No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of the study was to examine relationships which existed between selected demographics and college grade point averages “GPAs” for dislocated workers and non dislocated workers enrolled in career-technical courses at a rural community college. The variables included in the study are age, gender, and marital status. The study also reports identified educational goals of dislocated workers as well as the perceived enhancements and barriers to achieving the goals. This study was conducted to assist workforce investment network “WIN” personnel and college counselors in the advisement of dislocated workers interested in the pursuit of career-technical training. A survey research design was used to collect data from first semester career-technical students within a program at East Central Community College in Decatur, MS. An instrument designed by the researcher utilized three demographic items and three open-ended questions to collect the data within a two-week period. A total of 274 surveys were collected. The data were analyzed through the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of the study indicated the variables of age and gender were shown to have significant relationships with college GPA. Dislocated workers were found to be older, female, and to maintain a higher GPA than non-dislocated worker students. Responses to the open-ended questions revealed that the majority of dislocated workers stated graduation to be a primary goal. Enhancements included support from family and financial aid, most commonly in the form of Workforce Investment Act “WIA” funding. Dislocated workers responded that personal finances and time management skills were the most difficult barriers to overcome in regards to meeting educational goals.

This is a novel about grief.

What are we without the darkness that lurks inside our hearts, our homes, our forests, our deep places where light does not touch? For some, the darkness is overwhelming, overt, obfuscating. For others, it remains a place of balance; there is no shadow without light, after all. In the stories that follow, strange and eerie things rise from the darkness, but none so frightening as loss. What do we do when grief threatens to overwhelm us? Do we tear our way back into the world of the living with tooth and nail? Do we pray for a miracle? Do we take a life to preserve another? What power loss gives us, a vacuum to fill with fear or love or rage. Dark at the Center is an invitation. It invites us, reader and author alike, to look inside at our own dimly-lit places, to stare into a dark mirror and not recoil from what we see. It invites us to search for gods in the rings of trees. It invites us to plumb the depths of oceans and look to the stars for answers. It invites us to laugh with demons and make friends with the ghosts of our pasts. It invites us to discover what we are capable of in times of crisis. How deep does the darkness go, and what long-forgotten things might we find in its expanse?

A novel.

“The Chart of Some Place” explores grief, loss, loneliness through the lens of poetry. Split into four sections, like different stages of grief, the poems in each section represent different eras of the speakers life. The “Place” that is referred throughout is in reference to a small farming town in Utah. The relationships built throughout a span of three years and an abrupt separation led to reminiscent grief and an abundance of lost love and friendship.

KEEL is a poetic experiential observation of trauma, illness, disability, loss, and change.