Mid-level administrators comprise the largest group of administrative professionals on college campuses today. These professionals affect the daily lives of students and contribute significantly to the overall coordination of institutional resources and activities. Despite the importance of their role in administering programs, services, and other functions central to the mission of the university, little research has been conducted examining the issues that impact their motivation and job performance. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to increase understanding of the factors affecting work motivation of mid-level student affairs administrators through the identification of motivational determinants and an exploration of whether these determinants differed based on the career stage of the mid-level administrator. This study used Vroom’s theory of work motivation, specifically valence, instrumentality, and expectancy, to determine the factors motivating mid-level student affairs administrators to perform in their work roles. Ten mid-level student affairs administrators at a large, public, Hispanic-serving institution were interviewed. Findings suggest that mid-level student affairs administrators are motivated by the opportunity to serve students and influence the development of their subordinate staff. Participants cited internal drives, such as work ethic and a need for achievement, and external factors, such as opportunities to engage in their own professional development, recognition, and pay, as motivators. Some participants maintained that the culture of the institution had an impact on their motivation to perform. Individually and collectively, these motivational determinants influenced the effort and performance of these mid-level administrators in their work roles. Overall, the participants reported that they enjoyed their work and felt rewarded for their efforts in their work roles. Findings suggest that important differences in motivational determinants as a function of career stage are negligible. Implications and recommendations to implement initiatives to promote and support the identified motivational factors are discussed.

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When a face-to-face work group tries to accomplish its collective goals, the effectiveness and maturity of a group hinge on the combination of the functional roles performed by group members¡X task-oriented roles and group maintenance roles [Klopf, 1981; Benne et. al., 1948]. This research examines the phenomenon of group developmental processes, the functional roles performed by group members, and the relationships among certain critical functional roles, group maturity, and team effectiveness in the learning-task oriented virtual team setting. The samples are 24 project teams composed by part-time graduate students in a cyber university. After analyzing the group discussion sections by content analysis method, the development processes of these virtual teams demonstrate Tuckman¡¦s five-stage model of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. For the groups on forming stage, there are only two group maintenance roles ¡X initiator and information seeker/giver, performing by virtual team members. Conflicts between team members are not obvious due to virtual teams¡¦ learning-oriented task. Three group maintenance roles ¡X encourager, gatekeeper, and follower will encourage the occurrence of group cohesiveness and lead virtual teams to norming stage. Furthermore, when groups mature, four emerging task-oriented roles ¡X opinion seeker/giver, coordinator, orienter and evaluator will enhance the virtual team effectiveness. Negative functional roles (process-hindering roles) are rare due to virtual team¡¦s learning-oriented task. Therefore, this result indicates that members in a virtual team should play different critical positive functional roles according to their group¡¦s developmental stages, and it will facilitate group evolvement and improve team effectiveness.

Facing the unceasing challenges of new technology, the use of virtual teams as the future organization structure has become more and more common. The objectives of this thesis are to investigate members¡¦ behavior in each stage of group development adopted from Tuckman¡¦s five-stages model, and to find out the impact of critical behaviors on virtual team¡¦s collaborative performance. This thesis selects nine learning-task oriented virtual teams composed by part-time graduate students in cyber university of NSYSU and probes into the theme of each groups¡¦ discussions by content analysis approach. SYMLOG is applied to observe group member¡¦s behavior and construct the categories of content analysis. According to the research results, the critical behaviors of initial stage are active (U) and friendly (P) behaviors. During the middle stage, the existence of encouragers and followers should improve group development towards high performance. In the final stage, group members shall be able to shift the communication focus from emotionally expressive (B) to instrumentally controlled (F) in order to reach superior effectiveness. Therefore, the findings of this thesis will provide some suggestions about member¡¦s behavior, facilitate group development, and improve virtual team¡¦s collaborative performance.

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Abstract The species composition, abundance, body lengths and stages of chaetognaths in relation to environmental factors at nine stations in Kaoping coastal waters were investigated during June 2001 to March 2002. In the surface tows, 20 species of chaetognaths, belonging to 10 families and 4 orders, were found, with the mean abundance of 17753 ¡Ó14593 ind./ 100m3. The 4 most dominant species, Flaccisagitta enflata, Aidanosagitta crassa, Sagitta bipuncata and Ferosagitta ferox, comprised > 80% of total chaetognaths. Flaccisagitta enflata was the most common and abundant species and occupied 53% of total chaetognaths. In 100m oblique tows, 21 species of chaetognaths, belonging to 11 families and 4 orders were found, with the mean abundance of 23535 ¡Ó 18696 ind./ 100m3. The 4 most dominant species were Flaccisagitta enflata, Aidanosagitta regularis, Serratosagitta pacifica and Aidanosagitta crassa, and comprised 77% of total chaetognths. Pseudosagitta lyra was the species found only in the 100m oblique tows. The abundance of chaetognaths changed with seasons and had the highest abundance in summer and the lowest in late autumn. The relation between abundance of chaetognaths showed significantly negative relationship with salinity but not for temperature, and had larger variation when salinity > 32 o/oo. Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) method was used to elucidate the variation of chaetognaths community among seasons and stations. The community structure of chaetognaths had somewhat difference among seasons, with higher similarity between August and November, but these two months showed apparently different from June and March. The variation of chaetognaths community among stations was different seasonally, with higher in August and lower in March and June. Furthermore, three species groups were distinguished and their distribution patterns were herein disscussed. The Stage¢¹of chaetognaths dominated in this study area and occupied > 70 % of total count, and the number decreased rapidly following the developmental stages. The most dominant species, Flaccisagitta enflata, was also dominated by stage¢¹throughout the year, implied it might breed in the whole year. The body length of chaetognaths increased apparently with increasing of developmental stages, but overlapped among stages due to the wider variation in each stage.

