A Case Study of Gender Neutral Policies in University Housing

Gender neutral housing is an innovative new policy being developed in colleges around the country. One reason to create these policies is an attempt to meet the unique needs and challenges of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. As the number of gender neutral housing policies in the United States continues to rise, research has been slow to meet the growing demand for empirical data on gender neutral housing. The dissertation presented a case study of one institution. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with administrators, gender neutral housing committee members, residence life staff, and students. This dissertation examined the implementation, execution, and impact of gender neutral housing on the campus. The purpose was to provide a transferable case study for other institutions, as well as to provide the university with information about how gender neutral housing functions on the campus. This dissertation found that implementation began as a grass roots proposal from LGBT advocates in the student population. The university responded by creating a gender neutral housing committee that examined gender neutral housing policies on other campuses, sought feedback from the community, and eventually made recommendations for the creation of gender neutral housing. The strength of the policy is rooted in its openness to the entire community. Its weaknesses stem from misinformation and confusion about the policy, and a lack of practical access for first-year students. This dissertation also found that while the campus climate was not heavily impacted by gender neutral housing, individual students experienced a positive change as a result of participation. The results indicated that while the policy began as an LGBT specific program, the culture of the university and the gender neutral housing committee led to gender neutral housing becoming open to all students. Similarly, while the campus climate has not changed dramatically as a result of gender neutral housing, it has opened discussion on issues of gender and sexuality. It is recommended that the university conduct an awareness campaign to address misinformation about the policy, as well as consider alternative means for allowing first-year students to participate in gender neutral housing. Further, institutions seeking to implement gender neutral housing can consider this case as a model of practice

The Experiences and Perceptions of African American Women Who Reside in Nursing Homes

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the experiences and perceptions of African American women who reside in a nursing home and to understand African American women\u27s decisions for admitting to the facility. Social Learning Theory was applied to answer the question of how African American women\u27s experiences and perceptions toward long-term care influence healthcare decisions and admission to a nursing home. Eleven participants interviewed in the study were at least 60 years old, admitted into the facility within the past two years and who had not previously resided in a nursing home. Yin\u27s five step approach to data analysis, NVivo and Microsoft Office to gather data from African American women who live in a nursing home. Participants in this study described their perceptions of nursing homes as places they never thought they would reside in and expressed that African American families traditionally took care of their own. As a result, participants stated nursing homes were not an option normally considered within their families. Decisions to admit to a nursing home were based on family work schedules which resulted in lack of supervision at home, increased nursing care, and financial reasons. Cultural competence was an important factor in helping them adjust to a nursing home environment despite cultural norms. This research can contribute to social change by providing awareness and identifying health behaviors and cultural beliefs regarding the use of long-term care facilities by African American women despite cultural norms. The findings of this study can also create positive social change movement in nursing homes to deliver resident-centered care and empowering staff

Developing an Understanding of How College Students Experience Interactive Instructional Technology: A UX Perspective

Technology is increasingly mobile and social, resulting in dynamic digital and interactive environments. The ubiquitous nature of interactive instructional technology presents new paradigms for higher education, creating challenges for instructors to compete for time and attention as students are bombarded by information in a digital, media rich world. The problem being studied, with all of these technological advancements, is how instructors can approach these challenges from a user experience (UX) perspective. A macro level view sees college students taking multiple courses at a time, over many semesters, and using different interactive instructional technology that mix with other forms of online media consumption. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to describe the experiences with interactive instructional technology from the perspective of college students at a large Midwestern university. A combination of cognitive load theory, communications strategy, and UX perspective is used to provide a structure that higher education faculty and administrators can use to approach content strategies, technological advances, and student perceptions throughout their college education. Focus groups with college students found communication is the number one priority when using interactive instructional technology. However, as more social media is adopted, the line between personal and professional lives is being blurred for better or worse. Technological advances introduce layers of separation between student and faculty, as well as student and course content, which all impact motivation. Students want faculty to be comfortable with the technology to build trust and confidence with their interactions. There will always be technology problems, but students now need to actively solve problems when technology isn’t working. The significance of this study informs educators of issues they could expect when teaching with technology and offer ideas to integrate it in appropriate ways. Students offer a number of suggestions and UX tools are provided to improve student experiences with interactive instructional technology. Adviser: Allen Steckelber

