<p> African American women in student affairs face negative experiences as they seek to move along their career paths, including discrimination based on race and gender, tokenism, and microaggressive behavior. This qualitative interview study explored the professional experiences of 25 African American women middle level managers (MLMs) employed at four-year, predominantly White institutions across the United States. All of the participants had a desire to advance beyond their current MLM position to a senior role in student affairs. This study employed a conceptual framework combining Black Feminist Thought (BFT) with the Human Resource (HR) Frame of Bolman and Deal which piece together a lens for both the individual experiences of African American MLMs, and as people in their organizations of higher education. </p><p> Three themes emerged from this study. First, participants faced professional and personal challenges throughout their professional journey including race-based and gender-based discrimination and disrespect, being &ldquo;the only,&rdquo; the need to think carefully about presentation of self, and demands based on higher standards of performance and motherhood. Second, participants accessed a range of strategies and supports such as mentors, sponsors, faith, family, community, and a network to respond to and navigate these challenges. Participants were strategic agents who recognized the importance of putting themselves first. Finally, opportunities for professional growth throughout their career were a central component of their plans for advancement. </p><p> This study offered recommendations for policy, practice, and future research. Individuals should build networks to find a mentor and establish community while continually seeking professional growth opportunities. Institutions should support affinity groups for faculty and staff of color, provide culturally relevant training for senior student affairs officers on preparing evaluations for African American women MLMs, and on-campus professional development opportunities including collateral assignments that align with the ACPA and NASPA competency areas.</p><p>

This study examines the pathways of two Atlanta, Georgia African-American women social activists, Dorothy Lee Bolden Thompson and Ruby Parks Blackburn, and their respective organizations, two unsung heroes that some history books failed to give the proper recognition that they so deserved. It encompasses the challenges, civic work, social justice, and efforts as they emerged as social activists. Additionally, this study is based on the premise that these noteworthy Southern African-American women’s social activist organizations, The Georgia League of Negro Women Voters as founded by Ruby Parks Blackburn and the National Domestic Union established by Dorothy Lee Bolden made a major impact in the Atlanta area. Although they were both from two totally different lifestyles, it is without a doubt that these two fearless women originators of very successful organizations were instrumental in joining together African-American citizens of Atlanta Georgia.

<p> American community colleges are facing the dual dilemma of replacing the increasing number of presidents who are retiring, and promoting more diversity among their successors. Mentoring is viewed as a way of helping minority faculty and administrators acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to advance successfully into senior leadership roles. This study utilized a mixed-methods phenomenological approach to explore the differences in the perceptions of preparedness for their first presidency among Black/African-American community college presidents, who were mentored through an afro-centric leadership development program; other formal, national leadership programs, or mentored informally. The study was framed by five research questions exploring possible differences in participants&rsquo; backgrounds, career paths, and perceived impact of mentoring. Survey findings revealed few demographic differences among the respondents. Themes emerging from qualitative interviews of 12 randomly selected presidents indicated differences in perception regarding the impact of the psychosocial and career development aspects of mentoring in preparing for the presidency. The study identified the importance of context in determining the types of mentored relationships, and may offer insights regarding the role of mentoring in developing future minority presidents.</p><p>

<p> Background: Breast cancer diagnosis and treatment are traumatic experiences that leave an enduring sense of fear and worry about recurrence for most survivors. African-American breast cancer survivors experience moderate levels of fear of recurrence- a cancer-related maladaptive psychological outcome that involves worrying about cancer returning. Based on the social-cognitive processing theory, breast cancer survivors experience psychological distress when they have attempted to process the trauma of cancer within an environment that is not supportive. A previous study has found that breast cancer survivors with poor social environments (low social support and high social constraints) experience greater psychological distress and that emotional intelligence serves as a moderator in that relationship. No study to date has examined the impact of social environment on fear of recurrence and the usefulness of emotional intelligence as a moderator in African-American breast cancer survivors. </p><p> Purpose: This study sought to examine the relationships between social environment (social support and social constraints) and fear of recurrence and to examine emotional intelligence as a moderator in the relationships between the social environment and fear of recurrence in African-American breast cancer survivors. </p><p> Method: A community sample of 64 African-American breast cancer survivors completed a questionnaire assessing demographic and clinical variables, social support, social constraints, emotional intelligence, and fear of recurrence. The relationships between the social environmental variables (social support and social constraints) and fear of recurrence were examined using Pearson's <i> r</i> Partial Correlations. Using the PROCESS Macro for SPSS, moderation analyses were conducted to test emotional intelligence as a moderator in the relationships between the social environmental variables and fear of recurrence dimensions. </p><p> Results: Fear of recurrence was experienced by 60.9% of the sample. Contrary to expectations, increased social support was positively associated with increased fears of recurrence in the form of Role Worries, Health Worries, Womanhood Worries, and Death Worries (<i>p</i>&lt;.05) indicating that participants with more social support tended to experience more fears of recurrence. As expected, increased social constraint was positively associated with increased fear of recurrence on all five dimensions (<i> p</i>&lt;.05) indicating that participants with more social constraints experienced more fears of recurrence. Also, emotional intelligence moderated the relationship between social support and death-related fears of recurrence, indicating that the positive relationship between social support and death related fears of recurrence no longer occurred at high levels of emotional intelligence. </p><p> Conclusion: The present study generated results that highlight the need to further explore the relationship between social environment, fear of recurrence, and emotional intelligence in African-American breast cancer survivors.</p><p>

