The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand entry-level, live-in residence life professionals' experiences of resilience in the workplace. Resilience is a multilevel, biopsychosocial construct that broadly refers one's ability to maintain or improve positive function in response to adversity (Cicchetti, 2010; Masten and Wright, 2010). Workplace resilience is specifically concerned with such adaptive processes and outcomes in response to job stress. Resilience research has been conducted primarily from a post-positivist, diagnostic perspective that has failed to give attention to the diverse experiences of resilience in different contexts. This study was conducted using a constructivist perspective to develop an understanding of workplace resilience in the unique context of live-in residence life work in institutions of higher education where job stress, burnout, and attrition occur at high rates. Ten participants were purposefully selected through expert referral for two 90-minute, in-depth interviews to discuss their history, experiences, and reflections regarding adversity and resilience in the workplace. Data were analyzed inductively to discover themes regarding resilience for residence life professionals. Findings illuminated participant experiences of workplace adversity and resilience, as well as participant beliefs about themselves and the nature and role of resilience in the workplace context. Discussion of findings resulted in four primary conclusions: (a) adversity and resilience coexist in balance with each other; (b) resilience can be learned, as well as lost; (c) resilience is personal and experienced uniquely by individuals; and (d) resilience is a systems issue that is promoted through partnership. Implications for future policy, practice, and research were discussed. / Ph. D. / Entry-level residence life professionals living where they work experience high rates of job stress, burnout, and attrition. These individual concerns also create challenges for organizational effectiveness. Many studies have uncovered factors related to these issues, but few have considered what promotes perseverance in the face of such adversity. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand entry-level, live-in residence life professionals’ experiences of workplace resilience, a construct that broadly refers one’s ability to maintain or improve positive function in response to adversity in the workplace. This study was conducted with a constructivist approach to understand the individual experiences of diverse participants. Ten participants engaged in two individual 90-minute, indepth interviews to discuss their history, experiences, and reflections regarding adversity and resilience in the workplace. Data were analyzed inductively to discover themes regarding resilience for residence life professionals. Findings illuminated participant experiences of workplace adversity and resilience, as well as participant beliefs about themselves and the nature and role of resilience in the workplace context. Discussion of findings resulted in four primary conclusions: (a) adversity and resilience coexist in balance with each other; (b) resilience can be learned, as well as lost; (c) resilience is personal and experienced uniquely by individuals; and (d) resilience is a systems issue that is promoted through partnership. Implications of these findings suggest that individual and organizational outcomes of adversity and resilience are intertwined, and further understanding and promotion of workplace resilience in this setting could be mutually beneficial by contributing to improved employee wellbeing and performance.

Although some children develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following a traumatic event, such as a residential fire, many children continue to function normally. The link between trauma and posttraumatic stress has been well-established; however, less is known about the relationship between trauma and resiliency. Traditionally, resilience has been defined as behavioral competence and external adaptation, although the role of internalizing disorders in resilience is now being recognized. The purpose of this study was to examine resiliency, as conceptualized by both internal and external competence, following a residential fire. This study also sought to examine the roles of social support, coping and ethnicity in moderating the relationship between resource loss and resiliency. Results indicated there was a significant relationship between loss and resiliency. Specifically, resource loss was found to negatively predict resiliency. None of the proposed moderators were found to be significant. Implications for these findings will then be discussed. / Master of Science

This paper presents findings from a study of factors that lead to special education teacher attrition and retention involving 212 special educators in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Structural equation modeling was used to test a hypothesized model of the relationship between Teacher/Administrative Support, Role Dissonance, Psychological Strain, Satisfaction with Job, Commitment to the Profession, Age, and Psychological Resilience to determine which variables directly and indirectly affect the turnover intentions of special education teachers. Structural equation modeling identified a path model wherein nine variables had a statistically significant influence on special education teacher turnover intentions. This paper reports on significant findings that emphasize for the first time the role of psychological resilience in the study of special education teacher retention. In addition, the confirmed path model suggests that one's perception of the effects of adversity due to physical or sexual abuse and adversity due to family loss play some role related to resilience. As the perception of Psychological Resilience increases, Commitment to the Profession increases, and the Intent to Leave the field of special education decreases. / Ph. D.

