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Wmu International News Fall 2013, Haenicke Institute

WMU International News

In this issue:

• Empowering global engagement across the arts and sciences
• Employees abroad: Spanish immersion program expands understanding of international education
• Excelling in public relations key goal for Chinese twinning student
• WMU cultural anthropologist examines migration and lupus in Ecuador
• Ambiguity of borders continues to intrigue alumna from Berlin
• Visits to 35 countries complements global studies major
• Veteran administrator tapped to lead University’s international initiatives
• Future Iraqi engineer discovers the world at WMU
• WMU alumna coach points Japanese tennis player to Kalamazoo

An Assessment Of Public Outreach With Children And Educators Conducted By The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, Erica A. D’Elia

Masters Theses

Archaeological public outreach to children can be enhanced through collaboration with school educators. While archaeologists have begun to collaborate with local and descendant communities, they have been slow to engage in work with educators in the same manner. The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project provides the context for me to explore some of the current issues in public archaeology and the politics of education. My study was conducted to better understand the needs of both children and teachers. In my work with the archaeological summer camp for middle school students I seek to conceptualize how the camp enhances their educational …

Wmu International News Summer 2013, Haenicke Institute For Global Education

WMU International News

In this issue of WMU International News we are featuring the global engagement efforts of the faculty, students and staff of Western Michigan University’s Haworth College of Business. Under the direction of Dean Kay Palan, the college is a campus internationalization leader through a faculty dedicated to ensuring its graduates are real-world ready. The founding of a Global Business Center in spring of 2010 provided a focal point to support ongoing and expanded efforts to internationalize the curriculum, faculty and students through a broad range of opportunities, including research support, international internships, study abroad programs and scholarships, conferences, partnerships and …

Executive Functions And Social Interactions: Developing Social Scenarios, Mackenzie Waite

Masters Theses

The aim of this study was to develop a series of vignettes to form the basis for an assessment of executive functions (EFs) for 9 – 12 year old children. Although EFs are necessary for effective social communication and positive social interactions, currently, most EF assessments focus on impersonal activities. Little research exists that incorporates real-time processing using ecologically valid social scenarios. The current study aims to develop realistic scenarios that children could encounter in daily life. Ethnographic interviews were conducted with six participants, who worked in a school with 9-12 year old children, to gain their perspective on social …

Experiences Of Male Saudi Arabian International Students In The United States, Molly Elizabeth Heyn

Dissertations

Despite the increasing presence of Saudi Arabian international college students in American higher education, the literature regarding the experience of Saudi students in the United States is limited. This qualitative study explored and described the lived experiences of 9 male Saudi Arabian international college students studying in the United States. All the participants had studied in the United States for at least 2 years and were regularly admitted international students at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Moustakas’s (1994) phenomenological data analysis approach guided the data collection and analysis. The participants shared their lived experiences and the meaning of those …

Scholarworks At Wmu: Western's Scholarly Repository For Faculty Senate, Maira Bundza

ScholarWorks Repository Information

This was a presentation given at the May 16, 2013 Faculty Senate meeting to a representative from each department and administrators on the progress of the scholarly institutional repository at Western Michigan University. The focus was on ways the faculty could take advantage of the repository.

Missing The Mark: Why Modern Efforts To Better Schools Through Standardization Aren't Working, Richard Knowlton

Masters Theses

In the thirty years of school reform that began with A Nation at Risk, and continues today with A Race to the Top, the United States has rapidly increased its reliance on a standardized “one-size-fits-all” policy in regard to modern educational reform. This report provides a review of the empirical and statistical evidence to demonstrate that despite lofty and well-meaning intentions, modern reform has done nothing to significantly advance the quality of education in America, and in many cases have had a severe negative impact—blocking real reform. Many schools, especially those in low-income areas, have become glorified test-prep centers in …

How Schools Are Meeting State Legal Mandates To Provide Online Education, Mark Edward Deschaine

Dissertations

This study explores how public schools in Michigan are meeting the mandate to provide online learning opportunities as a condition of graduation. Michigan became the first state in the nation to mandate online learning opportunities as a condition for graduation with the passage of the Michigan Merit Curriculum. Although the mandate for compliance has been in effect since the 2010-2011 school year, there has been no systemic exploration as to how the mandate is affecting students, teachers, schools and systems.

This quantitative study surveyed administrators from all public traditional and charter high school programs across the state of Michigan. Using …

Climbing Into The Ivory Tower: A Look At Administrative Perspectives On Sexual Assault On The College Campus, Tasha Nichole Turner

Masters Theses

This study examines the attitudes of administrators about sexual violence on campus, as well as their knowledge of disciplinary policies and procedures to prevent and redress rape and sexual assault on campuses. This study begins the discussion about how administrators understand their current policies as well as the attitudes that may affect their understandings. I use Thematic Analysis to analyze responses to a series of open-ended questions surveying participants on their attitudes towards their universities policy and procedures for handling sexual assault. Findings suggest that the participants have overwhelming confidence in the established policies, the extent of their knowledge of …

Exploring The Experiences Of Counselor Educators Recognized For Their Excellence In Teaching, Allison E. Buller

Dissertations

Teaching is a deeply held value for counselor educators. Nonetheless, counselor education programs have historically provided only minimal attention to preparing doctoral students to actually teach. Furthermore, little of the research in the field of counselor education addresses the way counselor educators are prepared to teach. Using qualitative methods, this author engaged counselor educators identified as excellent teachers in an examination of meaningful experiences that contributed to their development as faculty in counselor education. By exploring experiences that prepared them to teach, excellent teachers provided the next generation of faculty members with rich descriptive strategies for teacher preparation in counselor …

Textbook Alternatives: Options For Students And Faculty, Michele D. Behr

Academic Leadership Academy

The issue of course textbooks continues to be a challenge at WMU as well as in all of higher education. For students the primary concern is textbook prices. Students often spend several hundred dollars per semester for required textbooks, at a time when tuition and other costs of attending college are increasing as well. Faculty are of course sensitive to student concerns and frustrations about textbook prices, but may be unaware of other options to cover the same content. Currently there is a movement toward Open Educational Resources (OER) which is a way to provide open access to high quality …

Raising The Stakes: Making Racial Diversity, Lonnie E. Duncan

Academic Leadership Academy

The Department of Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology (CECP) offers master’s and doctoral studies. There are two doctoral programs, Counseling Psychology and Counselor Education, and Master’s Degrees offered in Counseling Psychology and in Counselor Education. The Department and the Doctoral Program in Counseling Psychology has on average an active enrollment of 60 doctoral students. The Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program recognizes the importance of addressing the needs of an increasingly diverse society. To that end, the program strives to increase the educational opportunities of racial minorities and diverse student populations. The program is committed to recruiting and supporting diverse faculty and …