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Prospective Students
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Alumni and Friends
The manifestations of institutional and interpersonal racism have been linked to lower recruitment, retention and matriculation rates among ethnic minority students in predominantly white institutions (Harper, 2012). Those who experience racial and ethnic microaggressions have been impacted in numerous deleterious ways. Physical, mental, emotional and political outcomes have been examined in prior research (McGee & Stovall, 2016; Smith, Allen & Danley, 2007; Sue, 2010; ). In counselor training programs, specific coursework in multicultural education introduces counselors to the foundational aspects of the Multicultural and Social Justice Advocacy Competencies (Ratts et al, 2016) . Using Critical Race theory as a framework, a non-experimental, correlational survey design was used to explore the relationship between institutional type, perceived experiences of school-based racial and ethnic microaggressions, racialized experiences in multicultural coursework and social justice advocacy orientation among counseling students and professionals (N= 346). A standard multiple regression indicated a significant relationship between the school-based racial and ethnic microaggressions and racialized experience in multicultural coursework with social justice advocacy orientation. However, there was no significant relationship with social justice advocacy orientation and institutional type. Results from an independent sample t- test indicated there were significant differences between institutional type in experiences with school-based racial and ethnic microaggressions and racialized experience in multicultural counseling coursework. There however, was no significant difference between institutional type with regard to the social justice advocacy orientation of participants in this study.
SABRINA M. BROWN. HERITAGE SEEKING AND ITS IMPACT ON BLACK HBCU STUDENTS. (Under the direction of DR. LISA MERRIWEATHER)
Abstract
Study abroad is a high-impact practice in the college and university setting that can lead to increased student engagement and student success. While study abroad participation has increased, it is not a common practice across ethnic demographics or minority-serving institutions. Heritage-seeking is a form of study abroad that allows students of the ethnic minority to learn more about themselves in the context of another country. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to understand what, if any, impact heritage-seeking study abroad had on Black, HBCU students. This study also identified the aspects of heritage-seeking that are important to include in the experience to encourage student success.
This study utilized interviewed six HBCU students who participated in a heritage-seeking experience in Haiti. At the conclusion of the interviews, it was found that heritage-seeking study abroad impacted the students in two ways; it nurtured their university relationships, and it instilled a greater sense of responsibility to the Black community. This study also found that there were three aspects of heritage-seeking instrumental to this type of study abroad program: creating opportunities for students to develop relationships, developing it as an immersive experience; and allowing students the space to self-reflect.
Driver errors are the leading cause and contribute to about 94% of traffic crashes. To mitigate this issue, improve mobility, and enhance safety, automobile manufacturers are striving to develop various types of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). These ADAS are designed to assist or in some cases take over certain driving maneuvers. On the other hand, the acceptance levels of ADAS among drivers are questionable. Many surveys determined that drivers are unaware of the applications and limitations of ADAS. While ADAS are designed to enhance safer driving, their indirect effects on driver behavior have been seldom ventured and widely debated.
The focus of this research is on developing different driving scenarios that replicate real-world driving conditions using a driving simulator. Selected participants were prompted to interact with traffic within the simulation environment through a setup equipped with warning (lane departure warning, blind-spot warning, and over speed warning) or automated (lane keep assist and adaptive cruise control) features. The responses of participants when driving a vehicle with warning features, advanced features, and without ADAS in the simulation were captured, analyzed, and compared to understand their effects. The findings are valuable insights to automobile manufacturers as well as policymakers to better design ADAS such that their applicability is streamlined from both safety and user perspective.
Previous research has investigated the school context using conceptualizations of two constructs, school culture and school climate, that appear to overlap and contain measurement flaws, limiting their utility in applied research settings. To improve learning conditions and promote more equitable academic opportunities and outcomes for students in grades 3-8, the Charlotte, NC, community would benefit from a standard system of measurement that captures the essential elements of school climate and culture that local stakeholders believe matter most for students to succeed in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). CMS does not currently administer a comprehensive school culture or climate survey. The present study aimed to address that need. Through a multiphase, participatory community research project, a coherent, parsimonious, and clear conceptualization of school environment emerged, setting the stage for the development and initial validation of the School Environment Survey.
This collaborative effort involved the exchange of knowledge, expertise, and resources via a partnership involving the Community Psychology Research Lab at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and two community partners: CMS and a nonprofit organization, Communities In Schools of Charlotte-Mecklenburg. During the first phase of this project, essential elements of school climate and culture were reviewed, analyzed, and discussed during interviews and focus groups with 126 local stakeholders until the broader construct of school environment had been defined as a category of concepts that reflect the surroundings or conditions in which people operate in school. With this broad definition of school environment as the underlying, multidimensional construct, five applicable concepts (i.e., domains; see Kohl et al., 2013; Wang & Degol, 2016) were hypothesized to make up school environment: academics, safety, shared vision, community, and physical environment. Multiple participatory steps led to the development of 131 items hypothesized and designed to reflect 16 identified dimensions of school environment, organized into these five domains.
