Conducted have been studies on the development of adolescent students, the leadership style of middle school teachers, and the diversity of student. However, individual studies have not addressed the complex skills necessary for an effective middle school teacher. Today's teachers face rapid developmental changes of adolescents, increased…

The structure of higher education has changed with more remote part-time faculty superseding their full-time coworkers. Academic leaders are challenged to provide the support needed to ensure inclusion and engagement for online adjunct faculty. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to investigate the phenomenon of inclusion…

The purpose of this study was to explore how students described their social and emotional experiences with teacher effectiveness (TE) in the classroom setting. The researcher sought to address a gap in the research regarding the ways that students discerned and appropriated meaning in the context of determining what constituted teaching…

In this dissertation, I study the relationships between financial aid, student characteristics, persistence, and completion in three separate chapters. In all three chapters, I use detailed, student-level administrative data from the UNC System beginning in the Fall 2013 semester. The first chapter is entitled "Tuition Reduction and Student…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact a historically white institution (HWI) has on the experiences of their Black men college students who leave prior to obtaining their bachelor's degree. Using Wood & Palmer's (2015) Context, Actions, and Outcomes (CAO) Model of Institutional Responsibility, Venzant Chambers et al. (2014)…

The overarching goal of this dissertation is to examine institutional change initiatives in STEM and to understand the impact of engaging with a specific change strategy on a biochemistry educator's instructional practice. Institutional change initiatives involve executing an intentional strategy to influence teaching practices within a specific…

States founded, control, and fund public postsecondary institutions because higher education helps meet state goals. Public institutions of higher education provide considerable public benefits to states, but these benefits have not been systematically measured. As a result, public conversations about the broad value proposition of higher…

Employing critical race theory, this study explored Asian and Asian American mentorship pedagogy in minority serving settings. Despite growing recognition of the role Faculty of Color play in mentoring college students, especially in minority-serving institutions, few studies have explored the way Asian and Asian American faculty mentor Students…

In the wake of rapid technological advancements, sweeping educational reforms, and the far-reaching impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, hybrid courses emerged as a significant trend in higher education, particularly in China. This action research study built upon existing theoretical frameworks and practical experiences to delve deeper into the…

Career services leaders lead complex operations and leverage a vast network of community and employer partnerships to broker career opportunities for the students they serve. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences and perspectives of career services leaders who are working on diversity and social justice initiatives at large,…

Historically, gender norms have allowed faculty who were men to remain an ideal worker by being dedicated to work regardless of family status because they had a wife to keep up the domestic and childcare duties (Tierney & Bensimon, 1996; Wolf-Wendel & Ward, 2006). Although both men and women have served as faculty members and parents, the…

Academic integrity research has focused heavily on undergraduate students and indicates that students around the globe are unsure about the concept of academic integrity and the dishonest behaviors that can lead to penalization (Gullifer & Tyson, 2014; Ramzan et al., 2012). The limited literature focused on graduate students indicates they…

Given the contemporary context in which scholars debate the "crisis in the humanities," this study addressed how and why arts and humanities fields in higher education are changing. An overarching theme to much of these debates, crisis or no crisis, is neoliberalism, a political and economic philosophy that is pervasive to higher…

Despite impressive statistics related to community college transfer student achievement, negative perceptions and stigma attached to attending community college persist. The problem addressed by this phenomenological study is the community college stigma experience for transfer students attending the most highly-ranked public university in…

Many institutions of higher education within the United States and throughout the world encounter one of the largest nemeses they have on their campus--student cheating and plagiarism. Almost all colleges and universities have some type of honor code, but some form of student dishonesty continually occurs. The purpose of this qualitative research…