The role of a school district superintendent demands a balance of professional leadership and political astuteness. Individuals in this role possess distinct skills, values, and beliefs essential for navigating its complexities. This mixed-method phenomenological study employs self-reported values, decision-making styles, and interviews to explore…

Mergers among public HEI's in the United States are occurring with regular frequency, but with little research to understand the impact that mergers have on value outcomes at the micro, meso, and macro level. Previous research suggests that there needs to be a more robust way of assessing merger outcomes both quantitatively and longitudinally…

Over five decades of research have documented a central challenge: School leaders are confronted with a deluge of simultaneous demands. These demands have intensified in the past few decades, amidst the standards-based accountability movement and the COVID pandemic. Yet, school leaders - like all people - have limited time, energy, and effort…

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand the decision-making process of school choice for Christian parents with preschool through elementary aged children. Hall's et al. (2002) values-based decision-making theory (VBDM) guided this qualitative descriptive study that incorporated two research questions. The two sources of data included…

In a time of proliferated school choice, how do families choose a K-12 setting for their child(ren) in the state of Missouri? For many families the decision may be easy, but for others, they had to experience one educational setting before choosing another to know what they value and prioritize in their child(ren)'s education. This qualitative…

Black male teachers are extremely underrepresented in United States public schools. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to examine how Black male teachers describe their experiences and values that influenced their decision to enter a teacher preparation program in Southeast Louisiana public school systems. Black Masculinity…

In this exploratory study, I examined the workability of servant leadership theory (Patterson, 2003) in an Ethiopian context for the first time. Patterson's servant leadership theory is comprised of seven servant leadership virtues, agapao love, humility, altruism, vision, trust, empowerment, and service. I investigated the causal relationship…

Chinese students make up the largest and second largest group of internationals in U.S. and Canadian universities, yet they receive scant attention in terms of how they decide to study transnationally in North America. Most of the research on Chinese families' study abroad decision-making has been conducted with those from first tier eastern…

A growing body of research exists on core values. However, limited scholarly research exists on core values in higher education institutions that operate in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. And yet, society entrusts higher education with our nation's most important resource--our future leaders. University adopted…

Historically, institutions of higher education (IHE) have been cautious and slow in making changes. Yet in today's fast-paced and dynamic world of content availability and information flow generated by 24-hour news cycles and the ubiquity of social media present a challenging reality for colleges and universities in their public relations and…

This interpretive qualitative study examined how professional socialization experiences shape the student affairs specialty choice of higher education and student affairs (HESA) master's-level students. This research utilized Perez's (2014) conceptual model to comprehend participants' socialization, sensemaking, and self-authorship as they reflect…

This study explored how a community college president used strategic planning concepts to advance an institution's completion agenda initiatives. The research method was a qualitative single case study design. Keller's (1983) academic strategy served as the conceptual framework to conduct the investigation. Four research questions guided the…

While university department heads are integral to the operation and culture of higher education institutions, they often experience little training or support to fulfill their complex and multifaceted role. At the same time, there is limited research on how heads come to understand their work or how such understandings shape their behavior. In…

Although the Mexican population is experiencing tremendous growth, they continue to lag behind the national average in, and have amongst the lowest, educational attainment levels of all Latinos/as (Perez Huber et al., 2015). Some studies have looked at the experience of Mexicans along the K-12, undergraduate, and doctoral educational pipelines.…

Ethical misconduct continues to raise concerns among the public because of the significant impact on stakeholders. This study investigates differences among business ethics education, attitudes towards ethical decision-making, and length of work experience among MBA groups. Based on the premise that the transfer effects of business ethics…