Doctor of Ministry , Ashland University, 2024, Doctor of Ministry Program

The purpose of this project was to discover the extent to which students in U.S.-based Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE)-accredited programs had received training in trauma-informed care (TIC) pastoral practices for adolescents. Fifty-two surveys were completed by chaplains within various healthcare settings who had received ACPE training within the previous ten years. The results showed overall disappointment with the amount of TIC training received and a perceived lack of preparedness for providing pastoral care to traumatized adolescents. The results indicate a critical need for more research and training in TIC for this commonly overlooked population.

Doctor of Education (Educational Leadership), Youngstown State University, 2025, Department of Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

Although Christians comprise the majority of the population in the United States, they make up less than one third of the scientific community. This underrepresentation is attributed to the desire to avoid the secular culture in academia or self-selection due to a perceived incompatibility or belief in negative stereotypes of Christian scientists. Therefore, this study explores the association between teaching middle school science from an intentionally Christian worldview and student interest in science. Using enrollment and demographic data, along with Ohio State Test scores, this quantitative study examined the correlation between how long students received their science education from a Christian worldview at a middle school in Canton, Ohio and their interest in science as measured by their performance on the Ohio State Test in Science. The data fails to reject to null hypothesis of no association between the number of years a student was enrolled and their Science State Test scores. There were no significant correlations between these two variables. Also, there were no significant associations based on gender or grade level. Additionally, there were negative correlations found for some of the science subtopics for Black and Hispanic students, and general education students. However, there were positive associations found for both fifth- and eighth-grade students, mixed-race students, students with 504 Plans and IEPs, and gifted students in select science subtopics. The results of this study were limited by a small sample size, but as a first of its kind study, it indicates that more research is required.

Doctor of Ministry , Ashland University, 2024, Doctor of Ministry Program

The purpose of this project was to create a resource that would provide practical insights leading toward discernment for Evangelical Christians considering professional chaplaincy. The manual A Handbook of Discernment for Evangelicals Considering Ministry as a Professional Chaplain was written and evaluated by a team of twelve professionals who serve as pastors and chaplains. A Likert survey with additional qualitative questions was administered to determine if the handbook successfully led to discernment and provided practical tools for entering the profession of professional chaplaincy. Responses indicated the handbook would be an effective tool for discernment for persons considering professional chaplaincy.

Master of Arts in History, Youngstown State University, 2024, Department of Humanities

Many books and articles have been published illuminating the male perspective on events surrounding colonial expansion in North America. Less is known about the women behind expansion. These women were vital, sent over with promises of a better life, and they faced a harsh reality whether those promises proved true or false. At their root the Ursulines are Catholic, but their religious order was just a starting point to their long and storied history that has left a lasting impact on the world. The Ursulines hold a significant place in the history of women's education and religious development that made them stand out in a crowd of traditional missionaries. Yet, if these women were not writing their own history, little would be known about them. Despite facing numerous challenges over the centuries including wars, persecution, and social upheaval, the Ursuline Sisterhood have remained dedicated to their mission of education, service, and spiritual guidance, remaining a strong presence in the Catholic Church and the communities they continue to serve. This thesis is a valuable contribution to the field of History as it offers a collective analysis of the Ursuline Sisterhood's history from its humble beginnings all the way up to its current endeavors which, previously, had not been accomplished. Each section of Ursulines spanning from Italy to the United States discussed in this paper have only maintained their own personal local history, none have attempted a start to current narrative of their events in a semi- global perspective. I have explored the profound influence of the Ursuline Sisterhood on women's education and spiritual development, focusing on their mission, history, educational institutions, and the enduring legacy they have left behind.

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)

PHD, Kent State University, 2024, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Foundations, Leadership and Administration

Since the inception of Christianity, Christians have struggled to know how to interact with surrounding cultures, what aspects of life to pass on to the next generation, and how to disciple the next generation in faith in Christ. This project is an ontological investigation into Christ-centered education, making the case to move beyond the pre-critical, and critical to embrace an affirmative post-critical pedagogy. Having been grounded in the faith and grace of the evangel (Chapter I) and approaching epistemology with Christian humility (Chapter II), the Christ-centered educator embodies both critical pedagogy and affirmative pedagogy (Chapter III), based on six biblical principles that undergird Christ-centered education: 1. worship, 2. wisdom, 3. love, 4. faithfulness to the Bible, 5. in community fellowship, as 6. responsible stewards (Chapter IV). Christ-centered educators should be affirmed in these principles by their community (of other Christ-centered educators, administration, and by local Christ-centered churches and families) as they are called to live out the evangel in their classrooms and churches, flourishing as disciples of Jesus and as teachers (Chapter V). This is the ontological embodiment of Christ-centered pedagogy expressed in an affirmative, post-critical pedagogy.