<p dir="ltr">Mentorship between faculty members and graduate students is critical for students’ success, especially when it includes career and psychosocial support (Byars-Winston & Lund Dahlberg, 2019; Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Paglis et al., 2006). When mentors offer both types of support, mentees benefit in professional and personal ways (Gardiner et al., 2007; Johnson, 2007). Mentoring occurs through the communication messages that mentors transmit to mentees, but research on mentoring has failed to explore faculty mentor messages (Buell, 2004).</p><p dir="ltr">This study aimed to analyze mentor messages from the perspective of Latino graduate alumni from Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) programs, a continuously growing group in graduate programs (Solinas-Saunders et al., 2023). To study these messages, this study utilized the theory of memorable messages (ToMM) (Cooke-Jackson & Rubinsky, 2022; Knapp et al., 1981). This study aimed to not only identify what memorable messages mentors communicate to students but also the potential impacts of these messages. This study was also concerned with identifying whether mentor memorable messages also support students’ development of resilience. According to the communication theory of resilience (CTR), resilience may be supported through five communication processes (Buzzanell, 2010).</p><p dir="ltr">Thematic analysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with Latino alumni with degrees from various STEMM disciplines revealed four types of memorable messages, positive and negative, from primary faculty mentors. These messages ranged from short verbal messages to longer conversations and included non-verbal communication such as memorable behaviors. Participants recalled messages of invalidation and validation of their academic, interpersonal, and cultural identities. Messages of career and life advice were also recalled. Lastly, messages of mentor red flags were remembered and focused on three specific red flags: manipulative behaviors based on power, emotional manipulation, and unprofessional behaviors.</p><p dir="ltr">This study showed that negative messages were more easily recalled, nearly word for word, than positive messages, and the impact of these messages had a deep lasting effect on students’ sense of self-worth. Positive messages, however few, had the ability to counter negative messages even in mentoring relationships that were nearly completely negative. Regarding resilience, all five communication processes of resilience from CTR were exemplified in the data. The data showed that there were very few examples of negative messages that spurred resilience and that many participants learned from memorable messages to develop emotional resilience, particularly those in mostly negative mentoring relationships.</p><p dir="ltr">These findings expand existing mentoring literature by illustrating how faculty mentor messages can either facilitate or impede graduate students’ development in STEMM. They also support ToMM’s suggestion that memorable messages can be nonverbal and include behaviors. This data also extends how certain memorable messages may serve as a catalyst for developing emotional resilience. Finally, recommendations are offered for faculty for more intentional communication with graduate students that may result in supportive memorable messages.</p>

Experiences of sexual assault remain prevalent worldwide, with one in five women in the United States experiencing attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Open and supportive communication can facilitate the reconstruction of shame narratives and subsequent identity formation that may protect victims from the detrimental effects of sexual assault victimization. However, self-disclosure involves the risk of receiving negative or unsupportive reactions, leading to clinically significant symptoms of trauma. The risks of and vulnerability to such interpersonal communication warrant investigation and understanding of psychological and physiological processes that lead to emerging behaviors of resilience communication in response to another’s self-disclosure. Utilizing Communication Theory of Resilience and the Theory of Resilience and Relational Load as theoretical frameworks, this study examines relational proximity, communal orientation, emotional reserve, and empathy as predictors of intentions to engage in resilience communication. A posttest-only control group experimental design tested the effects of relational identity salience on participants’ physiological response as well as intentions to engage in communicative acts that nurture resilience upon listening to a self-disclosure of sexual assault. Survey responses (N = 39) indicated that individuals with high levels of empathy and emotional reserve were more likely to reciprocate the self-disclosure and share their own experiences. Analysis of psychophysiological measures of skin conductance (N = 39) and heart rate (N = 37) demonstrated that individuals displayed more emotional arousal and cognitive resource allocation when the relational identity as a friend is made salient. Implications and directions for future research are discussed in relation to a growing line of communication research that studies the dynamic co-construction of resilience through storytelling and everyday conversations among individuals within families, communities, and organizations. / Media & Communication

