Digital Commons Network^™

A Training Framework And Follow-Up Observations For Multiculturally Inclusive Teaching: Is Believing That We Are Emphasizing Diversity Enough?, Joelle D. Elicker, Mindi N. Thompson, Andrea F. Snell, Allison L. O'Malley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The authors present a theoretically and empirically grounded training for multiculturally inclusive teaching for new instructors. After implementing this training, qualitative data were gathered from instructors to identify their experience of the training and concerns related to incorporating issues of diversity into their classrooms (Study 1). At the end of the semester immediately following the training, quantitative data were gathered from instructors and their students to examine the interaction between students’ and instructors’ perceived diversity emphasis (Study 2). When allowed to choose the extent to which they incorporated issues of diversity in their classes, the instructors differentially reported emphasizing diversity …

Improvisational Theater As A Tool For Enhancing Cooperation In Academic Libraries, Anthony Stamatoplos

USF St. Petersburg Campus Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Regional Innovation Systems: An Annotated Bibliography, Eric Bowen, Zheng Tian, Junbo Yu, Randall Jackson, Shaoming Cheng

Regional Research Institute Resource Documents

Innovation, the ability to create, diffuse, and adopt new ideas and to transform them into new profitable products, processes, and services has been increasingly seen as an essential, if not the primary, driving force behind the enhancement of productivity, competitiveness, and economic welfare. While people conventionally understood the mechanism of generating innovation as a straightforward linear process from basic research to technology transfer and completed by industrial commercialization, re- searchers have begun to challenge this rationale with a complex, systemic model for innovation, viz. the theory of the systems of innovation where the orchestrated eorts and interactions among governments, universities …

Emergency Managers As Change Agents, Christine G. Springer

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

Since 2001, FEMA and others have been defining and refining competencies for emergency management professionals. In so doing, they have addressed directly and indirectly the qualities of leaders. We know that leadership is not a person or a position. It is a complex relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good. We also know that transformational or change-based leadership has become an organizational necessity given the fact that emergency management as a profession is just now coming into its own and emergency management jobs are not traditional in terms of the how, …

A User-Centered And Evidence-Based Approach For Digital Library Projects, Mary M. Somerville, Navjit Brar

Library Scholarship

Purpose–Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) processes fortified by collaborative evidence-based librarianship (EBL) principles can guide end-user involvement in digital library project design and development. User-generated research examples reveal the efficacy of this inclusive human-focused approach for building systems.

Design/Methodology/Approach– From 2003 to 2006, user-centered interaction design guided increasingly complex human-computer interaction (HCI) projects at California Polytechnic State University. Toward that end, project planners invited polytechnic students, supervised by computer science professors, to assess peers’ information seeking needs. This student-generated evidence informed creation of paper prototypes and implementation of usability tests. Sustained relationships between planners and beneficiaries permitted iterative evaluation …

Gender Mainstreaming In International News: A Case Study Of The Inter Press Service, Margaretha Geertsema-Sligh

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

From 1994 to 1999, the global news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) implemented a gender mainstreaming policy in its newsrooms. This study examined organizational changes and news coverage that IPS advocated, as well as methods employed to bring about these changes. It shows that IPS has not been able to mainstream gender into all aspects of the organization and news coverage, and it considers reasons for the lacking implementation of the policy, while documenting IPS's efforts to improve women's access and representation in international news.

Library Technology Center Debuts At North Georgia College, Shawn C. Tonner

Georgia Library Quarterly

The article reports on the opening of the Library Technology Center at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega to crowds of students, faculty, staff and community members on August 19, 2008. A brief overview is given on the history, graduate programs, and student population of the university. The college library needed more and better seating and public computing, library instruction spaces and collection space. These factors, combined with limited Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility and inadequate electrical, lighting and life-safety systems, created a compelling case for a library building project.

Georgia Library Quarterly, Winter 2009, Susan Cooley

Georgia Library Quarterly

Complete issue of Georgia Library Quarterly, Winter 2009, vol. 46, no. 1.

