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Through an examination of first year college students at a large, urban, public university, this study explored one university's use of alcohol course survey data from an online alcohol prevention program to determine whether it would increase the power of a predictive model for first year student retention. At a time when fiscal and human resources are both scarce and in high demand, institutions require policy and prevention strategies that promise to make a positive difference in the health, safety and academic persistence of its students. Using available data on 4,121 first year students this research identified key variables that, when combined with student attitudes about alcohol use, identify the significant predictors of first year college retention enabling university leaders to design more impactful strategies for intervention including a student-centered policy framework with an aim toward reducing harmful behaviors on campus. / Educational Administration

An investigation of the temperature response and corresponding lesion growth resulting from in vivo interstitial laser photocoagulation was performed in order to test the applicability of Arrhenius theory. The irradiations were performed in vivo in rabbit muscle for various exposures at 1.0W using an 805 nm diode laser source coupled to an optical fibre with a pre-charred tip, thereby forcing it to function as a point heat source. Temperature responses were measured using a five-microthermocouple array along a range of radial distances from the point heat source. Each temperature profile was fitted with a curve predicted by the Weinbaum-Jiji bioheat transfer equation. The lesions were resected 48 hours after irradiation and the boundary of thermal damage resulting in necrosis was determined histologically. Numerical integration of the Arrhenius integral using temperature-time data at the lesion boundary produced corresponding activation energy and pre-exponential factor pairs (Eₐ , α) consistent with reported values for various other endpoints and tissue types. As well, theoretical predictions of the lesion growth from Arrhenius theory agreed well with experimental results. However, the thermal parameters, which are generally assumed to be constant when solving the bioheat transfer equation, were found to vary with radial distance from the source, presumably due to dependence on temperature. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

This thesis gives an account of most known methods which can be utilized to solve various integral equations of the first kind. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

The primary guiding question proposed for this study is, what are the variations and commonalities in policies among the 132 school districts in the Commonwealth of Virginia that govern whether or not students who are educated at home have access to public school courses and extra-curricular activities? In order to obtain this information the study was conducted of two phases. The first phase consisted of a policy analysis in order to determine the scope and nature of home school policies across Virginia's 132 operational school districts, and whether they fall within the legal parameters established by state regulations and case law. The second phase involved ascertaining how school officials perceived local control of home schoolers' access to public school classes or extracurricular activities through a multiple case study. This phase involved interviewing the person designated to implement these policies from selected school districts. The intent was that the data analysis would provide the basis for recommending changes or perhaps no changes, in the state's role in governing home school access. / Ed. D.