Doctor of Ministry , Ashland University, 2024, Doctor of Ministry Program

The project's purpose was to create a resource for providing an academically integrated Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Program, to be implemented by providers, for graduate students pursuing professional chaplaincy, that includes the required four units of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education accredited Clinical Pastoral Education within the required preparatory academic courses, concurrently. The method was creating a "Resource Guide" outlining model elements and requirements of the collective accrediting bodies and organizations. Representatives of those entities were surveyed to assess to what extent it was helpful. The results demonstrated strong agreement for the usefulness of the "Resource Guide" and model it espoused.

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Organizational Leadership , Franklin University, 2024, International Institute for Innovative Instruction

This research sought to define pastoral leaders' leadership characteristics in congregational settings that create collaborative and distributive ministry leadership through team engagement. The purpose of this research was to examine leadership characteristics resulting in collaboration and distributive ministry leadership with team engagement. The research aimed to help pastoral leaders with the responsibilities of 21st-century congregational ministry and lessen the experiences of burnout. Study participants were pastoral leaders and at least two council members from congregations affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in the Southern Ohio Synod (SOS). The mixed methods concurrent QUAN-qual study utilized the Leadership Practices Inventory and the Shared Professional Leadership Inventory to measure various leadership characteristics and team engagement in the quantitative strand. The qualitative strand used three open-ended questions to assess further the presence of team engagement and pastoral leaders' leadership characteristics. The research question encompassed several components, including the leadership characteristics of pastoral leaders and the relationship between specific leadership characteristics of Transformational, Servant, and Shared leadership models and team engagement. The study findings found relationships between several leadership behaviors and team engagement in congregations. The research into leadership characteristics and team engagement assisted in the development of a best practices profile and training outline for congregational pastoral leaders to share and distribute ministry responsibilities with members to reduce feelings of burnout.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Educational Studies

“Education and Autobiography: The History, Practice, and Pedagogy of Autobiographical Narrative in Higher Education” explores the intersections of autobiography and education through three major areas: history, creative practice, and pedagogy, each of which is investigated in one of three papers that comprise this dissertation. The first paper, “Programming the Personal,” narrates the disciplinary history of creative nonfiction between the years 1930-2015, detailing how creative nonfiction rose to become a major genre track in graduate creative writing programs. The second paper, “Distance and Desire,” essays the experience of the educated split self and the “feeling” of education by integrating personal narrative with analyses of Tara Westover's Educated and Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory. The third paper, “Stretching the Truth,” explores the limitations of teaching autobiography with pedagogical aims external to literary analysis, such as instilling critical thinking skills or teaching religious experience. These papers are guided by several inquiries: What does it mean to be educated when education fundamentally changes who we are? Which autobiographers have taken up this deep change of education, and how have they narrated it? How is writing autobiographical narrative itself an educative endeavor? What educative possibilities emerge from teaching autobiography, and with them, what limitations? How is it that there is space carved out in our institutions of higher education—a place where we tend towards the objective and the scholarly—where we prioritize teaching the art of personal narrative? By probing this variety of relationships between education and autobiography, this dissertation offers new ways of thinking about how autobiography informs our conceptions and experiences of education, and how education informs our appreciation and practice of autobiography.

