Master of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, Applied Anatomy

This study evaluates whether academic performance differs when physician assistant (PA) students learn gross anatomy using a mixed-reality (MR) program versus cadaveric dissection. First-year PA student volunteers at Case Western Reserve University enrolled in an anatomy course were divided into two cohorts. During a given unit, each cohort spent laboratory sessions learning through either dissection or MR. At the end of each unit, participants were given a laboratory practical exam on each modality. Differences in exam scores were compared between modalities within the same cohort and between cohorts on the same modality. While students who performed cadaveric dissection within a given unit had less difference between lab exam scores, positive Pearson's correlation coefficients (r>0.80) and Spearman's rho (rs=0.78) indicate that individual students perform equivalently across both exams. Additionally, no difference was found between cohorts on lecture exams (p>0.05), suggesting that MR holds value in a PA gross anatomy curriculum.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2021, Counselor Education (Education)

Counseling leaders have published guidelines for enhancing professional counselor identity. The goal of these calls to action is to strengthen and unify the counseling profession in order to differentiate the field from other helping professions and to solidify a definition of professional counselor identity. One facet of professional counselor identity lies in counselors' level of engagement with research engagement, otherwise defined as research identity. Counselors must consistently engage in research activities in order to utilize evidence-based clinical practices and evaluate the efficacy of treatment interventions. However, counseling scholars discuss the need for increased research engagement across the profession. The training of counselors begins at the master's level in counseling education programs, which provide the foundation for professional counselor identity, including research engagement. Many scholars have discussed research identity development among doctoral counselor education students, but little information exists which explicates this concept among master's students. This study provides quantitative data regarding counselor education master's students research identity, specifically in relation to three key constructs of research identity: research motivation, research competence, and advisory working alliance. Through this study, I accomplished three objectives: (1) describe the level of self-reported perceived research competency among master's-level counselor education students in CACREP-accredited programs in the NCACES region, (2) describe relationships among participants' self-reported research competency, research motivation, and perceptions of advisory working alliance, and (3) describe relationships among participants' self-reported research competency, research motivation, and perceptions of advisory working alliance and age, gender, program specialty area, undergraduate major, number of terms in the master's program, and number (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Art Education

Grounded in the context of a peace education program for teens, this narrative-based research study offers a story of initiating and sustaining relationships amid personal challenge during youth-driven community art engagement. Dialogue, storytelling, and collaborative artmaking as peacelearning were part of the participatory practice within this humanizing research. A theoretical framework drawn from the dialogism of Freire (1970/2002) shapes this study as well as an ethical stance of care and wholeness that contributes to the health and well-being of communities. Connection and belonging, co-learning and transformation were intertwined goals, an approach that this research study suggests challenged teens' personal vulnerability, critical self-reflection, deep listening, and multiple roles and ways of knowing. The research study portrays how the process of sharing stories and art that acknowledged participants' roots, struggles, and hopes as peacebuilders became foundations for growth. Findings from this study revealed that through the arts we can cultivate critical self-reflection, communication about the issues and challenges in our lives, interconnectedness and collective action. Additionally, this study illustrated that youth-driven approaches to community-engaged pedagogy and research exist on a continuum of youth leadership and adult collaboration. Also, sustainable youth-led initiatives and research depend on strong organizational support and adequate resources, mentorship, and community connections. Finally, a relational and asset-based approach to peacelearning through the arts can contribute to connected knowing, with potential for coalition building that supports positive change for individuals and communities.

MA, Kent State University, 2018, College of the Arts / School of Art

This qualitative research study utilized narrative inquiry and action research methods to systematically investigate specific ways an ethic of love manifests in my teaching practices and art curriculum; to nurture a heightened degree of student engagement and inspire creative exploration. Based on the principles of agape, love is put into action through an interplay of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust. In broader contexts, transformative learning and holistic education models, born of critical pedagogy, set the theoretical framework for an approach that strengthens the case for love as a vital component of critical education.