Background: Engineering students who achieve academic success during their first year may later disengage from challenging course material in their upper-level courses, due to perceived differences between their expectations and values and those of their degree programs. In the extreme, academic disengagement can lead to attrition. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to better understand the learning approaches and strategies used by first-year engineering students. Research questions were as follows:  How do first-year engineering students describe their learning approaches and strategies?  How do first-year engineering students customize their learning strategies among their courses?  How do first-year engineering students employ reflection as part of their learning strategies? Design/Method: I employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to collect and analyze data, using an explanatory design approach consisting of two surveys and a set of semi-structured interviews between survey administrations. The interview data from a purposive sample of survey participants were coded using a priori, pattern and comparative coding. The survey data were analyzed for medians and interquartile ranges in order to identify trends in reflective learning strategies among courses. Results: One notable finding was the fact that many interviewees stated that their overall purpose for studying was to achieve high grades by preparing for tests (a surface-level approach), and yet the learning strategies that they used reflected a deeper engagement with their course material than one would expect from students whose singular focus was on grades. Certain strategies were similar for both technical and non-technical courses, while others were dissimilar. There are also ways to combine the surface and deep learning strategies sequentially. They need not be mutually exclusive. Conclusions: The results of this study will provide educators with a starting point for the development of guided practice in meaningful learning strategies to encourage a greater engagement with learning. Both educators and administrators should be amenable to measures that would improve their students' chances for success, by providing guidance in how to learn as well as what to learn. Several recommendations are given for future studies, such as the relationships among reflection, metacognition, and critical thinking, and the integration of meaningful learning strategies into technically overloaded engineering degree curricula. / Doctor of Philosophy / I chose to study the learning approaches and strategies of first-year engineering students. The term "learning strategies" refers to study habits, but learning strategies also involve choices about how to study based on goals, motivation, and available resources. My results will provide professors and instructors with insights that they can use to help their students learn more effectively and find deeper meaning in their course material, by guiding them in how to learn as well as what to learn. Knowing how to learn is a lifelong skill. First-year engineering students have a special need to know how to learn in order to be better prepared for a more challenging workload in their upper level engineering courses. Prior studies have shown that students most often leave an engineering program during their first or second year due to inadequate academic preparation in prior years. If we are to help engineering these students to improve their learning approaches and strategies, we first need to know what approaches and strategies they currently use. My data came from two surveys that were given at the end of each of two introductory engineering courses to a group of approximately 1,200 students, and from interviews with fifteen students who had also completed the surveys. I was trying to learn more about how these students customized their learning strategies among their courses, and how they used reflection to discover the meaning behind what they are learning. One of the most interesting findings was the fact that many interviewees stated that their overall purpose for studying was to achieve high grades by preparing for tests (a surface-level approach), and yet the learning strategies that they used reflected a deeper engagement with their course material than one would expect from students whose only focus was on grades. This combination of different learning approaches was more common in engineering, science and mathematics courses than in humanities or social science courses. This dissertation also contains a three-part class assignment, given at the beginning, middle, and end of a first-year engineering course, in which students reflect on their progress in learning one or more skills that they had identified at the beginning of the course. Implications arising from my study are directed at researchers, administrators, faculty, and students, respectively, as well as opportunities for further work in this aspect of higher education. Opportunities for further studies include the relationship between reflection and critical thinking, and methods for incorporating guided practice in learning strategies into engineering degree programs that currently contain too much technical content.