Yes / Introduction: There are risks to the safety of medicines management when patient care is transferred between healthcare organisations, for example when a patient is discharged from hospital. Using the theoretical concept of resilience in healthcare, this study aimed to better understand the proactive role that patients can play in creating a safer, resilient medicines management at a common transition of care. Methods: Qualitative interviews with 60 cardiology patients six weeks after their discharge from two UK hospitals explored patients’ experiences with their discharge medicines. Data were initially subjected to an inductive thematic analysis and a subsequent theory-guided deductive analysis. Results: During interviews twenty-three patients described medicines management resilience strategies in two main themes: identifying system vulnerabilities; and establishing self-management strategies. Patients could anticipate problems in the system that supplied them with medicines and took specific actions to prevent them. They also identified when errors had occurred both before and after medicines had been supplied and took corrective action to avoid harm. Some reported how they had not foreseen problems or experienced patient safety incidents. Patients recounted how they ensured information about medicines changes was correctly communicated and acted upon, and identified their strategies to enhance their own reliability in adherence and resource management. Conclusion: Patients experience the impact of vulnerabilities in the medicines management system across the secondary-primary care transition but many are able to enhance system resilience through developing strategies to reduce the risk of medicines errors occurring. Consequently, there are opportunities – with caveats – to elicit, develop and formalise patients’ capabilities which would contribute to safer patient care and more effective medicines management.

Abuse is associated with higher depressive symptoms (DS) and coronary heart disease risk (CHD), lower health-related quality of life (HRQOL), and dysregulated levels of cortisol and norepinephrine (NE). In HIV+ women, abuse relates to higher viral load (VL), lower CD4 count, and nonadherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Resilience (adaptive functioning following trauma) and positive self-esteem (PSE) were hypothesized to buffer the impact of abuse and predict better health outcomes. Three studies tested these hypotheses using self-report measures (for abuse, resilience, DS, HRQOL, and HAART use and adherence), autobiographical narratives (for PSE), Framingham Risk Score (for CHD risk), and blood and urinary specimens for cortisol, NE, and HIV disease markers (VL and CD4 count). Study 1 included 138 HIV+ and 64 HIV- women (87% African-American), and investigated the relationships between childhood sexual abuse (CSA), DS, and HRQOL and whether resilience moderated the relationships between CSA and outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis, multiple regressions indicated that higher resilience related to lower DS and higher HRQOL across both HIV+ and HIV-women, and CSA related to higher DS only for women scoring low in resilience. Study 2 examined how resilience moderated the relationships between abuse history and HAART adherence, VL, and CD4 count in 138 HIV+ women. As predicted, multiple regressions revealed that resilience related to having undetectable VL. Sexual and multiple abuse histories related to lower HAART adherence only for women scoring low in resilience. Study 3 with 53 HIV+ women investigated the relationships among resilience, PSE, abuse histories, NE, cortisol and CHD risk. In partial support of hypotheses, partial correlations showed that higher resilience related to lower cortisol; higher PSE related to lower NE; higher NE/cortisol ratio related to higher CHD risk; histories of abuse related to higher CHD risk, and lower cortisol related to higher CHD risk. The findings suggest that resilience and PSE relate to better health outcomes for HIV+ and HIV- women, and levels of stress hormones in HIV+ women are related in complex ways to abuse, resilience, PSE, and CHD risk. Promoting resilience and PSE may help HIV+ and HIV- women achieve better health outcomes.