Doctor of Education, Ashland University, 2018, College of Education

This quantitative, quasi-experimental research study was designed to determine the impact of a computer assisted reading instruction program on the fluency rates and comprehension skills of third and fourth grade students with reading disabilities at an Ohio suburban-metropolitan elementary school. Pretests established the participants' baseline reading skills. The participants' reading progress was monitored, during twenty-week baseline and intervention periods, with weekly measures of fluency and comprehension. Posttests measured the intervention program's impact on the participants' fluency rates and comprehension skills. Results were evaluated through visual analyses of experimental data graphs and by conducting time series matched pair t confidence interval tests to determine the reading intervention program's impact on the participants' reading skills, as measured by AIMSweb reading fluency probes, STAR reading comprehension tests, and Woodcock Johnson IV tests of reading achievement. The study provided two potential benefits for participants, improved reading fluency rates and comprehension skills, and increased value-added measures of student performance on Ohio's Common Core State Standards tests; and a third unintended benefit, improved school district's and teachers' value-added evaluation scores on the Ohio State Report Card.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Design

“Design is a problem–solving process and the fundamental skills of the designer are the ability to look for meaningful problems, frame them into appropriate contexts, and design a process for developing and implementing a solution” (Irwin, 2015). This definition of design and the role of the designer are a significant departure from its original definition by the Bauhaus where the objective of all creative effort in the visual arts was to give form to space and where the source of creative imagination was in developing a proficiency in the craft (Gropius, Bayer, & Gropius, 1938). Design as a discipline has evolved and is expanding its impact from individual physical objects and spaces to experiences and organizations. There is increasing interest in design thinking and human-centered design methodologies. Organizations are discovering the value and potential of design. Although definition and the sphere of design influence have changed, design education has remained rooted in the craft skills. Design education has two trains of thought: the foundation and the progression. The foundation skills of observation and application have remained consistent through the history of design but the progression of design is in constant change (Foster,O.,2015 as cited by Currey, 2015). “If design is to live up to its promise it must create new, enduring curricula for design education that merge science and technology, art and business, and indeed, all the knowledge of the university” (Norman & Klemmer, 2014). What is that promise that design has to offer? How can design schools lay the foundation to deliver that promise? How can or should design education prepare future designers for this expanding sphere of design influence? This research attempts to addresses these questions by exploring the future and value of graduate design education. This multidisciplinary research and design thesis combined design research methodologies with business strategy concepts and tools for de (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2010, Chemistry and Biochemistry

For students learning science, a potential source of difficulty arises from the fact that many words used in formal science instruction are used informally in everyday communication. Chemical is one such word with multiple uses and meanings. The word chemical has different meanings when used in everyday language than in scientific language. Although children do not take a formal chemistry class in elementary school, they are expected to learn about chemical principles (chemical properties, physical properties, chemical change, and physical change) in fourth or fifth grade. Because of the everyday use of the word chemical, children are likely to have constructed some meanings about the word chemical prior to formal instruction. This prior knowledge is an important and necessary piece in the learning process. The learning theories of children's science and meaningful learning framed this qualitative investigation of fourth grade children's conceptual knowledge of chemicals. During semi-structured interviews, children's ideas about chemicals were elicited as they categorized everyday objects and substances that were related to chemicals. The children described prototypical chemicals such as cleaning substances, acids, gasoline, lead, and mercury. The properties of chemicals described by the children suggest that the children think about chemicals within an anthropocentric framework. Children related the purposes and attributes of chemicals to human interaction with the chemicals. The implications for teaching chemical principles to children are discussed. While this written dissertation presents the story of the qualitative investigation into children's ideas of chemicals, two other projects were completed for my doctoral degree. Manuscripts describing these two analytical chemistry cognate projects are included as appendices: Appendix H - An undergraduate chromatography laboratory experiment; and Appendix I - Meaningful leaning in a first-year analytical laboratory co (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