This dissertation studies how first-year writing teachers' experiences learning grammar impact their teaching of and responses to the topic of grammar. Scholars like Francis Christenson and Martha Kolln agree that some knowledge of grammar helps students' rhetorical acuity but not when taught with rules and isolated exercises. CCCC's "Students Rights to Their Own Language" and the work of scholars like Geneva Smitherman and April Baker-Bell have shed light on the language-identity relationship and the damage that standardization inflicts on a person's sense of self. This pedagogical paradigm has created tension for writing teachers and their departments. Grammar is, for many, an emotional topic. Joseph Williams wondered at the rage caused by certain grammar deviations in his essay "The Phenomenology of Errors." This dissertation builds on Williams' work, suggesting we look to teachers' histories to understand their emotions and find usefulness in these emotions. Using grounded theory, I code six interviews in which first-year writing teachers describe their memorable encounters with grammar instruction. I then identify patterns in these stories and the interviewees' practices and compare them against the results of a nation-wide survey of over a hundred first-year writing teachers. In this study, I identify a type of experience I call epiphanic encounters with grammar instruction. Encounters are epiphanic when the instruction impacts the learner's sense of self. I trace a connection between these encounters and teachers' feelings of empathy for their students and passion for grammar instruction's reform. I argue that reflection on epiphanic encounters can help teachers locate points of empathy for their students' experiences of grammars and promote productive conversations about grammar instruction. Based on these findings, I recommend that educators of first-year writing teachers implement grammar-focused reflection into their teacher training as a way of leveraging teachers' emotions toward the topic of grammar to facilitate productive conversations about grammar instruction. In the first chapter, I question the impact of teachers' emotional resonances from personal encounters with grammar instruction. I introduce my emotional encounter with grammar instruction and describe the emotional reactions I have encountered when attempting to engage writing teachers in conversations about grammar instruction. After reviewing the project, I situate my work in scholarship on emotions in composition. My findings respond to Joseph Williams' "Phenomenology of Errors" in which he explores why people respond strongly to "grammar errors." My work also contributes to inquiries in teacher training and the use of self reflection as professional development. I suggest that student teachers reflect on their past encounters with grammar to better empathize with their students' experiences. Chapter Two constructs a history of grammar instruction in America, from the 1860s to the present, mid-twenty-first century. Through this review, I show how pedagogical debates and language anxiety have always followed grammar and, depending on the person's skill and class, made it the source of anger, fear, hope, or shame. I highlight the social and educational shifts that formed grammar around the ugly shapes of class and race discrimination, including the East Coast's development, regional dialects, and increased demand for education. Chapter Three details my methods of investigation. Here I explain the rationale behind my study design, which uses surveys and interviews. The interviews provided qualitative details beyond what the heavily structured survey could and allowed teachers to describe their beliefs and experiences in their own words. It was important to collect these first-hand accounts to better understand the internal processes behind teachers' reactions. The survey provided quantitative data with which to identify overarching trends and test theories devised from the interviews. These steps in turn indicated the generalizability of the findings. This chapter also explains my use of Critical Incident Theory to write the survey and interview questions and my use of grounded theory to code and analyze the data. In Chapter Four, I present the results of the nation-wide survey and the six, one-on-one interviews. By comparing responses to different survey questions, (e.g. number of respondents to report having had positive emotions at the time of their experience and now hold negative emotions toward teaching grammar), I determined that the teachers' emotions at the time of their experience did not correlate with any particular teaching practices or feelings toward teaching grammar. However, 72% of all teachers surveyed and 89% of teachers who had "very negative" emotions at the time of their experience reported that their experience has impacted their teaching of grammar. This means grammar studies that hope to change teachers' practices will need to consider how to address teachers' past experiences. Chapter Five is the first of two analysis chapters. By attending to content and word choice of survey and interview responses, I find that the teachers whose stories include evidence of epiphanic encounters with grammar instruction tend to show empathy for students' diversity and the negative experiences their students may have had with grammars. Furthermore, most of these teachers spoke of teaching practices they implement to serve multilingual/multidialectal students. Teacher training can benefit from these findings since self-reflection on transformational learning experiences could be used in teacher training to help teachers appreciate the issues surrounding grammars and respond to them with sensitive practices. In Chapter Six, I show how in addition to empathy, teachers with epiphanic encounters also tend to feel passion. I use the term passion to designate heightened emotions, such as anger or excitement, that compel teachers to teach new perspectives on grammars in classes and/or social settings. I find that this emotion is not always pleasant for the teachers experiencing it, but their beliefs in a more equitable teaching of grammars motivates them to spread alternative understandings of writing instruction and grammars' role in it. Additionally, this chapter compares the survey data to the interview data and finds evidence that the pattern of passion exists in this larger sample. This finding strengthens the likelihood that this trend extends to most first-year writing teachers, making grammar-focused reflection a viable tool to motivate new teachers to continue valuable conversations needed to spread new knowledge about grammars. In the final two chapters, I present a lesson plan to be used to prepare student teachers to address grammars in a way that honors students' identities and language rights. This activity has teachers reflect on their emotional encounters with grammar instruction and consider how their students' experiences may be similar or different. The discussion questions push student teachers to dig deep into the complicated and uncomfortable issues surrounding grammar instruction. After the lesson, students should understand the most common debates about grammar instruction and have strategies to teach grammars rhetorically and respectfully. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation studies how first-year writing teachers' experiences learning grammar impact their teaching of and responses to the topic of grammar. Scholars like Francis Christenson and Martha Kolln agree that knowledge of grammar can benefit students if it is taught in context. Scholars like Geneva Smitherman and April Baker-Bell have revealed how critical language is to people's identity formation. Because grammar is important but controversial, it is a point of tension for writing teachers and their departments. Grammar is, for many, an emotional topic. Joseph Williams wondered at the rage caused by certain grammar deviations in his essay "The Phenomenology of Errors." This dissertation builds on Williams' work. I suggest that first-year writing teachers look to their histories to understand their emotions toward grammar. Using grounded theory, I code six interviews in which first-year writing teachers describe their memorable encounters with grammar instruction. I identify patterns in the interviewees' stories and teaching practices. Finally, I compare these patterns against the results of a nation-wide survey of over a hundred first-year writing teachers. In this study, I identify a type of experience I call epiphanic encounters with grammar instruction. Encounters are epiphanic when the instruction impacts the learner's sense of self. I trace a connection between these encounters and teachers' feelings of empathy for their students and passion for grammar instruction's reform. I argue that reflection on epiphanic encounters can help teachers locate points of empathy for their students' experiences of grammars and promote productive conversations about grammar instruction. Based on these findings, I recommend that educators of first-year writing teachers implement grammar-focused reflection into teacher training. Through this self reflection, student teachers can better understand their emotions toward the topic of grammar. Beyond this understanding, student teachers who use grammar-focused self reflection will be more emotionally prepared to discuss grammar instruction.

