Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2020, Curriculum and Instruction: Gifted and Talented

Since the enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2002, school and classroom environments have become increasingly regimented and uniform. As the federal government placed more regulations on districts, schools, teachers, and students, classrooms have become a place where standardized outcomes are expected. High stakes testing has become the focus of discussions about curriculum, classroom environments, and teacher and student behavior. This heightened focus on ensuring all students are in the same place, at the same time, and performing in the same ways is concerning. The accountability and assessment culture in our schools is something Eisner (2005) addressed stating, “...the dominating values currently guiding our reform efforts focus heavily on boosting test scores and standardizing outcomes” (p. 14). Eisner continued by saying, “when schools get obsessed with ensuring predictable results, they tend to treat children in uniform and standardized ways. Such an approach is more suited to canning beans than to cultivating productive idiosyncrasy” (p. 16). Consequently, individuality and creativity in the classroom have become neglected and overlooked at a time when they are needed most. This dissertation is an ethnographic, descriptive multi-case study that captured gifted students' lived experiences with creativity in the classroom. Gifted students' definitions of creativity and their perceptions of classroom environmental factors that foster or hinder its expression were the focus of the research. Study participants included 21 fifth gifted students and four of their teachers from two school sites, one public and one private, in the midwestern United States. Data was gathered over the course of the 2019-2020 academic year and is presented primarily from the students' perspectives on how they define creativity and the classroom environmental factors that foster and hinder their creative expression in school. Data sources included focus group and individual in (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1975, Graduate School

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2016, Leadership and Change

This study developed a scale for teams to assess their behaviors related to creative synergy. Creative synergy is the interactions among team members where the collective creative results are greater than the sum of their individual efforts. When a team achieves creative synergy they have the potential to solve difficult problems with innovative solutions leading to positive impacts on our communities, societies, and even our world. This study looked at the internal-process variables of teams to determine what factors impact creative synergy. The research process involved two phases. In Phase 1, a survey was taken by 830 adults who were members of teams. The results were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. A new scale was created that identified three factors teams need for creative synergy: team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process. In Phase 2, the new scale was tested with three work teams to determine the perceived accuracy of the scale. The new Creative Synergy Scale will be a valuable tool for teams wanting to be more creative together. It will give them feedback on their level of team purpose, team dynamics, and team creative process. This dissertation is accompanied by two supplemental files: a video of the author's introduction (MP4) and a correlation table showing the original 75 items considered for the Creative Synergy Scale (PDF). This dissertation is available in open-access at OhioLink ETD Center, etd.ohiolink.edu and AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Industrial, Interior Visual Communication Design

There is little research on the relationship between the physical work environment and group creativity. Components within a physical work environment could potentially affect the users' perceptions of their own creativity or the creativity that they experience with others. The increase of creative work output as a standard in various work settings today requires that further research be completed to better understand the nuanced relationship between the physical work environment and group creativity. Various entities such as Google have taken this relationship very seriously, experimenting with a wide variety of environments to support their creative workforces. The experiential work environment is comprised of many elements within a complex system. Researchers are still working on outlining the components of this system, how these components relate to one another and how this system relates to creativity. Important questions relative to this relationship may include: How might an individual's (or a group's) perception of creativity (feeling creative) be affected by the physical work environment? What is the relationship of mood to creativity within an environment? What is the role of tools and materials to creativity within an environment? How might participatory design methods, the codesign of a workspace, affect the ownership and/or stewardship of a work environment? This research attempts to address these questions through the study of a group of creative workers who, by accounts of existing research on the topic, worked in a physical environment that did not support creativity. This group was able to function as creative professionals and students within this ill suited (pre-test) environment and was documented doing so for a 113 day period. This group then participated in co-designing their work environment to better support their creativity, which was implemented soon after. Finally, this group was documented working in their co-designed (post-test) en (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Arts Policy and Administration

