Communication Commons^™

Ua12/2/1 Graduation Guide, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Special edition of the College Heights Herald, includes articles:

• Harden, Olivia. New Chapter, New Home
• Department of Communication Graduates
• Crisp, Hannah. Level Up Your LinkedIn
• Mahurin Honors College Graduates
• Worden, Kayla. Costs of Your New City
• School of Media Graduates
• Jones, Tea. Most Valuable Courses
• College of Health & Human Services Graduates
• Norvell, Abbey. Financial First Steps

The Human Services Workforce Crisis: Moving Forward With Intention In Massachusetts, Suzanne Gray Henderson

School of Professional Studies

The human services field is growing rapidly in Massachusetts as it is across the country, and the Commonwealth does not have enough qualified staff to fill vacancies. The workforce shortage has risen to crisis levels due to high turnover, insufficient training, low wages, and a lack of recognition and appreciation for direct support professionals. The individuals receiving services in Massachusetts deserve quality and stability. The state budget – strained by inefficient service models and reactive fixes – also demands systemic change. The human services workforce crisis impacts a variety of stakeholders. Individuals served are directly affected, as are the direct …

Amjambo Africa! (May 2021), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In this Issue

Chad’s president dies.........2/3

Corruption in Africa.........2/3

Maine & slave trade..............5

Vaccine pause/editorial .......6

Portland Empowered..........12

Onyx Emelo photo essay ...13

Liberation Farms photo essay.......................14

A taste of Jamaica................15

Support for AAPIcommunity........................17

Midcoast Literacy................18

Amran Osman.....................19

Minorities in Healthcare....20

Finance.................................21

Guest Columnists/community voices.....................24/25/26

Ekhlas Ahmed.....................27

Ryan Adams.........................28

Cynthia McGuirl.................28

Navigating benefits.............29

Racial justice........................31

Translations

French..................................7

Swahili.................................8

Somali..................................9

Kinyarwanda.....................22

Portuguese.........................23

The Purpose Of Black Role Models, Chris Williams

Communication & Media Studies | Senior Theses

When thinking of role models, the notion is typically speculated from the perspective of the youth; though, black role models are known to have a direct contribution on the lives of men and women in all stages of adulthood as well (18+). Researching the essence and character of role models, more specifically black role models will include, but are not limited to: 1) how they transcend into the role model they eventually become; 2) what is considered to be important in not just a leader but a black leader; and 3) the barriers black people have to fight to become …

A Gateway To Economic Success, Nathan R. Boudreau

School of Professional Studies

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a leader in the United States, a gleaming example of the American dream and the way life should be. We are always at the forefront of world-class innovation, house arts and culture that rival some of the best cities in the world, and have high-class educational institutes rivaled by almost no other region. Massachusetts leads the way when it comes to progressive ideals that provide for the less fortunate and ensure equality for all while keeping taxes reasonable, unemployment down, and living wage jobs readily available. With all that said, I began to ponder why …

Examining The Strategies In Response To Crises In Major League Baseball, Jimmy Palmerino

School of Professional Studies

This paper analyzes the crisis response strategies of Major League Baseball (MLB) during the following events: the steroids scandal, the Houston Astros cheating scandal, and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The hypothesis tested is as follows: MLB’s crisis response strategies are ineffective, as they are directly related to the league’s poor image in the public eye. Research includes a review of academic literature explaining crisis communication theories, as well as the relationship between crisis communication and public relations (PR). The paper concludes with recommendations for how the league can improve its crisis communication and crisis response strategies in the future to …

The Global Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic On Women’S Careers, Allison Bach

School of Professional Studies

This paper explores the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on women’s careers on a global scale in the past year. It begins by focusing on the many pre-existing barriers that existed in realizing gender equality in the workplace prior to the pandemic, such as inadequate access to proper childcare, uneven participation in household labor between the genders, and pay inequality. The paper then continues to examine the impact that the pandemic has had on women’s careers across a variety of industries, countries, and specific groups. It was hypothesized that the COVID-19 crisis had created worse effects for women’s …

The Effects Of Social Media On Young People Through The Lens Of Covid-19, Molly Gammon