This study's purpose was to determine how well education colleges in Saudi Arabia prepare pre-service teachers to address 21st-century skills with their future students. The perceptions of college professors and pre-service teachers at several Saudi education colleges across the country were examined according to the methods of quantitative research and descriptive statistics. Data was obtained through a Likert scale survey consisting of 30 closed-ended questions regarding how well Saudi education colleges impart four 21st-century skills— computer literacy, research skills, critical thinking, soft skills—and two support programs—special education and English as a foreign language (EFL). The data was analyzed using pairwise t-test comparisons to discover which skills were most prioritized by professors and pre-service teachers. It was found that special education was perceived as requiring the most improvement, with EFL in second place and computer literacy in third place, followed by research skills. An extensive literature review was also conducted on the topic. Based on the findings, it is recommended that special education, EFL, computer literacy, and research skills receive the most focus during any future attempts to reform the Saudi education system, and that the input of Saudi pre-service teachers be consulted during any process of upgrading curriculum related to critical thinking, special education, research skills, and soft skills. Keywords 21st-century skills, Saudi Vision 2030, English as a foreign language (EFL), critical thinking, research skills, soft skills, computer literacy, special education, Saudi education system, teacher preparation programs, colleges of education in Saudi Arabia, perceptions of pre-service teachers, perceptions of college professors. .

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2024, Educational Administration

Faculty are critical players to advance institutional mission in higher education (Clark, 1972). Hiring faculty who have an affinity for mission and who understand and support Catholicism in the spirit of an institution's founding charism can be a significant challenge for academic leaders and for the longevity of institutional mission in Catholic higher education (Heft, 2021). Faculty across disciplines may find it challenging to grasp or apply the mission of their Catholic university because mission-related criteria are not always understood or prioritized in faculty hiring processes (Breslin, 2000; Briele, 2012; Heft, 2021; Steele, 2008). Currently, there is no standard mission focused guide for faculty hiring at the University of Dayton (UD), a Catholic Marianist University. Given that hiring priorities and practical knowledge of Catholic Marianist principles of education differ among faculty across the university, hiring for mission criteria may not be well defined among search committees. This practical action research study used qualitative methods to explore how affinity for the University of Dayton's Catholic Marianist mission is assessed in faculty searches. Results showed that search committee members consider mission principles at least moderately important, but these have not been consistently identified in candidate assessment criteria. Still, participants discussed six mission-based criteria with twenty component elements that have been operative in some way in recent faculty searches. This knowledge, coupled with the principles of Marianist education, informed Hiring Faculty to Engage Catholic Marianist Mission, a practical intervention plan to strengthen hiring for mission practices through articulating the purpose of hiring for mission; developing criteria and assessment rubrics; standardizing the hiring for mission search process; and fostering faculty stakeholder participation. Anticipated results of the action plan and challenges in project lead (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

How might teacher educators build a reflective and supportive community of practice with pre-service teachers? How might a visual (intermedia) journaling practice support critical and reflective thinking? How might an arts-based intermedia approach to analysis inform teacher educator pedagogical methods? These questions evolved and emerged throughout my research process during this dissertation study. As an artist/researcher/teacher I used an arts-based research paradigm to guide an emergent research practice focused on understanding the potential of arts-based reflective practice in an art teacher education program. The study was conducted with two groups of undergraduate student participants enrolled in pre-service teacher education coursework. Parallaxic praxis, emerging from a/r/tography, was a guiding research methodology and pedagogical approach used to maintain a creative, living inquiry throughout the study. This methodology supported opportunities and potential for the researcher and participants to generate arts-based study data and engage in performative processes documenting their experience with creative reflective practices. The learnings from the first participant group informed decisions and activity design for participant group two. Participants actively engaged in self-directed and co-designed intermedia reflective activities throughout the cycles of the study. Along the way, poetic inquiry surfaced as a central method for analysis and to generate research renderings, primarily in the form of found poems. The research renderings were conceptualized into a research exhibition designed to be experienced through multiple modalities including an exhibition in an art gallery and a virtual online exhibition. This dissertation illustrates where the research process led me as the researcher, and my students, as participants. Through the renderings in the research exhibition, the process of analyzing data using poetic inquiry highlights benefits and cha (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Leadership Studies, Xavier University, 2023, Leadership Studies and Human Resource Development

