Digital Commons Network^™

Days Of Future Past: The Legacy And Self-Efficacy Of Black And Hispanic Educators In Predominantly White School Districts, Tesfa S. Stewart

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

This mixed-methods dissertation investigates the self-efficacy of Black, Hispanic, and Multiracial educators in predominantly White institutions (PWIs), examining its connections to job satisfaction, career development, and perceived impact on students. Data from 34 participants, collected using the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES), indicated high overall self-efficacy, particularly in instructional strategies and classroom management. A one-way ANOVA revealed a statistically significant effect of race/ethnicity on total self-efficacy scores, with Black educators reporting significantly higher scores than their Hispanic and Multiracial peers (η² = .271). A simple linear regression using years of educational experience as the sole predictor did not produce …

Leadership And Change From Within: An Honors College And Ctl Partnership, Connie M. Schroeder, Hilary K. Snow

National Collegiate Honors Council Monographs: Chapters

Scaling sustainable change in teaching and learning is an institutional priority in higher education, yet often it is elusive, given the decentralized and siloed academic landscape. Most colleges and departments lack the necessary expertise to design and implement scaled change or the critical organizational structures to sustain change. Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) seek to advance improvement in teaching and learning and highlight improving institutional culture as part of their mission. Reliance on traditional programming and consultations, however, primarily targets individual change versus scaled or sustainable change.

The successful process of change at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Honors College …

How To Create A Self-Sustaining Meditation Garden, Heather Salazar, Lydia Barrett-Miller, Kaitlyn Parisan

Honors in Practice Online Archive

This essay presents the creation and maintenance of a campus meditation garden as an outgrowth of four successive philosophy classes in honors. The authors describe the garden’s inception, execution, curricular advantages, and administration, with specific examples of the impact on student health and well-being. The authors observe the ways in which honors students attained skills in transformational leadership by collaborating to develop projects and lead events, suggesting that a meditation garden may be appropriate for any learning environment emphasizing cooperation, creativity, mindfulness, and well-being.

Mitigating Burnout In Illinois Human Services Nonprofits: Exploring Leadership Strategies And Human Resource Practices, David Rivers

All Capstone Projects

In this qualitative study, the researcher sought to explore how nonprofit leaders perceive and respond to employee burnout through answering the research question, “What strategies do leaders of human service nonprofits within the Chicago area implement to reduce the burnout risk and mitigate its consequences, and do the servant leadership practices explain the organizational approaches towards the burnout issue?” The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with five leaders of Chicago-based human services nonprofit organizations to explore the prevalence of burnout, challenges that burnout presents to organizational mission, how they address burnout in their specific contexts, and what lingering challenges that threaten …

Barriers To Spiritual Growth, Brian A. Brunke

All Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examined the barriers to spiritual growth among believers, analyzing biblical and theological sources alongside perspectives from additional literature. The study identified significant obstacles to spiritual development, including persecution, cultural and religious differences, conflict, lack of understanding, and worldly influences, as illustrated in the Book of Acts. Furthermore, modern challenges, such as the implications of neuroscience for spiritual formation, lifestyle choices, and cultural shifts, also contribute to these barriers. A quantitative approach was employed, utilizing an online survey to assess spiritual growth across six dimensions: commitment to God, evangelism, engagement in spiritual disciplines, pursuit of intentional relationships, stewardship, and …

John P. Davis And The Joint Committee, Pamela A. Izvănariu

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article uses archival research and social movement theory to recover a critical but untold story about how John P. Davis innovated novel modes of organizational mobilization and multidimensional advocacy to build power and movement at the intersection of race and the economy in the Jim Crow and New Deal era. It examines Davis’s mobilization of the Joint Committee on National Recovery (JCNR), recovers the mobilization and advocacy models Davis engineered, and tells of the fight Davis and the JCNR waged to achieve racial and economic justice and effect a new— and truly emancipatory—New Deal.

Forced Migration And Women's Empowerment: Evidence From Rohingya Refugees, Adam Chilton, Katerina Linos, Anup Malani

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

We explore a puzzle: high levels of satisfaction among forcibly displaced Rohingya women in informal camps in Hyderabad, India. Despite experiencing extreme poverty, loss of family and community, and high levels of gender-based violence after resettlement, both men and women—particularly women—report significant increases in satisfaction. We structured a representative household survey, employed a trusted female Muslim interviewer with deep ties to the local community, interviewed comparable numbers of men and women, and embedded list experiments in our questionnaire, to allow people to answer sensitive questions indirectly. We attribute this paradoxical finding to increased freedom post-resettlement, facilitated by economic, legal, and …

A Unified Thermodynamic Framework For Regime Discovery, Entropy-Aware Optimization, And Emergent Leadership In Flocking Systems, Victor Nkwocha

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation post-2024

This thesis presents a unified framework for modeling, optimizing, and analyzing collective behavior in flocking systems through a thermodynamic and statistical lens. In the first study, we employ entropy-regularized Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) to identify distinct thermodynamic regimes—ordered, transitional, and disordered—based on the energy and entropy profiles of simulated agent-based flocks. The second study introduces the Organic Adaptive Flocking Algorithm (OAFA), a biologically inspired, entropy-aware extension of the Boids model. OAFA dynamically adjusts rule weights based on local entropy signals and is optimized via a multi-objective NSGAII framework to balance cohesion, separation, energy efficiency, and disorder. Results show that entropy …

Emergent Leadership: A Study Of Ethiopian And Eritrean Diaspora Leaders, Bethel Zelalem

