The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological study was to highlight the experiences of undergraduate STEM vertical transfer students. Through the lens of Schlossberg's Transition Theory, this study sought to better understand how students make sense of the transfer credit process and which support structures facilitated their understanding.…

Access to social capital has an immense impact on socio-economic mobility and career attainment. All too often, students from underserved and marginalized communities struggle to find and mobilize social capital. This inequitable access to professional career networks is known as the network gap. Students in affluent communities are tapped into…

Undergraduate physics laboratory curriculum has undergone significant modification in recent decades in response to research and recommendations from educational and professional organizations and stakeholders. These reforms address multiple issues, such as 1) lack of student agency in experimentation, 2) an incomplete framework for student…

The quality of support provided to students in higher education can have a powerful impact on the student's experience, their perceptions of challenges, and their overall academic success, particularly retaining in and completing their degree. Though many universities create robust services to support undergraduate students, existing literature…

As the world faces increasingly complex issues, there is a recognition in many disciplines that the existing paradigm of reductionist and linear thinking is not enough to address these issues. The agriculture, food, and natural resources fields are facing a host of issues that defy solutions in part because of the level of complexity. Systems…

The lower retention and success rates of Black and Latine students in the Cinema/TV Department at a Hollywood-based community college reflect a broader diversity issue in the entertainment industry. This qualitative, arts-based study focused on student voice and the power of counternarratives by utilizing participatory action research to determine…

The University of Delaware Department of Biological Sciences is in a period of change. Pressures, both internally and externally, are driving towards a greater teaching demand. The University of Delaware itself is under a leadership directive that has all departments focusing on performance goals along the lines of peer institutions from the…

Student grades and motivational outcomes in introductory physics courses can influence their retention in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines and future career aspirations. In recent years, many research studies have focused on inequities in calculus-based introductory physics courses, e.g., by investigating gender…

Although institutions of higher education have been increasing efforts to recruit and retain Black women graduate students, Black women are still low in numbers in graduate programs. Black women have experienced decades of socio-historical challenges that impact their persistence and resistance in graduate education, with the most common being…

The field of life science is facing a great challenge, in that the tools are beginning to outpace the user. Technology has rapidly been accelerating while the knowledge to use this new tech has been unable to keep pace. For example: as the recent push to get the faster, cheaper sequencing machine designed has inspired engineers to design…

This interdisciplinary study examines faculty members' various understandings of writing pedagogies across the curriculum to foster global citizens from the perspective of "soka," or value creation. Broadly, value-creating global citizenship pedagogy develops students' skills and knowledge for the purpose of socioecological good.…

Recent calls in education have emphasized the critical need for curricula in the sciences to support student development of the general and disciplinary-specific practices that are relevant to modern scientific research and careers, as well as foundational scientific knowledge that reflects recent advances. In this regard, the life sciences,…

In this thesis, I study some aspects of how students learn to use math to make sense of physical phenomena. Solving physics problems usually requires dealing with algebraic expressions. That can take the form of reading equations you're given, manipulating them, or creating them. It's possible to use equations simply according to formal rules of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences between native and community college transfer students and identify factors that predicted upper-level biology course grade-point average and final overall grade-point average at a four-year institution in biological sciences. The results of this study indicated four-year institution…

The purpose of this cross-national study was to gain a more comprehensive understanding about doctoral students in the United States and Chile and how their decisions to pursue a career in the life sciences field occurred throughout their lives. I interviewed 15 doctoral students from the Seven Lakes University (Chile) and 15 students from the…