Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

Theatre As An Intervention For Empathy Development Among Undergraduate Students, Jonathan Stewart

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Empathy is the ability feel into, or put oneself in the place of another. It is the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes. Studies have shown that this ability is decreasing among today’s college students and on the rise as a desired trait for today’s leaders. This dilemma provides an interesting opportunity to explore how institutions of higher education can help develop the leaders of tomorrow by increasing empathy among students. Specifically, this research explores theatre as an intervention for empathy development among college students.

Theatre, as a program of study, is unique within the college experience in that …

Equity Issues In Dual Enrollment Programs: Exploring African American Community College Students’ Perceptions Of Dual Enrollment, Kristen Wagner Rarig

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

Dual enrollment has been shown to increase post-secondary student success outcomes across a variety of measures such as retention, grade point average, and four-year attainment (Allen & Dadgar, 2012; Hoffman, 2012, Pretlow & Wathington, 2014). In Virginia, access to community colleges among students of color has increased from 32.3% in 2008 to 42.7% in 2018 (SCHEV, 2019-a). Despite these gains, far fewer African American students than White students participate in dual enrollment in Virginia, which has significant implications for their future success in post-secondary education. This study examined the experiences that influenced African American students’ choice to participate in dual …

A Delphi Study: Retention Of Women In Leadership Positions In Stem Disciplines, Kimberly T. Luthi

Educational Foundations & Leadership Theses & Dissertations

This Delphi study explores barriers and support systems that impact women’s professional advancement in STEM disciplines. There were 20 expert panelists who committed to participate in the study and 15 panelists completed the four rounds of the study after attrition. The panelists were selected based on specific criteria including educational background, diversity within STEM disciplines, experience as a former or current female administrator who served at two-year degree offering institutions, leadership and membership within women’s advocacy organizations in STEM and related workforce education fields, and depth of knowledge and understanding of the research questions. Through the four rounds of the …

Asian American Community College Presidents: An Asiancrit Analysis Of Their Approaches To Leadership, Johnny Hu

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

This study explores the experiences of five current and former Asian American community college presidents including their career transitions into executive leadership using an AsianCrit analysis for framing their narrative experiences. The literature review situates the experiences of Asian American community college presidents in various contexts by providing a brief summary of several historical moments and political movements that have shaped the realities they currently confront as higher education leaders. This study employed a Critical Race Theory (CRT) approach to counter storytelling to analyze the participants’ narratives both individually and thematically based on their social identities as Asian Americans and …

Reframing Internationalization: Faculty Beliefs And Teaching Practices, Marco Tulluck

Ed.D. Dissertations in Practice

This study applies Critical Race Theory as a critical lens to gain a clearer understanding of highly racialized policies and teaching practices around international student engagement in US higher education. The findings help to inform higher education leaders of how to support faculty to foster more inclusive and affirming learning environments for international students of color and other diverse student populations.

This mixed methods study employed a modified version of the Colorblind and Multicultural Ideology of STEM Faculty Measure as well as focus group interviews to gain a more complex understanding of how university faculty members’ beliefs align with colorblind …

“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Kazimierz Dabrowski’s psychological theory of positive disintegration is a lesser known theory of personality development that offers an alternative critical perspective of literature. It provides a framework for the characterization of postmodern protagonists who move beyond heroic indoctrination to construct their own self-organized, autonomous identities. Ezra Pound’s The Cantos captures the speaker-poet’s extensive process of inner conflict, providing a unique opportunity to track the progress of the hero’s transformation into a personality, or a man. American Gods is a more fully realized portrayal of a character who undergoes the complete paradigmatic collapse of positive disintegration and deliberate self-derived self-revision …

Methods Of Teaching Latin: Theory, Practice, Application, Morgan A. Nicoulin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this project, I present a way to effectively blend modern theories of language acquisition and the contemporary practice of teaching Latin. I intend to demonstrate that a curriculum is able to balance both traditional and innovative philosophies by adapting Second Language Acquisition Theory’s idealized way to learn a language to fit the realistic limitations of the classroom. I begin with a discussion of the history of language pedagogy, focusing on Latin’s influence on the study of language learning from antiquity to present. Next, I present the key topics in SLA and the practical implications of this research for today’s …

Seeking Success: A Case Study Of African American Male Retention At A Two-Year College, Richard Latroy Moss

