The purpose of this constructivist grounded theory study was to describe and illuminate the transition experiences of re-enrolling student veterans. This research question guided the study: What are the barriers and strategies for resolution that re-enrolling student veterans face in their pre- and post-service transition experiences? I conducted…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between institutional characteristics of colleges and universities and Intercultural Maturity. More specifically, the study looked at two relationships: (1) the institution's emphasis on diversity and faculty emphasis on Intercultural Maturity in the classroom, and (2) the institution's…

More and more, critical thinking and writing skills are necessary and of prime significance. Stakeholders across the board are concerned that students are deficient in these vital areas. The purpose of this study was to examine how the employment of specific, targeted and explicit critical thinking and writing instruction could enhance the…

Advocates of students with ADHD in the school system are usually parents who must become advocates in response to the child's need for support and a call for parental involvement from the school. Parent advocates are confronted with many challenges, the primary being the daunting, often solitary task of advocating for a child who is often viewed…

The dissertation outlines a framework for understanding variation in ultimate attainment and syntactic structure in second language acquisition by positing a distinction between competence-based and generalized learning processes. Within this framework, competence-based learning is theorized to employ inductive learning processes to acquire a…

More students are beginning their higher education journey at community colleges with the intent of transferring to a four-year college or university. The purpose of this study was to attempt to gain a better understanding of the experiences of two-year community college transfer students who transferred to a large, four-year public research…

Educators need insight into what instructional strategies are effective in the online environment, but few researchers have contrasted threaded discussion strategies and measures of student performance using a quantitative approach. Also, the effectiveness of threaded discussion strategies across all student generation groups or between genders is…

This dissertation aims to understand the maturational and non-maturational aspects of early bilingualism and language attrition in heritage speakers who have acquired their L1 incompletely in childhood. The study highlights the influential role of age and input dynamics in early L1 development, where the timing of reduction in L1 input and the…

Parents of college students are an important partner in higher education today. Students maintain close relationships with their parents and consider them their top advisors. Parents can provide support and influence to help their students succeed. However, little empirical research on parents of college students exists. Much of the information in…

This qualitative study was conducted to investigate the social and cultural characteristics of gifted and talented students and their perceptions of the educational factors that have contributed to the development of their gifts and talents. Twelve Puerto Rican English Language Learner (PR-ELL) students who are identified as gifted and attend a…

African American males fail to graduate from colleges and universities as compared to any other demographic. The impact of this non-completion failure continues to touch the African American family structure, community stability, economic reduction at all levels, and an increasing situational hopelessness. The literature surrounding the struggles…

Scholarly literature points to an important relationship between transformative learning and pastoral ministry, as well as the need for experiential learning in pastoral ministry formation. The necessary role of critical self-reflection in transformative learning underlines the need for theological field education experiences to foster students'…

The projections for higher education indicate a large number of senior academic leadership posts being vacated in the future due to retirement of existing leaders. The gap in leadership positions lends itself to an increased importance for developing a pipeline of talent to fill these positions. The leadership lifestyle lived by academic leaders…

Typically language development in children closely coincides with development in many other areas. This makes it difficult to determine whether observed correlations are coincidental or causal in nature. The three studies presented here explore these relationships by looking at two populations of learners who are delayed in exposure to English,…

This study examined nontraditional student engagement into the collegiate environment on the University of Memphis (U of M) campus, specifically services and programs in the University College. The sample surveyed included 4 nontraditional undergraduate students, 1 from each grade level, aged 25 years or older. The 4 nontraditional undergraduate…