Digital Commons Network^™

Developing Best Practices For Successful University Fundraising Events, Ravyn Ladenburger

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This research study addresses the crucial role of fundraising in sustaining universities in the United States, particularly public institutions facing funding challenges. For this paper, fundraising refers to the seeking of financial support from individuals to support initiatives at a nonprofit entity, such as a public university. It identifies a gap in research and professionalization within higher education philanthropy, emphasizing the need for standardized training and empirical research. The focus is on studying the effectiveness of fundraising events, especially in public universities like the University of Kentucky, amidst declining government support and rising operational costs. The research problem to be …

A Review Of The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act In Kentucky Schools System, Spencer Collins

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The federal government's role in education has been center stage for the past decade. Policy actors on the right call for a complete deconstruction of the federal Department of Education (ED). In today's partisan fighting over government funding, the topic of education services is critical. With further investigations into education services provided by federal funding, one vulnerable population that needs to be safeguarded is those students with disabilities. Protecting those students with disabilities and ensuring equal access to education and resources provided for non-disabled students should be one of the highest priorities of policy actors within the education sphere today. …

University Of Kentucky Healthcare Community Engagement Program Strategic Plan, Madison Fyffe

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Strategic planning is an essential tool in providing direction to an organization through analysis of its current state and ideal future, and development of strategic goals. The University of Kentucky HealthCare’s community engagement program is a robust program within the department of Brand Strategy, tasked with serving all 120 Kentucky counties and over 150 local, state, and national organizations through health education, event sponsorship, and promotional resources. In its current state, a strategic plan to guide and track performance does not exist. This capstone aims to develop a strategic plan through the assessment of strategic planning theory, stakeholder analysis, and …

Employer Incentivized Cancer Screenings In Kentucky: A Case Study, Addison Dumes, Sophia Freeman, Megan Latiff

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Kentucky has some of the highest mortality rates for colon, breast, cervical and lung cancer in the United States, according to the Center of Disease Control. Our Client, The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, is seeking to lower these rates by increasing employer driven cancer screenings. Previous studies show many states have been successful in implementing programs to motivate employees to participate in preventative screenings. Through individual interviews with Kentucky employers, this study aims to answer what factors affect the best practices and perceived barriers amongst employers with health and wellness programs to increase the rate of preventative breast, cervical, …

Lfcug's Utilization Of 2022 Opioid Settlement Funds For Recovery Housing, Emily Wiley, Ken Britton Jr, Madelaine Coy

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Following national settlements to combat the opioid epidemic, Kentucky and its local governments received a collective $842 million to invest in prevention and treatment. To employ these dollars most effectively, Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) aims to become “recovery ready” as a part of Kentucky’s Recovery Ready Communities (RRC) certification program. This mixed methods comparative case study determined the following high-priority variables that align with RRC certification requirements: recovery housing infrastructure, certification disclosure, and medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) services. To provide additional insight into Fayette County’s recovery housing landscape, we analyzed the following supplemental variables: vulnerable populations served, …

Venture Capital & State Policy: A Mixed Methods Approach For Identifying And Understanding “Bright Spots”, David Durman Ii, Cole Wilson

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The relationship between the availability of venture capital at the state level and state policy is largely unexplored in research. To expand the understanding of this subject, the aim of this paper is to determine what states are performing greater than would be expected in the area of venture capital availability and examine the nature of policy in those states in order to glean insights in regard to policy improvement. To that end, the researchers developed a multiple regression model to identify overperforming states, then performed an examination of policy within the states identified and contacted subject matter experts within …

Government Grant Receipts And Revenue Volatility: A Correlational Investigation Of Medium-Sized Arts Organizations, Carly Colvin

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Minimal revenue volatility has been shown to enable more accurate planning by nonprofit managers and contribute to nonprofit financial sustainability. The volatility of government revenues, a major income source for nonprofit organizations, is not a well-researched topic. This capstone presents correlational tests to study the relationship between government grant receipts and revenue volatility within medium-sized nonprofit arts organizations in California. In addition, a data compilation methodology is tested and documented to enable future research. The results do not show a correlation between receipt of government grants and revenue volatility. The ensuing considerations for nonprofit managers along with areas for future …

Sports Betting In Kentucky: An Analysis Of Kentucky’S Sports Wagering Legislation Through Local And Regional State Budgetary Revenue Trends, Brett Gillispie