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a problem in higher education in the United States. African American students, specifically males, are not being retained and graduating. This problem is even more evident for students that attend two year colleges. African American male students lag behind white males, Hispanic males and African American females, in retention and graduation rates. This problem has caught the attention of many leaders. Policy makers and college leaders are among those who seek to understand the why and find solutions to the challenge of African American male student retention at two year colleges, as two year colleges are becoming the …

Remaking Identities, Reworking Graduate Study : Stories From First-Generation-To-College Rhetoric And Composition Phd Students On Navigating The Doctorate., Ashanka Kumari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation responds to the decreasing number of first-generation-to-college doctorates in the humanities and the limited scholarship on graduate students in Rhetoric and Composition. Scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have long been invested in discussions of academic and/or disciplinary enculturation, yet these discussions primarily focus on undergraduate students, with few studies on graduate students and far fewer on the doctoral students training to become the next wave of a profession. In this dissertation, I argue that if we engage intersectional identities as assets in the design of doctoral programs, access to higher education and academic enculturation can become more manageable …

Positionality Matters: School Choice Decisions Based On Ethnographic Accounts Of African American Parents, Dr. Stacy L. Thomas

Dissertations

This research delves into experiences with reasoning and selected criteria for choosing the right school for their children. Beginning with a series of vignettes that assist with recognition of parental empowerment, this research archives acknowledgement of their own positionality when it comes to making life changing decisions. As selected parents of African American children grapple with the strategic balance and possibilities of educational outlets, family and finances, they offer ethnographic accounts of their successes and failures with school choice. Individual accounts of parental school choice decisions posing as data ascertained from interviews provided research that explored the critical frequencies and …

Promoting Persistence Among Lgbtq Community College Students, Gregory D. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

A vast amount of research has been devoted to the persistence and retention of college students since the 1970s. Recent research has focused on targeted populations such as first year students, racially minoritized, students with low social economic status and students at the developmental/remedial level. Nevertheless, limited scholarly research has been conducted on the persistence and retention of another category of students, sexual and gender minorities. This qualitative study examined the experiences that promote persistence among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) community colleges students. Interviews with eight LGBTQ students from three community colleges in the state of Illinois …

Gender And Work: An Analysis Of Mid-Level Women Administrators In Student Affairs, Eboni Turnbow

Wayne State University Dissertations

Research has examined the experiences of women faculty in higher education. However, the experiences of non-faculty mid-level women administrators within higher education continues to be understudied. Women are often the majority in non-faculty positions, yet men dominate senior level positions. Instead, women are frequently clustered in entry and mid-level administrative roles within student affairs divisions or departments, often with limited access to career ladders. Drawing on the theoretical framework of gendered work organizations, this study explores the experiences of women working in non-academic departments, and analyzes how these experiences impact their career advancement at four-year public universities. More specifically, I …

Using Spanish In English-Language Spaces: Identifying Bilingual Composition Students' Translanguaging Practices, Maria Isela Maier

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation is a qualitative study that uses ethnographic research methods to examine the translanguaging practices of bilingual students in first-year composition at a university along the U.S.-Mexico border. Specifically, I observe how and why bilingual students employ translanguaging practices, as they are encouraged or invited by their instructors, in contexts where English Standard Language policies exist. The results of this qualitative project demonstrate bilingual students' use of translation as part of their translanguaging practices, as well as a tool that uncovers students' writing processes which also demonstrates their language negotiation. Furthermore, the students' translanguaging practices reveal the rhetorical use …

Music Therapy Effects On Social-Communicative Response Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Raymond Payton

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are challenged with communicative skills, which can negatively influence their emotional development. As children with ASD in the local school were not demonstrating functional communication skills as measured by the Assessment of Social Skills for Children with Autism (ASSCM), music therapy was introduced as remediation. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which music therapy increased the ASSCM scores. This single subject design study was guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory, which holds that individuals are impacted by various environmental systems around them. The research question addressed the extent to …

Early Care And Education Testimonios At The Borderlands, Jennifer Torres Siders

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Latinas represent a large proportion of the United States early care and education workforce, and thus have the potential to wield significant influence over the growth and development of millions of American children. However, the voices of Latina early childhood professionals often are missing in both research and mass media. Instead, social, political, and academic frames cast Latinas as foreign regardless of nationality, uneducated notwithstanding expertise, and passive despite action and influence. This testimonio analysis draws on Chicana feminist epistemology to re-center the perspectives of Latina child care providers and reveal more authentic insights on how they understand and perform …

