Digital Commons Network^™

Effects Of Project Rebound On Reducing Recidivism, Lisa A. Ravega, Ashley Van Mouwerik

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Background: Recidivism is the tendency of justice-involved individuals to relapse into criminal behavior and remains a critical challenge within the justice system. Objective: This proposed research aims to assess the effectiveness of campus-based programs to assist individuals with enrollment and success in higher education, specifically Project Rebound. Project Rebound is a campus-based re-entry program that assists justice-involved college students in obtaining their educational goals through such support as enrollment and counseling services. Methods: The proposed research suggests utilizing a quasi-experimental non-equivalent comparison group design to examine the impact of Project Rebound on reducing recidivism among justice-involved college students at California …

Evaluating Trauma-Informed Care In Higher Education For Hispanics, Latino/A/X/E, And Afro-Latinos Impacted By Adverse Childhood Experiences, Daylene A. Medina, Lilian Grijalva

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Background: Henshaw (2022) discusses the importance of trauma-informed approaches in higher education institutes by implementing culturally responsive policy, research, and practice to support students impacted by trauma. However, less is known about how effective trauma-informed care is and its impact on the educational outcomes of racial and ethnic minority students, specifically Hispanics, Latino/a/x/e, and Afro-Latinos students in community colleges. Past studies have excluded Hispanics, Latino/a/x/e, and Afro-Latinos from research due to insignificant participation and risk re-traumatization. Objective: This evaluative study aims to determine effectiveness of trauma-informed care for adult (18 and older) Moreno Valley College students in their last academic …

Development In Comprehensive Onboarding Training And Professional Development For Online Adjunct Faculty, Leslie R. Stover

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Hiring online adjunct faculty in higher education continues to grow, encompassing nearly half of the overall faculty population. As four-year institutions rely on the benefits of adjunct faculty, they must also invest in their orientation and continuous development. Existing literature confirms the varied approaches to supporting adjunct faculty, deficiency in coordinated programming, and reveals a lack of understanding in adjunct faculty's perception of training delivered. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, this study explored the gap between the onboarding and professional development an institution provides and the online adjunct faculty’s perception of its effectiveness. The research questions explored the lived experiences …

Predicting And Forecasting University Rankings In The Uae Using Machine Learning, Fatma Ibrahim Ahmad

Theses

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) play a vital role in advancing knowledge economies, and institutional rankings are increasingly used as global benchmarks of academic performance and reputation. In the context of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), enhancing institutional competitiveness in global rankings aligns with national strategies such as UAE Vision 2030 and the Centennial Plan 2071. This research applies machine learning (ML) techniques to develop predictive models that forecast institutional ranking outcomes, enabling data-driven planning and continuous academic improvement. The study utilizes a dataset compiled from the QS World University Rankings (2020–2024), cross- referenced against the institutional listings maintained by the …

Enhancing Self-Efficacy For Engagement With Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Initiatives: Evaluation Of A Seven-Day Immersive Pilot Program In A College Of Education, Health, And Human Sciences, Jennifer M. Jabson Tree, Stefanie Benjamin, Dorian L. Mccoy Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Colleges of health, human sciences, and education are often administratively organized to include a diverse array of human sciences departments that share roots in social justice and a commitment to advancing equity and inclusion. Despite espoused commitments to equity and inclusion, they frequently struggle to achieve the changes necessary for advancing equity, and inclusion principles across policies, practices, procedures, and units. We implemented and evaluated a 7-day, total immersion, 56-h, educational program entitled the “Social Justice Institute” (SJI) for two cohorts of faculty, staff, and administrators to develop self-efficacy to intervene in systemic oppression in their academic units. SJI delivered …

Transforming Education With Ai: An Exploratory Study Of Faculty Insights On Chatgpt's Opportunities And Risks, Sobaih Abu Elnasr E., Mohamed Naceur Mahjoubi, Riadh Brini, Amer A. N. A. N. Al-Qutaish

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

Objective: This study explores ChatGPT adoption in higher education, highlighting both its benefits and perceived risks. Method: This research adopts an exploratory and qualitative approach to deeply analyse instructors’ perceptions regarding ChatGPT adoption in higher education. This approach is implemented via semi-structured interviews with 25 faculty members from different nationalities. Result: The findings reveal that ChatGPT improves academic performance, research activities, and training, but also raises concerns about technology dependency, ethical implications, and diminished human interaction. Conclusion: Faculty members emphasize the need for thoughtful and balanced integration of this technology to maximize its benefits while minimizing its potential risks.

