence On Careers And Education., Suzan Kommers

Doctoral Dissertations

Study abroad is one of the main ways in which higher education institutions provide students with the opportunity to gain international experiences. While study abroad is mostly discussed in terms of the beneficial effects on students’ learning and development, the results in this dissertation indicate that study abroad works for some but disadvantages other students. Based on nationally representative U.S. data, I examined 1) disparities in students’ opportunities to study abroad as well as the effect of study abroad on the socioeconomic outcomes 2) early career income and 3) graduate school enrollment. The combined studies in this dissertation provided insight …

Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research attempts to distinguish China’s model from that of the traditional North-South relationship, with a focus on how China’s philosophy articulates its foreign policy and the nation’s higher education engagement with African countries. It examines the China-Africa higher education partnership in response to China’s discourse on South-South Cooperation (SSC), Africa’s human resource flows, and the benefits and constraints of current China-Africa cooperation. In order to achieve these goals, the dissertation uses one of the China-Africa partnership universities in China, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU) as a site for its field research. The fieldwork looks at both a student level …

Dropping The Invisibility Cloak: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Of Sense Of Belonging And Place Identity Among Rural, First Generation, Low Income College Students From Appalachian Kentucky, Brenda Abbott

Doctoral Dissertations

In a country that once was 95% rural in the late 1700s, only 19.3% of the population of the United States now live in rural areas (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The shift in population from rural to urban areas is not simply demographic; it imbues a shift in who and what matters. Only 13.6% of adults over 25 in Appalachian Kentucky have earned bachelor's degrees, 18.9% below the national average (Appalachian Regional Commission, 2016). This phenomenological study seeks to understand how rural, first generation, low income college students from Appalachian Kentucky experience a sense of belonging in their first year …

"No One Is Gonna Tell Us We Can't Do This": The Development Of Agency In Student-Initiated Community Engagement, Shuli A. Archer

Doctoral Dissertations

By its simplest definition, service-learning and community engagement (SLCE) connect work in the community and reflection on that work with credit-bearing academic courses. SLCE has been critiqued for, among other things, an incomplete consideration of power dynamics, and scholars and practitioners have recently expressed a desire to reinforce service-learning as primarily promoting agency, or the capacity to make change in society. Student-initiated community engagement programs offer a unique perspective and context to study agency. These programs, much like student-initiated retention projects, provide spaces where students take the lead in curriculum development, community partner relationship development, and program administration. Using Emirbayer …

The History Of Massachusetts Transfer And Articulation Policies In Contexts Of Evolving Higher Education System Structure, Coordination, And Policy Actors, Daniel De La Torre, Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Community colleges carry out dual missions providing occupational and collegiate preparation in local communities across the United States. These institutions prepare students for advanced study via transfer policies that lead to enrollment in baccalaureate institutions. State higher education systems use transfer and articulation policies to strengthen academic pathways between two-year and four-year institutions. These policies rely on established governance to facilitate student transfer between sectors. The transfer and articulation literature stresses the importance of statewide policy guidelines, yet little has been written about the process of transfer policy development involving state higher education governance and policy groups and actors. The …

Investigating The Causes And Cures For Unclear Scholarly Writing, Marlene Ingrid Mahony

Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative dissertation investigated possible causes and cures for unclear scholarly writing. For this study, a stipulative definition of unclear scholarly writing, or “academese,” is that the language tends to be vague and verbose. The problem, according to the included literature, is that people who use or accept vague language have less academic, social, professional, and civic power. Academese, some say, can detach readers and that can accordingly diminish collective exchange. Because higher education is meant to share knowledge, promote agency, and prepare students to communicate powerfully within and beyond the university, this study researched the causes and cures of …

Factors That Shape Arab American College Student Identity, Abdul Rahman F. Jaradat

Doctoral Dissertations

Arab American identity has not yet received the research attention and scholarship that it deserves. In this dissertation, I have qualitatively studied the narratives of young Arab American college students and recent graduates. The research questions that I explored include what makes them Arab Americans, and what are the factors that help them identify as such. By focusing on Arab Americans and their identity factors, I have presented the narratives of those women and men who self-identify as Arab American and quoted their accounts of how they navigate this undervalued, misunderstood, and stereotyped identity. I have used ethnic and racial …