School of Professional Studies

This study looks at the relationship between social media and its effect on young people’s wellbeing by examining the available literature and research on the topic. Because Millennials and Generation Z do not remember a time before the internet and social media, it has become an influential and crucial part of their lives. Many suggest that social media is harmful to young people, while others argue that the benefits of the internet and social media outweigh the costs and risks. By analyzing the current research, it seems like there is still a lack of consensus on this debate. The goal …

Social Media And Political Campaign Communication In Ghana., Beatrice Eyram Amenyeawu

School of Professional Studies

Originally designed for social networking and interactions, social media has gained precedence in business and organizational operations. Politics which has had a long relationship with the media has seen some changes in its campaign and communication due to the evolution of the media. Social media has proven to be an effective strategy in political communication and campaign. Given its numerous features such as the like button, live videos, content sharing, comment option, photo sharing, status update, tags, amongst others it has enabled the dialogue between political stakeholders. Furthermore, social media impacts elections and democratic discourse with its dialogic feature which …

Internal Communications In The Time Of A Global Pandemic, Thais Gandica, Manvi Talwar, Sange Wangmu Thungon, Edgar Knyvet Diengdoh Pyrtuh, Emmanuel Kumah

School of Professional Studies

The business and organizational worlds have been in constant transformation for years. Still, 2020 changed drastically the way they function from their very inside. The COVID-19 pandemic hit all industries, and with that, all models of communication had to be reshaped so they could efficiently connect with their internal players in charge of crafting and delivering messages that would work towards a healthy and productive environment. Internal Communications played a critical role in the employee relations, brand image, and overall success of organizations, especially during the crisis. Through primary and secondary research conducted to three different organizations’ sizes, this research …

Bail Discrimination: Racial Disparities In The United States Bail Determination Process, Collin Porter

School of Professional Studies

Nationwide, there is a systemic problem with bail determination: the process that a citizen goes through after they are arrested and before they go to trial to determine guilt or innocence for the crime they have been accused of committing. The United States leads all other countries with approximately half a million individuals detained before trial each year, a number nearly double the next highest country (China) (Nejdl, 2017). The high rate of pre-trial detention in the United States is due to both widespread use of monetary bail and the limited financial resources of most defendants; specifically, African American men. …

Broadband In Rhode Island, Deborah Ruggiero

School of Professional Studies

Broadband is the 21st century fiber-optic highway in our technology and information economy. The need for high-speed fiber-optic connectivity is critical for economic development, education, business, e-learning, and telehealth

Examining The Effectiveness Of Influencer Marketing Across Platforms, Alison Everett

School of Professional Studies

This paper evaluates how effective influencer marketing is across the two most popular influencer platforms, YouTube and Instagram. This paper uses a case study approach to analyze popular brands that use influencer marketing on both platforms to determine which platform is more successful at engaging and reaching audiences from influencers. The brands analyzed for case studies are food delivery service HelloFresh and haircare brand Function of Beauty. Both brands use influencer marketing on Instagram and YouTube. The HelloFresh case study analyzes sponsored content from YouTube creator Jacksfilms and Instagram influencer Marisa Hen. The Function of Beauty case study analyzes sponsored …

Happening In Plain Sight: An Evaluation Of Sexual Harassment In Municipal Government Through A Case Study Of Newark, New Jersey, Hoween R. A. Flexer, Caitlin R. Louie

School of Professional Studies

In the city of Newark, New Jersey, Sebrevious Scott, a participant in the New Jersey Reentry program was hired as part-time office assistant in the city's re-entry office. After being transferred to the city’s Parks and Grounds Departments, she started being sexually harassed, inappropriately touched and propositioned by her supervisor, Richard Kirkland. Scott made repeated attempts to report these actions through the appropriate channels. She was met with dismissal, resistance, and later retaliation. While working in this hostile environment she was also pursuing a full-time employment opportunity with the city upon the completion of the reentry program. Unfortunately, this never …

Using Large Pre-Trained Language Models To Track Emotions Of Cancer Patients On Twitter, Will Baker

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Twitter is a microblogging website where any user can publicly release a message, called a tweet, expressing their feelings about current events or their own lives. This candid, unfiltered feedback is valuable in the spaces of healthcare and public health communications, where it may be difficult for cancer patients to divulge personal information to healthcare teams, and randomly selected patients may decline participation in surveys about their experiences. In this thesis, BERTweet, a state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) model, was used to predict sentiment and emotion labels for cancer-related tweets collected in 2019 and 2020. In longitudinal plots, trends in …