This study empirically investigated correlations between work engagement and transfer interest. The study examined the two variables and their respective disaggregated dimensions. The study involved 69 faculty (29) and staff (40) from five K-12 nonprofit schools in the Tanzanian cities of Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, and Arusha. Data were collected online using two previously validated self-report assessment instruments: Gegenfurtner et al's (2020) 10-item Transfer Interest Questionnaire (TIQ) and Utrecht's 9-item Work Engagement Scale (UWES) (Seppala et al, 2020). Of the 165 eligible participants,101 respondents consented to participate in the study. After deleting the incomplete responses, a sample of 69 remained. Data were transferred from Qualtrics to Excel for analysis. The dissertation supervisor used t-tests to assess whether there were significant differences between faculty and staff regarding work engagement and transfer interest, then performed Pearson correlation analysis to assess linear relationships among the variables. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 were supported by the data, while hypotheses 4 and 5 were partially supported. There was no significant difference between faculty and staff on either dedication or vigor, while faculty were significantly more absorbed than staff. Training content and interest in training transfer were each positively correlated with both vigor and dedication, but not with absorption.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, EDU Teaching and Learning

This teacher inquiry study documents my personal journey as a teacher. The main research question was how have my teaching practices as an early childhood educator changed over time in relation to my changing understanding of learning, teaching, and drama in education? This study is a story of my growth and transformation as a teacher over ten years. I draw on my experiences as a kindergarten teacher in Korea, my work using dramatic inquiry with emergent bilingual children in the United States, and my experiences as a graduate student at Ohio State. Using teacher inquiry and narrative inquiry as my methodologies, I analyzed raw data, such as journals, fieldnotes, photographs, and video-and audio-recordings to create narratives of my teaching practice. I engaged in reflective dialogue with my past selves as a teacher in different times and places when I had used play and dramatic inquiry in my own classrooms. I also analyzed the teaching practice of my advisor using dramatic inquiry. My analysis was shared in a community of inquiry as part of my coursework at Ohio State. This reflective process allowed me to better understand my changing teaching practices in more depth and to confront feelings of discomfort that became pivotal moments of realization that I analyzed to show changes over time. I used Cultural Historical Activity Theory as my main theoretical framework for analysis. In addition, I used a framework created by Janet Emig. I analyzed the narratives to identify my changing hidden assumptions, beliefs, and theories of teaching, learning, and drama in education. My findings showed significant changes over a ten-year time frame. I used an innovative approach to construct, present, and analyze the narratives as data. I present and then analyze narratives of the practice of four past teacher-personae. Each persona represents a unique phase in my teaching journey. Collectively, they show change and reveal some of the complexity of my growth and transformati (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

The problem addressed in this critical autoethnographic study concerns the lack of higher education opportunities for musicians in the state of Sonora, Mexico and the ways in which that impacts music educators from the region. In particular, I look at the different paths music teachers take to follow their vocation by critically examining my privileged music education story. I base this critical lens on a framework of capital to understand the types of resources and forms of capital that are needed to study music professionally in Sonora. This study is presented through stories and poems that reflect the realities of my music education journey as well as the stories of this study's participants. The primary research question was: What factors, including social class, impact the availability and accessibility of resources and professional development opportunities for music educators in Sonora, Mexico? To collect my data, I employed individual/personal and what I call “collective” forms of data collection through journaling/creative writing and interactive focus groups. The creative writing I engaged with included letter-writing, poems, and vignettes. I did some of my personal writing before and after conducting the interactive interviews to constantly reflect and embody the practice of meaning-making. This study included 19 participants who are active music educators in Sonora and who were assigned to three focus groups. Upon completion of the nine interview sessions (three per group), I began to engage with the collected data by relistening to interviews, reading Spanish transcriptions and thinking about the possibilities for selecting and translating such stories. After identifying important moments in participants' narratives, I reread my selections to identify different forms of capital that were represented. The four forms of capital with which I framed my analyses are economic, social, cultural, and human capital, which I based on literature by Becker (1964), (open full item for complete abstract)

