University education across history and contexts aimed for a myriad of purposes, from the advancement of knowledge to educating citizens and contributing to the social good. With the rise of universities functioning in a market economy, and navigating higher education institutions' public role, some of the university purposes are constantly debated, and often without accounting for the students' perspectives. The purpose of this qualitative multi-case study is to explore the students' perspectives on the purpose of enrolling in a higher education institution and obtaining an engineering higher education degree. Each case is focused on a higher education institution, for a total of four institutions across the U.S. and England. The embedded units of analysis focus on twenty (20) undergraduate chemical engineering students' narratives from the time they enroll in those institutions to the time they graduate to answer the following two main research questions: RQ 1: What are the perspectives of undergraduate engineering students towards the purpose of higher education? RQ 2: How, if at all, do undergraduate engineering students' perspectives of the purpose of higher education change throughout their degree? The Capabilities Approach is used as the main theoretical framing. The framework is concerned with the question of what a person is able to do and be. It also provides a perspective on thinking about the purposes of education in terms of instrumental, intrinsic, and social values. Results show a variety of perspectives and reasons why students pursue an engineering degree, mainly expressed in terms of career-driven purposes and personal-driven purposes. Fulfilling being good at math and science, seeking a job for purposes beyond individualistic reasons, and personal growth were some of the common purposes mentioned by the students. In addition, more students than not maintained a fixed perspective throughout their undergraduate years. This research is set to address the problem of the neglect of the students' voices in the literature and to address the lack of research on longitudinal studies, higher education, and capabilities approach within the engineering education space. / Doctor of Philosophy / University education across history and contexts aimed for a myriad of purposes, from the advancement of knowledge to educating citizens and contributing to the social good. With the rise of universities functioning in a market economy, and navigating the institutions' public role, some of the university purposes are constantly debated, and often without accounting for the students' perspectives. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the students' perspectives on the purpose of enrolling in a higher education institution and obtaining an engineering higher education degree. I focused my study on four institutions across the U.S. and England. Within each institution, I interviewed undergraduate chemical engineering students from the time they started their degree till the time they graduated to answer the following main research question: RQ: What are the perspectives of undergraduate engineering students towards the purpose of higher education? To help position the study, I used the Capabilities Approach framework. The framework is concerned with the question of what a person is able to do and be. It also provides a perspective on thinking about the purposes of education in terms of different values including seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge and helping in the community. Results show a variety of perspectives and reasons why students pursue an engineering degree. Fulfilling being good at math and science, seeking a job for purposes beyond individual reasons, and personal growth were some of the common purposes. In addition, more students than not maintained a fixed perspective on why they chose to enroll in university throughout their undergraduate years. This research is set to amplify students' voices and add to longitudinal research studies in the engineering education literature space.

Higher education institutions in the United States have come under increased scrutiny due to increasing demands for accountability in the use of public funds and increasing visibility (Altbach, Berdahl, and Gumport, 1999; Trow, 1974). Colleges and universities must continually prove their credibility and legitimacy to their stakeholders, including government officials (Lawrence & Sharma, 2002), donors, students, and sponsors. The proving process may involve engagement in legitimacy-seeking behaviors designed to show efficiency, access, and quality in terms defined mostly by external perceptions. The decision to concentrate organizational resources on activities designed to influence the opinions of external agents has the potential to lead organizations away from their core values and historic missions. The case study that follows documents the restructuring of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and the drivers that led university administrators to pursue change. The case was developed based on a series of interviews with key informants associated with or affected by the restructuring process. Explanations for the restructuring and the underlying university goal of becoming a top 30 institution, included cost-savings and efficiency via a "fiscal rationalization"; the framing of programs in terms of their entrepreneurialism, innovativeness, and revenue generating capacity; and an emphasis on the economic development benefits of university programs. Even though Virginia Tech administrators were not expressly responding to external demands for restructuring, there was evidence to suggest that a need to construct a more business-like model for university structure and operations had entered the collective conscience of Virginia Tech's leadership. I document the rhetoric and actions that I believe influenced university administrators in their decision to restructure. I also draw attention to administrators' use of language that I believe exemplified the commodification of the university's human and intellectual capital. Theoretically, I believe that the constructs from resource dependency theory and neoinstitutional theory have relevance to the interpretation of this case. Specifically, the construction of legitimacy-seeking behaviors, the imperative to decrease reliance on external organizations (i.e., the state), and the institutionalization of acceptable management behaviors are aligned closely with the propositions of one or both of these theories. The lack of theoretical distinctiveness between these two organizational perspectives indicated a need for further research and limits the ability to anticipate the potential outcomes for Virginia Tech and the broader field of higher education. / Ph. D.

Recent work has shown that many state supported school counseling programs have not developed working statewide program evaluation schemas. This study examined two exemplary examples of state level program evaluation. Mixed-method case studies were created and then analyzed across cases to reveal common themes and best practices. The findings indicated that these cases were able to build statewide evaluation capacity within very different contexts.