Residence Directors As Residential Crisis Workers: Exploring The Role Of Campus-Based Critical Incident Stress Management In The Mitigation Of Compassion Fatigue, Noga Flory

Doctoral Dissertations

Residence Directors, as a result of repeated exposure to their students' trauma, are prone to developing compassion fatigue. Research on the use of college-based Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) has been shown to foster collaboration, consultation, and increased stress debriefing among staff who respond to critical incidents on campus. CISM can teach Residence Directors means of recognizing work-related triggers, contribute to the normalization of stress reactions, and improve healthy coping and self-care strategies. CISM can also potentially help reduce or diminish the incidence of compassion fatigue and burnout, thereby improving Residence Directors' overall professional and personal quality of life and …

The Role Of Resistance And Social Capital In Facilitating Latino/A College Success, Patricia Sánchez-Connally

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationship between race and educational achievement among inner city, low income, first generation, and high achieving Latino/a students. Research on students of color has focused on cultural deficit models, which portray students as culturally deprived and proposes cultural assimilation as the solution (Nieto 2010; Delpit 2006; Solórzano & Yosso 2002). As a way to contest these models, I describe the role of Academic Support & College Readiness Program (ASP) as a place where community cultural wealth (Yosso 2005) is being created and transferred. Community cultural wealth is an alternative concept that uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) …

Getting It Right: African American Male College/University Presidents And Their Early Cultivation Of Self-Efficacy, James Randall

Doctoral Dissertations

GETTING IT RIGHT: AFRICAN AMERICAN MALE COLLEGE/UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS AND THEIR EARLY CULTIVATION OF SELF-EFFICACY MAY 2017 JAMES ANTHONY RANDALL, B.A., MOREHOUSE COLLEGE M.S.W., UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, COLLEGE OF SOCIAL POLICY AND PRACTICE Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by Joseph B. Berger Education remains the single most important means by which individuals in the United States can empower themselves economically, socially, and personally. In spite of this, a significant percentage of young African American males do not even appear to be competing or reaching for the educational opportunities before them as they rank the poorest amongst their peers in a …

Academic Library Resources And Services For Online Distance Learners: An Exploratory Study, Roseanne Michele Sasso

Doctoral Dissertations

In this study distance learning library resources and services as provided by member institutions belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) were examined. The goals of this study were (a) to identify the types of distance learning library resources and services being provided, and (b) to gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of Association of Research Libraries’ library personnel in delivering library resources and services to their distance learning library patrons. This exploratory study consisted of two phases, where both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Phase one involved a content analysis of member institution’s distance learning websites …

Post-Concussion Experiences Of Collegiate Student-Athletes, Kaitlin Iris Singer

Doctoral Dissertations

Sports-related concussions are a major public health concern affecting a significant number of collegiate student-athletes. Medical and public health research has addressed every aspect of concussion management processes including concussion education, medical diagnosis, recovery, and returning to sport and classroom. This research has led to several best-practices for concussion management. Since 2010, the NCAA has mandated that its member institutions maintain concussion management policies and procedures. However, the current recommendations, based primarily on medical research, have been found in quantitative studies of the behaviors and practices of athletic trainers, coaches, and student-athletes to be ineffective. To date, no studies have …

Living Alongside: A Narrative Inquiry Into The Impact Of Reflective Practice Training In Real Life, Patricia Randall Long

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this narrative inquiry (NI) was to explore, through personal narratives, the experience of the impact of Reflective Practice (RP) training (offered through an institute for collaborative communication housed within a large southeastern regional research one university) and subsequent practice on the day-to-day lives of two participants. While most published studies focus on RP impact during or immediately after training, this inquiry spanned seven months post training.

Field texts were generated from five open, non-structured interviews, journals, and field notes. The findings were framed within the NI commonplaces of temporality, sociality, and place, as well as seminal theories …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Athletic Satisfaction And Student Adaptation To College, Brian C. Russell

Doctoral Dissertations

Research on the experience of student-athletes at the collegiate level suggests that they may face challenges and hurdles in adjusting to college differently than those faced by students of the general student population. Additionally, research on student satisfaction suggests that a student’s satisfaction has an impact on the academic experience and retention of students, while research on athletic satisfaction suggests a relationship exists between athletic and academic satisfaction for student-athletes. However, it remains unclear whether there is a positive or negative relationship between the experiences of adjustment to college and athletic satisfaction of a student-athlete.

