This research reflects a qualitative exploration of the timeliness of pursuits of higher education by females who were classified as non-traditional students at Concord College in southern West Virginia. The researcher studied females, educated in West Virginia, who had completed at least 30 semester hours, and who were at least 25 years of age at the time of admission. The study focused on identifying several factors common to many non-traditional students, including the factors that influenced them to not pursue their education as traditional students, the factors that changed so they recognized higher education as a viable option for themselves, and the factors that influenced them, positively or negatively, in their perseverance to continue in an undergraduate program. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study was to facilitate self-discovery of strengths of women who were homeless and trauma-exposed. Using an emancipatory feminist and existential phenomenological qualitative research design, seventeen women participated in facilitative dialogs exploring perceptions of strength. The dialogue focused on three aspects of strength: characteristics, strategies, and barriers. The participants’ words were represented within global themes of strength: balance, protection, and dangerous environments. Results suggest women who are houseless and abused find ways to remain strong as evidenced in their stories. Findings support strength-based discovery, patient engagement, and partnering as a health intervention with vulnerable women.

The industry has during the past decades been changing towardsdigitalization at a rapid pace, adapting new frameworks and digitalsolutions, with the thrive to improve efficiency, and output quality.This thesis covers how a hyped industry concept, digital twin, incontext of smart manufacturing, could be applied in this changingclimate. Focus is put on what strategies a Product LifecycleManagement (PLM) principal could adapt when approaching theutilization of digital twins, in a customer setting. The research project, using a qualitative exploration format,incorporated a thorough review of journal articles and standards,interconnected with conducted interviews with industry experts, inorder to develop two strategies on how to approach the conceptof digital twins. The two-part strategies were formed on the basis of Mintzberg(1978) emergent and deliberate strategies. The former, consisted ofIDEF0 function modeling diagramming, where a digital twin businessprocess was portrayed, based on the literature review and interviewdata. The latter, approached the digital twin application challenge ina theoretical manner, based on the concept’s high risk anduncertainty, incorporating organizational structure theory andinnovation theory. The two strategies showed two different pathsto approach the digital twin phenomena and how to, boththeoretically and practically, adapt digital twins in a customer setting.

This thesis focuses on managing stress overload in social services of social rehabilition for clients with mental disorders. The goal is to clarify the resources of the overburdened of the social service managers from the view of the managers. This thesis is divided into teoretical and empirical part, in witchteh conducted research and its results are described. Teretical part defines mental disorders and discusses possible characterizations and manifestation of behaviour within people with mentaldiseases. Nongaverment nonprofit organization and their management are disorders. An important part of thesis is chapter dealing with stress overload with focus on social service managers. All chapters of the theoretival part are based on knowledges from literature. The empirical part focuses on the conducted research with discovered sources of overload of social service managers as a focal point. Research design comes from qualitative methods. In-depth interviews were conducted with several social service managers; based on these, the areas of stress in their profession were identified in three main parts, managers in general, specifical for particular social service and overload from concurrend and cumulation of previous domain. Keywords: mental disordes, executive, social services of social...