The creative sector of any community provides important economic and social benefits. Research has shown that supporting a thriving arts and culture sector provides not only monetary returns on public investment but also helps create a positive image of a city that is in turn attractive to new businesses and a talented workforce. Furthermore, researchers have found that the presence of artists within a city is a good judge of a community's cultural vitality and that cities should look to attract and retain artists to create new and innovative arts experiences while enhancing and building the creative capital within the community. However, attracting and retaining artists is not always easy. Artists are highly mobile and frequently leave “second tier” cities to move to the premier art cities of New York and Los Angeles. In order to attract and retain artists to a community like Columbus, Ohio the city needs to support organizations and groups that help develop a hospitable environment for artists. A hospitable environment includes access to studio space and equipment, peer support, ability to gain exposure and exhibit work, and also a high quality of life at a reasonable cost. Most cities, including Columbus, are not doing near enough to attract new artists and retain the young artists who are attending secondary educational institutions in the area. But one way Columbus can create a hospitable environment for artists is to support the creation and management of artist-run organizations. Artist-run organizations refer to artist collectives, artist cooperatives, artist-run arts spaces and other artist-run and managed groups. Artist-run organizations are groups that share the common goal of providing peer and career support, as well as access to resources through an organization created and managed by artists. These organizations in turn also provide new artistic experiences through the promotion of innovative art that is able to reach a broad audience within their com (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1964, Graduate School

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2024, Dance

The postpartum period is a tumultuous time that often brings about changes to the psychological, social, and interpersonal aspects of a new mother's identity. Additionally, existing literature has revealed the potential for the creative arts—namely visual art and creative movement—to provide a space for individuals to explore their identities. This study aimed to examine 1) how mothers describe their postpartum identities and 2) how creative arts workshops can support an exploration into a mother's postpartum experience. Participants were postpartum women, without mental or physical health concerns. They participated in four, 90-minute creative arts workshops. Each workshop consisted of a visual art prompt and creative movement prompt for participants to explore, as well time for discussion about the art-making processes. Data included researcher observations, participant artwork, and participant reflective responses. Four distinct themes emerged through data analysis: Mother/Baby as a Unit, Routine, Body Size, and Reflections on Motherhood. The emergence of these themes reflected significant aspects of the participants' postpartum identities, including feelings that their babies were an extension of themselves, the presence (or lack) of a daily routine in the postpartum period, and feelings related to body size. The data revealed that creative arts workshops provided participants with time and space to reflect on—and bring new meaning to—their postpartum experience. Future research might build upon these findings to see how creative arts might be expanded to support women in the postpartum period.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, English (Arts and Sciences)

At the crossroads of Middle America and the Appalachian Mountains, there is a small town called Hallowed, West Virginia, where the veil between worlds thins. Over 123 years, many different people of this town realize that this place that should be their safe haven is a breeding ground of horrors, all while combating the typical worries of rural America.

Master of Fine Arts, University of Akron, 2024, Creative Writing

A woman in middle age has a particular set of concerns—bodily, emotional, sociological, personal—that rise to the top as her children leave home and she contemplates the end of her professional career and the impending death of her parents. Those concerns form the framework for this manuscript which consists of thirteen personal essays on womanhood. Looking backwards, inwards, and ultimately outwards, these essays contemplate the ways she learned about reproduction, her obsession with her hair, the possibility of donating her body to science, her role as a mother, her extended family's obsession with drinking and her own relationship with alcohol, her love of reading and the way it has been passed down through generations of females within her family, her thirty-year marriage, traveling with her now-adult children, teaching for a final year, and watching her parents age. They ask and seek to answer questions around what it means to be a woman in this world, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, and someone in the middle of her life. Unpacking the complex truths of human relationships, these essays are interested in laying it all out there, begging forgiveness for the narrator's imperfections, perhaps invoking humor as catharsis, and addressing the personal as a way to make it universal.

Doctor of Business Administration (D.B.A.), Franklin University, 2022, Business Administration

The practical sense of business in female entrepreneurship as it relates to the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic creative behaviors of female entrepreneurs working in the United States is the main focus of this study. The field of female entrepreneurship is growing with the participation of women with or without full-time jobs in standard employment, with or without formal business education, and with or without equal access to financial resources compared to their male counterparts. This study aims to capture the definition of success and how female entrepreneurs perceive success. Utilizing convenience sampling, this qualitative study conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 successful female entrepreneurs in a major Midwest metropolitan area. With dual roles in work and family, the female entrepreneurs engage in a role of chaotic business management and self-branding with a quest for work/life balance. Their pursuit of a lifestyle business brings about a direction of working within an area of great interest, commonly called a passion. This passion allows for exploring what the female entrepreneur enjoys and a quest to produce a profit from that inspiration. Emergent themes resulting from this study are definitions of success, pandemic challenges, entrepreneurial credibility, social networking, business investment, brand management, creativity, innovation, profit design, and authentic leadership. One core result of this qualitative study is a theory called female entrepreneurial design. The female entrepreneur creates an organizational life unique to her personal style and business brand through personal self-care and professional investment.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