The purpose of this study …

Undergraduate Women In The Stem Fields And The Use Of Academic Library Resources And Services, Rebecca O'Kelly Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

Women majoring in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields are few in number. This research will be conducted in an effort to understand the use of academic library resources and services by undergraduate women in the STEM fields. Data collection methods consisted of three focus groups and five interviews with undergraduate women in the STEM fields, and three focus groups and two interviews with academic librarians and library staff familiar with library resources and services in each of the STEM fields conducted at a Research I University in the USA. Grounded theory principles provided a basis for the …

The Relationship Between Demands And Resources And Teacher Burnout: A Fifteen-Year Meta-Analysis, Tammy Marie Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations

This meta-analysis explored the phenomenon of teacher burnout— the biggest contributor to teacher attrition (Owens, 2013; Unterbrink, 2014; Yu, 2015). The focus of this study was to use meta-analytical procedures to explore the relationship between burnout dimensions (i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of personal accomplishment) and specific demand and resource correlates. Demand correlates included work overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, and student misbehavior. Resource correlates included peer support, supervisory support, and decision-making. This meta-analytical research method encompassed fifteen years of published and unpublished studies from January 2000 through January 2015. A total of 116 studies met the following inclusion …

Increasing Career Exploratory Behavior Through Message Framing, Lauren Elizabeth Tressler

Doctoral Dissertations

Career indecision is a growing problem for present day college students. As more and more students attend college right out of high school, rates of' indecision are also rising. The consequences of this include increased time to graduation, increased student loans, and decreased likelihood of career satisfaction and fit. While most institutions of higher learning offer services to help students choose a major and career path, these services remain underutilized. Research in this area has focused on investigating the effectiveness of these interventions, with little attention given to methods of increasing utilization of these services as well as career exploratory …

Outreach Practices Of A Small College Counseling Center: A Comprehensive Model To Serve The College Community, Jessica R. Ferriero

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past 10 years college counseling centers (CCCs) have been urged to broaden their focus considerably and to serve the entire campus community due to increases in student mental health issues. Engaging in outreach efforts is one way to address campus wide needs. However, few research efforts have been conducted to systematically investigate how outreach is practiced at a small college. The dialogue around outreach has focused on single programs at large institutions rather than the network of interventions that occur on a campus. The purpose of this study is to understand the web of relationships between a counseling …

Peace Under Pressure: Portraits Of Christian Leadership In College Basketball Coaches, Charles Henry Wilson Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

NCAA Division I college basketball coaching is a high-stakes, high-reward profession. This study is based on three premises: (a) there is increasing pressure on college basketball coaches to win immediately and win consistently; (b) coaches are expected to maintain their integrity; (c) the pressure to win immediately and win consistently can influence some coaches to compromise their integrity. Given that context, the purpose of this study was to investigate and illuminate the lived experience of Christian head men’s and women’s basketball coaches at public, NCAA Division I institutions. This study was guided by two guiding research questions: (a) What is …

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Selected Demographic Variables And Dual Enrollment Participation On Postsecondary Success For First Time Freshmen, Marby S. Barker

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between dual enrollment participation in high school and successful transition to post-secondary institutions for first year students. The sample consisted of a random sample of first-time students enrolled at four-year, two-year, and technical colleges in North Louisiana.

Participants completed the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships First Year Out Student Survey. The results were analyzed based on characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, School Performance Scores (SPS) of high school attended, ACT scores, high school cumulative grade point average, first term postsecondary grade point average, and type of postsecondary institutions selected by dual enrollment …

Examination Of The Clinical Benefit Of Adding Reversal Theory Concepts To The Expressive Writing Paradigm, Stephanie Ellis

Doctoral Dissertations

Expressive writing as a form of emotional disclosure produces many physical and psychological benefits (Pennebaker, 2004). Central to the present study are findings that expressive writing decreases symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD (Koopman, Ismailji, Holmes, Classen, Palesh, & Wales, 2005; Opre, Coman, Kallay, Rotaru, & Manier, 2005; Russ, 1992). Reversal Theory (RT) suggests that individuals experience the world from eight different psychological states including serious, playful, conforming, rebellious, mastery, sympathy, self, and other (Apter, 2007). Teaching individuals to be aware of and elicit these states also decreases depression and anxiety (Charat, 2006). The present study sought to determine if …