Continued professional learning is a consistent focus of attention for the field of student affairs within higher education. Yet, very little research has been conducted on the factors that influence the motivation of student affairs professionals to pursue continued professional learning, especially professionals within community colleges. This…

Internships are an impactful form of workplace learning that helps undergraduate engineering students acquire and enhance competencies to improve their employability. However, the nuances about what makes an internship successful are not well understood. Furthermore, learning during engineering internships has not been thoroughly researched.…

Teacher retention continues to be an issue in rural school districts nationwide. The problem is teachers are leaving the profession within the first 5 years. While there is evidence to show a correlation between mentorships and teacher retention, there is a gap in the literature on effective teacher mentorship program experiences and rural teacher…

The primary objective of this qualitative case study was to explore the factors contributing to job stress among mental health providers who treat veterans diagnosed with trauma. The six participants were all licensed professional counselors in the Central Southwest who regularly treated veterans living with trauma. Data were obtained through…

This study focuses on factors related to teacher retention, specifically focusing on professional education staff in the state of Michigan. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there were certain factors that led to teachers feeling motivated to remain in a profession that has recently experienced some unfavorable attrition rates.…

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of burnout among teachers of special education students in rural schools, focusing on understanding the factors that contribute to burnout and the strategies that can mitigate its effects. The study used a qualitative research design to interview teachers from a rural Board of Cooperative Educational…

It is predicted that higher education institutions, based on the current landscape, will need to merge, be acquired, or close at increasing levels in the coming years. This level of organizational change is challenging for those who are a part of it. The purpose of this research was to explore the experiences of trust at an institution of higher…

Teacher job satisfaction is important to retaining high-performing teachers. This study aims to investigate the effects of certain factors, such as age, gender, and years of experience, on overall job satisfaction. This study involved over 400 teachers from a West Tennessee school district, where the Job Satisfaction Survey was distributed. The…

This study aimed to understand the sources of stress new school leaders identify and how that stress influences them and what coping strategies or stress management techniques school leaders employ to stay healthy within this profession. Semi-structured focus groups were utilized to elicit thick, rich descriptions of participants' experiences.…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe Title I rural K-12 school counselors' lived experiences with compassion fatigue in Oklahoma. The research questions were: How do Title I school counselors in rural Oklahoma describe their experiences with compassion fatigue? How do participants describe the factors that…

The level of supervision an intern receives during an internship has been shown to impact the quality of the student learning experience. However, there is evidence that unpaid undergraduate interns receive less supervision due to a variety of factors. The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to understand the relationship that university funds…

This qualitative study investigated staff retention in higher education by focusing on the retention of academic advisors. Academic advisors play an integral role in student success and advising is notably one of the fields in higher education with the greatest turnover. This turnover comes at great costs, financial and otherwise, for the…

City Colleges of Chicago undergo policy changes. In 2010, a reform sought to install accountability and transition City Colleges of Chicago into compliance with government funding requests through Reinvention. Reinvention, in the public view, was hailed as a necessity for a system that could not sustain on its own. It used a shock-system…

Instructional leaders are vital to the success of a school given the impact their leadership behaviors can have on teacher retention. This quantitative study investigated the connection between teachers' perceptions of instructional leaders and teacher retention. Furthermore, this study explored which factors had the most significant impact on…

When the teachers miss school, students miss out on new content, a structured environment, and more. Several studies have examined the relationship between teacher absenteeism and pupil achievement and found a strong connection. In fact, there appears to be a one-to-one relationship: a 10-day increase in teacher absence results in at least a…