No / WHO advice suggests a family-centred approach for managing the elevated risk of recessively inherited disorders in consanguineous communities, whilst emerging policy recommends community engagement as an integral component of genetic service development. This paper explores the feasibility of the family-centred approach in the UK Pakistani origin community. The study took place within a context of debate in the media, professional and lay circles about cousin marriage causing disability in children. Using qualitative methods, a total of six single-sex focus group discussions (n = 50) were conducted in three UK cities with a high settlement of people of Pakistani origin. Tape-recorded transcripts were analysed using framework analysis. Kinship networks within Pakistani origin communities are being sustained and marriage between close blood relatives continues to take place alongside other marriage options. Study participants were critical of what was perceived as a prevalent notion that cousin marriage causes disability in children. They were willing to discuss cousin marriage and disability, share genetic information and engage with genetic issues. A desire for accurate information and a public informed about genetic issues was articulated whilst ineffective communication of genetic risk information undermined professionals in their support role. This study suggests a community that is embracing change, one in which kinship networks are still active and genetic information exchange is taking place. At the community level, these are conditions supportive of the family-centred approach to genetic testing and counselling.

ABSTRACT College and university mission statements commonly declare contributions for the public good and the development of engaged and responsible citizens as central to their institution's work. Yet, a different narrative is often revealed when rhetoric meets reality in the promotion and tenure policies for faculty. Since Ernest Boyer's seminal work Scholarship Reconsidered (1990) called for an expansion of the way we think about and reward scholarship in academia, a preponderance of studies have considered the degree to which community engagement and public scholarship has been integrated into higher education faculty reward policies. Such research has helped chart the progress that has been made in this area over the past twenty-five years. Many past studies have focused on land-grant and public research universities, both of which have specific mandates informing their institutional missions. Fewer studies look specifically at private or faith-based institutions. This study specifically considers how Catholic higher education is addressing the challenge of recognizing and rewarding community-engagement in its faculty policies. The overarching research question guiding this study asks: To what extent is institutional mission operational in faculty recruitment, reappointment, promotion, and tenure policies at Catholic colleges and universities designated with the Carnegie Foundation's Community Engagement classification? The study employs a qualitative, content analysis of the mission statements and recruitment, reappointment, promotion, and tenure policies of 31 Catholic colleges and universities. The institutions in this target cohort are members of the Association of Catholic Colleges & Universities (ACCU) that received the nationally recognized Carnegie Community Engagement classification in 2015. These two affiliations suggest that each institution in the cohort has a distinct Catholic identity and demonstrates a high commitment to community engagement. I first explore how these 31 Catholic institutions articulate their mission, values, and identity. Next, I evaluate their recruitment, reappointment, tenure, and promotion policies. Through a comparison of the findings, I determine the extent to which these Catholic institutions align their faculty reward policies with their faith-based foundations and espoused missions through a commitment to community engaged teaching and scholarship. Further, through a cross-case analysis, I reveal policy exemplars from Catholic colleges and universities that can inform institutions interested in strengthening the alignment between their Catholic mission/identity and faculty roles and rewards.

This qualitative study should provide insight into stakeholders' perceptions of a system-wide educational partnership focused on a change effort to increase student achievement in a school system located in a large, metropolitan city in the southeastern United States. The importance of partnering to assure that all children are succeeding in school has never been more important to local communities and our nation. Not only are definitions of educational partnerships expanding, but so are the parameters, the players, and the structures. As educational improvement initiatives are put into effect by local, state, and national governments, schools across the country are realizing the need for local action. Some of the many successful school systems in our nation have implemented more than parent involvement; they have created a collaborative school-community partnership. Through investigation of surveys and interviews administered to the stakeholders of a partnership that has only been in existence for 2 years, this case study was designed to identify similarities and differences in the stakeholders' perceptions regarding their respective roles in the partnership, in improving student outcomes, and in the desired future state of this particular school system and partnership. Findings from this study confirm that there are both similarities and differences in all stakeholders' perceptions about most aspects of the partnership. In addition, many of the study's participants have changed their perceptions of the partnership over the 2 years of its existence and the challenges facing education. Finally, challenges and barriers of this partnership were identified. Differences in perceptions regarding the vision, mission, goals, action plans, and measures exist between school system personnel, school board members, and the partnership. This study focused on the implications of building partnerships and provides a section detailing recommendations and lessons learned from the process for this particular partnership as well as recommendations for future partnerships. This study might be of interest to stakeholders who are presently involved in a similar collaborative change effort or serve as a guide for other school systems that wish to replicate this type of school-community partnership.