Doctor of Ministry , Ashland University, 2023, Doctor of Ministry Program

The purpose of this project was to impact the participants' spiritual formation at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio through the practice of spiritual disciplines. This impact project was comprised of six weekly sessions. The impact of the project was measured by pre- and post-test assessment, and a post-test qualitative questionnaire, along with teaching, introducing, and practicing spiritual disciplines in-session. Also, participants were given assignments to journal and practice spiritual disciplines between sessions. The assessment results showed that the highest growth experienced was the impact on the participants' practice of spiritual disciplines to promote spiritual transformation in their lives.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

This study documents patterns of description of Roman Catholic characters, beliefs, cultural attitudes, dispositions, doctrines, worship and ceremonial rites, and visual and material culture in eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century British prose fiction. From Daniel Defoe's Religious Courtship (1722) to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814), British prose fiction wrestles with the problem of religious difference between Anglo-Protestants and a defamiliarized Catholic other. Delineating Roman Catholicism the spatial-geographical as well as timebound “constitutive outside” of Protestant Great Britain, numerous British novels portray Catholics and Catholic religion as shadows of a dark age past from which Britain itself has emerged, enlightened and whole. And yet certain features of these fictions belie a clean, easy separation and indeed problematize Anglo-Protestant identity itself. Describing in fetishistic detail Catholicism's visual and material culture, to emphasize its strangeness and outlandishness to British observers, British writers draw attention to Protestant Britain's own lack of internal religious unity and coherence, which is often symbolized by the novel's inability to render a rival Protestant religious imaginary on the page. I argue that the stark contrast between the visible and embodied evidence of Roman Catholic religion and an Anglo-Protestant religious imaginary that both contains and resists Catholic art and artifice, is a constant source of unspoken disquiet and tension in the British novel. British writers of the eighteenth-century wrestle with the question or what Britons have lost or gained in shedding the visual and material culture of Catholicism for comparatively immaterial and rational constructions of faith. In consequence, however, a Catholic religious imaginary and sacramental universe—part of England's religious heritage from the Catholic Middle Ages—is preserved in the realm of the symbolic, and becomes a challenge to b (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Educational Studies

Worldview diversity education is an integral aspect of preparing students to negotiate difference in an interconnected world and to work together toward solving global problems. It intersects with diversity and intercultural learning, contributing the missing piece of religious, secular, and spiritual worldviews to global learning. This study utilized a survey and comparative case study to explore non-U.S. global liberal arts colleges and universities' engagement in worldview diversity education, common approaches, and how senior campus leaders expressed worldview diversity education in relation to larger education purposes, policyscapes, and priorities. Incorporating a view of education practice as policy and of worldviews as representing not just systems of belief but also cultures of belonging, this study contributes to the identification and development of worldview diversity education policy and practice among global liberal arts colleges and universities.

Doctor of Education , University of Dayton, 2023, Educational Administration

As students of color find belonging in their campus community, they not only desire to persist to graduation, but they to seek to thrive and cultivate a sense of place for their peers to do the same. Utilizing Black placemaking framework, this study explored the lived experiences and the interpretation of that experience for Black students at Carmel University. The university's place based identity is rooted in the Imago Dei, the understanding that we are all created in the image of God and are to be fully known in who we are. Hermeneutical phenomenology was employed in the process of data collection which included interviews, observations, and the reflexive journaling of the researcher. In that communicative space, five themes overarching themes were identified in the data analysis: experience of place, belonging, social capital, interpretation of experience, and hope. Findings suggest that while participants value their experience at Carmel, there is an expressed need to support Black student belonging through representation, opportunities, and practices that represent who they are. Further, findings suggest a critical need for a commitment from the institution to take the initiative to create and sustain these opportunities. The study proposes a plan of action grounded in a collaborative process with participants, community members, and invested stakeholders that contributes to belonging and thriving through mentorship and a feasibility study of bringing a Black Greek Letter Organization to campus.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, Media and Communication

Generations of women in the Evangelical Church have embodied narratives passed from mother to daughter, from church leadership, and through their religious communities. These narratives, including those of women's subservience and deserving of suffering endured from spouses, church leaders, and others, have origins in the earliest days of church history. In this thesis I examine how such narratives are embedded in books on pubertal guidance targeted to mothers and daughters in Evangelical Christian communities. Building on Fish's work on interpretive communities, Gramsci's conceptualization of hegemony, Foucault theorizing on power, and an interdisciplinary literature on the interaction between religion, culture, and politics, I interrogate themes of puberty, sexual function, gender roles, consent, and gender-based violence addressed in books on pubertal guidance, and how these books contribute to or reinforce evangelical Christian doctrinal narratives on gender and sexuality. Through a methodological approach using grounded theory, narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and textual analysis, findings indicate Evangelical Christian culture creates an interpretive community which drives only acceptable interpretation of religious texts (primarily the Bible), gender norms, and patriarchal power dynamics. Themes emerging from the texts analyzed, including Complementarianism, submission, purity, modesty, inadequacy, and silencing, have deep consequences not only for women and girls in Evangelical Christian communities, but for society at large as the legislative push for adherence to Evangelical Christian doctrinal ideologies work to remove access to basic human rights for people who do not adhere them. Misinformation, incomplete information, and hegemonic narratives serve to perpetuate gender inequality and have broad effects on women's and girls' mental, emotional, and physical health. In light of the most recent intrusions by Christian Nationalists into the legislative (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Science of Communication Studies (BSC), Ohio University, 2023, Communication Studies