Jessica "Decky" Alexander, Oral History Interview, 2025, Kat Hacanyan

Oral Histories

Decky Alexander is a professor of drama and theater education and the Director of Engage@EMU. Alexander has become a well known community member across Washtenaw County through her theater education programs and work with organizations like the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor. She is the founder of CloseUp theater troupe and has been another long time supporter and board member of the Center for Jewish Studies at EMU. In this interview, Alexander talks about her Jewish upbringing in Chicago, the strengths of a good community network, and why having a center like this is especially important at EMU.

Grounding Ai Use In Learning Science: A Conversation With Steven Miller, Steven Miller, Lieven Demeester

CASTLe: Collection of Articles on Scholarship for Teaching and Learning

In this insightful interview, SMU Associate Provost (Teaching and Learning Innovation) Lieven Demeester and Professor Emeritus of Information Systems Steven Miller discuss the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in teaching and learning, emphasising the importance of grounding AI use in the fundamentals of learning science. They explore the evolving role of education in the context of AI advancements, highlighting the need for educators to focus on the cognitive aspects of learning, such as goal-directed practice and feedback. They also address the potential of AI as a collaborative agent in group projects and the importance of maintaining accountability and quality control …

Full Issue 17(2) 2025

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

Institutionalizing Normality: Disability, Productivity, And Higher Education, Ashley Dirzis

Student Theses

This thesis examines how capitalism and neuronormative domination shape the structures and values of academic institutions, affecting faculty, students, and research subjects alike. By privileging productivity, conformity, and efficiency in the pursuit of income, universities often marginalize those who diverge from normative standards of thinking, behavior, and embodiment, particularly disabled individuals. Drawing on Marta Russell’s Disability and Capitalism and the shaping of disability by capitalist systems, Robert Chapman’s notion of the "Empire of Normality" and Jay Dolmage’s concept of the retrofit from Academic Ableism, this paper analyzes how academia reinforces ableist norms. It explores the realities and barriers that …

Deadtime In The Vale Of Soul-Making: Hermeneutics, Humanization, And Higher Education In Prison, Dale Michael Brown

Dissertations

This body of work examines higher education with and for justice-involved people from a descriptive, theoretical, and empirical perspective—pulling together multiple disciplines and employing different methodologies from the humanities and social sciences. The investigation is written from a philosophical perspective via educational foundations and a social science perspective via qualitative research, including an examination of carceral higher education’s connections to teaching and experiential learning. This approach reflects the interdisciplinary nature of both the author’s degree program and the topic itself, which (as a field of academic inquiry) is part theoretical and part empirical (both qualitative and quantitative). The papers in …

Ai Responsibilization: Shifting The Burden Of Academic Integrity, Daniel A. Cryer

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Because AI text generators like ChatGPT give students unprece-dented power to outsource their work, concerns about academic integrity are escalating among instructors. This essay suggests that the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence in teaching and learning dramatically shifts the burden of academic integrity, typically shared between teachers and students, onto students. The concept of responsibilization, a defining feature of neoliberal societies in which individuals become responsible for costs and tasks once shouldered collectively, is a useful lens through which to view this new reality. Rather than policing students’ work, educators should recognize the new responsibilities conferred onto students by learning …

Pull Up A Chair, Deep Blue: Ai In Honors Education, Betsy Greenleaf Yarrison

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Generative AI is the latest in a succession of technologies that allow us to do with machines what we used to have to do by hand. This essay argues that the elements of teaching in honors that can be automated probably should be and that it is the role of honors faculty to teach students how to distinguish superior thought from mediocre thought, good questions from great ones, and solid supporting evidence from weak or biased counterparts. Large learning models (LLMs) only collate what is already known and cannot teach thinking. As an information delivery system, AI can narrow the …

News From The Front: How To Win The Ai War, Christine Haverington

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

While artificial intelligence is currently and justifiably a hot topic among scholars and university administrators, students are way ahead of the curve in terms of its use and application. Calling for educators to stop trying to catch AI “cheaters,” this essay provides evidence from honors and other classroom observations, student research on peer and faculty usage and attitudes, course evaluations, and external sources to demonstrate how and why generative AI can be creatively and effectively incorporated into teaching. Toward this end, practical pedagogical strategies are shared describing teaching modalities and innovative curricular design, avoiding the cognitive degradation of students, and …

Another “Tone Test” Moment: Authenticity, Ai, And The Admission Essay, Peter Tschirhart

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Debates about “authenticity” are not new but cyclical, and insights from music history and performance studies can illuminate how we evaluate student work in an age of machine collaboration. At the turn of the twentieth century, Edison’s “tone tests” blurred the line between human and machine by staging performances in which audiences were challenged to distinguish live singers from phonographic recordings. These events inaugurated a century-long debate about authenticity in music, one that resonates strongly today as educators confront new challenges posed by large language models (LLMs). Drawing on Auslander’s (2023) account of liveness, authenticity in writing—like authenticity in music—can …

Honoring Intellectual Risk-Taking: A Dialogue, Julie Bowman, Alexis Teagarden

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Presented in the form of a Socratic dialogue, this piece considers what honors courses should strive to teach. Bowman, an experienced instructor of both non-honors and honors classes, notes that while universities’ honors colleges prize intellectual curiosity, her honors students might not. Teagarden, the other interlocutor and a writing program administrator, wonders whether curiosity is a sufficient end goal for honors or any teaching. The speakers turn to whether curiosity or courage is the more important virtue to instill, explore a classical difference between courage and audacity, and then discuss whether and how courage could be taught.