<p><em>This thesis applies a Bourdieuian analysis to a qualitative study of volunteerism that focuses on the question of how ‘doing good’ relates to social change overall? - in particular, the ways that social class influences the volunteer experience and the overall culture of volunteerism. I argue that the leading theoretical research models of volunteerism need to recognize the evolving nature of the activity and theorize the influences that are structuring the culture of volunteerism. What emerges is a model of volunteering where motivation is understood as a complex set of factors that are structured by social class identities and volunteering is understood as a form of distinction that can be used to acquire cultural capital. Social class-based ideas, in particular, the values related to the middle class, have become a part of the culture of volunteerism and, in part, create and reproduce the social change/volunteerism paradox. The volunteerism/social change paradox is the idea that volunteerism is often perceived as a social change activity when in many cases it reproduced the status quo. Without a strong activism component to the volunteerism, it is not an inequality challenging activity. </em></p> <p><em>This thesis presents interview and observation data collected with Habitat for Humanity Canada in their two largest programs – the National program (domestic) and the Global Village program (international). By utilizing ideas of class, class distinction and social and cultural capital from Bourdieu’s work, the role of class, the culture of benevolence (or volunteerism) can be explored in a new way. What emerges is a culture of volunteerism that is deeply influenced by middle class values where social change ideas are common but structural change is not – resulting in the volunteer/social change paradox.</em></p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This study examines the long-term effects of adoption reunion. The main focus is on adoptees who have searched, made contact with their birth mothers and encountered a reunion experience. Intensive, open-ended interviews with a randomly-selected sample of sixty adoptees indicate that search and reunion have little connection to the adoptee's dissatisfaction with his/her adoption outcome or his/ her adoptive parent-child bonds. In fact, a large number hide their search and reunion from their adoptive parents because they do not want these significant others to think that they are unhappy with their adoptive status. The desire to reunite is more likely to be precipitated by some life-crisis event that raises the adoptive role-identity to a prominent position in the adoptee's salience hierarchy. Consideration of the meaning of that role-identity leads the adoptee to resolve the ambiguities that he/she encounters because of his/her lack of knowledge about his/her biological origins. Reunion contact resolves this sense of uncertainty because. it provides the missing background information that the adoptee needs for a consistent presentation of self in social interaction. Reunion contact with the birth mother is not a necessity for satisfactory reunion outcome. The adoptee possesses a strong vocabulary of motives that he/she uses to account for his/her reunion outcome and to integrate his/her background information as a part of his/her positive self-concept.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This paper delves into the current definitions and ideas of the Service-Learning pedagogy and how it ties into community engagement. The importance of service learning and community engagement is talked about in this paper as well as the proven benefits of both. The goal of this paper is to answer and better understand students’ relationships to service-learning courses such as why they take them and how to better engage them in the learning</p>