U.S. K-12 Catholic schools are ideologically and demographically homogenous environments that exist to evangelize their students and perpetuate Catholic doctrine. Due to homogeneity and homophobic doctrine, minoritized students (i.e., LGBTQ+, BIPOC, low-income) in U.S. K-12 Catholic schools undergo adverse experiences as a result of their schools' (a) invalidation and policing of identities, (b) lack of representation, and (c) inability to understand and value difference. This senior thesis uses (a) Vatican document analysis and (b) thirty interviews with former Catholic school community members (i.e., former students who were minoritized, the parents/legal guardians of this population, and former teachers) to demonstrate how U.S. K-12 Catholic schools perpetuate doctrinal thinking at the expense of their minoritized students. I identify how U.S. Catholic schools suppress difference among those in their school community, manage the identities of their minoritized students, and hinder teachers' ability to communicate with minoritized students. Moreover, I argue the incommensurability of critical pedagogy with Catholic doctrine.

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2023, Educational Leadership

This study examines the professional experiences of three teachers in a national network of urban, low-income serving, Catholic high schools. These teacher-participants were chosen to participate in this study because they engaged in experiential, community-based pedagogy within this national network and exemplified a commitment to social justice through their teaching practice. As detailed in Chapter One, such teaching practice resembles critical pedagogy and aligns with best practice in quality civic education. Therefore, by examining the experiences of critical educators, this study aimed to illuminate ways we can enhance civic learning for K-12 students by enhancing support for and removing the barriers to critical educators' distinct pedagogical practice. This is particularly important for Students of Color, who have faced historical exclusion from formal and informal modes of civic learning (Campbell, 2012; Lo, 2019). Critical theory (Freire, 1970/1993; Giroux, 2003; Horkheimer, 1972[1992]) and social reproduction theory (Bourdieu, 2016; Bowles & Gintis, 2016) were used to frame this study, which employed qualitative portraiture methodology (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997) to answer two key research questions. The first question— Why do teachers in this Network engage in experiential, community-based pedagogy? —drew attention to the internal and external factors impacting my participants' practice. This set up inquiry into the second key research question: How do these educators exhibit civic and/or critical consciousness about and through their work? Findings from this study revealed that both internal and external factors contributed to the choice teacher-participants made to engage in experiential, community-based pedagogy. Professional ecology, consisting of local school and corporate cultures, were particularly influential on these teachers. That ecology functioned in distinct ways at each study site to both aid and obstruct the critical teaching (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Arts, Walsh University, 2022, Honors

Over the past few years, the nationwide protests over the long-standing plague of racism in our country, most recently manifested in the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, have placed our nation before a “fork in the road.” We stand on the precipice of monumental change or devastating regression in the area of race relations within our nation. This has been most vivid in the relationship between law enforcement and the African American community. What comes next between these two parties will depend on how law enforcement responds to the cries of the people in these affected communities. Historically, particularly in African American communities, there has been an intimate connection between social movements and sensitives to injustice and faith. At the same time, there appears to be a decreasing appreciation of faith among law enforcement officers. If the disparity between the attitude towards faith by law enforcement and the significance of faith in communities of color continues to increase, it will undoubtedly lead to more tension between these two communities. I hypothesize that reconciliation between law enforcement and African American communities can be achieved through the inclusion of religious literacy in the training and formation of law enforcement officers. As a disclaimer, it is important to understand that the building of trust and the reparation of relationships is an effort that requires the cooperation of both sides. This means that there has to be a willingness and an understanding from both law enforcement and communities of color for any real difference to be made. It is also important to recognize that this is not a “black versus white” issue, this is an issue that affects society as a whole. This understanding will be made present throughout this research, but the primary focus will be on the inclusion of religious literacy in the formation of law enforcement officers.

