Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2019, Management

Identity development is a key part of flourishing, but how an at-risk emerging adult student shapes a life project meant for a flourishing life has been understudied. There is a notable gap in current literature examining the effects of capital negotiation (social capital and identity capital) on life project design, and informal educator behaviors on emerging adult student employability and identity capital, which we argue are critical, missing elements of a flourishing life project. Previous research on informal student-faculty interactions has addressed academic/educational outcomes of those interactions, leaving void the potential identity capital development and negotiation also resulting from those same interactions. In the same vein, much research has addressed counseling life designing, some even for vulnerable youth, but little attention has been devoted to informal edu-mentor behaviors regarding the planning of a life project for at-risk emerging adult students across educational settings. This work borrows from othering and literature on under-resourced students to begin to define at-risk, but we concentrate its definition by specifying Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). This dissertation's intensive interviews and structural equation modeling investigated behaviors of faculty that foster bonding with students, the consequences of which resulted in student identity capital development. The research offered herein developed from a three-part exploratory sequential mixed methods project addressing how an at-risk emerging adult student negotiates capital in shaping a life project across educational settings. The initial phase leveraged a grounded theory approach to examine the student-teacher relationship from the secondary school teacher's perspective. I investigated the particular behaviors, social and emotional intelligence competencies, and practices that made a teacher good at the facilitation of a relationship with othered students, specifically (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Paul Salipante (Committee Chair); Diana Bilimoria (Committee Member); James Gaskin (Committee Member); Kalle Lyytinen (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Community Colleges; Continuing Education; Education; Education Policy; Educational Evaluation; Educational Leadership; Higher Education; Management; Organizational Behavior; School Administration; Secondary Education; Social Psychology; Social Research; Systems Design; Teacher Education; Teaching