This study examines visual artists' processes and approaches to creating their work. From these findings, I theorize approaches to the artmaking processes. The implications from this study provide new insights not only of the artistic processes but also how these processes benefit thinking processes outside of the arts. Grounded theory, created by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967, ties the discovery of theory from data coding, often derived through interviews (Charmaz & Belgrave, 2012). This study utilizes the constructivist grounded theory approach, popularized by Kathy Charmaz (2006, 2011, 2014). A unique aspect of grounded theory is the theory emerges from the study. You do not enter a study with preconceived notions, you code and recode data repeatedly through a series of processes that drive codes to categories, categories to hypothesis, and ultimately hypothesis to possible theories (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). This study examines 35 interviews with artists across 20 years. The software, Atlas.ti, was used to assist with various interactive and inductive coding processes. Nine unique aspects of artists' processes were discovered: 1. Artists rely on craft for the successful completion of their works. 2. Artists embrace and utilize feelings in making their work. 3. Artists use the connection between thinking and knowing to make work. 4. Artists are open to and desire to be overcome in their practices. 5. Artists create challenges and struggle with their work. 6. Artists give of themselves as much as their works give to them. 7. Artists experience joy in their work. 8. Artists work from places of their own creations. 9. Daily matter and their surroundings are often the focus of artists' works. The findings in the pilot study broke from creativity as problem-solving-based research (Campbell, 1960; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Dudek and Cote, 1994; Mansfield & Busse, 1981; Perkins, 1981; Wallas, 1949). This project also identifies distinct (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, Cleveland State University, 2021, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

The essays contained herein seek to examine the quantity of identities allowed in a life, specifically when the life is female in nature and American in flavor. Not secondarily examined is the quality of freedoms provided within aforesaid examined identities. Methods of examination include sleepless nights, introspection, substance use, religious practice, and, of course, writing. No conclusive results were found, other than that much work remains to be done in the field of American female identity and freedom. Recommendations for further research include a deconstruction of the workday as provided by the Industrial Revolution and a redefining of equality as misunderstood by the middle and upper classes.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2020, English

Flora: A Cookbook is a hybrid creative writing project that functions as both a cookbook and a memoir of the author's diagnosis with Crohn's disease, a chronic, inflammatory bowel condition. The project';s 18 recipes are entirely dairy-free in order to match the author's restricted diet. They are connected to stories, which tell of the author';s upbringing, his personal health, his love of food, his Jewish identity, and, more generally, the history of Crohn's disease in the United States. Themes explored in Flora include the visible and invisible body, self-actualization, cultural inheritance, and romantic anxiety.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: Romance Languages and Literatures

Las raices de la luz (The roots of the light) is a character-driven novel about Ana, a young woman who just lost her grandfather, Leo, from Alzheimer's disease. In an effort to honor her only family member, and to find answers about her own past, Ana goes back to her childhood and tries to find the moment when the relationship with her grandfather reached a point of no return. The novel explores the possibilities and limitations of living and taking care of a patient with Alzheimer's disease. This project draws upon the critical work of scholars such as Tess Maginess, Irmela Kruger-Furhoff and Ragna Aadlandsvik, devoted to the study of fictional representations of dementia and the challenges of narrating Alzheimer's disease. As Maginess and other scholars in this field have pointed out, such representations constitute an enormous contribution in the building of knowledge regarding the human, social and psychological dimensions of such disease; and participate in an important cultural debate about the ethical implications of living with Alzheimer's disease in contemporary societies. This creative project is accompanied by a critical essay analyzing the current pedagogy practices and scholar development of Creative Writing in Spanish as an academic discipline. Resumen Las raices de la luz es una novela sobre una joven, Ana, que acaba de perder a su abuelo, Leo, de la enfermedad de Alzheimer. En un esfuerzo por honrar a su unico familiar y encontrar respuestas sobre su propio pasado, Ana vuelve a su infancia e intenta encontrar el momento en que la relacion con su abuelo llego a un punto sin retorno. La novela explora las posibilidades y limitaciones de vivir y cuidar a un paciente con la enfermedad de Alzheimer. Este proyecto se basa en el trabajo critico de academicos como Tess Maginess, Irmela Kruger-Furhoff y Ragna Aadlandsvik, dedicados al estudio de representaciones de la demencia y los desafios de narrar la enfermedad de Alzheimer. Como Maginess y otros (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, English (Arts and Sciences)