The concept of resilience, which indicates people's capability of using resources in difficult circumstances in order to reduce or prevent negative effects and achieve positive outcomes, has given a new perspective to the scientific literature on the experience of late-life memory loss and the experience of caring for persons with memory loss. The current research was guided by incorporation of resilience into the stress process model for assessing personal and caregiver burden associated with mild and more severe memory loss. I conducted two studies to investigate the association of protective factors with the well-being of people with dementia or mild cognitive impairment and their caregivers. The first study focused on the well-being of older persons with dementia (PwDs). I employed data from a large national sample of older adults to examine how the perceived social cohesion of neighborhoods affects quality of life among people with and without cognitive impairment in conjunction with their engagement in valued leisure activities. Findings revealed that, regardless of cognitive health status, all participants who perceived high neighborhood social cohesion reported better quality of life along with more participation in valued activities. However, PwDs reported significantly lower perceived neighborhood social cohesion, less involvement in valued activities, and poorer quality of life than persons without cognitive impairment. The second study focused on the well-being of caregivers for older persons with mild cognitive impairment (PwMCIs). I used dyadic data from families dealing with mild cognitive impairment to examine how well-being of caregivers for PwMCIs differed according to whether PwMCI-caregiver dyads had similar or different perceptions of the PwMCIs' cognitive impairment severity. Caregivers reported lower caregiving burden when they and PwMCIs had a similar cognitive impairment representation, or when caregivers rated the PwMCIs’ cognitive functioning more positively than the PwMCIs rated themselves. Also, PwMCIs’ and caregivers' perceptions, and their concordance or discrepancy in those perceptions, varied across the multiple domains related to MCI symptoms. These findings demonstrate that care dyads' perception of MCI-related deficits is not a unitary construct, and that the context of PwMCIs’ and caregivers’ dyadic illness appraisals is significantly associated with the caregivers' well-being. Taken together, the results of these two studies illustrate the value of considering resilience processes in people with cognitive impairment and their caregivers. Examining dimensions of resilience, in association with assessment of the intersecting effects of personal, interpersonal, and environmental factors, provides additional information about the effects of cognitive impairment on older adults’ well-being and the effects of assisting someone with cognitive impairment on caregiver well-being. / Ph. D. / Resilience indicates people's ability to successfully adapt to or bounce back from life adversity by using personal, social, and environmental resources. Resilience helps explain what makes some people with dementia and their caregivers tolerant of changes in memory functioning and able to adapt to difficulties associated with dementia. I conducted two studies to investigate the role of protective resources in buffering negative effects of memory loss on people with dementia and their caregivers. The first study compared people with and without dementia to find out how their sense of belonging to the community and their participation in valued leisure activities influenced their quality of life. Regardless of whether they had memory loss or not, all the people with a stronger sense of belonging in the community participated in more leisure and valued activities and, in turn, had better quality of life. However, compared to cognitively healthy people, those with dementia had lower sense of belonging, less participation in leisure activities, and poorer quality of life. These findings indicate that people with dementia may feel excluded from their community and experience barriers to participation in valued activities. Nevertheless, feeling that one belongs in the neighborhood and participating in valued leisure activities is important for well-being of older adults both with and without cognitive impairment. The second study examined how the well-being of caregivers for persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) differed according to whether caregivers and their care recipients had similar or different views on the care recipients’ memory problems. When they both had similar views or the caregivers had a more positive view than their care recipients did, the caregivers reported higher well-being. This finding suggests that some caregivers for people with MCI understand how the person with MCI views their own memory loss, and others either are not aware of all the memory loss symptoms or choose to ignore some of them. In either case, these caregivers feel less burdened than those who think their loved one’s symptoms are worse than the person with memory loss believes. Support for these caregivers is needed to help them cope better with the memory loss in their loved one. The results from these two studies provided valuable evidence about resilience in older adults facing memory loss and their caregivers. Being resilient can help people with dementia and their caregivers manage or overcome the difficulties associated with dementia.