Honors Theses, Ohio Dominican University, 2023, Honors Theses

This paper describes the process of development and evaluation of an open educational resource (OER) e-module on the Central Limit Theorem written for an Introductory Statistics college-level course. The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, the e-module bridges the knowledge gap between introductory topics and Hypothesis Testing – one of the most challenging concepts in Statistics. Second, the project focuses on developing tools that allow instructors to analyze the effectiveness of the module and reveal student patterns of interaction with the platform. The overall goal of the project is to improve the quality of open educational resources, provide students/instructors with additional study materials in response to rising cost for textbooks and higher education, and provide more data for further research on student behavior while interacting with e-textbooks. The interactive e-module was developed using LaTeX markup language and Overleaf editor, uploaded to the XIMERA platform and tested on two sections of MTH 140, a college-level Statistics course. Once the experiment has been performed and the data collected, the results were analyzed using Python programming language. As a result of the study, some tools for analysis of user data have been developed, and an OER has been created.

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2022, College of Education and Human Services

The choice of college and careers are not simple. The choices students make when selecting a college can affect them for their entire life. Tressie Cottom (2017), in her book, Lower Ed, describes our educational journey like a stream (Cottom, 2017). We are all traveling down the stream of life, and there are rocks and forks. The question is: what diverts us on our path and where do we end up? This narrative study examines the experience of women attending For-Profit Institutions and the reasoning behind choosing to go to an FPI rather than a traditional higher education institution. The participants' stories show that they were determined to find a better career, wanted to provide for their families, and had significant life events that changed their paths.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2022, Higher Education

Higher education in the United States is threatened by the continued decrease in state and federal funding, increasing competition for the ever-decreasing funds. The need to understand and articulate institutional value is critical so institutions can communicate their worth as a means of ensuring viability. There currently exists an unclear understanding of how the public value of four-year colleges and universities is identified and communicated; this study provides some understanding. Using the Delphi method, this research examined how presidents, or their proxies, of four-year colleges and universities in Ohio identify and communicate institutional public value. Presidents are selected as participants because for centuries, college presidents have been tasked with conveying their institution's mission and value to the public. This study defines public value as “creating a pluralistic democracy through education, research, and community engagement for the betterment of society, which helps all people to flourish,” provides characteristics of this definition, and includes implications for current practice.

PHD, Kent State University, 2022, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

In 2015, then-Higher Education Minister Rodolfo Alarcon said in response to many Cubans' inability to communicate in the international language, English fluency would be required by students as a university exit requirement (“Mastering English,” 2015). The purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to understand the experiences of Cuban university English instructors, who encountered these curricular changes. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with six university instructors and emailed responses from another six. The participants included both current and former faculty members who left the teaching profession for more lucrative careers in private tutoring or tourism. Motivational Systems Theory (Ford, 1992), various aspects of social identity (Gray & Morton, 2018) and my own experience as an EFL instructor guided the study in understanding the instructors' social identity, motivation, and self-agency. The data were analyzed using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. The findings showed differing experiences among men and women and urban and rural instructors. Faculty expressed both positive and negative teaching experiences, and, as a result of some unfavorable experiences, some instructors left the field of teaching altogether and applied their talents to the growing tourism and private business sectors. In addition to understanding the experiences of the study's participants, the investigation also provides valuable insight into the evolution of English teaching in Cuban higher education, the consequences of educational borrowing and the complexity of conducting research within an authoritarian regime.