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Background and Purpose: Evidence now links poor oral hygiene to systemic and infectious diseases such as pneumonia. Hospitalized patients, who now retain their teeth into older adulthood, often rely on nurses to provide oral hygiene care. Nurses have the potential to impact oral health outcomes and quality of life by controlling plaque. However, oral hygiene care practices of nurses in post-acute hospital settings are relatively unknown. The purpose of this study was to explore how nurses provide bedtime oral hygiene care, how they decide on interventions provided, and how certain factors influence their ability to provide oral care. Methods: A qualitative, exploratory multiple-case study was conducted with 25 nurses working on five inpatient units at different hospitals. Nurses were accompanied on their evening rounds to observe oral care practices, the physical environment, and workflow. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the case study data base including transcripts of guided conversations, field notes, and documents. Within-case analysis was followed by cross-case analysis. Findings: Findings indicate that: (a) nurses often convey oral hygiene care to their patients as being optional; (b) nurses are inclined to preserve patient autonomy in oral hygiene care; (c) oral hygiene care is often spontaneous and variable, and may not be informed by evidence; and (d) oral hygiene care is not embedded into bedtime care routines. Implications: Oral health history and assessment data are essential to the creation of individualized, feasible oral hygiene care plans that consider patient dignity. Knowledge of the health benefits of oral care, and skills related to assessment and approaches to oral care are required by nurses. Availability of effective products and supplies facilitates provision of oral care. The evidence for oral hygiene care practices, outcomes of nurse-administered oral care, and the role of nurses in influencing the oral health literacy of patients requires further study. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / When in hospital, older people often rely on nurses for help with oral care. Little is known about how nurses provide this type of care, but poor oral care can lead to pneumonia, gum disease, and other diseases of the body. In this study, nurses were accompanied as they provided bedtime oral care to patients. Findings showed that: (a) nurses let patients decide about doing oral care and do not encourage it, (b) nurses let patients do oral care themselves, even if they cannot do a good job, (c) the oral care given depends on the nurse, and (d) bedtime oral care, the most important time of day, is not part of the bedtime routine. Nurses should (a) ask patients about their oral health and inspect their mouths, (b) have the right supplies available so they can more easily provide effective oral care, and (c) teach their patients about the importance of oral hygiene.

The use and development of Scientific Computing Software (SCS) has become commonplace in many fields. It is used to motivate decisions and support scientific research. Software Engineering (SE) practices have been shown to improve software quality in other domains, but these practices are not commonly used in Scientific Computing (SC). Previous studies have attributed the infrequent use of SE practices to the incompatibility of traditional SE with SC development. In this research, the SE development process, Document Driven Design (DDD), and SE tools were applied to SCS using case studies. Five SCS projects were redeveloped using DDD and SE best practices. Interviews with the code owners were conducted to assess the impact of the redevelopment. The interviews revealed that development practices and the use of SE varied between the code owners. After redevelopment, the code owners agreed that a systematic development process can be beneficial, and they had a positive or neutral response to the software artifacts produced during redevelopment. The code owners, however, felt that the documentation produced by the redevelopment process requires too great a time commitment. To promote the use of SE in SCS development, SE practices must integrate well with current development practices of SC developers and not disrupt their regular workflow. Further research in this field should encourage practices that are easy to adopt by SC developers and should minimize the effort required to produce documentation. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Industrialized house building of multi-storey residential buildings is not only gaining practical importance in Sweden but is also emphasized as a way for companies to address the demands for lower and more predictable production costs, shorter delivery times and higher product quality. However, to be competitive on the market, IHB companies need to protect and capitalize their specific investments into platforms and organizations. The engagement inplatforms and industrialized way of working, it is not just about the complexity of integration but it is also about having a capability over time to handle this market variation (i.e. dynamic capabilities). Industrialized house building has mainly been investigated from an operational view, leaving a gap in the characterization from a strategical (dynamic) view. Purpose of this research is to increase understanding about industrialized house building, from a dynamic capability view, described the characteristics of industrialized house building through exploring and describing the evolution and development of and industrialized house building company. An in-depth, longitudinal case study approach was adopted to get and deeper understanding of the development of dynamic capabilities in an industrialized house building company. The unit of analysis was the long-term interaction between house-market development, the case company’s business development, and external collaboration activities between the years 1993 and 2018. The findings from the case study were then analyzed against a theoretical framework based on dynamic capabilities. Industrialized house building can be characterized by a set of dynamic capabilities constructs that are evolved and developed in order to cope with the changing conditions derived from both internal and external factors, entailed in entrepreneurship and long-term thinking. The findings indicate that the organization's focus may vary between different kinds of dynamic capabilities over-time. In addition, findings indicate that development of dynamic capabilities supporting collaboration and building trust to the market was of importance at the beginning of their journey. These dynamic capabilities evolved in close relations with external partners, due to external market pressure. This study also indicates that path dependency affects the development of dynamic capability, through collaboration, trust, and learning – which influence how the company behaves and through their investments in a platform constraining future actions.

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