<p> According to national statistics, the number of Black women college graduates is 44.8% while for Black men, the national college graduate rate stand on 33.1%. The overall graduation rate of the Black population remains 57.3%. Further as the per statistics, out of 7.9% of the total Black male population in America in the age group of 18 to 24 years, only 2.8% of Black men were undergraduates at public flagship colleges and universities (NCES, 2012). It is argued that while this troubling trend is most prevalent in all groups among Black men, young Black men are generally the most vulnerable to underrepresentation in colleges and universities (Harper, 2010). </p><p> The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine a federally funded academic and support services program titled PASSAGES, which aims to increase success rates for African American males using what this author refers to as a traditional deficit model for recruiting African Americans. This study examined the PASSAGES through an alternative framework, the Anti Deficit Achieving Framework (ADAF), which is specifically designed for African American males (Harper, 2012). </p><p> This study examined current PASSAGES participant&rsquo;s perceptions of the program, both within the traditional deficit model and within the ADAF. Specifically, this study examined factors such as microaggressions that undermine African American males&rsquo; achievements by evaluating their perceptions of the institutional, traditional practices within a student support services program: PASSAGES at Los Angeles Southwest Community College which prohibits them from being successful. The intent of this study was to provide the educational community serving the African American male population with some insight into contemporary techniques to improve their success rates through a positive framework.</p><p>

This thesis traces the mechanisms and sources responsible for the generation of civic social capital (a set of shared norms and values that promote cooperation between groups, enabling them to participate in the political process) by black churches in West Perrine, Florida. Data for this thesis includes over fifty interviews and participant observations, archival records, newspaper articles, and scholarly journals. Despite the institutional racism of the first half of the twentieth century, many blacks and whites in Perrine developed levels of trust significant enough to form an integrated local governing body, evidence of high levels of csc. At mid-century, when black and white interactions ceased, Perrine's csc decreased, leading to the deterioration of Perrine's social and physical conditions. Perrine's csc increased in the1980s by way of broad-based coalitions as Perrine's churches invested their csc in an effort to eradicate crime, clean up its neighborhood, and win back its youth.

<p> This study examines the conditions contributing to Black women becoming firsts and thriving in positions of leadership and authority. This qualitative phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of six Black women leaders, representative of different fields and geographies across the United States. In 2018, there remains a conspicuous absence of Black women in top leadership positions. The availability of models and mentors to inspire young Black girls and women to achieve key positions of authority remains a challenge. The literature of Black women that concentrates on the challenges, barriers, and stereotypes as manifestations of racism, sexism and classism diminishes how Black women are viewed. The phenomenological research method provides an opportunity for these leaders to reflect on their journeys, and to use their own voices to share their stories, their insights and collective wisdom. We learn by virtue of their experiences that the daily struggles of gendered racism never truly end. </p><p> The conceptual framework for this study addresses self-efficacy, professional development and organizational culture. In spite of their organizational accomplishments, success is a relative condition, one that may be fleeting. Since the challenges have not ceased these leaders have learned to operate in the face of the struggles that persist. For this reason, this study focuses on the phenomenon <i> to thrive</i>, a dynamic state of contributing and influencing change. </p><p> The findings reveal six emergent themes: 1) strong supportive family, 2) strong sense of self/self-confidence, 3) resilience/ adaptability, 4) the desire to make an impact/help others, 5) collaborative/connector of people, and 6) use their voice. The six themes that work together dynamically for the leaders to thrive, do not provide a roadmap paved with guarantees. At best, they offer us a pathway lined with uncertainty. And yet, given the option to give up or keep going, we can learn from their experiences and look to the illustrations presented here of resilience and resolve, as a model to emulate. </p><p> This study gleans poignant advice to young Black women embarking on their careers and recommendations to organizational leaders committed to the advancement of Black women as leaders.</p><p>

