Human Resources Management Commons^™

My Choice Greens, Alina Zulfikarova, Amelia Mohr, Hesi Zhang, Ruiqi Huang, Sean Tatar, Yuhao Zhou, Zijun Zhou

School of Professional Studies

My Choice Programs for Independent Living is a nonprofit in Worcester, Massachusetts that helps individuals with special needs. In 2016, My Choice Programs added a branch to their organization called My Choice Greens. My Choice Greens is committed to growing fresh produce in their hydroponic farm. The profit generated from selling their vegetables is put back into direct programming for My Choice Programs. My Choice Greens is the first hydroponic farm in Worcester, but unfortunately not many people are aware of their program. Also, since they are a small nonprofit, they do not have sufficient funding or resources to market …

Optical Heritage Museum: An Interactive Touch, Connor Guerin, Ankur Halwai, Jinzhao Liu, Qi Liu, Yangjing Wang, Yashaswini Bharti

School of Professional Studies

Optical Heritage Museum (OHM) was established in 1983 with the aim to preserve, promote and display historical artifacts of the optics industry and educate all of its vital role optics has played in societal development. Over the years, the museum has grown in its physical space along with exhibit development to engage audiences in innovative, effective methods. Clark University’s School of Professional Studies department and curator of Optical Heritage Museum, Mr. Whitney’s Whitney, have establish a collaboration that has spanned over two semesters with the goal to support and aid in improving OHM. Our capstone group was assigned the task …

Leicester Research A Study In Effective Technology In Education, Jimeshkumar Chauhan, Anna Lakomy, Li Liu, Christina Mccarthy, Scott Mccarthy, Roman Pena, Emilie Smiley

School of Professional Studies

The LPS Research Team has been tasked with researching and recommending a technology plan for a new school that Leicester Public Schools is planning to build. In this paper, we present an overview of the our goals and our client’s goals, an introduction to industry trends, and discuss our findings based on research conducted via interviews with schools that have undergone similar projects. We also outline the conclusions drawn from this research and our analysis of the data we uncovered, and make specific recommendations for technology to be utilized in Leicester’s new school. Finally, we present a 3-part framework that …

Leicester Public Schools Information And Data Portal: Research And Recommendations, Yue Cen, Natalie Bonetti, Rashida Buchanan, Sathark Jain, Yuwei Wong

School of Professional Studies

The purpose of this project is to develop a strategy for the creation of a multifaceted portal to help with the organization and dissemination of information about the Leicester public school district. The functionality of this portal is to provide comparative financial, demographic, and academic data to other relative school districts in the area, both for the parents’ and for the city’s reference. It will be an examination into the best practices for creating a portal, both technological and aesthetic recommendations, as well as research into the value the publication of this data would provide for the parents of current …

Water In Worcester A Campaign For Public Fluoridation, Ryan Early, Xiao Gu, Yajing Huang, Lauren Meininger, Emma Phillips, Yao Su

School of Professional Studies

Water in Worcester: A Campaign for Public Fluoridation arose as a project from our sponsors, Chris Philbin, Vice President of Government Relations at UMass Memorial Health Care, and Joe O’Brien, former Worcester Mayor, Executive Director of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, and Clark University Adjunct Professor. Our goal has been to produce resources that will support the fight for fluoridation in the City of Worcester. Fluoridation has failed to pass in Worcester on four separate occasions, but Mr. Philbin and Mr. O’Brien believe that the time has come to try again.

In order to fluoridate Worcester’s water supply, the municipal …

Canine For Disabled Kids Awareness Campaign Research And Implementation Plan, Jiamin Gu, Kendall Harcourt, Chang Liu, Kiamu Liu, Jemmie Tejada

School of Professional Studies

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) service animals are: “dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities” ( ADA, 2015). On the other hand, emotional support animals are: “dogs that provide comfort and support in forms of affection and companionship for an individual suffering from various mental and emotional conditions.” In addition, an emotional support animal is not required to perform any specific tasks for a disability like service dogs are (Ibid).