In spite of many indications to the contrary, not least the tenor of the times which includes both the remnant left after the "death of God" as well as the rise of New Age religiosity, this thesis proposes, using feminist and feminine archetypal thinking, that the theory of culture that Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, formulates, is more relevant than ever for the culture it had a part in creating. Within the frame of Christian value reality, a "religion of relatedness" is centred on the Great Commandment which orders loving relatedness to God, then to oneself, and finally to others. What this has to mean in practice is that our relatedness to others depends on our relatedness with ourselves which depends on our relatedness to a beneficent God. Our relatedness to ourselves and to God can be appreciated and evaluated through the lens of Jungian thought - in particular Jung's theory of individuation. Our relatedness to others and the success of that as expressed in the health of our cultural milieu can be appreciated and evaluated through the lens of Lacanian discourse theory. Both individual and cultural growth are part of a developmental and maturation process leading to the "paradox, depth and intergenerational responsibility" that Fowler (1981) describes as characteristic of a Stage 5 level of faith in his Stages of Faith model. That complexity in Stage 5 understanding is seen as essential for growing out of the social and environmental problems that beset human life at this point in its history.

The scope of this work is to generate quantifiable measures of sustainability elements that apply to manufactured products in terms of environmental, social and economic benefits. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis for developing a methodology to compare the costs encountered by a vehicle over its entire life-cycle (Pre-manufacturing, Manufacturing, Use, and Post-use stages), considering two different material scenarios, aluminum versus steel, used in body-in-white (BIW) structures and exterior body panels. The potential benefits of using lighter materials in auto body applications are further evaluated through a Sustainability Scoring method. The proposed six major integral sustainable elements considered in this work are: products environmental impact, societal impact, functionality, resource utilization and economy, manufacturability and recyclability/remanufacturability. Each of these elements has corresponding sub-elements and influencing factors which are categorized as having equal importance to the product.

Objective: The purpose of this dissertation was to examine which student- and school-level factors differentiated (1) susceptible never smokers from non-susceptible never smokers, (2) experimental smokers from never smokers, and (3) current smokers from experimental smokers among a nationally representative sample of Canadian students in grade 9-12. Methods: Student-level data from Canada???s nationally representative 2008-2009 Youth Smoking Survey (2008 YSS) were linked with school-level data from the 2006 Census, and one built environment characteristic, and examined using multi-level logistic regression analyses. Results: Overall as hypothesized in these three studies, student-level and school-level characteristics were associated with smoking susceptibility among never smokers, experimental smoking and current smoking. The likelihood of susceptibility among never smokers (P=0.0002), experimental smoking (P<0.0001) and current smoking (P<0.001) significantly varied across schools. This study identified that attending a school in an urban (AOR=0.62; 95% CI 0.46-0.82) setting or in a high socioeconomic status (SES) neighbourhood (AOR=0.88; 95% CI 0.79-0.98) was inversely associated with odds of a student being an experimental smoker (versus a never smoker) when adjusting for student-level characteristics. The number of tobacco retailers located within a 1-km radius of each school was associated with the odds of a student being a current smoker (versus an experimental smoker) (AOR 1.03; 95% CI 1.01-1.05) and also associated with a student being a susceptible never smoker (versus a non-susceptible never smoker) (AOR 1.01; 95% CI 1.00-1.02) when adjusting for student-level characteristics. Additionally, several student-level intrapersonal and social context characteristics were associated with smoking susceptibility, experimental smoking and current smoking. Conclusions: This study showed that the characteristics of the school a student attends may increase their likelihood of a student being in any of the smoking stages that were examined. Additionally, several student-level factors were also associated with the three smoking stages. Understanding these factors will provide more insight to guide stakeholders interested in developing anti-tobacco strategies that are responsive to the risk and protective factors of adolescents in different smoking stages.

In order to assist people in making positive changes of problematic behaviour it is necessary to examine how people change and what factors influence the process. Criminal offenders represent a group of individuals who often have difficulty desisting from problematic behaviour and continue to engage in illegal activity. Offenders in provincial correctional institutions were administered questionnaires to determine stage of change and processes utilized as outlined in the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of change (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1984). Additionally, offenders were asked about their visions of the future using the Possible Selves (PSs) Model (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Taken together, this study looked at the contribution of the PSs Model to our understanding of the TTM, which has been criticized in recent years as lacking therapeutic significance for treatment providers as they guide individuals through the change process. More specifically, this study compares chronic criminals with first time offenders on psychological variables such as readiness for change, vision of possible selves, and hope for the future, as well as on legal variables such as risk for recidivism and institutional behaviour. The results indicate that most offenders acknowledged their behaviour as problematic and some even reported they were actively taking steps to change; however, chronic offenders admitted having less hope than first time offenders. Interestingly, both groups rated similarly on the dimensions of PSs. The outcomes would suggest that research efforts to incorporate other complimentary theories of change into the TTM, like the PSs model, may be helpful for understanding the process of change. While it seems these models may not be useful for predicting institutional behaviour, the data perhaps demonstrates the complexity of criminal behaviour and speaks to the necessity of further research in this population.