<p>Recent trends in community development efforts rely on social capital to solve issues at the local level through consensus building, increasing capacity and citizen empowerment. The asset based community development (ABCD) approach assumes relationships and partnerships built on networks of trust and shared norms build communities beneficial for all members. The current community capacity building approach blurs political interests and supports the current neoliberal agenda of the state and private interests to shift the responsibility and management of social problems to the community. This project calls in to question the potential of an assets based community development strategy as it has been attempted in Hamilton, Ontario to lead to long-term structural change in addressing social issues at the root. Findings suggest that despite the number of community projects appearing on the ground, there is little evidence to support asset based community development and social capital that leads to long-term structural change in communities, or economic prosperity to the extent proponents suggest. Furthermore, contrary to the claim of resident leadership, the findings suggest models that attempt to include resident participation are still managed, funded, and administered by professionals in organizations in a ‘top down’ manner. Additional discussion will explore how social capital and capacity can be used toward meeting social justice outcomes in communities.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<p>Against the backdrop of social and demographic transformations, including increasing longevity and changing family relationships, this dissertation combines quantitative and qualitative methods to examine contemporary grandparent-grandchild ties in Canada. Beginning with an analysis of grandparenthood at the population level, this research analyzes the social and demographic contours of grandparenthood, establishing the prevalence of grandparenthood, adults with living grandparents, step-ties, multi-generational households and grandparents raising their grandchildren, as well as the supply of grandchildren and the intersection of family and work roles with grandparenthood. And, given that American data are often used to represent the Canadian situation, the dissertation provides a comparative analysis between the two countries.</p> <p>The demographic analysis revealed high percentages of grandparent-adult grandchild relationships in the population. This finding formed the foundation for the micro-level analysis on which the dissertation is also based-an original qualitative study involving older grandparents and adult grandchildren (n=37). The overall aim of this research was to explore grandparent-adult grandchild relationships from the perspectives of both generations in order to understand the significance of the ties and these family roles, as well as how they are negotiated over time and within the context of contemporary social life. The data reveal that the ties have instrumental, symbolic, existential and material significance, that adult relationships are qualitatively different and more complex compared to young grand relationships and that the broader social context is very consequential to how these family ties and roles are negotiated. Taken together, the qualitative and quantitative findings challenge commonly held assumptions about who and what constitutes 'the family' and shed scholarly light on choice and obligation as they arise in contemporary family life.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Howard Hahn / Public parks provide essential green space for people to congregate, exercise, and respite from the city. Urban public parks in the United States began with Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park in the mid-1800s (Cranz & Boland, 2004). Since then, planners and designers continue to design urban parks to best serve residents. Therefore, understanding user recreation patterns and preferences is critical for urban park design. Several factors influence leisure styles, including ethnicity, that need to be considered by planners and designers. This study examines parks in South Omaha, Nebraska. Residents living in this area make up over ten different ethnic groups. Notably, Omaha’s largest Hispanic community concentration resides in South Omaha. Through quantitative and qualitative research including site analysis, a literature search, precedent studies, and community interviews, important design considerations emerged. This project presents design considerations and a conceptual redesign for two urban parks in South Omaha: Lynch Park and Spring Lake Park. The designs incorporated the leisure preferences and recreation patterns as revealed through interviews of the majority Hispanic community as well as European, Asian, and African minority ethnic groups. Precedent studies and literature research further informed redesign decisions by providing background knowledge on leisure research, design form, and demographic trends. Nevertheless, urban parks should ultimately respond to the users, regardless of cultural backgrounds, to meet the needs and requirements of all South Omaha residents.

Master of Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Huston Gibson / Play is essential to the development of children, as it serves as the main platform for a child to begin to explore his or her world and understand their physical and social environment. It is not a frivolous activity, but a method of learning. Despite this recognition, many playground designs are still steered, wrongly so, by unwarranted societal fears of safety. Such playgrounds lack developmental benefits due to their composition of isolated, prefab plastic components on an asphalt field. Despite recognition in the late twentieth century that “childhood itself is in danger of extinction”, many playground are still sterile in nature. The time is now for designers to look critically at playground design trends and intervene to improve the quality of the environments our children are exposed too. The positive development of the next generation, our children, depends on it. In the case of the community of La Chuscada in Chinandega, Nicaragua, economic status presents a major barrier to the creation of beneficial learning environments. This project addresses the hardships of implementing a developmentally beneficial playground, and through the collaboration with the Amigos for Christ philanthropic organization and interior architecture student Aaron Bisch, offers solutions to achieve this goal. Culture-specific influences of play are explored and survey data from the community of La Chuscada reveal strategies for the implementation of a nature playground design that offers developmental benefits for the children of the community.