Student affairs practitioners attempt to combine in-class and out-of-class learning. One example of this is first year residential programs. In these programs freshmen live together in one residence hall. Each program is different, but common characteristics include increased student staff, freshmen seminar, and increase programming on adjustment issues. This study examines one first year program (FYP) and attempts to determine the effects of the program on the academic success of the participants. Gender differences and ethnic differences were also examined. Academic success was defined as those elements of students' collegiate experiences that relate to retention and graduation. The instrument used in this study was based on a specific definition of academic success. Five hundred and thirty five students were asked to participate in the study, and a total of 249 usable instruments were returned, for a response rate of 48.44%. Of the 249 participants, 264 (49.35%) were in the FYP and 271 (50.65%) were not in the FYP. The non-FYP students lived in a variety of buildings on campus. There were significant findings in several areas of academic success. FYP participants had higher grades overall and completed more class credits. FYP students were more likely to understand academic policies and requirements. FYP students were more likely to complete all assignments before class and they were more likely to begin taking steps towards their career goals. Students in the FYP also reported higher levels of contact with faculty and higher attendance at university events. The FYP appeared to offer opportunities that enabled students to reach higher levels of academic success. / Master of Arts

This study explored the activities in which first-generation students engage that might promote academic and social integration. Additionally, differences in activities by race were examined. Participants included fifteen Caucasian and fifteen Multicultural first-generation, first-year students. Respondents maintained logs of their daily academic and social activities for a two-week period during their first semester on campus. The logs yielded both quantitative and qualitative data. The results revealed several interesting findings. First, first-generation students engaged in a number of academic behaviors that often contribute to academic integration and success. Although they were not always confident in their abilities as a student, first-generation participants attended most of their classes, completed assignments, participated in class discussions, and visited their professors to seek assistance. Second, although informants seemed to devote more time to academic pursuits, they did take time to enjoy conversations and activities with peers and attend meetings and events on campus. Third, Caucasian and Multicultural first-generation students were nearly equally involved in academic pursuits. However, Caucasian students focused on developing personal relationships with those who support their success, while Multicultural students focused more on results and achievement. Fourth, both Caucasian and Multicultural students found ways to be involved socially on campus, but Caucasian students were more comfortable describing their time spent out of the classroom. In general, the students in this study were not as much at risk as results from prior research on first generation students has suggested they might be. In their first semester, they found ways to participate successfully in the academic and social environments of college. / Master of Arts

The literature available on financial aid addresses how aid promotes access and equal educational opportunity by enabling students to matriculate into college. The literature also discusses how financial aid impacts students' ability to persist to degree completion. However, there seems to be little research on how financial aid affects students' lives while they are in college. The present study attempted to address this gap in the existing literature by examining the differences in quality of life between college students receiving financial aid and those not receiving such aid. For purposes of this study, quality of life was defined by four dimensions culled from the literature: (a) material possessions; (b) housing; (c) use of time; and (d) support mechanisms. Financial aid was defined as any need-based grant, loan, or work-study money awarded to a student. Data were collected using the Quality of Life survey developed specifically for this study. The survey consisted of 59 items that were designed to measure the four dimensions of students' quality of life. The target sample for this study consisted of 600 first year undergraduate students: 300 financial aid recipients and 300 non-aid recipients. The findings revealed significant differences in three of the four areas: material possessions, use of time, and support mechanisms. These findings suggest that those who administer financial aid programs and those responsible for creating financial aid policies may wish to consider the role financial aid plays in the quality of life of students. / Master of Arts