A Case Study Of Intended And Implemented Tanf Policies In The New York State Bridge Program, Yi-Jung Wu

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act changed public policy. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), affecting both educational policy and social welfare policy. Simultaneously, policy implementation responsibilities devolved to states.

The Effects Of Organizational Culture And Climate On Employee's Turnover In Public Child Welfare Agencies, Miseung Shim

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Background & Purpose: Employee's turnover in child welfare agencies negatively influences remaining employees, clients, and organization itself as well as losing skilled or trained employees. For example, employee's high turnover tends to be cyclical, in that high turnover gives additional workload burden to remaining employees and causes lack of continuity of services for vulnerable children and families. Moreover, child welfare agencies have to bear financial costs, including hiring and training. Although current literature increasingly emphasizes the importance of organizational factors in employee's turnover issues, more empirical research is needed to be conducted to understand organizational effects on employee's turnover. This …

Explaining Torture And Its Reduction In A Police Department : A View From Below, Ahmet Guler

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This is an ethnographic study of police deviance and police reform. This study investigates how organizational members rationalize the torture they perpetuated in the past, how they explain their sensemaking process and organizational identity change during the change process using empirical data from a counterterrorism division of the metropolitan police department (MPD) in a prospective member state of the EU.

How The Individual Differences Of Subordinates Within The Workplace Predict Leadership Style Preference And Organizational Commitment, Elizabeth A. Rupprecht, '09

Honors Projects

The connection between leader and subordinate is a crucial one for businesses. One reason this connection is crucial is that many subordinates see the business through the eyes of their managers or super-ordinates. Leaders with certain abilities and attributes can help employees feel more comfortable with their work environment. Different subordinates in specific work environment situations may desire different attributes in a leader. Conversely, individuals with specific personality attributes and a similar work environment may, therefore, desire the same type of leader. The following study will attempt to describe the relations between subordinates' personality characteristics, gender, job stereo typicality and …

Brokering Up: The Role Of Temporary Staffing In Overcoming Labor Market Barriers, Françoise Carré, Brandynn Holgate, Helen Levine, Mandira Kala

Center for Social Policy Publications

Alternative Staffing Organizations (ASOs) are social-purpose businesses created by community-based organizations and national nonprofits to “broker up” job seekers, starting with temporary assignments and forming bridges to better jobs. Funded by the C. S. Mott Foundation, the Alternative Staffing Demonstration examined four ASOs around the country for a three-year research project, with 18 months of close monitoring, exploring, and assessing the ASO model. The Center for Social Policy studied how ASOs structure the services they provide, handle day-to-day management issues, and sell their services. We found the ASO model was variously adapted to generate short-term employment, build work experience, provide …

Youth Reproductive Health: Investing In The Future, Frontiers In Reproductive Health

Reproductive Health

Youth—young people aged 10–24—constitute about a quarter of the world's population. Nearly three-quarters of these young people live in the developing world, and they suffer a disproportionate share of unplanned pregnancies, STIs including HIV, and other reproductive health (RH) problems. Research undertaken by FRONTIERS has shed light on numerous aspects of youth RH, including the information needs of young people, married adolescents, and parents and guardians. Findings from over 20 studies on youth RH provide important lessons about which interventions are effective, what kind of impact is possible, and what approaches have limited impact. This paper focuses on engaging all …

Balancing Multiple Roles: A Pilot Study Exploring The Complexity Of Role Balance In Working Mothers With Primary School Aged Children, Katherine Prince

Theses : Honours

For working mothers, maintaining a balance between work and parenting roles is a challenge. Each role presents its own set of physical, mental and temporal demands which frequently compete for the limited personal and environmental resources available to the mother. These competing demands can create conflict and stress, which prompts a coping response. The coping response initiated is a physiological reaction to the mother's appraisal of her situational conflict, and follows a process of appraisal. Firstly the working mother appraises the conflict itself. This is followed by the appraisal of the personal and environmental resources, constraints and demands. Finally, a …

How Effective Leaders Learn From Life: A Grounded Theory Study Of The Impact Of Significant Life Experiences Upon Leadership Development, Ryan P. Meers