Zoom as a Virtual Conduit: The Possibilities and Limits of Intimacy in Remote Instruction

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

An Approach to Help End Users Become Aware of Privacy Risks in Home Automation

Smart home devices, such as voice assistants, smart lights, and smart video doorbells have become a part of end users' daily lives. Many of these devices combine their features with other services and smart devices to create a simple and efficient user experience. This is partly because of the contribution of end-user programming platforms, like If This Then That (IFTTT). IFTTT provides trigger and action events to end users to connect two or more smart home devices via easy-to-create applets. However, these applets rarely highlight underlying risks related to confidentiality (leakage of sensitive information) or integrity (authorized access) violations. Prior work has shown that providing users with violation scenarios makes them aware of the risks associated with these specific applets. However, these works have not investigated if end users can identify potential risks from the applet descriptions and change their behavior. This thesis closes this gap by (1) presenting end users with “consequences” of using IFTTT applets to understand if end users could find the possible violations and their reasoning, and (2) evaluating whether end users’ behavior changes when applets are presented with the consequences. In this work, we conducted a user study with 20 participants to evaluate our approach of including consequences in applet description. Our results show that adding potential consequences into the basic IFTTT applet description can help end users discover integrity and confidentiality violations and related factors impacting their applet usage decisions. Finally, we suggest a framework to automatically nudge end users when they want to use applets through end-user programming platforms. In this way, end users can have a comprehensive understanding of using applets in different contexts

Foreign language graduate student instructors’ experiences with drama-based pedagogy

Required teacher training for graduate student instructors (GSIs) teaching in foreign language (FL) departments is often limited to a front-loaded, one-semester methods course that largely overlooks the needs of more experienced GSIs. The current discourse on FL GSI development has sought to alleviate this problem by giving recommendations of theoretical frameworks and pedagogical practices GSIs can learn to improve the undergraduate curriculum and their own teaching abilities, such as a multiliteracies framework and high leverage teaching practices. However, there are few empirical studies that document how graduate students engage with and take up recommended teaching practices through professional development in their departments. Furthermore, no evidence-based process model of such uptake exists as of yet. This dissertation involved a study of nine GSIs’ uptake of drama-based pedagogy and the factors that helped or hindered their engagement with relevant concepts and techniques. A formative experiment study design, ethnographic data collection, and a grounded theory approach to data analysis yielded a process model of how experienced GSIs engaged with an innovative pedagogy. This model presents a central phenomenon, engagement, that is grounded in extensive qualitative data, with engagement operationalized to mean that GSIs thought about, allocated resources to, and strove toward implementing the drama-based pedagogy at the core of the semester-long professional development. Engagement as a process was embedded in individual and programmatic contexts and specific conditions, such as helpful and hindering factors. Both desirable and less desirable outcomes resulted from engagement with the innovation of drama-based pedagogy. Thus, this theoretical model has implications for how educational developers implement their GSI teaching development. By identifying factors that trigger and help engagement, such as efficacy, value, and support, educational developers can account for and influence these factors in their orientations, workshops, meetings, graduate courses, and other offerings that promote innovative pedagogy. Conversely, educational developers can mitigate hindering factors, such as time and risk, to strive towards more desirable outcomes of GSI engagement as well as more frequent engagement.Foreign Language Educatio

Cases of resiliency : exploring experiences of refugee women participating in U.S. textile and apparel nonprofit organizations' skills training programs.

Humanitarian crises around the world have forced thousands of refugees away from their native lands to neighboring countries on their own continent and as far as Europe and the United States, in search of safe harbor (UNHCR, 2017) and a better life (Igielnik & Krogstad, 2017). Refugees resettled in the United States, need to become self-sufficient within 18 months of arrival (U.S. Department of State, 2017). With the re-birth of manufacturing in the northwest region of the United States, local textile and apparel nonprofit organizations set-up community-based sewing programs that provided skills-building and job training opportunities to refugees resettled in the region that match the needs of the local labor market, which is essential to their economic integration (Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, 2008). ... Therefore, the aim of this study was to gain in-depth understanding of the career transition experiences of women with refugee backgrounds within the context of textile and apparel NPOs in the United States by exploring what motivated them to participate in the training programs and attain training outcomes. Using a multiple case study approach, participant observations, direct observations and in-depth interviews were conducted at five textile and apparel NPO training sites. Fourteen graduate and current trainees as well as 10 training providers in each textile and apparel NPO who were knowledgeable about the organization's structure, vision and mission were interviewed. The data analysis uncovered nine emergent themes that represented factors that facilitated or hindered the motivation of trainees to participate in career transition programs and attain training outcomes.Includes bibliographical reference