Connecting Classroom And Community: Building Ecosystems For Meaningful Alternative Breaks, Chelsea Redger-Marquardt, Jean A. Patterson

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This essay presents best practices in experiential learning via an alternative break program at a large public research university. In this interpretative qualitative study, authors analyze on-trip reflective blogs of students participating in an immersive alternative spring break program focused on food and shelter insecurity in Washington, D.C. (n = 11). A sensemaking/sensegiving theoretical framework is applied to explore the role of program partnering between student affairs (alternative break) and honors (coursework). Findings suggest that special care and attention be given when creating strong, direct-service experiences through reciprocal community partnerships, creating spaces for reflection during the immersive experience, and …

Generative Ai And The Honors Thesis: A Rhetorical Framework For Gai Policy, Pedagogy, And Equity, Sean Chadwick

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

This article offers a rhetorical framework for understanding how honors students engage with the capstone thesis following the emergence of generative AI (GAI) tools. Author reviews the nature of the honors thesis and analyzes some rhetorical models for thinking about GAI and literacy before offering a heuristic framework identifying four interdependent skill categories—writing, social, executive, and subject matter—that shape students’ thesis work. Drawing on findings from an interview study, this framework clarifies how GAI tools interface with existing thesis practices and pain points, allowing honors practitioners to better articulate our values, evaluate use cases, and craft GAI-informed policy. As a …

Acculturation Experiences Of International Students In The U.S. Cacrep-Accredited Counselor Education Programs: Challenges, Support Systems, And Systemic Barriers, Nargiza Amirova

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

International students significantly enrich U.S. counselor education and supervision programs by contributing diverse cultural perspectives that inspire teaching, research, and professional growth. Yet, these students often face complex challenges including cultural adjustment, language barriers, social isolation, and the academic demands of counseling academic programs that impact their educational outcome s and psychological well-being. Systemic barriers, such as visa restrictions and institutional unawareness, further complicate their experiences. This study explored acculturation experiences of international students enrolled in CACREP-accredited counselor education programs in the United States.

Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), in-depth interviews were conducted with seven international students on J1/F1 visas, …

Digital Access, Digital Skills, And Academic Success: Rethinking Digital Capital In Higher Education, Nicholas Boon

Honors Thesis

Recent scholarship has suggested that “digital capital” (DC), encompassing digital access and competency, may play a critical role in processes of social reproduction. However, there has been limited scholarship exploring this concept’s empirical utility. Especially within higher education, where increasing digitalization may exacerbate inequality by disadvantaging students with low DC. Using a survey of 239 students at two institutions of higher education in the Midwest, this study examines the usefulness of the DC concept for understanding unequal educational outcomes in the contemporary university context. This study is among the first to empirically investigate the relationship between sociodemographic factors, DC accumulation, …

The Impact Of Artificial Intelligence On Quality Of Higher Education, Pragati K. Rouniyar

Honors Thesis

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is redefining higher education, captivating scholars with its promise to personalize learning and streamline institutions. However, underneath this assurance exists a network of ethical challenges, disparities in equity, and inquiries regarding academic integrity that require our focus. In pursuit of this goal, this research employs a mixed-methods strategy—through the implementation of surveys and semi-structured interviews—to investigate the transformative effects of AI on higher education, concentrating on its repercussions for teaching techniques, learning results, and institutional processes. This study’s findings indicate that AI can personalize educational experiences to meet individual needs, ease course administrative workload, and assist with …

Donna Winkelman, Oral History Interview, 2025, Kat Hacanyan

Oral Histories

Donna Winkelman is a member of the Center for Jewish Studies advisory board and a dedicated member of the local Jewish community. Originally from Huntington Woods, Winkelman first moved to Ann Arbor while attending U of M--where she later met her husband, Tom. She became part of the CJS team after learning about it from friend and neighbor, Decky Alexander. Both strong supporters of the center, Winkelman and her husband developed the Donna Winkelman and Thomas Easthope Endowed Scholarship in Jewish Studies, which funds students taking travel courses. In this interview, she talks about finding community, her experiences in the …