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the lived experiences of young Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora leaders in the United States who have been recognized by others as embodying emergent leadership. The research was inspired by the firsthand observations of a gap in leadership representation and recognition among first- and second-generation East African diaspora young adults, particularly those navigating bicultural identities and intergenerational tension. Guided by Borderland Theory (Anzaldúa, 1987) and Emergent Leadership Theory (Bormann, 1972; Mumford et al., 2002), the study explored how young adult Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora members in the United States, nominated as embodying emergent leadership by their communities, experience …

Minnesota's Path To Prosperity: A Single Case Study Examining The Evolution Of Children's Programs And The Birth Of The Department Of Children, Youth And Families (Dcyf) - Implications For The Well-Being Of Minnesota Families, Shaneen D. Moore

School of Business Student Theses and Dissertations

This case study research inquiry delves into the possibilities of restructuring children's programs, with a specific focus on the establishment of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) in Minnesota. The goal is to address and rectify ongoing challenges in the current system by employing a human-centered design approach. These challenges encompass program silos, restricted access to essential resources, and the pervasive scarcity mindset that detrimentally affects the well-being of Minnesota families. The study endeavors to investigate how the restructuring, realignment, and innovation of children's services can result in an adaptive, transformative, and people-centric system capable of providing holistic …

Leadership In The Digital Economy: An Investigation Into How Digitalisation Is Changing The Role And Practice Of Leadership In The Australian Defence Industry, Rhogan Aitken

Theses

Digitalisation is a phenomenon that is transforming society and is the process that moves an organisation to become digital. Research was conducted on senior leaders in the Australian defence industry with the purpose of investigating how the role and practice of leadership was changing because of digitalisation. A two-phased qualitative methodology was employed. An initial Delphi study on 13 experts in digital transformation was adopted to gain consensus on key issues, with the results informing a second stage of semi-structured interviews with 32 senior leaders in the Australian defence industry. The results identified factors that were influencing leadership, including increased …

Empowering Emerging Air Medical Leaders Through A Novel Professional Development Program Adapting National Nursing And Healthcare Management Competencies To A Multi-State Air Medical Service, Christopher Hardman

Yale School of Nursing Digital Theses

Empowering Emerging Air Medical Leaders through a Novel Professional Development Program Adapting National Nursing and Healthcare Management Competencies to a Multi-State Air Medical ServiceHigh turnover in the nursing workforce has led to clinicians with limited experience being promoted to leadership roles without proper training or support. Nurse leaders directly impact clinical outcomes and retention. The financial burden of turnover is significant, as health systems must continually replace employees. Despite this, limited evidence exists on effective professional development and retention strategies in non-traditional, non-hospital settings. This DNP project sought to adapt and implement a novel professional development program, derived from the …

Examining The Practice Of Teacher Leadership Across Nevada: How Is Context Associated With Practice?, Peter Wiens, Kaavonia Hinton, Ami Pritchard

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

Teacher leadership (TL) is recognized as vital to creating effective schools with demonstrated benefits to principals, teachers, and students. Teacher leadership is defined in this study as teachers leading from within and beyond the classroom in both formal and informal capacities. TL can take the form of a variety of behaviours such as professional learning, the leading of professional development, collaboration, shared leadership, and equity leadership. While there are commonalities, the practical applications of TL can vary greatly from context to context. Even within specific policy contexts, TL can vary from school to school. This article analyzed the responses of …

The Perceptions Of Training And Development And Emotional Intelligence Among Virtual Leaders In Public And Private Institutions Of Higher Education, Ryan J. Trautweiler

Theses and Dissertations

This applied qualitative dissertation explored virtual leadership in higher education, examining virtual leaders' perceptions of training and development and emotional intelligence. Using an inductive research approach, data were collected through semistructured interviews and a questionnaire distributed via Google Forms to eight virtual leaders from public and private higher education institutions. Data were analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) and thematic analysis to identify key patterns and themes. Findings revealed distinctions between public and private institutions. In public institutions, training and development focused on faculty preparedness, resourcefulness in overcoming limitations, and its impact on student engagement. In private institutions, training was …

S-Methyl Cysteine Sulfoxide And Its Potential Role In Human Health: A Scoping Review, Caroline R. Hill, Alex Haoci Liu, Lyn Mccahon, Liezhou Zhong, Armaghan Shafaei, Lois Balmer, Joshua R. Lewis, Jonathan M. Hodgson, Lauren C. Blekkenhorst

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Higher intakes of cruciferous and allium vegetables are associated with a lower risk of cardiometabolic-related outcomes in observational studies. Whilst acknowledging the many healthy compounds within these vegetables, animal studies indicate that some of these beneficial effects may be partially mediated by S-methyl cysteine sulfoxide (SMCSO), a sulfur-rich, non-protein, amino acid found almost exclusively within cruciferous and alliums. This scoping review explores evidence for SMCSO, its potential roles in human health and possible mechanistic action. After systematically searching several databases (EMBASE, MEDLINE, SCOPUS, CINAHL Plus Full Text, Agricultural Science), we identified 21 original research articles meeting our inclusion criteria. These …

Equity Leadership In Independent Schools In Seattle, Nimisha Joshi

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

No abstract provided.

Mindful Or Mindless? How And Why Virtual Communities Fail To Contain Information Pollution Across Different Disasters, Mahmudul Hasan, Varqa Shamsi Bahar, Cecil Eng Huang Chua, Michael David Myers

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

People visit virtual communities to find trusted information (i.e. verifiable, accurate and reliable information) during disasters. Virtual communities are open spaces where people interact and share information. However, virtual communities often suffer from information pollution (including too much information and false or contradictory information) which decreases peoples' ability to find trusted information. Oddly, some virtual communities will develop useful practices for combatting information pollution during one disaster but subsequently fail to effectively employ the same practices or adapt them in subsequent disasters. We conducted a longitudinal, exploratory cross-case study to better understand how and why this occurs. Using the lenses …