Over several decades, USU’s Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning (LAEP) Department and Extension specialists have engaged Utah’s rural communities through several design-based outreach activities. These activities are intended to benefit both community partners interested in learning how design can positively impact the community in tangible ways, and students, who are given the opportunity to engage with real-world projects. This study documents, evaluates, and assesses outcomes of community engagement projects undertaken by LAEP Extension to better understand the program’s impact over time and come up with approaches that will enhance the impact of future community engagement projects. This research develops a framework of indicators for assessing the impact of the selected LAEP Extension projects. Selection criteria ensures representation of an extensive array of project typologies and settings undertaken by LAEP Extension. Selected projects’ impact will be thoroughly assessed through detailed physical site examination of selected projects, administration of surveys/questionnaires/interviews with knowledgeable individuals for each project, evaluation of relevant economic data, and analysis of projects’ relationships to other local factors. Expected results include the assessment of issues related to preserving records of Extension projects, recommendations for establishing a model framework for assessing future projects’ impact, and structuring processes of documentation and evaluation for advancing research in landscape architecture, community engagement, and service-learning. It is also expected that this project will illuminate the way each project connects with Extension design engagement, subsequent project funding, and practitioner involvement. Targeted outcomes include a greater understanding of the impact of design on communities’ physical, economic, and social conditions; an increased capacity among community partners to apply design to issues that they identify in their communities; and greater collaboration between USU LAEP and Extension. Outcomes also include developing a model framework that can be used to assess, evaluate, and document the various impacts of university design engagement activities at both USU and other land grant-based design programs by evaluating past design Extension projects and future design engagement activities.

Online Health Communities (OHCs) have become an important source of sharing and receiving information and support for people with health-related concerns. These communities provide important benefits to users including enhanced medical knowledge, emotional comfort, personal empowerment and the ability to create offline social connections. High levels of user engagement are beneficial to both users and the OHC, so it is important to understand what motivate users’ participation, encourage them to contribute and influence their churning behaviors. This thesis covers why, when, and how users are actively engaged within an OHC. It is based on descriptive and predictive analytics of OHC users’ online interactions with text mining techniques. I built explanatory models to reveal how users’ motivations and roles evolve over time, the types of social support activities that encourage users’ continuous participation, and the forms of social capital that drive users’ continued contributions to the community. In addition, I developed predictive models to help an OHC forecast whether and when a user will churn. The findings of this study have implications for managing and sustaining successful OHCs, and can provide OHC managers with suggestions on how to motivate user contributions and retain users through interventions.

Music has been part of human culture since the beginning of civilization. All musical types, styles, and genres are products of different cultures at different times. What we refer to today as Classical Music are the musical compositions written for standard Western European orchestral instruments ranging from solo to chamber music to symphony orchestra. Towards the end of the nineteenth-century classical music gradually came to be seen as "serious" music that required deeper knowledge in order to truly appreciate it. With the rise of the popular music category, classical music itself has become less relevant and less a part of today’s society. Classical music institutions have thus been trying to find different strategies to reconnect classical music with audiences. Examples include attractive subscription schemes, varied concert formats, and community and educational projects. It is also notable that non-musical aspects connected with concerts also contribute to an audience’s overall decision making. The quality of the performance is not the only factor anymore that needs to be considered to ensure success. This dissertation explores different strategies used by some prominent Western European art music organizations, mainly orchestras, to creatively engage their audiences. These strategies are examples of successful audience engagement that can serve as a resource for other organizations in their quest to engage their own audiences.

This this three-article dissertation sought to explore the potential causal link of students’ collegiate residence with three broad categories of student outcomes. Using data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, each article employed propensity score matching in an effort to reduce selection bias associated with a student’s decision to live on campus. The first manuscript examined academic achievement, retention, four-year graduation, and satisfaction with the college experience and found that living on campus had no direct effect on any of these outcomes. The second manuscript explored the effect of living on campus on students’ overall health, alcohol consumption and binge drinking, smoking behaviors, exercise frequency, and psychological well-being. Findings suggest that living on campus has a positive effect on students’ first-year alcohol consumption, frequency of binge drinking, and exercising behaviors. These findings do not persist beyond the first year. Some conditional effects were uncovered, with a significant interaction between race and campus residence on some outcomes. The final study considered the effect living on campus has on student engagement. Living on campus was found to have a direct effect on positive peer interactions, frequency of interactions with student affairs staff, and co-curricular involvement. Like the second study, conditional analyses were conducted and revealed significant interactions mostly among race and campus residence.