The ADA limits the number of questions that can be asked to protect the privacy of utilizers. In fact, …

Life Can Change In The Blink Of An Eye Capstone, Christopher Rutigliano, Jillian Elalaoui, Kristin Humphrey, Phillip Gates, Mohamed Ndjikam, Highness Meena, Adam Menard, Spencer Pickney

School of Professional Studies

Texting and driving is one of the most widespread and uncontrollable of epidemics that have arose to prominence in the 21st century. Texting and driving is now a global issue, that has left nations across the road scrambling to implement new laws and preventative measures to stunt the increasing rates of accidents and fatalities caused by texting and driving. The severity of the issue has lead to a multitude of different entities ranging from domestic and foreign governments, cell phone and car manufacturers, cell phone carriers, and insurance agencies to seek new methods to prevent texting and driving. Determining the …

A Social Media Plan For The Changemakers’ Playground, Meng Cong, Ciara Kilian, Xinling Wang, Sumanth Wilson, Chenyu Yan

School of Professional Studies

The purpose of this project was to create a social media plan for the Changemakers’ Playground campaign. The Changemakers’ Playground is a website thought up by our client, Sarah Lange, whereby ordinary individuals doing extraordinary things in their community can be celebrated for the work they are doing. Each person featured on the website, also known as a Changemaker, was interviewed by Sarah and that interview was split into three videos to be posted on the Changemakers’ Playground website throughout the week they are being featured. In short, our task was to create the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram content to …

Surprisingly Open Or Openly Surprised? That Is The Question; Using Surprise Experiences To Increase Openness To Experience And Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Anneke Veenendaal-De Kort

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Using Surprise Experiences to Increase Openness to Experience and Tolerance of Ambiguity

In the fast-changing world in which we are currently living, we constantly come across situations and problems that we have not encountered before. An open mind and the ability to tolerate ambiguity are important skills in uncertain times. People who embrace the unpredictable can develop their resilience and flexibility. Surprisologists Luna and Renninger (2015) have discovered that a great way of dipping into unpredictability is through surprise. For my Master’s Project, I designed experiences that transform people’s openness and tolerance for ambiguity through surprise. This paper begins with …

Implementing Agile Methodology Techniques In Automobile Industry, Nikhil Kranthi Datrika

Dissertations and Theses

Automotive industries have continued to expand, as they cut on costs by regulating efficiency, grow and make profits. The factors that have continued to change the industry include marketplace growth, outsourcing for product development, customers demanding for improved reliability, development of human-vehicle software and have continued to change the automotive industry. As a result, companies have continued to face numerous challenges to manage the factors. The challenges include managing volatility, experiencing massive uncertainty, as well as reduced predictability of future businesses. Other challenges include handling a complex and interconnected industry and the need to form joint ventures and maintain successful …

Business Perspective E-Banking Systems In India, Divya Nalluri

Dissertations and Theses

The paper seeks to explore how internet or e-banking has improvised the efficiency and adequacy in the banking sector within a very short span of time, Research Design/Process in Financial Organization, Methods of Data Collection, taking into consideration the trends, challenges of E-banking, the security measures and propound a solution that can root out the fraud in e-banking.

I would like to thank my professor Dr. Stephen Onu for all the guidance he is providing me for the completion of the paper. I would also want to thank Professor Prof. John Clark for helping me out with the research with …

Role Of Effective Quality Risk Management In Drug Safety Project, Bhawna Sharma

Dissertations and Theses

Identifying risk is one of the key topics of discussion in project planning and update meetings. Project managers have to identify and manage different risks at various levels of projects. These risks must be managed and eradicated in the effective and structured manner to perform effective quality risk management and thus leading to adequate project management. The research investigates the potential root cause of the quality risk management issues using tools such as the fishbone diagram (Ishikawa), 5-Whys, FTA etc. which could remedy this situation. An effectiveness check measure can also be implemented after applying corrective/preventive actions to ensure that …

Reasons For Success And Failure Of Projects, Tamunogbenye Dago

Dissertations and Theses

This paper discusses information from at least ten peer-reviewed project management related articles on project success and failure. The articles provide information on the challenges faced in global projects. This paper will address the link between infrastructure, culture and project outcome.

Regardless of the chosen methodology, there are many possible reasons for project failure, partial success and total success, the articles have discussed different factors which could be a reason or a partial reason for the outcome of a project.

Agile methodology is becoming increasingly popular and utilized on large and complex projects. Large projects that lack clarity in some …

Using Iop As A Mechanism For Project Team Management, Maryam Selah Varzi

Dissertations and Theses

This project investigates the application of Industrial-Organizational Psychology (IOP) in project management. Project managers are responsible for creating effective teams and building a proper environment to communicate, collaborate, and deliver their tasks. Factors such as lack of trust, miscommunications, and personal conflicts lead to dysfunctional teams which can ultimately fail a project. Thus, understanding the behavioral characteristics of the team members and realizing the psychological principles of the interpersonal relationships in organizational settings would significantly help project managers. The purpose of this project is to find out whether project managers can exploit IOP for effective team management. By an exhaustive …

Managing Business Process Transformation Projects Using Contextual Hybrid Agile Methodology, John Tu

Dissertations and Theses

Business and business processes never cease to change, and this is especially true with today’s accelerating pace of changing business environment. Executives and project teams in both traditional and Agile organizations across industries have been increasingly motivated to find a flexible project management methodology that can work well and can be readily customized in the context of each of their own organization.