The resulting measure was piloted online with 186 teacher participants during the 2020-2021 school year. Exploratory factor analysis results suggest that within the boundary conditions of this effort (i.e., a focus on two CMS learning communities, the inclusion of teachers from grades 3-8, data collected during school year 2020-2021), a 25-item School Environment Survey that captures three domains (academics, safety, and shared vision) may be a useful indicator of teachers’ perceptions of school environment. That model explained 55% of the total variance and, notably, items that performed well on the resulting version of the measure cover nearly the entire hypothesized breadth of the concept as it was defined and operationalized by stakeholders; reliability estimates met or exceeded acceptable thresholds; and school environment results were found to positively relate to student learning outcomes (specifically, standardized tests in reading and math for students in grades 3-8).
However, this study had a relatively small sample size that prevented researchers from conducting a confirmatory factor analysis, and COVID-19 presented additional challenges and limitations. Therefore, in addition to an overview of specific advantages and the empirical and theoretical support for the current version of the School Environment Survey, recommendations for ongoing validation are provided as well as considerations of the implications for local practice.
Project Management activities have become an integral part of almost every organization. Most
of the effort on a project tends to occur in the middle of a project with a substantial focus on the
planning and execution phases, but with limited emphasis on the closing or termination aspect.
Terminating a project has intrinsic and extrinsic organizational effects that need to be
acknowledged and addressed at the end of a project lifecycle. Even successfully completed
projects require post-project analysis to fully realize the benefit of the experience attained at the
end of a project. The learning that occurs augments or improves business processes,
technological capabilities, senior management trust, and can mitigate current and future
stakeholder issues. This dissertation intends to heighten the awareness of the importance
of project termination activities to insight commitment of resources from organizations for
closing efforts. The intention of this dissertation is to measure the effects of project termination
quality from the viewpoint of the project management community. Execution of a quality
project termination promotes organizational learning that strengthens the relationship between
organization’s capabilities and future project management success.
As the demand for wireless connectivity increases, new power and area efficient solutions will be required to meet the specifications of these systems. Most transceivers require a local oscillator with quadrature(I/Q) phases and the power and noise specifications of this oscillator plays a crucial role in the system performance. Although traditionally these oscillators were designed using on chip LC components, recent advances in manufacturing have opened the possibilities of incorporating Bulk Acoustic Wave(BAW) resonators in the design of such oscillators. In this work, we introduce a novel coupling technique for creating a Quadrature Voltage Controlled Oscillator(QVCO) which leads to a lower phase noise and power consumption compared to other published designs.
This study empirically tests and theoretically examines the influence of two types of stressors on resilience. In doing so, it also considers the buffering effects of self-identification (work centrality) and two prevalent personal resources in the stress literature, one based on the contextual environment outside the organization (external social support) and one based on the contextual environment within the organizational (psychological safety) to this relationship. This study hypothesizes that the extent to which an employee self-identifies with work will influence the relationship between stressor (demands) and resilience. The relationship between stressor type and resilience is further examined by testing the effects of two personal resources linked theoretically to supporting the replenishment of resources to determine if they have different or similar levels of influence in developing the personal psychological resource of resilience.
Hydrogen bonds play a vital role in protein-DNA interactions. In particular, side chain-base hydrogen bonds are crucial to the binding specificity between protein and DNA. Mutations effecting interface hydrogen bonds in protein-DNA complexes have been linked to changes in binding specificity and are implicated in various diseases. However, knowledge about the distribution of hydrogen bond energy (HBE) in protein-DNA complexes as compared to other important biomolecular complexes is unknown. Here, we performed a systematic comparative analysis of hydrogen bond energy (HBE) in three protein-ligand complexes; protein-DNA, protein-protein and protein-peptide. Our results show that while the hydrogen bonds in protein-protein and protein-peptide complexes are predominantly strong, a unique, almost equal distribution of strong and weak hydrogen bonds is observed in protein-DNA complexes. More importantly, more strong hydrogen bonds are observed in the minor grooves of highly specific protein-DNA complexes than multispecific complexes indicating the role of minor groove hydrogen bonds in protein-DNA binding specificity. The knowledge gained from these analyses was applied to develop a novel hydrogen bond energy-based method to assess the similarity between protein-DNA complex models and reference structures, an important step towards computational prediction of complex structures. We show that HBE based method provides more accurate assessment of similarity for models generated by both homology modeling and computational docking methods.
