Nursing student attrition is of ongoing concern to programs of nursing and healthcare employers given the persistent shortage of nurses. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the perceptions of ten graduates from two cohorts of a Pre-Licensure Program of Nursing regarding the impact of program-level and college-wide practices…

Cross-national studies consistently reveal that bullying is a pervasive problem in schools and associated with a multitude of deleterious outcomes. The present dissertation conducted two studies to further provide insight into this complex phenomenon and facilitate the development of effective bullying prevention programs. Youth involved in…

Citizen Science programs create a bi-directional flow of knowledge between scientists and citizen volunteers; this flow democratizes science in order to create an informed public (Bonney et al. 2014; Brown, Kelly, and Whitall 2014). This democratization is a fundamental part of creating a science that can address today's pressing environmental,…

Culturally responsive leadership and instruction have proven beneficial for racially minoritized student populations. Similarly, linguistically minoritized students benefit from a learning environment that values students' experiences and culture. Connections of students' experiences help support learning through meaningful connection to local…

Public organizations have been interested in tapping into the creativity and passion of the public through the use of open innovation, which emphasizes bottom-up ideation and collaboration. A challenge for organizational adoption of open innovation is that the quick-start, bottom-up, iterative nature of open innovation does not integrate easily…

This dissertation project developed and evaluated a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) tool, PAT GRAM, that provides explicit instruction on grammar patterns. Evaluation of the explicit instruction offered by PAT GRAM adopted Chapelle's (2001) framework of criteria for CALL task appropriateness. Following this framework, evidence was…

Distance Education (DE) provides a means for which people, who are unable to attend on-campus courses for any of various reasons, to receive a college education. While there are many benefits cited for DE and many students show a partiality towards DE (Guthrie, 2009; Kelsey, Lindner, & Moore, 2002; Koch, Townsend, & Dooley, 2005; Mink…

There has been a significant amount of research on the impact of stress and job satisfaction amongst employees in a multitude of professional settings, including the criminal justice and higher education field. Yet, information on criminal justice professionals who work in more untraditional types of higher education institutions, such as career…

The focus of the descriptive study utilizing a sequential explanatory design was to develop a comprehensive examination of ongoing development and improvement of an Administrative Professional Program at "Midwest College," a vocational-technical college in the Midwest. A Career Pathway (CP) is a logical, expressed grouping of dynamic…

This qualitative descriptive study examined the factors that faculty leaders believe influence the decision to offer the DrPH degree in their schools of public health and how those factors influence the design of the DrPH. The central research question in this study was: How do faculty leaders describe their experience with the decision to offer,…

Creating accessible instruction has been a subject of debate and lawsuits since the Civil Rights Movement. Examples include "Mills v. Board of Education" in 1972 discussed the 14th Amendment of equal rights in public K-12 education; instances involving extracurricular after-school programs, such as the YMCA Middle Tennessee Agreement for…

Community Partnership Schools™ are designed to serve as a positive resource center in their community, staffed with dedicated professionals committed to student success and community well-being (Coalition for Community Schools, n.d.; Ellis, 2016). Following the education model created at the University of Central Florida (UCF), the first…

This study was directed by a modified Delphi-methodology design to gain perspective of the perceptions of alumni regarding the value and applicability of the general education program. The expert-panel participants were 14 alumni of Frostburg State University from various majors, representative of all three colleges, who graduated between 2006 and…

Sports coaching education and research in higher education have received increased attention lately, especially in English-speaking countries such as the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK (Potrac, Gilbert, & Denison, 2013). Although research on sports coaching education is on the rise, very few studies have explored formal…

Sexual violence in the United States continues to be a growing problem. Collegiate women face some of the highest rates of sexual violence, with statistics estimating one in four women will have this unwanted experience sometime during their college career. With Title IX administrators required to provide sexual violence awareness, more colleges…