Doctor of Education (Educational Leadership), Youngstown State University, 2023, Department of Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

The COVID-19 pandemic created massive amounts of stress for frontline healthcare providers. The purpose of this study was to examine perspectives of respiratory therapists, student respiratory therapists, and respiratory therapy managers on trust in leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. The United States' healthcare and government systems were not prepared for the burden caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. High levels of prolonged stress, along with significant amounts of death, can cause burnout and moral injury for frontline healthcare providers. Healthcare leaders must provide effective communication, support, and proper amounts of personal protective equipment to help diminish the effects of burnout and moral injury. This study used Q-methodology, which is a mixed-methods research design, that included 203 staff respiratory therapists, student respiratory therapists, and respiratory therapy managers in the state of Ohio who worked the frontlines, or managed respiratory therapists working the frontlines, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Five distinct groups emerged from perspectives of participants: I'll be There for You, Won't You Please, Please Help Me?, I'll Get You There, What's Going On?, and Show Must Go On. The quality of the leader has profound effect on participants' perspective of how their institution handled the COVID-19 pandemic. The more daily contact and communication with their leaders, the less guilt the participants felt during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harold Kelley's covariation model conceptualizes the entity and circumstance of the COVID-19 pandemic by sharing perceptions of frontline respiratory therapists. Though the United States government considers the COVID-19 pandemic over, frontline respiratory therapists will endure the effects of the COVID-19 virus for years to come.

Committee: Karen Larwin PhD (Committee Chair); Sal Sanders PhD (Committee Member); Kelly Colwell EdD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Behavioral Sciences; Communication; Continuing Education; Cultural Resources Management; Demographics; Education; Educational Leadership; Environmental Health; Health Care; Health Care Management; Health Sciences; Higher Education; Higher Education Administration; Management; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Organizational Behavior; Pathology; Personal Relationships; Philosophy of Science; Public Health; Public Health Education; Social Research; World History

Bachelor of Arts, Capital University, 2022, Communication

“Fake news” has magnified media credibility and utility as issues of the digital age. The COVID-19 pandemic, by presenting life-threatening uncertainty, has created new interest in online information and perceptions thereof. This study examines how the crisis and its political implications have affected college students' perceptions of online news media. A survey was administered to Capital University's undergraduate student body via email to gauge students' perceptions of online news media credibility and utility since the pandemic's onset. Other questions explored perceptions of “fake news,” social media use, and the value of user comments. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to draw conclusions about how perceptions of media credibility and utility are affected by the perceived presence of a crisis and its politicization. The study found a negative correlation between a crisis's politicization and online news media credibility and a positive correlation between the perceived presence of a crisis and online news media utility. Understanding how college students consume and perceive online news media may provide insights into how crises affect the public's perceptions of online news media.

Committee: Lois Foreman-Wernet Ph.D. (Advisor); Stephen Koch Ph.D. (Advisor); Sharon Croft Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Stephanie Wilson Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: Cognitive Psychology; Communication; Information Science; Journalism; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Political Science

This project is an ethnographic critique of depoliticization as a mode of exclusion and silencing through vernacular cultural forms like bluegrass festivals. The argument builds a theory of the implication of concepts of honesty, nostalgia, and family in the experience of Central Ohio bluegrass festivals, claiming that broader sensibilities of the world bear on people's understandings of bluegrass just as bluegrass festivals are themselves examples of the sorts of setting in which those sensibilities are formed and produced.

Committee: Sonja Amadae (Advisor); Barry Shank (Committee Member); Amy Shuman (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Folklore; Political Science

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2011, German

This study examines Steve Reich's reflections on his early works in the context of Walter Benjamin's thesis in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” While Reich's thoughts as expressed in interviews and selected writings show a similar attitude to Benjamin's toward changes in human perception, Benjamin's notion of auratic demise in the age of technical reproducibility is challenged by Reich's understanding of the role of technology in music and the effects of gradual musical processes. Reich's assertions regarding the aesthetic autonomy of his compositional process are reminiscent of Romantic ideals of art, particularly those embodied by the “poeticized” as defined by Benjamin in “Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin.” However, the means by which Reich claims to have reintroduced artistic autonomy are those that Benjamin attributes to aura's deterioration, such as impersonality and gradual presentation of the artistic subject. This study determines that, while Reich uses mechanical process to accommodate the change in human perception as Benjamin anticipates, aura is not eliminated as proposed in “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility.” Although the “here and now” of the original is destroyed, aura survives through the authority and transcendent nature of musical process, and singularity is achieved by the unique reception of individual audience members with each hearing. Reich's work may not politicize aesthetics as Benjamin predicts, but through the authority of autonomous musical process and the decentralization of interpretation, the fascist aestheticization of politics may still be averted in the age of technical reproducibility.

Committee: Edgar Landgraf Dr. (Advisor); Geoffrey Howes Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Germanic Literature