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Fifteen effective leaders from diverse organizational backgrounds described their significant life experiences and the impact upon their development as leaders. Using grounded theory methodology, a theoretical model emerged for assisting leaders absorb greater learning from their various life experiences. Related to the central phenomenon of how effective leaders learn from significant life experiences, four causal conditions of types of experiences were identified as influencing how leaders learn: (1) experiences of adversity or loss; (2) experiences of “stretch assignments”; (3) inspirational experiences; and (4) experiences with conflict. Strategies used by the leaders to absorb learning from their significant experiences were active …

Positioning Libraries To Support The Goals Of Higher Education Institutions: The Peabody Academic Library Leadership Institute, Sharon A. Weiner, Patricia Senn Breivik, Timothy Caboni, Dennis Clark

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This article describes the genesis of Vanderbilt University's Peabody Academic Library Leadership Institute as an outcome of a particular philosophy. That philosophy is based on the concept that to fulfill their potential contributions, academic libraries need to direct their planning, resources, and services to support the priorities of their parent institutions. This article addresses the need for campus-focused leadership training; higher education leadership training for academic librarians; and the higher education context for libraries. It describes why Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development initiated a professional development institute for librarians. It describes the institute's history, curriculum, and assessment …

The Rise Of 'People Power': Role Of Civil Society In The "Color Revolutions", Vladyslav Galushko

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation has been spurred by the surprising turn of events that took place in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Both countries were scheduled to have elections—parliamentary in Georgia and presidential in Ukraine. Though fraud, voter intimidation and opposition harassment were widely expected, few predicted the magnitude of popular response that swept away the regimes of Leonid Kuchma and Eduard Shevarnadze. Grappling with the unexpected, many heaped praise on the so-called “people power” that was able to bring masses to the streets and sustain their involvement in what were quickly labeled “color revolutions.” Civil society groups like …

Do Good Things Come Out After Recessions? The Productivity-Business Cycle Interaction, Michael M. Alba, Lawrence B. Dacuycuy

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

For the past two decades, the Philippines has endured a wave of recessions, events that technically represent fluctuations in economic activity. While some of these recessions have been shallow, resulting in minor deviations from where our economy should be, some have been deep and devastating like the ones that occurred during the last years of the Marcos regime.

Better, Faster, Stronger: Integrating Archives Processing And Technical Services, Gregory C. Colati, Katherine M. Crowe, Elizabeth S. Meagher

University Libraries: Faculty Scholarship

The University of Denver’s Penrose Library implemented a consolidated cataloging and archives processing unit for all materials, taking advantage of the structure, workflow design, and staff resources that were already in place for library-wide materials processing: acquisitions, cataloging, binding, and stacks maintenance. The objective of Penrose Library’s integrated approach was to efficiently create metadata that allow searches based on subject relevance rather than on collection provenance. The library streamlined archives processing by integrating digital content creation and management into the materials processing workflow. The result is a flexible, sustainable, and scalable model for archives processing that utilizes existing staff by …

Organizational Justice And Fairness In China: An Inductive Analysis Of The Meaning And Dimensions, Chun (Grace) Guo, Jane K. Giacobbe-Miller

WCBT Faculty Publications

Taking an inductive approach, we examined the meaning and dimensionality of the organizational justice construct in the People's Republic of China. By triangulating qualitative data from in-depth interviews and structured open-ended surveys, we found that organizational justice and organizational fairness were perceived as distinct constructs in a Chinese context.

Factors Influencing Effectiveness Of Interorganizational Networks Among Crisis Management Organizations: A Comparative Perspective, Bahadir Sahin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Crisis management has become one of the most important public policy areas in recent decades with greater numbers of manmade and natural disasters. History showed that well-implemented crisis management policies can save lives and reduce costs in a disaster. Literature offered various suggestions for more effective crisis management policies with different techniques utilizing different theoretical frameworks. Informal relationships among crisis management employees were suggested to have a positive impact on crisis management effectiveness. Yet it was not demonstrated with advanced statistical tools if there is such a relationship. This study considers crisis management effort as a network effort and employs …

Understanding Deviant Behaviors Through Coercion And Social Support Theory, Maria Nicte-Ha Uribe