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, Educational Leadership

Existential worldview diversity infrastructure has emerged across public and private higher education institutions in the interest of advancing religious pluralism, yet receives little attention from current literature, graduate preparation programs, and student affairs practitioners from a critical religious pluralism theoretical and social justice framework. The existing literature around the field of interfaith-interreligious studies, college student religious and spiritual development, campus religious and spiritual climate, and multicultural organization development does not address how this infrastructure emerged let alone the way that white Christonormativity and the false neutral of secularism is embedded within liberatory models for advancing religious pluralism in student affairs and higher education. My qualitative case study is grounded in a constructivist paradigm informed by the critical theoretical perspectives of Critical Religious Pluralism Theory and Third World Feminist Theory. My case study involved two levels of sampling. The first level sampled a private university (Southwestern Catholic University, SWCU), and public university (Midwestern Public University, MPU). The second level sampled participants within each university's existential worldview diversity infrastructure: Center for Religion and Social Justice at SWCU and the Multifaith Collective at MPU. The range of participants' insights point to the substantive impact that engaging with religious pluralism had on the emergence of existential worldview diversity infrastructure at each university. Interviewed administrators, faculty, and campus religious advisors understood that methods for religious pluralism allow students to feel connected at the intersection of their religious, secular, and spiritual identity. Overall, my analysis does not minimize religious oppression nor is it complicit with white Christonormativity. Instead, I consider and raise the topic of societal transform (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2022, Educational Leadership

The experiences of seven Catholic homeschooling families about their continued motivations for homeschooling their children was explored in a series of guided interviews conducted within the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, located in the state of Ohio. The study examined the initial motivations of why the participating parents chose to homeschool their children as well as how and if those motivations have changed over time. The interview data was analyzed through the lens of transcendental phenomenology. Following the process of transcendental phenomenology set out by Moustakas (1994) two major themes of motivating factors emerged as the primary reasons the participants chose to homeschool their children. The first major theme was Community support, which examined how the participants felt they were receiving positive support or negative support from their local community in the realm of education. The second major theme to emerge was the parent's desire for a curriculum that centered on both Faith and Family. The results showed that all of the participants' initial primary motivations for choosing to homeschool their children corresponded with the current established literature of pedagogical reasons such as curriculum, and school safety. However, their primary motivation for continuing to homeschool their children had shifted over time to religious instruction of their Catholic beliefs and practices. The results of this study suggest a need for dialogue between Catholic homeschool parents within the boundaries of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and the administration of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati about what support can be provided from the later to the former.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), University of Dayton, 2022, Theology

Mary's purity has been a subject of theological inquiry for over a millennium. This project's objective is to follow the development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception historically to the ways it became manifest in the Spanish kingdoms of the Middle Ages, how it was brought and taught to the Nahua and Maya in the sixteenth century evangelization of Central Mexico by Spanish friars, and then how it remained a powerful force of evangelical and political fervor in New Spain through the analysis of three seventeenth century homilies about the Immaculate Conception. Whereas the conquest of the Americas is largely remembered for the brutalities and injustices committed, the Spanish friars who implemented a wide-scale evangelization of the Native Americans were interested in the sincere conversions of people like the Nahua and Maya. This dissertation studies the evangelization methods of the sixteenth century Franciscan friars in Central Mexico with particular attention to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and to Marian belief and devotion. The study also takes into account the cosmologies and ways of living of the Nahua and Maya, the two most prominent cultural groups in Mesoamerica at the time. The interaction between the friars and the natives is viewed in light of their respective cultural heritages. The spiritual concerns of the friars and their indoctrination of the Nahua and Maya are studied in light of the religious heritage of the Spanish kingdoms of the Middle Ages and the defense of the belief in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The Spanish friars make Mary central to their evangelization of Central Mexico, along with Christ and the Cross. The first three chapters deal with the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world with respect to Nahua and Maya cosmologies, the Catholicism of the Iberian Peninsula up to the expansion to the Americas, and the development of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception respectively. Chapter four focuses on the ev (open full item for complete abstract)