The aim of this study was to examine the impact of academic digital archives on scholarship and university status. Digital archives have played roles in strengthening scholarly research and developing innovative fields of study. This is especially prevalent in the rise of digital humanities and making work available through digital libraries and…

In this dissertation, I present readers with three studies about the ways in which science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research experiences impact undergraduate learning, perspectives, and academic/career activities. In the first two studies I focus on this topic by investigating the ways in which undergraduates were impacted…

The literature concerning international education among U.S. colleges and universities suggests that strategic planning is vital to the internationalization process to ensure that institutions intentionally respond to globalization. Central to that internationalization at large is how the senior international officers (SIOs) facilitate the…

This study focused on both the voice and experience of successful Black students in higher education as well as the factors, both internal and institutional that they perceive as contributors to their success. This research is important because while a breadth of research exists that examines Black students and their relationship to higher…

At the researcher's local level, comprehensive transition planning on the part of secondary special education teachers has historically been lacking. There have been several cases that went to litigation over transition planning issues. The district received a citation from the Connecticut State Department of Education for the school year…

This investigation of teacher agency addresses the dual concerns of reduced teacher agency in an era of accountability tied to high stakes testing and a reduced conception of the professional role of teachers to that of an instrumentalist, restricting teachers' decisions regarding curriculum and instruction. This study has three goals: the primary…

Smart cities surveil through ubiquitous and intrusive data collection via networked sensors. Smart city efforts are also frequently imagined as primarily top-down and male visions of the future in service of economic benefit. The smart campus presents a new dimension of smart city urbanism as an identified gap in literature. In the following…

How does leadership emerge and develop among university STEM faculty working to adopt evidence-based teaching practices? This qualitative case study examines academic departments as sites for instructional change, viewing leadership as an emergent property of the relationships within a social system. The researcher adopted a dual lens of McElroy…

Advocates for inclusive diversity with equity, access and accountability (IDEAA) are often torn between individual-level change and institutional-level change processes. Similarly, antiracist scholarship spans individual-level and institutional-level efforts towards antiracism. In discipline-based education research (DBER) in microbiology…

There are five developmental areas: gross motor, fine motor, communication, adaptive behavior, and social-emotional. If social-emotional skills are delayed, all other developmental areas are negatively impacted. Preschool-aged students are incapable of kindergarten readiness if they have a delay in social-emotional development as it impacts their…

Decades of student achievement data reveal that schools in the United States do not adequately equip students with the skills needed for success in college. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which the AP Capstone program, an Advanced Placement (AP) diploma program launched by the College Board in 2014, promoted specific…

The purpose of this action research was to evaluate flight students' perceptions of a reward-based gamification intervention for their motivation to study outside the classroom while attending the Initial Entry Rotary Wing (IERW) flight school in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has an ever-increasing population with a diverse number of…

This phenomenological case study investigated the experiences of doctoral student parents at a research university. Purposeful sampling was used to select six participants for maximum diversity of experience. The participants shared if and how their experience in their academic departments differed from their non-parent peers. The research…

This study utilized a systematic review methodology to explore best practices in improving reading fluency. The literature was searched to determine how the current curricular trends of technology, phonemic awareness and phonics, independent reading, and complex text and vocabulary can improve reading fluency in K-12 students. Potential studies…

With the developmental education (DE) reform movement at postsecondary still apace, this qualitative study seeks to understand the policy impacts of Florida Senate Bill 1720, major legislation mandating developmental education reform in the state of Florida. The body of literature thus far has focused on quantitative analyses of secondary data…