Professional Development in Doctoral Education: The Perceptions of Faculty Mentoring on the Formation of Senior Student Affairs Leaders

Thesis advisor: Karen ArnoldStudent affairs models exist on every United States college and university campus and serve as an integral part of the undergraduate student experience. However, very little research has been conducted on students in Higher Education Administration doctoral programs and the preparation of Senior Student Affairs Officers (SSAOs) for leadership in student affairs. This study investigated the perceptions of mentoring relationships between faculty mentors and doctoral student protégés and the socialization of these students into becoming senior leaders in student affairs. Kram's (1985) theory, which identifies the psychosocial and career aspects of mentoring in organizational development, serves as the lens to examine these relationships. The participants in this study consisted of five faculty mentors and eight of their former students who are now current Senior Student Affairs Officers. Results included four major themes, identified by both the mentors and the SSAOs, comprising the major aspects of the mentoring relationships. In addition, the faculty mentors felt that they did not particularly prepare students for these senior level positions, as there were no specific or intentional discussions about the role itself. However, the former students believed their doctoral mentoring was good preparation for the SSAO role, as they learned about university structures, governance, political climates and other aspects of senior leadership. Given these findings, it is recommended that there be a stronger emphasis be placed upon the SSAO socialization component of the doctoral program. Recommendations such as the addition of "mentors of practice," a student apprenticeship component similar to Arts & Sciences doctoral programs, and an increased faculty awareness of their impact upon students as mentors are suggested to enhance the doctoral student experience.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education

Increased positive and disorganised schizotypy in synaesthetes who experience colour from letters and tones.

Synaesthesia is a condition in which one property of a stimulus induces a conscious experience of an additional attribute. For example, in grapheme-colour synaesthesia, a visually presented grapheme results in synaesthetic experiences of colour. These experiences occur in approximately 4% of the population (Simner et al., 2006) and the authenticity of the condition is well established (Cohen Kadosh and Henik, 2007). Despite this, our understanding of the neuropsychiatric profiles of synaesthetes remains limited and surprisingly few studies have addressed whether synaesthesia is linked to more widespread abnormalities in perception that extend beyond the synaesthetic experience itself. There is, however, growing evidence to suggest that synaesthesia may be linked to a broader phenotype. For example, synaesthetes who experience colour show early processing differences to stimuli which do not evoke synaesthesia (Barnett et al., 2008); and the presence of synaesthesia has been linked with other phenotypic manifestations including out-of-body experiences (Terhune, 2009), creativity (Ward et al., 2008), mental imagery (Barnett and Newell, 2008), and mitempfindung (Burrack et al., 2006). Here, we examined the relationship between synaesthesia involving colour and the abnormal perceptions observed in schizophrenia by assessing levels of schizotypy in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. We report that synaesthesia for colour is associated with greater levels of positive and disorganised schizotypy (Fig. 1A), suggesting widespread perceptual differences in synaesthesia that extend beyond the synaesthetic concurrent