“What’s Belonging Got to Do With It?”: An Exploration of Campus Racial Climate and Sense of Belonging in Black Counseling Students Attending Predominately White Institutions in the North Atlantic Region

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dialogues are raging across campuses throughout the U.S. with specific focus on the needs of Black student populations in the aftermath of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbury murders. However, if the supportive spirit of the DEI initiatives is undermined by a hostile campus climate and local community, it may negatively impact the learning environment isolating the target population, while also effecting their potential for successful completion of their programs. The current qualitative study aims to explore the perceptions of belonging expressed by Black graduate students enrolled in Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) accredited counseling programs in the North Atlantic region (as designated by the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES). Through individual semi-structured interviews with participants, the researcher seeks to gain a deeper understanding of whether Black students are actively seeking belonging within their programs and how their impressions of belonging are developed when contrasted with the racial climate present and the history of their respective programs at selected North Atlantic predominately white institutions (PWIs). It is also prudent to consider the evaluative properties of this data regarding the efficacy of the DEI interventions within the identified academic spaces. While this data may later inform the recruitment and program development practices of university stakeholders and partners interested in the efficacy of diversity, equity and inclusion strategies, this research initiative also intends to amplify the experiences of Black counseling students in ways that will be enriching for future students of color and individuals with other marginalized identities. Key words: belonging, DEI, campus racial climate, predominately white institutions

“What’s Belonging Got to Do With It?”: An Exploration of Campus Racial Climate and Sense of Belonging in Black Counseling Students Attending Predominately White Institutions in the North Atlantic Region

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dialogues are raging across campuses throughout the U.S. with specific focus on the needs of Black student populations in the aftermath of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbury murders. However, if the supportive spirit of the DEI initiatives is undermined by a hostile campus climate and local community, it may negatively impact the learning environment isolating the target population, while also effecting their potential for successful completion of their programs. The current qualitative study aims to explore the perceptions of belonging expressed by Black graduate students enrolled in Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) accredited counseling programs in the North Atlantic region (as designated by the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES). Through individual semi-structured interviews with participants, the researcher seeks to gain a deeper understanding of whether Black students are actively seeking belonging within their programs and how their impressions of belonging are developed when contrasted with the racial climate present and the history of their respective programs at selected North Atlantic predominately white institutions (PWIs). It is also prudent to consider the evaluative properties of this data regarding the efficacy of the DEI interventions within the identified academic spaces. While this data may later inform the recruitment and program development practices of university stakeholders and partners interested in the efficacy of diversity, equity and inclusion strategies, this research initiative also intends to amplify the experiences of Black counseling students in ways that will be enriching for future students of color and individuals with other marginalized identities. Key words: belonging, DEI, campus racial climate, predominately white institutions

So What, Now What? Using Social Media Activism to Inform Power-Conscious Prevention of Gender-Based Violence

We will not end gender-based violence by responding to it. Experts and national organizations agree that effective primary prevention programs are essential to stopping harmful behaviors before they start (DeGue et al, 2014; American College Health Association, 2016; American College Health Association, 2018; Townsend, 2017; Schneider & Hirsch, 2018; McMahon et al, 2019), so much so that primary prevention to address gender-based violence on college campuses has been mandated by state and federal policy (SB 19-007, 2019; Institutional Security Policies and Crime Statistics, 2020). In order to be effective, primary prevention programs should be tailored to the community in which they will be implemented (Banyard, 2011; Banyard, 2013; Banyard, 2014; Townsend, 2017; American College Health Association, 2018). Addressing the root cause of gender-based violence perpetration (power) is essential to developing an effective primary prevention curriculum (Harris, 2017; Hong, 2017; Linder, 2018). One university sought out to develop a comprehensive prevention program to address the root cause of GBV perpetration. Therefore, the purpose of this doctoral research project was to uncover: What is the nature of gender-based violence perpetration at Downtown University