This study examines the Hispanic Scholarship Consortium (HSC), a scholarship program in Central Texas that serves Hispanic college students. This study analyses trends in awarding and persisting with the program. A better understanding of what influences persistence rates can help scholarship programs in implementing policies to increase college completion rates. The findings can assist programs identify needed changes to improve scholarship application and award processes. These results can also help programs assist scholars during their college careers by identifying at-risk students early on and developing supportive practices to promote student persistence. Additionally, scholarship organizations can utilize metrics to identify long-term trends among their scholarship recipients for ongoing program evaluation and enhancement. This mixed method study utilizes both quantitative and qualitative research methods by analyzing student focus group data along with HSC program data. Quantitative analysis is used to determine predictors of persistence in the HSC program. The qualitative analysis results are used to find themes regarding students’ perception of HSC offerings. The study focuses on college students who receive scholarships from the HSC. It examines the relationship between persistence in HSC with student factors such as high school and college grade point average (GPA), gender, college major, college type, first generation status, low-income status, citizenship, high school graduates from schools with more than 35% free and reduced lunch (F&RL) population, and scholarship award amount. Additionally, it examines the relationship between scholarship award amount and student factors. Ultimately, this study provides insights for best practices in scholarship programs. The findings will contribute to a better understanding of scholarship programs and their potential for influencing persistence and college graduation rates. The knowledge gained should not only benefit HSC, but also provide recommendations for other scholarship programs and possibly a state supported initiative. / text

Applied ethnomusicology emerged as a sub-discipline within the larger field of ethnomusicology in the late 1980s. The approach has gained considerable attention in recent years, evidenced by the publication of the first book-length treatment of the subject in 2010 and numerous scholarly papers and roundtables devoted to the topic at the 2011 SEM conference. I review of the literature in order to trace general trends and shifts in frame and approach in order to establish a context for critically reflecting on the role of activist scholarship in ethnomusicology today. Drawing from the literature on applied ethnomusicology, cultural rights projects in Brazil, and personal experiences working with black women hip-hop activists in Recife, I suggest that activist approaches allow greater possibilities for progressive social change, facilitating dialogue and critical reflection in ways that applied approaches do not. I propose that we must re-think activist scholarship in ethnomusicology, and in Brazil more specifically, seriously considering the possibilities and limitations of music making for establishing sustained community activism that incorporates dialogic pedagogy. / text

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

This is an exploratory study, using quantitative and qualitative tools, studying younger adult students (aged 18 to 25) at a college in Ontario and proposes that younger adult notions of possible selves are strengthened through engaging with models for possible selves by conducting informational interviews with them. Research was conducted in the classroom and outside of the classroom (but on campus) using a methodological framework informed by the scholarship of teaching and learning. Anticipated outcomes include a further understanding of the researcher’s own practice in order to improve it, a further grounding of the researcher’s personal theory of practice, and useful data for other researchers interested in using possible selves as a lens to understand their teaching. The results of the study indicate that there are other issues and concerns related to notions of possible selves, including goal-setting and a sense of having choice and control over one’s fate. Implications for practice include recommendations that more opportunities and tools for the development of possible selves be offered to students and that these opportunities can be found in existing courses and programs. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-04-06 14:36:02.109

The integration of new technologies in higher education has provoked a strong response over the last decade, not only from administrators and the public but also from academics. It has re-opened basic theoretical questions about the role of universities and that of academic culture. / This thesis begins with a critical review of the literature dealing with conceptualizations of academic culture and technology in higher education. Most theorists have come to the conclusion that academic culture is a set of values and norms that serve as guides for action. At root, this conclusion is derived from an organizational perspective prevalent in contemporary academic culture theory. / I argue, instead, that academic culture needs to be re-addressed to consider the complexities between its traditional boundaries and new technological pressures. My research suggests there are high levels of contestation across the full range of technologies, and that the nature of this contestation is ideological, aesthetic, and pedagogical. Furthermore, the contestation is both a product of, and is productive of, a reshaping of academic culture. / Drawing on the theory of cultural production of Pierre Bourdieu, who views culture as constitutive of fairly engrained practices I demonstrate that academic culture stands as a check on institutional powers, yet it is also influenced by the integration of new technologies. This suggests that academic culture is formed and maintained by an ever-negotiated and shifting set of activities.