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Kentucky’s legislation legalizing sports wagering in the Commonwealth and delineating its taxation, HB551 of the 2023 Regular Session of the General Assembly, has been implemented and posted numbers in its early months that suggested it will exceed revenue projections for the Commonwealth. Researchers have raised concerns, particularly in studying West Virginia, which implemented similar legislation in 2019, that sports betting may be cannibalizing existing gambling revenue for states that implement it. However, this was not conclusive. While evidence from West Virginia suggests that sports betting may be cannibalizing existing revenue, evidence from Kentucky and the individual and broader regional trends …

Financial Monitoring And Oversight Of Public Higher Education Institutions By States A Descriptive Case Study Analysis, Ryan Kaffenberger

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Higher education in America is at an inflection point with numerous challenges threatening the traditional business model relied on by institutions across the country. These forces include, but are not limited to: 1) A decrease in the number of high school graduates due to historical declines in birth rates (Grawe, 2018; Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, 2020) 2) Sustained disinvestment by many states in their higher education institutions which has effectively shifted the cost of education to students and families (Kunkle & Laderman, 2023) 3) Increasing skepticism among Americans of the value of higher education, particularly given its rising …

Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative: Addressing Lexington’S Equity Gap, Kinsleigh Smith, Jason Schubert

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The equity gap between Black Americans and white Americans is a persistent social issue. This equity gap presents itself in a variety of measures – wealth accumulation, homeownership, healthcare, educational achievement, financial stability, and more. Locally, the Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative, a program of the Blue Grass Community Foundation, is primarily focused on strengthening Lexington’s Black community and closing this equity gap. The initiative was established in 2020. As the Lexington Black Prosperity Initiative enters its fourth year of operations, they are seeking to expand their reach within the community by enacting long-lasting and sustainable programs that will work to …

Foster Caregiving: How Interactions With The Child Welfare Agency Impact Foster Parent Satisfaction, Recruitment, And Retention, Ethan Engelhardt

Theses and Dissertations--Social Work

Professionals of the child welfare system in Kentucky have continuously worked to retain and recruit new foster parents for the foster care system. Foster parents are uniquely placed in a surrogate caring position for children removed from their homes for reasons of abuse or neglect. Foster parents accept this role and step in to provide a safe and loving household for many children. There are more than 9,000 children placed in Out of Home Care (OOHC) on any given day in Kentucky, leaving many children in need of a loving and supportive household. Foster parents hang in the balance between …

Three Essays On Rural Education: Descriptive Studies Focused On Federal Rural Definitions And Policy Changes, Kyung Ha Oh

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Rural education issues in K-12 public schools are understudied despite a large rural student population in the U.S. This dissertation studies how different federal definitions of rural change how rural school districts and their diverse communities are portrayed, in comparison to their non-rural counterparts. This study also explores the recent federal rural policy changes on rural district revenue and student academic outcomes.

This dissertation consists of three descriptive essays. The first chapter shows how we choose to define ‘rural’ changes what differences are accentuated between rural and non-rural districts. Definitions of ‘rural’ is closely related to who gains access to …

Cares Act Unemployment Insurance Program Implementation In Kentucky: A Case Study, Alicia Landon

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States. The deadly virus filled hospitals to capacity and caused approximately 375,000 deaths nationwide over the next nine months (Ahmad et al., 2021). In an effort to slow the spread of the Coronavirus, federal and state governments closed businesses and agencies within a matter of weeks. Almost as quickly as the threat to human health changed the lives of Americans, the secondary threat of economic disruption began to unfold. Nationwide unemployment rates increased from approximately 4% to 15% between February 2020 and April 2020 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, …

Solving The Healthcare Employee Shortage: The Effectiveness Of Incentive Programs In Enticing Young Health Professionals To Appalachian Kentucky Communities, Taylor Williams

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Kentucky’s Appalachian counties have long been recognized as medically underserved areas, with access to care being limited by a shortage of healthcare professionals in the region. This issue, specifically as it pertains to primary care physicians, has been the focus of many programs hoping to improve access to care in these communities for many years. Is the ongoing effort to recruit and retain primary care physicians in Appalachian Kentucky counties effective? Hypotheses The mean number of people per physician in Appalachian Kentucky counties reported in 2013 is equal to the mean number of people per physician in Appalachian Kentucky counties …

Budget Models And Methods Used In Higher Education, Brad West

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The Cambridge Dictionary defines a budget as “a plan to show how much money a person or organization will earn and how much they will need or be able to spend.” (Budget, 2023). The budget of an institution within higher education is how to allocate the planned amount of revenues received to support the planned expenditures across the organization for an upcoming period, usually a fiscal year or project duration. Various public higher education institutions have many different methods for allocating those planned revenues to support expenditures across their colleges, schools, and administrative units to support the university's mission. This …