No description available.

No description available.

Employee engagement levels are critical to organizations that desire to retain a workforce that innovates, produces positive results, and stays committed to the organization. The purpose of this single case study was to explore employee engagement strategies used by business leaders to retain talent. The conceptual framework that guided this study was Deci's self-determination theory. Data collection occurred through semistructured interviews with four participants within the insurance industry having three or more years of management experience and having a positive reputation for engaging employees. The participating company is located in central Indiana. Participants answered 10 open-ended questions related to employee engagement and retention of talent. Data were transcribed and coded to identify themes. The modified van Kaam method was used for analysis of the data. Open and honest communication between managers and employees, managers looking beyond words to recognize disengagement and respectful and a caring leadership team at all levels of the company were amongst the prominent themes identified during data analysis. The study findings may contribute to business practices positively by increasing the understanding of the importance of employee engagement strategies in a work setting as well as how engagement levels affect retention. The study findings may contribute to social change by providing leaders ideas on how to provide greater job satisfaction to employees, which could translate into improved professional and personal lives by providing employees a greater feeling of fulfillment and confidence with their job.

Research on stress and burnout and their influence on empathy, engagement, and retention, in healthcare support staff is scarce in the literature. The theoretical framework for this study was the conservation of resources (COR) theory which claims that when people are stressed, emotionally exhausted, and experiencing burnout, they protect and preserve their physical and mental resources from becoming depleted by reducing their effort and withdrawing from work. The key research question was: Does burnout mediate the relationship between stress and empathy, engagement, and turnover intentions in healthcare support staff working in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC)? This quantitative, non-experimental, mediation analysis included 83 female and 10 male healthcare support staff working in an FQHC. The variables were assessed using the Job Stress Survey (JSS), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OBI), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) – Brief Form, and the Behavioral Intentions to Withdraw Measure (BIWM). A path analysis was performed to estimate the magnitude of the relationships between the variables. The results indicate that burnout does not mediate the relationship between stress and empathy, but it does significantly predict engagement and turnover intentions. FQHCs serve vulnerable and medically complex patients in underserved communities, and when the negative impact of burnout in healthcare support staff is addressed, patients, providers, and staff can enable positive social change by achieving important clinical health outcomes for patients.

This study seeks to explore the impact that admissions viewbooks have on students’ expectancies of an institution as well as their academic and social engagement. Because few studies exist on admissions viewbooks, the literature review seeks to establish a base for the importance of viewbooks in students’ college choice and their development of expectancies of their chosen institution, as well as the subsequent impacts of violated expectations on engagement and retention. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this study examines (1) the promises made by institutions in their viewbooks as found via textual analysis and (2) the impact of violated expectancies on academic and social engagement. Specifically, this study seeks information about the expectancies students have developed of the University of Kentucky, the degree to which those expectancies have been violated, and the impact of those violations on students’ academic and social engagement on UK’s campus. Findings suggest that UK is positively violating students’ expectancies, which in turn impacts engagement as related to several themes (i.e., faculty-to-student ratio, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities). Implications for instructors, the University of Kentucky, and marketing professionals are included, such as UK should continue its dedication toward developing an excellent and engaging first-year experience.

This observational study surveyed the engagement of fifth-grade gifted students who spend the majority of their academic day in a general education classroom. This study looked at students in a K-6 public school district in Southern California. This study was a qualitative study with some quantitative data to confirm observational findings. The methods included observations, observational notes, audio and video recordings. After the observations the recordings were reviewed to assure the observational notes accurately portrayed the actions of the target students. The measures included student surveys, observational data via the Behavioral Observation of Students in Schools instrument, and teacher interviews. The short response portion of the student surveys and the teacher interviews were coded and analyzed for common themes. The research questions that dictated the direction of this study included: Is student engagement altered by use of differentiated curriculum, if so is it increased or decreased with more appropriate assignments for gifted students? Do students put forth the same effort with more complex assignments as with easier assignments? Do fifth-grade gifted students show signs of a lack of student engagement? Further research may include expanding the study to include more students from various school districts to ascertain if the findings are consistent with other groups of students.