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2022, Educational Leadership

Financial literacy is a tool necessary for navigating adulthood, often overlooked when preparing students for college decision-making. Despite the lack of preparation, research indicates financial issues as one of the most significant concerns for student retention, affecting first-generation and minority students the most. The purpose of this study is to improve the financial literacy of first-year students at Texas A&M University-Commerce, a mid-sized institution with a majority-minority student population. This mixed-method action research study uses surveys and interviews to establish themes around the perceived financial literacy of students from a sample of first-year students, business faculty, and campus housing staff. The themes emerging from the analyses show a lack of knowledge and willingness to learn about the five chosen financial concepts and a need for progressive program-based education that includes campus-wide participation. The action plan resulting from the data analysis includes the implementation of expanding the current residential curriculum to include financial literacy learning outcomes. The residential curriculum process includes creating an interdepartmental task force including both faculty and staff, creating collaborative and progressive workshops, and meetings to collect and analyze data for the continual growth of the action plan. Success is based on student participation and feedback from surveys. Implementation of the first phase would take a minimum of two years. The first is to be used for development, and the second for a full cycle implementation. The budget for the implementation is low. Stakeholders involved in the task force will provide space and marketing for programs. The largest resource to manage is the time commitment of the faculty and staff implementing the action plan. This study involves a campus-wide process of understanding first-year students and their perspective on their financial literacy while developin (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, Educational Leadership

In response to growing awareness of real-world limitations of narrowly linguistic language pedagogies, and of unintended but enduring negative consequences, research has continued to demonstrate that teaching languages interculturally is not merely educationally facilitative, but essential. Although increasingly sophisticated, intelligible, and creative theoretical discussions and research conclusions are presented within pertinent disciplines, there is comparatively little comprehensive knowledge concerning the extent to which instructional ideologies, practices, and professional circumstances align with crucial advancements in the designs and implementations of intercultural language learning and teaching. Even less is understood about how these relevant components of intercultural language education may vary among different groups of language instructors worldwide. To address these gaps within a framework engaging interdisciplinary insights from areas such as intergroup relations, translingual education, and cross-cultural psychology, this study investigated the perceived impact of scholarly advancements in intercultural language education upon the opinions, attitudes, practices, and wider learning environments of language instructors with differing educational backgrounds across the globe. Findings showed significant differences between groups with regard to degrees of supervisory support; intercultural language teaching ideologies; the frequency with which language instructors made efforts to teach culture, and their perceived preparedness in using various pedagogical methods to do so. Implications for critical and efficacious intercultural language education are discussed, along with recommendations for broader academic initiatives, psychometric analyses of different language educator groups, and new avenues for professional development and teacher education research.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study examines the big and small stories of faculty at a small, internationally-focused graduate school in New England during a time of change in higher education. A macro-micro perspective enables both an aerial view of faculty experience over time and a view of how faculty work with students at the ground level. The landscape of higher education has been shifting, a story which has drawn the interest of researchers looking at change at the institutional level. In the literature, and in the media, stories are told in broad strokes: the rise of the neoliberal university, the wave of campus internationalization, and an increasing reliance on a contingent faculty workforce. However, in spite of faculty's central position within these phenomena, stories of faculty experience during this era of change mostly remain untold. Narrative research has primarily focused on the professional development and situated learning of novice educators as they find their footing and balance a range of commitments. Considerably less attention has been given to veteran faculty whose stories are situated at the confluence of broader changes in higher education. This study addresses this gap and, in its synergy of big and small stories, contributes to the dynamic field of narrative research in educational contexts. Retrospective big stories told in life history interviews capture the life-span of faculty careers, from entering the field to experiencing challenges and change through working with diverse groups of students over several decades. Analysis of these stories produced two key metaphors which are the focus of Chapter 3. Through the use of bedrock stories, faculty preserve shared values and an institutional narrative in the face of change. In faultline stories, faculty make sense of unsettling or unresolved experiences. The findings suggest that these stories of critical events are important sources of institutional narratives and faculty learning. Compared to well-order (open full item for complete abstract)