This project is a series of essays aiming to develop inclusive creative writing curricula by utilizing resources from the areas of creative writing studies, writing & composition studies, and critical identity studies, to address avenues toward developing a “culturally competent” curricula for student authors involved in creative writing. The project investigates how creative writing practices might be examined for their ethical, linguistic, political, and pedagogical potential; how 21st-century writing practices affect the production and consumption of literary works for culturally diverse audiences; and, finally, how the imminent social issues in creative writing theory and pedagogy might be adapted for graduate student instructors (GSIs) and teacher-practitioners involved in bridging creative writing and composition instruction.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2019, English

This thesis is a collection of both flash memoir and longer creative nonfiction essays centered on the intersections of poverty, girlhood, identity, patriarchy, and secrecy, particularly within the matrilineal line of my family. I reflect on the choices poor women make or are forced to make for their families and the resulting consequences. Specifically, my work examines and comments on the lives of poor women and girls in relation to outside patriarchal forces (such as religion, capitalism, and governmental regulation) that make demands on their lives and create decisions based in survival. My examination of these decisions and forces are based in essays primarily about my mother, my grandmother, and myself and the lives we have led and the decisions we made to hide aspects of our pasts and the shame that followed. By using the essay rather than a traditional narrative memoir form, the pieces are able to inhabit a number of different time periods, tenses, and points of view. The essays convey the enduring repercussions of secrecy, a life of poverty in a trailer park where we lived both without men but also in the shadow of them, with an eye toward discovery and understanding.

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2019, Creative Writing/Poetry

Dog Stars weaves together confessional and persona poems that reflect on family, personhood, and death and how death shapes the experience of life. Themes include the reciprocal nature of life and death, compassion, longing and hunger, the reinvention of mythology to fill in the gaps, the nature of monsters, and the authority of mythology. The thesis asks: What does a creation owe its maker, whether they are a builder, a parent, or a god? What makes a creature a monster? And if death is imminent, why bother living at all? A wide cast of speakers—from history, nature, personal experience, and mythology—respond to these questions. Norse mythology in particular takes center-stage as a study of family relationships and personhood focused on Loki's brood. The thesis is divided into three sections and beginning with Twilight, or Ragnarok, “the twilight of gods.” Ragnarok is always known, like death itself, and begins with the birth of narrative. Twilight portrays the world as it is, with its origin stories. This section maintains the status quo as characters like Loki, Embla, and unnamed speakers struggle with expectations and the demands of living. Identity becomes a question as shape shifters either succumb to or resist these expectations. The second section, Night, signals Ragnarok in full swing. This is a period of destruction, loss, and grief, as the status quo begins to crumble. A grandfather dies, the wolves begin their pursuit, and the world itself deteriorates. Speakers cope and endure these losses, often with a sense of fear and guilt; other characters, like the wolves, grapple with the consequences of an innate longing and hunger that nothing can satisfy. In Daybreak, the cycle begins with the inherited history of the first cycle, to start a palimpsest of cycles. Speakers begin the process of building and rebuilding cities for themselves and transformations are no longer a means to survival, but an expression of autonomy and joy.

Master of Fine Arts, University of Akron, 2018, Creative Writing

On Writing 2: An Essay Collection and Loose Sequel to Stephen King's On Writing, a creative nonfiction thesis, takes horror and suspense legend Stephen King's memoir on the craft and UPS THE ANTE!!! Eighteen years after the debut of King's nonfiction hit comes the sequel fans have been begging for. Gone are the tales of King's childhood, his lessons on writing, and that time he got hit by a van. Now, read of the essays of a different schmuck, none of which have to do with writing, but do deal with traveling in Key West, volunteering at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and trying to keep a relationship together at an IKEA. Each essay is handled deftly with a lot of humor and that innate sadness that is key to the human condition. See what the critics are saying about On Writing 2: "This is worse than A Million Little Pieces." — Melvin Goldfarb, New York Times "My son has really disappointed me this time." — Barbara Cibella, Mother of Author Do yourself a favor and download Stephen King's lawyer's favorite thesis of 2018! Get On Writing 2 today! DISCLAIMER: This is a sequel to Stephen King's On Writing in name only. Please do not sue me.

Master of Fine Arts, University of Akron, 2017, Creative Writing

A collection of personal essays