Public Health Access And Service For All, Austin Nugent

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Collecting, analyzing, and reporting accurate, reliable data is necessary for achieving health equity. Although data alone will not lead to equitable health outcomes for all people, it helps health professionals, researchers, and policymakers understand health disparities and develop effective interventions, programs, and policies to reduce them. Necessary data includes disaggregated health information on diverse demographics, including people with disabilities. However, despite this need, disability data gaps exist. Fortunately, numerous solutions exist to address this issue, including implementing minimum data standards on disability and engaging all levels of health organizations in data practices. This capstone project investigated the current data practices …

Coalition Of The Ending: Why States Withdraw From International Military Coalitions, Weiss Mehrabi

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation examines the causes and conditions motivating states to discontinue supporting an ongoing military coalition operation and prematurely abandon their partners. In exploring coalition defection through a three-article dissertation, I advance three separate theoretical arguments focusing on three levels of analysis.

The first article contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of political regime types on coalition abandonment during interstate wars. I argue that anocracies are dependable wartime partners and will not abandon coalition warfare earlier than autocracies and democracies. I advance two arguments for the theory of anocratic reliability. First, leaders of mixed regimes expect severe post-defeat …

The Geopolitics Of Infrastructuralized Platforms: The Case Of Alibaba, Hong Shen, Yujia He

Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce Faculty Publications

Contemporary digital platforms have become increasingly infrastructuralized, and started to raise geopolitical tensions with their global expansion. Amidst the heightened geopolitical competition between the US and China, the growing power of Chinese infrastructuralized platforms has made them the center of recent geopolitical dynamics. Drawing from an exploratory case study, this paper discusses Alibaba, one of the most prominent Chinese Internet giants, as an infrastructuralized platform, and highlights its geopolitical struggles. Often perceived as an e-commerce company, Alibaba has become ‘infrastructuralized’: its now-massive digital empire has moved beyond e-commerce, expanding into almost every aspect of China’s and global digital economy such …

Chinese-Backed Fintech Lending Boom: How Did Indonesia Respond?, Angela Tritto, Yujia He, Victoria Amanda Junaedi

Diplomacy and International Commerce Reports

Peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending has the potential to boost innovation and financial inclusion in emerging markets, yet it can also incur investment and borrower-related risks, such as privacy breaches.

Driven by regulation control in China, Chinese investments flocked to Indonesia, causing a rapid expansion of online lending platforms.

Similar to what happened in China prior to the regulatory crackdown, the P2P lending boom in Indonesia saw a rise in unethical and illegal business practices. The government responded by creating new regulations and institutions to mitigate risks without stifling the potential for financial inclusion.

A proactive approach towards monitoring and regulating …

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

Wrfl 88.1fm Strategic Plan, Clayton Abernathy

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

WRFL 88.1 FM (WRFL) is a student-run radio station at the University of Kentucky that has existed on the University of Kentucky’s campus since 1988. As the station recently turned 34 years old in March 2022, it has never had a strategic plan or gone through the strategic planning process. The strategic planning process was facilitated by the Principal Investigator and involved members of WRFL’s leadership team, and general student and community members. Using multiple data collection methods to gather feedback, the Principal Investigator was able to present WRFL’s leadership team with a plan that they believe will provide WRFL …

University Of Kentucky Sustainability Strategic Plan, Sophie Beavin

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Global climate change is impacting ecosystems, communities, and economies and will continue to do so into the future. To address these issues, sustainable practices and policies are needed on the local and global scale. At the University of Kentucky, sustainability implies that actions are ecologically sound, socially just, and economically viable. Harmonizing these three aspects is critical when developing and implementing sustainability goals on campus. The Office of Sustainability is responsible for coordinating and implementing sustainability policies, actions, and programs for the University of Kentucky. In 2017, they released the first Sustainability Strategic Plan that set goals through 2022. The …

Defunding The Police: True Police Reform Or Just Political Smoke And Mirrors? A Look At The City Of Camden, New Jersey And Its Approach To Police Reform, Anitra Austin

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The summer of 2020 brought police brutality to the forefront of society. The deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd at the hands of police officers ignited a firestorm of social justice movements. Black Lives Matter and other social justice organizations were calling for cities around the country to defund their police departments as a strategy for police reform. This strategy was largely unprecedented, and highly controversial. There was a lack of understanding of what defunding the police actually meant, as it seemed to mean different things to different people. The subtle suggestions of defunding the police quickly turned to …

