The purpose of this study was to investigate second-year college student wellness behaviors and their relationship to academic achievement. The ten constructs of wellness within Hettler's model of wellness are physical fitness, nutrition, self-care and safety, environmental wellness, social awareness, emotional awareness and sexuality, emotional…

The quality of relationships between teachers and students has been associated with academic achievement and performance outcomes for students at all levels of their education. Extensive literature examining characteristics of positive relationships between teachers and their elementary age students exists, but is less abundant in regard to…

The purpose of this study was to identify campus environmental predictors of American Indian college student involvement. The American Indian research asterisk, or not including American Indian data, has prevailed over student development research for decades. As a result, student affairs professionals have been limited in their ability to develop…

This study in Conversation Analysis investigates the organization of other-initiated repair sequences in American learners of German, i.e., it examines how learners deal with troubles in hearing or understanding that they encounter in naturally-occurring talk-in-interaction. Data for the project were collected during informal interaction in…

The creation of learning outcomes inside and outside of the classroom on college campuses has been a growing trend based on a variety of publications which encouraged the fostering of diverse types learning and the measurement of student learning outside of the classroom (ACPA, 1994; Keeling, 2004). The creation of the learning outcomes is a…

This dissertation examines the economic value of online storage resources that could be traded and shared as potential commodities and the consequential investments and deployment of such resources. The value proposition of emergent business models such as Akamai and Amazon S3 in online storage grids is capacity provision and content delivery at…

Marginalized college students are retained at disproportional rates than their counterparts. A major factor of retention is student engagement in the classroom, which can be impacted by course design and instruction. Critical pedagogy aims to value all students' experiences through six elements of course design and instruction: decreasing teacher…

The education system has currently failed Latino students. A large achievement gap exists between English Language Learners (ELLs) and other student populations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of the Response To Intervention (RTI) model in improving the reading achievement of Latino students at a Title Once school…

Response-to-intervention (RTI) as applied in several California school districts was investigated by analyzing responses to questionnaires completed by 190 school psychologists representing 142 school districts. This analysis targeted the depth and breadth of RTI in these public K-12 school districts. A majority (80.7%) of the respondents…

Many urban schools struggle to retain their best teachers because of challenging work environments, poor salaries, and ineffective school leadership. The additional requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation for teachers to be highly qualified and the increased academic requirements of raising students to a proficient level in reading…

Response latency has been widely used as a cognitive method to investigate how respondents answer survey questions and also as a method to identify problems with survey questions (e.g., flawed or poorly worded questions) or errors associated with respondents' behaviors (e.g., faking). However, little attention has been paid to using response…

The Latino community has grown to be the largest minority population in the United States, but not the most prosperous. Consequently, attention needs to be focused on preparing Latinos for their economic futures, as they are grossly under-represented in higher education and in professional careers. This study explored, within the framework of…

The Hispanic population in the United States is the fastest growing ethnic group. It is also one of the least-educated and poorest groups and one of the least researched nationally. The purpose of the study was to identify the variables that affect the persistence of Hispanic college students who begin their postsecondary educations at community…

Humans rely heavily on their sense of vision and look at images in response to their need for information. People learn from didactic images within environments; for this reason, in traditional educational environments, educators tend to care about visual representation. As today's technology brings images to wider audiences with more diverse…

This dissertation investigated the impact of being the child of a Holocaust survivor on teaching in a university setting. A life history method was utilized. Participants were asked about their backgrounds, parents' survival stories, and how the Holocaust has carried forward into their adult lives and teaching. Multiple interviews with a time…