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mark Colvin, Francis T. Cullen and Thomas Vander Ven (2002) developed an integrated theory of crime called "coercion, social support, and crime" which hypothesizes that coercion and social support are inversely related and that these variables have direct effects on criminal and deviant behavior as well as a combined effect. Specifically if an imbalance between coercion and social support exists, crime is more likely to occur because coercion induces weak social bonds and low self control thereby increasing crime. On the other hand, social support prevents criminal involvement through organized networks of human relations that assist people in meeting their …

Organizational Approaches To Drug Law Enforcement By Local Police Departments In The United States: Specialized Drug Units And Participation In Multi-Agency Drug Task Forces, Robert M. Lombardo, David E. Olson

Criminal Justice & Criminology: Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper examines the factors associated with the decision of local police departments in the United States to operate specialized drug units or to participate in multi-jurisdictional drug task forces. Combining data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) Survey, the 2000 Census, and the Uniform Crime Report, we use both bivariate and multivariate methods to conduct the analysis. The findings indicate that county-level agencies, those with other formalized drug control efforts, high levels of violent crime, high degrees of task specialization and formalization, and high proportions of the resident population accounted for by renters were more likely …

Setting The Table For A Sustainable And Just Food System, Kien Lee, Kolu Zigbi, Marjorie Nemes

The Foundation Review

· As consumers and producers, people of color have been affected disproportionately by systemic problems in the food system.

· This article describes the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a joint effort of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the capacity of organizations led by people of color to engage in policy and advocacy work.

· Grantees successfully built their capacity to engage in policy work (e.g., increased capacity to identify policy targets), increased their organizational capacity (e.g., diversified boards), improved their communities’ capacity (e.g., created opportunities for dialogue and improved …

Contextual Leadership: The Social Construction Of Leadership In A Comprehensive Healthcare System, Mark J. Moir

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Healthcare is a complex and dynamic environment containing a plurality of social forces and perspectives that shape the organizational culture and the nature of the leadership. As leadership is a social phenomenon, it is important to understand the complex social processes that mediate our perceptions and that in turn influence processes of leader attribution. The central purpose of this study has been to illuminate the nature of culturally specific processes that emerge within a specific organizational setting and that fuel leader attribution and the social construction of leadership. Accordingly, this qualitative study has developed a Grounded Theory utilizing Situational Analysis …

Holographic Leadership: Leading As A Way Of Being, Janet L. Byars

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Holographic Leadership integrates values-based leadership into an understanding of an energetic holographic world. It is a world where the unseen is the primary influencer, where the smaller is more powerful (Bohm, 1994). I will synthesize many diverse ideas into an exploratory theory that will suggest new insights into sustainable leadership. I will propose a new model of practice from which to work. I suggest that it is through an internal state of physiological coherence and psychological balance that a leader can truly learn to “hold steady” (Heifetz, 1994), creating an intentional holding environment, a coherent group dynamic, which draws forth …

Making The Value Of Development Visible: A Sequential Mixed Methodology Study Of The Integral Impact Of Post-Classroom Leader And Leadership Development, Laura Curnutt Santana

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In a time of increasing complexity, many organizations invest in leadership development programs to prepare those who will assume the role of leader. Although many studies have evaluated programs’ impact, the questions remain: does development happen in leadership development program? If so, what kind of development? And what is the participant’s experience of personal or organizational impact? The purpose of this sequential mixed methodology study is to address these three questions utilizing an online follow-through platform as a lens on 248 participants in the Center for Creative Leadership’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) who reported completing their LDP goals. Those who …

Library Annual Report

Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

An Action Research Study Of The Supporting The University-Ready Through Environment (Sure) Program, Natalie Brown

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The current research documented the processes and outcomes of an educational access program for women living in poverty at the individual and organizational level of analysis. The purpose of this study was to understand barriers, strategies to reduce barriers and outcomes achieved by a grassroots program: Supporting the University-Ready through Empowerment (SURE). The 12 participants consisted of three women learners of the SURE program, three SURE co-directors (including myself), three university partners and three community partners. Life narrative interviews were conducted with the learners with structured interviews conducted with all other informants. Additionally, focus groups were run with the SURE …