Developing A Food Assistance Informational Graphic And Implementation Plan Based On Consumer Evaluation, Mckenna Cunningham

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Undergraduate Honors Theses

Food insecurity refers to the uncertainty of having or acquiring enough food to sustain all members of a household. In 2019, 10.5% of households in the United States reported being food insecure. Of that number, 4.1% of households reported ‘very low food security,” meaning that there were additional periods of time in which one or more household members restricted or forfeited their food intake due to lack of money or other resources (USDA, 2020). Without access to proper nutrition, the health of both adults and children are put at risk for illness including anxiety, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other …

Social Media As A Tool For Evangelism Among Youth And Young Adults, Trisney Bocala

Student Research

This research aims to answer the question of which social media platforms youth prefer and what types of content they prefer. Using data collected from a quantitative survey, this research seeks to identify the most-used social media platforms and most appealing formats of content so that Seventh-day Adventist churches, media organizations, and digital missionaries can more effectively utilize social media as a tool for evangelism among youth, defined as 15 to 24 years of age.

Social Media Preferences Of Individuals Seeking Graduate Business Degrees, Peyton N. Boxberger, Hannah C. Lee

Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to provide actionable insight to the Walton MBA Programs Office for a cohesive social media strategy that is inclusive of all audiences. This research hopes to help the Walton MBA program better understand potential and current students based on their social media behavior and learn how social media use has changed due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This report will analyze the results of a survey crafted to better understand the social media preferences of individuals seeking graduate business degrees. From these, a social media marketing strategy can be created to tailor content to …

Evaluating Va Nurse Acceptance Of Virtual Healthcare Technology During The Coronavirus Outbreak, Francesca Bryan-Couch

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Projects

At a regional Veterans Administration (VA) hospital, nurses performing case management were unable to perform face-to-face visits with patients due to coronavirus. Care coordination and discharge planning efforts occurred through telephonic case management to preserve personal protective equipment and reduce transmission rates through social distancing. Trust and rapport between patients and nurses were reduced without personal contact. Peplau’s theory of interpersonal relations described six nurse roles and three phases of relationship development required to create therapeutic nurse-patient relationships. Connectedness was a key concept considered to be the path to a successful meaningful therapeutic nurse-patient relationship (Hrabe, 2005).

To evaluate current …

The Pacific Sentinel: May/June, Mini Issue, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Vivian Veidt

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter From the Editor
• Vaccine Hesitancy
• Campus Policing and the Call for Abolition
• Goodbye Afghanistan Palestine
• Where Memes and Cinema Collide

Employee Retention Rate, Lila Sorenson

School of Professional Studies

This paper addresses the following problem regarding low employee retention rates in non-profit mental health organizations, specifically at NFI. The problem at hand is that majority of staff at NFI have an average length of stay of one year or less. The purpose of this paper is to address the current problem and hypothesize factors that could impact the low retention rates. Additionally, the purpose of the paper is to brainstorm potential solutions regarding the low retention rates and suggestions of how to implement the solutions. The documents contained in this paper include data analysis of employee average length of …

Ua45/6 Commencement Program, Wku Registrar

WKU Administration Documents

Commencement program for both Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 graduation. The Fall 2020 ceremony was postponed due to COVID-19 gathering restrictions.

Communication In Adult Children Of Alcoholics: The Problem, The Result, And The Solution, Audrey Barth

Communication & Media Studies | Senior Theses

In the United States alone, 25% of children live with an alcoholic parent (Haverfield et al., 2016). While there is extensive research on the psychological impacts of growing up with an alcoholic parent, research focused on communication is slim. This paper seeks to examine the communication characteristics in adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) in three ways: (1) to determine how communication dynamics in alcoholic families are detrimental, (2) to determine the implications of these dynamics in adulthood, and (3) to determine how communication can be implemented as a solution for ACOAs. Several interviews were conducted on ACOAs based on those …