Hadīth scholarship and its erudition among the Jāwah or the Muslims from the Malay Archipelago (the term applied to them in the Hejaz) in the periods prior to the twentieth century is almost a neglected area of study on Islam and its development in the Southeast Asian region. While this may be surprising considering the sublime status and influence of hadīth on the religious outlook of the Jāwah, perhaps the dearth of surviving materials on hadīth and its study during these periods might have also aggravated this apparent gap in their religious and intellectual history in the pre-modern era. However, this study proposes that despite the feasibility of an early presence of hadīth studies and its scholarship among the Jāwah, it was actually in the nineteenth century that significant development in its scholarship and discourse took place through Lubāb al-Hadīth. This is a collection of four hundred traditions attributed to al-Suyūtī (d. 911/1505), which has managed to attract serious scholarly interests from two important Jāwah scholars in Mecca namely, Nawawī of Banten (d. 1314/1897) and Wan ‘Alī of Kelantan (d. 1331/1913), who undertook their adaptations and commentaries of the text. Even though both scholars shared similar cultural and scholarly milieu of Arabia, their approaches, methods, and choices of languages in commenting on the text are markedly divergent. The fact that both works are still being distributed and read until the present day indicates their significance and relevance as an influential legacy of Jāwah h}adīth scholarship and its discourse in the nineteenth century. Thus, this study examines the important issue of hadīth scholarship in the nineteenth century through the case of Lubāb al-Hadīth and a comparative study of its two commentaries as mentioned above. Although the primary focus of discussion is on their methods on hadīth and selected religious views as presented in their commentaries, the anonymities surrounding the origin, authorship and significance of the base work is also analyzed. In turn, this has lead to a more detailed account on the place and influence of these works on the general development and characteristics of Jāwah hadīth scholarship and its discourse in the nineteenth century which also had their impacts in later years.

This thesis presents information on community healthy marriage initiatives and university-community collaborations. Specifically, it examined the workings of one of those healthy marriage initiatives in the university-community collaborative context. The project explored the current process of this initiative, identifying specific challenge points and defining factors and characteristics associated with the success thereof. Rather than working in discrete categories, these challenge points exist on a success continuum. How each challenge is managed determines whether it is a success factor or a stumbling block. The project is grounded in published learning from other university-community initiatives and employs an ethnographic qualitative research strategy. Data consist of interviews with several key collaborators (n = 9) who were involved with this initiative. The findings from this ethnography support and enhance previous literature on university-community collaborations and outreach scholarship and provide useful examples and lessons that can be used by other university-community collaborations, especially those involving marriage education initiatives in a community setting.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects, a type of complex information technology project, are very challenging and expensive to implement. Past research recognizes that escalation, defined as the commitment to a failing course of action, is common in such projects. While the factors that contribute to escalation (e.g., project conditions, psychological, organizational, and social factors) have been extensively examined, the literature on deescalation of projects is very limited. Motivated by this gap in the literature, this research examines deescalation, that is, on breaking the commitment to the failing course of action with a particular focus on ERP projects. This study is organized as a single-case study of a complex ERP project that was undertaken after a merger of two organizations. It examines how the project team members’ sensemaking is implicated in deescalation. Applying sensemaking as a theoretical lens, this engaged scholarship research contributes to practice by providing recommendations on how to better manage ERP project deescalation. It contributes to theory by providing a nuanced understanding of ERP project deescalation through project team members’ sensemaking activities.

Plenary session from the Living the Future 7 Conference, April 30-May 3, 2008, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ. / The proliferation of IT and research application tools has changed the way that readers and researchers work, which is frequently labeled as eResearch or digital scholarship. Building strategic partnerships with faculty, PI’s and industry players is called for, yet often difficult to execute. Strategic planning, business management tools, and technology-based approaches often still fall short. Using the Emory University Libraries as an example of navigating in this arena, this talk with provide a mix of inward and outward focused examples of forging new approaches to enabling digital scholarship.

Two centuries after the printing press was invented, the first scholarly journal appeared in 1665. Less than two decades after the journal went online, the digital format is reshaping scholarly communication rapidly. We are moving quickly towards an open system of scholarship, and from a Western heritage of print scholarship to a future of global knowledge, a shift driven by the communications revolution. This thesis provides data describing the size and growth of the universe of scholarship, its global reach, how much of it is accessible free of charge on the internet and the rate at which that share is growing. Open Access together with development programs aimed at reducing price barriers to subscription journals have vastly increased the possibilities for accessing research in the South. The relevance to globalization and development is explored conceptually and revealed in the results.