This thesis seeks to first abstract the concept and practices of the Agile methodology by examining the hallmarks of both traditional and Agile project management through comparison. It then constructs a contextualized model by identifying key characteristics of …

Adopt Agile Methodology For Building Wealth Management Platform Building, Mandar Shripad Kulkarn

Dissertations and Theses

Agile software development is becoming very important software development methodology in the IT world because it is iterative and its agility. This research shows how the agile methodology helps to deploy the project smoothly by saving time and money. This research also shows the benefits of adopting agile than following traditional procedure. The result of the research would help to adopt and implement the agile methodology and would help to achieve the business goals.

Middle Managers Working Beyond Senior Management’S Expectations: A Phenomenological Study Of The Managed Healthcare Industry In Southern California, Gerald Dugas

Dissertations

Purpose. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how middle managers and senior managers working in the managed healthcare industry in southern California perceive what factors motivated middle managers to work beyond senior management’s expectations.

Methodology. A qualitative phenomenology study was chosen because it allowed the researcher to acquire a firm understanding of the nature of everyday lived experiences. This methodology was used to capture the meaning of experiences that motivated middle managers to work beyond expectations. The researcher conducted semi-structured, face-to-face interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experience of the participants. Participants …

Identification Of Right Leadership Style For Agile Teams, Aashik Sekharan

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this research is to identify trends within leadership techniques applied in agile projects that lead to project success. Certain motivation and productivity drivers need to be defined in order to understand how to evaluate key project success metrics. My research approach involved reviewing papers that studied theoretical leadership frameworks in decision-making, motivation and information sharing. The methodology applied includes creating a mock project scenario, in which two leadership styles (authoritarian vs. servant) will be tested to understand the relationship between leadership, project performance and team morale. The project will have two team leaders applying the leadership style …

Agile Adoption In Investment Banks, Jiayin Liang, Suman Shekhar

Dissertations and Theses

Many companies and organizations, regardless of industries, countries, size, and cultures, are in the process of transiting from traditional project management methods to Agile. When it comes to financial industry, today’s investment banks, face more unstable market conditions, faster changes of worldwide politics, economies and technologies, stricter regulations, and greater pressure to meet customers’ requirements and sustain revenue growth. Investment banks are usually full-service global financial institutions, which provide advisory and financing banking services, as well as sales, market making, and research on financial products. Therefore, investment banks are in great need to transform from traditional PM concepts to Agile. …

The Effects Of Coworker Relationships, Involvement, And Supportiveness On Job Satisfaction And Performance, Stephen F. Occhipinti, Nicholas M. Rollo, Eric J. Klimowicz

Student Publications

Past research has indicated that relationships, involvement, and supportiveness have an effect on job satisfaction and performance. A study was done on Gettysburg College students who have had experience with group work. Sixty-four (29 males, 35 females) Gettysburg College students were used as participants in the study. The study was split fairly evenly between sophomores, juniors, and seniors. To start, the survey included two demographic questions: gender and class year. Participants completed an online survey about the relationships among group mates, group involvement, and group support experience. Questions about the overall satisfaction and performance were also included. A correlational design …

Impact Of Motivation On Project Teams’ Performance In Information Technology, Ramu Karanam

Dissertations and Theses

Sufficient motivation is a critical ingredient for any organization to derive optimal performances from their workforce. Project teams are an integral part of the efficient conduction of an information and communication technology company’s core operations. This study is dictated towards the evaluation of the main factors that influence the level of motivation portrayed by team members of information technology project teams. Through a comprehensive literature review, the research was able to uncover insightful trends in motivation patterns among project team members that might be useful to project managers. The findings of this research conclude that a project team manager can …

Implementing Agile Lean In Telecom Industry, Swapnil Narvekar

Dissertations and Theses

With the introduction of new technologies, there has been a huge competition in the Telecom industry to maintain the customer base and stay at the top of the competition. In order to retain the customer base, the telecom companies are required to provide a high quality of service to its customers. Agile Lean practices have been implemented in the manufacturing industries for decades and are well known for eliminating waste, reducing the delivery time of the products and services and at the same time enhance the quality of services provided to its customers. This research paper aims to study the …