Disease And Disaster: Navigating Food Insecurity In A Community Affected By Crises During Covid-19, Andrew S. Pyle, Michelle Eichinger, Barry A. Garst, Catherine Mobley, Sarah F. Griffin, Leslie H. Hossfeld, Mike Mcgirr, Helen R. Saunders

Publications

This exploratory study examines how a community experiencing food insecurity while navigating multiple crises can be a model to inform resources, processes, and systems supporting communities facing similar circumstances. Data for this study were collected from residents of a community in Oconee County, a rural county in the northwest corner of South Carolina experiencing pervasive food insecurity. The community was severely impacted by the onset of COVID-19 and further devastated by a tornado in mid-April. The area of the county that sustained the greatest damage from the tornado was the Utica Mill Hill community, home to the county’s most vulnerable …

The Disconnected Podcast, Sydney Wright

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Humans are social creatures. Yet when the pandemic forced the world into lockdown, social interaction became limited and more intentional. I explore the forms of communication people turned to during this time through a series of podcast episodes. I interview people who can provide first-hand experiences of how major areas of life changed. The areas I focused on are digital literacy in the elderly, online connections versus in-person ones, telehealth, education, journalism, and social media. The episodes can be listened to on the Disconnected website.

Getting Excited For Our Class: Instructor Immediacy, Rapport, And Effects For Students, Emily Napier

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examined the relationships between instructors and students to determine the effects of prosocial instructor behavior on the college student experience for both in-person and online learning. Study One examined instructor rapport with students and verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors in face-to-face classes. Students reported on how their instructor constructed the classroom climate and perceptions of their instructor’s behavior. Results indicated that students’ perceptions of instructor verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors were related to lower student communication apprehension with instructors; whereas perceived classroom rapport was related with higher perceptions of their instructor’s credibility and was also related with a …

“It’S Never Going To Be Perfect Even Though I Want It To Be”: Quantitatively And Qualitatively Investigating Honors And Non-Honors Students’ Experiences Of Perfectionism And Related Variables, Julie A. Hartung

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Previous research has demonstrated that students in university honors programs may be distinct from their non-honors counterparts. To further examine these differences and the overall experiences of honors students, this thesis utilized a Study 1/Study 2 mixed methodology design to examine the experiences of honors students within East Tennessee State University’s University Honors Scholars program. Study One quantitatively examined the differences between honors and non-honors students’ levels of perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and academic and social competitiveness. Findings from Study One inspired Study Two, which qualitatively examined honors students’ experiences with perfectionism, uncovering the sources and effects of their perfectionistic behaviors. …

Allyship Training Programs In Higher Education: Creating A Critical Curriculum Of Change, Macy Marin Keith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Allies Training Programs (also known as Safe Space/Zone training) are found in many institutions of higher education. Usually provided by an LGBTQA+ or Gender and Sexuality Center staff, the goal is to prepare participants for an allyship role in hopes of promoting safe spaces on campus and decrease instances of queerphobia. This thesis examined current allies training programs to determine what content is being presented and compare to the latest critiques and definitions. After analysis it is determined that current allyship trainings are inadequately preparing higher education staff and faculty for an ally role. Using the results of this study …

Perceptions And Content Of Traditional And Online News: An Analysis Of Bias In Indian Media, Sangya Tyagi

Communication Theses - Archive

The primary objective of this study was to compare and analyse two different points of view on media polarization: one, from the public’s perspective through a survey (analysis of their perceptions on news received from their preferred news sources) and the other, analysis of media published by the media content providers. Another research contribution of this study was that it included an analysis of the mode of media consumption, i.e., how the news was consumed--via traditional media or through online media. This project ties in a variety of aspects in the field of communication -- media, mode of news consumption, …

An Examination Of Chinese Private College Students’ Intercultural Competence, Li Li

Education (PhD) Dissertations

With globalization being a focus of the 21st century, the primary approach for responding to global challenges for higher education institutions is to adopt an internationalization strategy and accelerate the internationalization pace. To cultivate “global-ready” graduates, developing students’ intercultural competence (IC) has become one of the core missions of international and Chinese higher education institutions. Given the scarcity of quantitative studies on Chinese private college students’ IC and inconsistent findings on the relationships between foreign language capability, international experience, and IC in the extant literature, a quantitative study was conducted in a Chinese private college to explore 1,983 undergraduate students’ …