abstract: Black male students experience a number of issues related to identity during the persistence process, which have potential to deter them from graduating. Some of these issues include feeling isolated and lack of access to resources due to their ethnic and/or racial identities. Recent statistics indicate that though there is an increase in college enrollment for Black students, the graduation rate is disproportionate to their enrollment. Using critical race theory, co-cultural theory, and communication theory of identity, this study investigated the role of identity in the persistence of Black male students’ graduation rates. Specifically, the central question was ‘What role, if any, do identity processes play in Black male students' decisions to continue or depart from a Predominantly White Institution?’ In order to answer this question, fifteen first-generation Black male college students were interviewed in order to understand the specific experiences that impacted them in relation to graduation. The study sample included a subset of Black male athletes who were found to have distinct differences in college experiences based solely on their athlete status. The overall results indicate that Black male students have expectations of the persistence process and that their personal identity also plays a significant role in the persistence process. In order to maintain their identities and continue with coursework, Black males enacted persistence strategies that were consistent with an overall goal of graduating. Research findings suggest that Black males must maintain a strong personal identity in order to maintain their personal commitment to graduation and college institutions can support them in this endeavor. Research outcomes also suggest that Black males should have a plan of persistence upon entering college, which is constantly reinforced as a graduation motivator. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2015

abstract: This dissertation takes the material culture of New Orleans’ Spiritual Churches as its point of the construction and application of academic categories in studies of religions of the African diaspora. Because I am interested in what emic explanations reveal about scholarly categories and methods, a dialogic approach in which I consult practitioners’ explanations to test the appropriateness of academic categories is central to this work. Thus, this study is grounded in an ethnographic study of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple, which was founded and is operated by Priestess Miriam Chamani, a bishop in the Spiritual Churches. The Spiritual Churches first emerged in the early twentieth century under the leadership of Mother Leafy Anderson. Voodoo, Pentecostalism, Spiritualism, and Roman Catholicism have been acknowledged as their primary tributary traditions. This study examines the material culture, such as statues and mojo bags, at the Voodoo Spiritual Temple as it reflects and reveals aspects of Temple attendees’ world views. In particular, material culture begins to illuminate attendees’ understandings of non-human beings, such as Spirit and spirits of the dead, as they are embodied in a variety of ways. Conceptions of Spirit and spirits are revealed to be interconnected with views on physical and spiritual well-being. Additionally, despite previous scholarly treatments of the Spiritual Churches as geographically, socially, and culturally isolated, the material culture of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple reveals them to be embedded in transnational and translocal cultural networks. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2016

abstract: Modern and contemporary African American writers employ science fiction in order to recast ideas on past, present, and future black culture. This dissertation examines Afrofuturism’s cultural aesthetics, which appropriate devices from science fiction and fantasy in order to revise, interrogate, and re-examine historical events insufficiently treated by literary realism. The dissertation includes treatments of George Schuyler, Ishmael Reed, Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, Nalo Hopkinson, and Chicana/ofuturism. The original contribution of this research is to highlight how imagination of a posthuman world has made it possible for African American writers to envision how racial power can be re-configured and re-negotiated. Focusing on shifting racial dynamics caught up in the swirl of technological changes, this research illuminates a complex process of literary production in which black culture and identity have been continuously re-interpreted. In the post-war and post-Civil Rights Movement eras African American writers began reflecting on shifting racial dynamics in light of technological changes. This shift in which black experience became mechanized and digitized explains how technology became a source of new African American fiction. The relationships between humans and their external conditions appear in such futuristic themes as trans-human anamorphosis, cyberspace, and digital souls. These thematic devices, which explore humanity outside its phenotypic boundaries, provide African American writers with tools to demystify deterministic views of race. Afrofuturism has responded to the conceptual transformation of humanity with a race-specific scope, locating the presence of black culture in a high-tech world. Techno-scientific progress has provided important resources in contemporary theory, yet these theoretical foci too seldom have been drawn into critical race discourses. This discrepancy is due to techno-scientific progress having served as a tool for the legitimation of scientific racism under global capitalism for centuries. Responding to this critical lacuna, the dissertation highlights an under-explored field in which African American literature responds to techno-culture’s involvement in contemporary discussions of race. Rather than repeat nominal assumptions of Eurocentric modernity and its racist hegemony, this dissertation theorizes how modern techno-culture’s outcomes—such as information science, genetic engineering, and computer science—shape minority lives, and how minority groups appropriate these outcomes to enact their own liberation. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017