The current unprecedented level of college student debt in the United States at over $1.4 trillion (Federal Reserve, 2017) is of major concern for all who desire to improve higher education, income and social inequality, and the general welfare of society. This study's purpose is both theoretical and empirical: first, to develop and propose the…

Devastating life experiences continually plague many foster care youth throughout their entire lives on social, emotional, educational, psychological, and physical levels. Oftentimes, the cumulative effect of these events results in large numbers of individuals dropping out of school and becoming increasingly disconnected from people and many…

The number of graduate students who chose to participate in study abroad experiences has grown within recent years. As this population of study abroad participants continues to expand, it is necessary for study abroad faculty and staff to understand the learning outcomes that graduate students experience after their study abroad program. This…

The purpose of this qualitative, narrative inquiry was to explore and analyze the narrative stories of native English speaking adults who matriculated through a multicultural, dual language program from prekindergarten to 6th grade to understand the influence of the program on their lives, and the relationship between those experiences and their…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain insight into the career patterns of early career professionals living in Aiken County, South Carolina. Two theoretical frameworks were selected for this study; Patton and McMahon's (1999) Career Development Systems Theory and Higgins and Kram's (2001) Developmental Network Theory. The researcher…

As higher education institutions make intentional steps to include underrepresented groups and ensure their success in school, it is particularly important to understand their cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal development as a key factor of supporting their academic and developmental needs. Institutions of higher education are challenged…

I examined the role of social perspective taking in leadership decision-making by investigating how a group of 70 leaders made sense of a hypothetical workplace dilemma in order to understand how they used their capacity for social perspective taking as part of their decision-making process. The majority of these leaders work in North America, are…

Leadership development programs focus studies on the positive attributes and experiences of effective leaders. From this focus comes the next generation of leadership. This study, however, suggests that there is much to be learned in the development of new leaders from an examination of the traumatic experiences leaders face. The purpose of this…

The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) was founded in the 1950s to aid in the spiritual development of middle and high school student athletes. During the late 1990s a paradigm shift occurred when intercollegiate football coaches started to hire full-time team chaplains to become the spiritual coordinators for their student athletes. Athletes…

Family genealogy research has grown exponentially over the past decade, making it an area worthy of scholarly inquiry (Smith, 2010). Genealogy is now one of the world's most popular hobbies, with hundreds of millions of people worldwide actively engaged in some form of family research (Veale, 2004). In the United States, there has recently been a…

Through a contextual comparison of the theological ethics of H. Richard Niebuhr and the educational theory of Paulo Freire, I argue that socialization, while an essential task of moral education, is an insufficient aim. The proper aim of moral education is individual development. The intention of my argument is address tendencies towards…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe and understand the complexity of life experiences for first-generation college students or recent graduates who are working adults in the Central and South-Central Appalachian region of the United States in light of the construct resilience and how purposefully selected…

This study explored the doctoral student experience through the lens of college student psychosocial development theory. Although psychosocial development has been a mainstay in the research of undergraduate education, doctoral student psychosocial development has received little attention. The primary research objective was to engage, listen to,…

History education experts are increasingly interested in the concept of "historical consciousness"--that is, how as individuals we orient ourselves in time and create for ourselves "historical identity". But is encouraging students to feel personally connected to the past potentially in tension with promoting their historical…

This autoethnography focused on the following overarching question: How did I overcome the indoctrination and socialization in my early human development to accept the unexamined assumption that my life was limited to being a wife, mother, and cosmetologist that prevented me from aspiring to a career as a school counselor that would increase my…