An Analysis Of Krs 123.487 And The Motor Vehicle Tax Rates Levied Among Special Districts In Kentucky, Beth Atkinson

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Kentucky Revised Statute 132.487 sets forth limitations on the motor vehicle tax rate, which can be levied by the state, counties, cities, and special taxing districts. According to the statute, the rate is formulated on a January 1, 1983 date without exception. However, a lack of oversight and understanding of KRS 132.487 has created problems among counties, cities, and special districts in Kentucky. In some cases, this has led to the adoption of tax rates which violate the statute and should be investigated and addressed by the legislature. This research suggests that non-compliance with KRS 132.487 is more prevalent among …

Irs Form 990 And Opportunity For Improvement, Sarah Bocklen

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In the contemporary world, IRS Form 990 returns are increasingly being used to source data about the nonprofit sector, which have critical in enhancing the community's social welfare. However, there has been a considerable debate concerning the adequacy, reliability, and quality of the data contained in the document. This study incorporated a total of 150 nonprofit entities from the US to investigate the adequacy, reliability, and quality of Form 990 returns. I used both quantitative and qualitative research methods to evaluate the consistency in the selected data. Selected entries were used for analysis and compared with those of audited financial …

Statewide Educational Achievement Goals: How Has Kentucky’S 60x30 Goal Affected Postsecondary Credential Completion?, Cameron Childress

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

During the past decade, several states have adopted statewide educational attainment goals. Kentucky’s 60x30 goal seeks to credential 60% of the adult population in the state by 2030, bringing Kentucky closer to the national average. Using a difference-in-differences empirical strategy I compare Kentucky to a control group of states from 2010-2019 in order to understand statewide gains in varying levels of postsecondary achievement, and in what subsamples of the population the largest gains have been made. The results indicate that Kentucky has been successful in increasing educational attainment compared to states who have not adopted an educational attainment goal, and …

Analysis Of Regulatory Options To Reduce Ethylene Oxide Emissions In Southern Louisiana, Claire Oyler

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Toxic chemicals are dangerous when exposed directly to humans but are often vital for the production of goods and services. Ethylene Oxide is a carcinogenic gas used as a commercial sterilizer and emitted during the manufacturing process of common household goods. The term fence-line communities describes the residents living adjacent to facilities emitting toxic chemicals into the air. Several predominately minority, low-income fence-line communities in Southern Louisiana are exposed to higher than average levels of Ethylene Oxide from nearby manufacturing facilities. This raises environmental justice and overall public health concerns in the area. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged …

Building An Academic Partnership Through A Strategic Plan: University Of Kentucky Auxiliary Services, Sally Martin

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The Auxiliary Services department at the University of Kentucky (UK) is a far-reaching department on campus that contains everything from housing to dining to events. If there is an office or activity on campus that provides a service to a student, staff or faculty member, it is most likely within Auxiliary Service’s jurisdiction. Some of the departments and/or offices that fall under this umbrella include all residence halls, dining locations, the Gatton Student Center, University Events Management, and the UK Bookstore. Auxiliary Services also manages the partnerships with external companies that provide services to the campus like housing (Greystar), dining …

Merged Government: Is This An Option For Bowling Green And Warren County, Ky Governments?, Alice Williams

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In recent history, the most common attempt at reorganization of government in a metropolitan area is the city-county consolidation model. With limited government resources, elected officials along with community members look to this model to make the best use of those resources. “Applied to local government, the term ‘‘consolidation’’ is generally understood to mean the structural merging of two or more governments into one. When a city and county consolidate, a new and different form of local government is created that has elements of both city and county government but is neither.” (Martin, 2011) There are both benefits and problems …

Inter-State Variability Of Pharmacist Recovery Network Policies And Practice, Lindsey Porter

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Recovery Networks (PRNs) are state organizations, typically associated with a licensing Board of Pharmacy to aid in recovery and monitoring of pharmacists with substance use disorders with the intention of providing an avenue for pharmacy professionals with infractions to return to practice. However, there is significant variation in the structure, funding, and leadership of these organizations leading to high variability in how they serve that purpose and their efficacy in doing so in a rehabilitative fashion. The purpose of this project was to assess, in twenty-five strategically chosen US states, PRN structure, function, and perceptions of Directors regarding allowance of …