Sam Hirsch, Oral History Interview, 2025, Kat Hacanyan

Oral Histories

Sam Hirsch is Vice Chair of the EMU Foundation Board of Trustees and member of the Center for Jewish Studies advisory board. A retired pathologist from the University of Michigan, Hirsch first stepped into the EMU community while his daughter was a student here; and joined CJS in part because the founding director, Marty Shichtman, was her favorite professor. Since then, he's developed a greater appreciation for Eastern and the things that distinguish it from U of M. In this interview, Hirsch talks about his unexpected place at EMU as an outsider, what being on the advisory board means, and …

An "Exceedingly Persuasive Justification": Affirmative Action As Protected By The Free Exercise Clause, Kristin O'Bryan Pereira

Pepperdine Law Review

In 2023, the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard (SFFA) decision effectively outlawed the use of race-based affirmative action programs in higher education, holding that such programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, the current Supreme Court has been unprecedently friendly to claimants seeking Free Exercise Clause protection from government restraints on religious exercise. The intersection between these two areas of law has implications for a category of schools not explicitly considered in the SFFA decision—private, religious schools …

How To Grow Research Data Management Services And Uptake At A University, Janine Lockhart

Proceedings of the IATUL Conferences

The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), through the library, has ensured a functional environment to foster good Research Data Management (RDM) practices and services for the university community and in line with FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles to ensure transparency. The first RDM policy was approved in 2013 and subsequently reviewed, a research data repository, called eSango, powered by Figshare, was established in 2018 and a Data Management Plan (DMP) tool was developed and deployed. A preservation platform, Arkivum, was procured and a CoreTrustSeal submission is in process to secure and build trust in the research data …

Jeff Bernstein, Oral History Interview, 2025, Kat Hacanyan

Oral Histories

Jeff Bernstein is a professor of political science and Director of the Faculty Development Center at EMU. Bernstein, alongside colleagues like Decky Alexander and Pam Landau, is another one of the Center for Jewish Studies' earliest supporters. He started teaching classes at EMU while working on a graduate degree from U of M and was later hired as a full time faculty member. Up until its move off campus, Bernstein served as a board member for Hillel, alongside CJS Founding Director Marty Shichtman. He was appointed director of the Faculty Development Center in 2021 and continues to serve on the …

Artificial Intelligence In Higher Education Accreditation: Advancing Quality, Accessibility, And Special Education Inclusion, Jacques D. Singleton

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming higher education accreditation by enhancing quality assurance, accessibility, and inclusion. Traditional accreditation relies on manual evaluation, but AI- driven tools improve efficiency through realtime data analysis, predictive insights, and automation. This chapter explores AI’s role in adaptive learning, automated accessibility tools, and predictive analytics for student success, with a focus on supporting students with disabilities and ensuring compliance with accessibility standards. Ethical concerns, including bias, privacy, and transparency, are addressed to ensure AI complements human judgment. Through case studies and policy recommendations, this chapter provides a roadmap for institutions and accrediting bodies to integrate AI …

Balancing Minds And Missions: Mental Health, Wellness, And Accountability Leadership In Higher Education, Asher M. Pimpleton-Gray

Teacher Education Faculty Publications

Now, more than ever, mental health and wellness have become more dominant and pronounced threads within the fabric of our daily landscape. These terms have been emerging more often in conversations within nearly every industry, ranging from entertainment and sports to politics and law enforcement. Higher education is no different. With increased rates of difficulties regarding mental health and wellness it is even more important that colleges and universities create institutional structures and resources that can aid students, faculty and staff in tending to their mental and emotional wellbeing. In this chapter, implications for higher education leaders are explored and …

Bob Erlewine, Oral History Interview, 2025, Kat Hacanyan

Oral Histories

Bob Erlewine is the Director of the Center for Jewish Studies and professor of religious studies at EMU. In 2022, Erlewine left Illinois Wesleyan University and made his way to EMU as the newly appointed CJS Director. He is the second director of the center, taking over after Marty Shichtman's retirement. With a formal background in Jewish studies, he's been able to develop more academic curriculum and maintain strong community ties. In this interview, Erlewine talks about the things that eventually led him here, why having this center is particularly important at EMU, and where he hopes to guide it …

An Exploration Of Self-Efficacy Of Online Dissertation Chair-Only Faculty During The Mentoring Process: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study, Heather L. Strafaccia

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the self-efficacious experiences in the dissertation mentoring process for online dissertation chair-only faculty at higher education institutions in the United States. The theory guiding this study was self-efficacy theory. The central research question of this study was: What are the self-efficacious experiences of online dissertation chair-only faculty at higher education institutions in the United States? The examination of the self-efficacious experiences of 11 online dissertation chair-only faculty was explored utilizing a qualitative transcendental phenomenological design. Participating individuals must have held an online dissertation chair-only role in a higher education institution …