“It’S Like A Big Freaking Fake Circus”: An Exploration Of Intersectionality And Women’S Experiences In Higher Education Fundraising, Daniel Mathis Spadafore

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Women in higher education fundraising navigate the broad forces of sexism and racism in society and their profession, a profession in which they are being paid less than their male counterparts and are under-represented in leadership roles, despite being the majority of fundraising professionals. This study provided a platform for women in higher education fundraising to tell their stories and to explain, in their own words, how they navigated a traditionally White patriarchal system of philanthropy, interacted with fundraising prospects and donors, and experienced the fundraising profession. The research questions included:

• What do women say are their lived experiences …

Instructional Reading Practices For Third Grade African American Males, Kimberly Dawn Whaley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American males often struggle to read on grade level. However, 3 East Texas Title I schools demonstrated exceptionally high levels of reading proficiency with this population. This study addressed the knowledge gap of understanding the instructional practices linked to high reading achievement of third grade African American males in Title I schools in East Texas. Guided by Ladson-Billings's theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, which builds upon academic success, cultural competence, and development of critical consciousness, and supported by Vygotsky's theory of social and cognitive constructivism, the reading instructional practices of the 3 schools were investigated. Research questions focused on …

Exploring The Lived Experience Of Female Presidents In Higher Education: A Journey Of Ascension To The Rural Community College Presidency, Patsy Jackson

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to investigate the lived experience of females who ascended to rural community college presidencies. This study explores their perceptions of barriers and facilitators that influenced their success in capturing a rural community college presidency. Lastly, this study aims to examine their leadership approach and their intended leadership legacy. An imminent leadership crisis exists for community colleges and has created an uncertain future for these open access institutions. The number of qualified applicants to fill the presidential pipeline is declining and sitting presidents are retiring at alarming rates, threatening the sustainable of community …

African American Christian Senior Pastor's Beliefs About Mental Health Treatment, Trinaa L. Copeland

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In the African American community, the Black Church and its clergy have served as gatekeepers to formal mental health treatment. Little is known about the beliefs of African American Christian senior pastors about mental health treatment and their personal views influencing their counsel to congregants seeking support through the church. This transcendental phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of African American Christian senior pastors in relation to how they understand mental health treatment and provide it to their congregants. The research questions explored three areas: (a) the senior pastors' experiences in rendering mental health treatment, (b) the senior pastors' personal …

Servant Leadership Development Model For Staff At The University Of The Southern Caribbean, Lloyd Eric Jacott

Professional Dissertations DMin

Problem

Concerns have been raised by students regarding the unsatisfactory nature of customer service from administrative departments within the University of the Southern Caribbean such as Finance and Admissions. An investigation into this matter, using a focus group design was conducted by Brent Marshall for his Master's Thesis (2013) through the School of Business. However, prior to this an exit report of graduating students was conducted by the Department of quality assurance (2012). The findings of these two investigations provide the basis for implementing the servant leadership development model for staff at the Admissions, Records and Recruitment Departments of the …

The Multicultural Center's Role In Black Male Success At A Predominantly White Institution, Stephan Tramaine Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many scholarly works have focused on the problems that Black males face in higher education at predominantly White institutions (PWI). However, few have explored specific factors that lead to the success of Black males. This study focuses on the Multicultural Center’s role in Black male success a PWI. There are a myriad of issues that Black men face when pursuing higher education ranging from a lack of financial resources to “invisibility” in the collegial environment. These challenges are further exacerbated for Black men who are enrolled at a PWI. The Multicultural Center (MC) is among the essential modalities that can …

Support From Above The Glass Ceiling: Narratives Of Women As University Student Leaders, Rebecca Schwartz

Masters Theses

Using qualitative methodology. the researcher examined motivations, social support networks, and challenges college women face in student leadership positions. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted at a midsized university in the Midwest with college women in various positions of organizational leadership. The researcher identified motivational factors for women to apply for leadership positions as well as described the social support network that exists for college women in positions of leadership. Challenges college women face in achieving higher leadership positions were also identified. Lastly, recommendations were made for student affairs professionals and women in leadership based on the research findings.