Relationship Between Leadership Styles And Job Satisfaction In Luxury Retail Project, Cuiping Zhang

Dissertations and Theses

This is a study on the impact of leadership styles on the employee job satisfaction in the luxury retail project management industry. The purpose of conducting this research is to identify the impact of different types of leadership styles on the employee job satisfaction towards the organization. This research examines major leadership styles, which may be summarized as autocratic leadership, democratic leadership laissez-faire leadership, transactional leadership and transformative leadership styles. The proposed research solution for this study is a qualitative correlational study. In this study specially designed questionnaires will be used to collect the primary data from targeting population which …

Scrum In Construction Industry To Improve Project Performance In Design Phase, Yingchen Liu

Dissertations and Theses

As building technologies dramatically developed over the past several decades, construction project delivery methods evolved tremendously. Since the Renaissance, the fields of architecture and construction have been regarded as complex art forms. Today, both disciplines are regarded more as technical fields meant to improve human functional, technological, and practical needs. Therefore, the management of a project plays a more critical role in contemporary construction projects.

Over the several decades, there has been no significant change in the way of construction projects management changes. However, client requirements and expectations are constantly evolving. Because of this disconnect, traditional construction management practices cannot …

Implementing Project Management Principles In Digital Advertising Age, Yuanqing Jiang

Dissertations and Theses

Digital advertising is a rapidly evolving industry in the US, which only has a short history of 20 years. As the demand for brands and advertisers to accurately target their audiences at the right time has increased, projects have been gradually featured as the most critical revenue-generating factor for companies in the advertising industry to survive. The advertising ecosystem, which includes agencies, technology vendors, media partners, brands and publishers, has developed as a complex system which requires efficient project management methodologies to meet the increasing demands of the industry.

This thesis aims to discuss the main problem for a lot …

Ua35/3 Memoranda, Wku Provost

WKU Administration Documents

2018 memoranda issued by the WKU Provost to facutly & staff via email.

• University College Reorganization
• Dean, College of Education & Behavioral Sciences
• Interim Registrar Appointment
• Associate Provost for Global Learning & International Affairs
• New Admissions Standards
• Mahurin Honors College Appointment
• RAMP & Open Forum

Ua8 It Security Bulletins, Wku Information Technology

WKU Administration Documents

IT Security Bulletins issued in 2018 to faculty and staff via email.

• Ciampa, Mark. Protecting Your Critical Email Password
• Alteryx Data Breach
• Securing the Human
• New to WKU?
• Spam
• University Policy
• Personnel Changes
• Password Extortion
• Facebook Messenger Scam
• Privacy
• Phishing

Graduate Admissions Recruitment Project, Kevin Anderson, Chiemela Dike, Yixin Du, Arvinder Kaur, Amanda Popp, Huizhong Yang

School of Professional Studies

In this project, several comparison schools were interviewed and disclosed to have used search lists to find candidates. The organizations that have valuable search lists which may be of good use for the School of Professional Studies include Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). By choosing criteria such as demographics, location, academic performance, educational history provided by search lists, we believe there are many quality candidates for SPS programs. However, as we further investigated the functionality and cost-efficiency or return of investment of GRE search list, we spotted many uncertainties and few solid and successful …

Worcester Center For Crafts: A Transition To Online Sales, Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, Alberta Yamoah

School of Professional Studies

The Clark University School of Professional Studies created a capstone team consisting of Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Iana Matkovskaia, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, and Alberta Yamoah to assist Worcester Center for Crafts (WCC) with the launch of their new online store. Worcester Center for Crafts wanted to showcase their beautiful American handmade crafts on an online platform, Shopify, in order to increase their sales and expand their market reach. The capstone team created a charter that outlined the scope of the project and what the team would deliver to WCC by the end of the project. The team agreed to …

Audubon Data Project Final Report, Askhat Beygenov, Valinur Kutlambetov, Shrikant Patel, Phoebe Roberts, Ulfat Sayyed, Shriram Sivaraman

School of Professional Studies

The Audubon Data Project was initiated as a Clark University Capstone project. The project’s client, Mass Audubon’s Shaping the Future of Your Community program, had identified a need to improve their data management methods and make better use of their data. The Capstone team, composed of Clark University graduate students, met with the client regularly to review the current state of the data and potential improvements to be made. The process began with a data review. During the review we worked with the client to explicitly define the purposes and requirements of the data, the current process for updating and …