Mindful Women’s Leadership: Empowering women leaders through mindfulness practice to make confident, ethical decisions in our mission-driven organizations

Looking for ways to empower existing and future women leaders lead to an exploration of mindfulness as a practice to improve self-awareness and increase empathy allowing leaders to arrive at each situation with a balanced, present mind. This project proposes a Mindful Leadership Model which begins by looking inward, then shifts outward to the situation with an adapted situational leadership model that helps assess the appropriate response for different situations depending on the leaders response and the contributors readiness

Novel Image Representations and Learning Tasks

abstract: Computer Vision as a eld has gone through signicant changes in the last decade. The eld has seen tremendous success in designing learning systems with hand-crafted features and in using representation learning to extract better features. In this dissertation some novel approaches to representation learning and task learning are studied. Multiple-instance learning which is generalization of supervised learning, is one example of task learning that is discussed. In particular, a novel non-parametric k- NN-based multiple-instance learning is proposed, which is shown to outperform other existing approaches. This solution is applied to a diabetic retinopathy pathology detection problem eectively. In cases of representation learning, generality of neural features are investigated rst. This investigation leads to some critical understanding and results in feature generality among datasets. The possibility of learning from a mentor network instead of from labels is then investigated. Distillation of dark knowledge is used to eciently mentor a small network from a pre-trained large mentor network. These studies help in understanding representation learning with smaller and compressed networks.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

Impact Of Mentoring Amongst Indigenous Young Adults In Sabah, Malaysia

Most indigenous communities in Malaysia live in poverty and this has limited their access to education and decent employment. This study examines how mentoring relationships may aid indigenous young adults (19-24 years old) in Sabah, Malaysia in overcoming socio-economic barriers and securing stable employment. To explore this, several data sources were used that derived from interviews with mentors, a mixed method online survey with the mentees followed by telephone interviews with selected mentees from the responses. Findings indicate that the family’s influence, language proficiency of the young adult, development of soft skills and financial literacy were factors that influence an indigenous young adult’s employability, job security and stability. The findings also demonstrate that mentoring provides benefits such as increased positive character values, career advancement opportunities, preparedness of work, skills development and employment opportunities. Mentoring, if paired with an understanding of indigenous culture, may be an effective intervention tool especially in the development of Sabah’s indigenous young adults towards human capital growth in Malaysia

Built to Change: Catalytic Capacity-Building in Nonprofit Organizations

Summarizes the results of a broad survey of programs, and business and nonprofit experts, in the field of organizational effectiveness

Widening the circle: Faculty-student support groups as innovative practice in higher education.

Faculty-student support groups have the potential to promote strategies for co-mentorship in places of learning. They can also function to facilitate alternative forms of pedagogical practice in the context of lifelong learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe ideas and practices in the innovative development of faculty-student support groups in higher education. The authors provide a context for introducing the model of a co-mentoring support group, for considering institutional dynamics in forming comentoring support groups, for illustrating a case study analysis of a university-based support group, for providing a collegial response to the mentoring literature, for considering the need to formalize mentoring programs and outcomes, for exploring challenges to and benefits of the support group effort, and finally for envisioning comentoring support groups more generally. The authors argue that more attention needs to be given to studying alternative pedagogical practices that enable mutualistic relationships to endure. This article accordingly offers an original holistic guide for viewing mentoring as interconnected cycles and phases of lifelong learning

The Role of Mentoring in the Lives of Underrepresented Youth

Underrepresented youth (Latino, Black, Pacific Islander, and Native American) face challenges in school enrollment/completion and often lack feelings of belonging in educational and social institutions. One specific group of underrepresented youth who face unique struggles is unaccompanied youth. Mentoring, a non-parental relationship between a young person and someone who supports and guides youth, has been found to result in better well-being and health in adolescents and potentially lead to higher self-worth and better academic performance. In order to fill a gap in the literature examining the effects of mentoring on underrepresented youth and specifically unaccompanied youth, I conducted a mixed-methods study, including both quantitative and qualitative data. For the quantitative data, a survey was distributed using five measuring tools that evaluated the correlation between having mentoring experience during adolescence and overall well-being, academic success, academic-self efficacy, and resiliency. Data consisted of 33 participants who were over the age of 18, varied in ethnicity and gender, and who have had previous mentorship experience. Due to a small sample size, represented and underrepresented individuals were included in the results. The results showed that a strong mentoring relationship did not positively influence well-being, resiliency, and academic success, but did positively influence academic self-efficacy. For the qualitative data, I interviewed 3 mentors to explore the ways in which mentoring helps support unaccompanied youth overcome barriers and examine how the mentoring process also affects the mentors themselves. Qualitative research findings suggest that the development of trust allows mentors to provide improved support and foster an increased sense of belonging with their mentees. This research is important to help train future mentors and strengthen mentoring programs for under-served youth

Occupational Therapy via Telehealth for Families Raising Children with Autism

Family health is an emerging practice area in occupational therapy that has potential to improve overall family health and participation in daily activities. Families raising children with autism may experience challenges that families raising typically developing children may not experience, and occupational therapy has been shown to improve both child and family outcomes. This study seeks to determine the preliminary effectiveness of the Healthy Families Flourish Program, a ten-session occupational therapy intervention program delivered via telehealth to support families raising school-aged children with autism. Four New Hampshire families were recruited for participation in this study. Weekly sessions took place and families collaborated with us to create goals and employ strategies to reach those goals. Quantitative measures were employed pre- and post-intervention to determine preliminary effectiveness of the program. Results show that the intervention program was successful in creating progress toward family goals as well as improving areas of family communication, engagement, and cohesion. Participant testimonials suggest that programs such as the Healthy Families Flourish Program have potential to create significant change for families raising children with autism

Build Your Mentoring Relationship with Creative Thinking. Designing an iPad Application

This Master’s project presents a prototype for an iPad Application introducing adult mentors and adult mentees to creative thinking tools and exercises that can be used to help support and build their mentoring relationship. The project also includes various planning, research and documentation supporting the product’s need that will help create and launch the final product. The objective is to promote and revive a 2,000-year-old tradition with a 21st century tool. The tools and exercises suggested in the application are meant to encourage mentors and mentees to experience creative thinking and use aspects of creative problem solving processes. This creative product is intended to help adults involved in mentoring relationships develop potential and interpersonal skills, build creative work climates, and adapt to change, ultimately resulting in change leadership and organizational sustainability

Faculty of Color in the Academy: A Perspective on Cross-cultural Mentoring

Research has indicated that students’ race and their experiences and sense of belonging are associated with the racial characteristics of the faculty. This highlights the importance of recruitment and retention for faculty of color (FOC) in higher education. A formal faculty mentoring program is essential to providing an academic atmosphere that nurtures, supports, and develops faculty members’ teaching and research skills to assist them in feeling a sense of belonging within the university community is essential. However, finding the right mentoring program that addresses the daunting challenges among FOC is challenging. Upon reviewing the higher education faculty data and literature on racial battle fatigue, developing a culturally responsive mentoring program model is prudent to assist with the professional development and advancement of FOC in higher education