Despite shifts toward a more collaborative approach to emergency management, little scholarly attention has focused on the roles of local public organizations and nonprofits that do not have explicit emergency management missions in disaster response. Scholars and government officials call for identifying key local actors and developing a more collaborative emergency preparedness approaches prior to disaster situations. In practice, emergency officials seldom recognize post-disaster efforts of these local actors. Efforts to anticipate the potential decisions and actions of organizations that do not routinely deal with disasters necessitate a better understanding of how managers perceive their post-disaster related roles and what may account for such perceptions. Focusing on public libraries in the U.S., this study draws on information gathered through surveys and semi-structured interviews with library managers and directors operating in Hampton Roads, Virginia. To further investigate variations in willingness to engage in emergency response among local jurisdictions, the study explores context-related characteristics such as organizational arrangements and features of the policy environment in which library managers operate as well as factors related to individual managerial practices. The study finds that library officials' perceptions vary across libraries. Variations range from a more defensive approach to a more proactive approach. Efforts to account for the extent to which officials would be willing to engage in a more proactive approach should consider both the emergence of individual-managers' entrepreneurial spirit and their involvement in community-based disaster planning. / Ph. D. / This study examines how public managers in organizations that do not routinely deal with emergencies perceive the role of their organizations in responding to natural disasters and explores what may help explain such perceptions. Focusing on public libraries in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, I found that managers’ entrepreneurial spirit combined with their sense of recognition and inclusion in the local emergency preparedness network were associated with willingness to engage in a more proactive approach to disaster response.

Statistics show that chronic heat exposure and extreme heat waves are the leading cause of death amongst natural disasters in urban spaces across the United States, outpacing the likes of more notable phenomena such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes. Heat in urban spaces is not distributed equally due to the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon which significantly elevates temperatures due to the various absorption characteristics of built environment features. Historical discriminatory mortgage lending schemes and planning practices that targeted communities of color have intensified that issue, endangering the health and well-being of marginalized neighborhoods to this day. Although generating feasible design solutions to mitigate the impact of heat in urban spaces represents a substantial challenge, utilizing readily available data sources to garner the social and political support required for actionable change is likely the more complex issue. Because youth are typically less jaded by external social and political influences and will either enjoy the benefits or suffer the consequences related to the built environment for their entire adult life, they possess a unique potential to serve as a vehicle for generating community momentum for the implementation of heat resilience solutions. This thesis explores the spatial distribution of heat throughout neighborhoods in Roanoke, Virginia by exploring both land surface temperature and air temperature discrepancies by Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) classification and census tract. I find that HOLC polygons not labeled "A" possess a considerably higher average temperature than the most "desirable" classification, and that there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between mean land surface temperature (aggregation of Landsat raster files) and census tract socio demographic characteristics such as median household income and percentage of residents aged 65 and over. This thesis also examines the potential of youth-focused science education programs to catalyze the political will necessary to enact resilience planning efforts that no single governmental agency is responsible for. I analyzed the various impacts that artifacts produced by a 2021 science education program conducted with Roanoke City middle school students inflicted on a 2022 focus group comprised of influential Roanoke public officials. I show the reasoning which supports that four primary opportunity and challenge categories – Breaking Down Silos, Spreading Awareness, Places and Venues, and Resources and Funding – can serve as foundational discussion components for heat resilience planning panels in the future. This thesis advances the awareness of disproportionate exposure to heat in urban spaces and contributes to theories attempting to trigger heat resilience planning efforts. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning / Extreme heat presents a deadly threat to people, particularly those who live in cities. Heat is not distributed evenly throughout urban areas, with some places being hotter than others. Climate change is a force which will make that problem worse. As a result, it is important for planners and other leaders to implement strategies to solve that issue. Engaging youth in the planning process is one way to speed that process up. This thesis explores whether neighborhoods in Roanoke, Virginia experience different levels of heat stress. I find that areas which have historically been deemed by the government to be "most desirable" are typically cooler than others. This research also examines the ability of youth education programs to compel relevant decision makers to act on an issue. Through an analysis of a focus group discussion, I show that the experiences and ideas of Roanoke City middle school students encouraged Roanoke City public officials to respond to their concerns. Four major themes related to heat resilience opportunity and challenge areas emerged – Breaking Down Silos, Spreading Awareness, Places and Venues, and Resources and Funding.