Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Housing
- All Subjects: Women's Studies
- Creators: Colbern, Allan
- Status: Published
Description
Colleges and universities have continued to refine their understanding of engagement, affinity, and retention. At Arizona State University (ASU), the goal has been to continually retain first-year students at a 90%+ retention rate. At ASU, two key aspects of the first-year experience have been employed to foster retention. First, ASU has grouped on-campus students so they lived in residential colleges, housing students with others in the same college, to aid retention of first-year students. Second, ASU has required first-year students to take a 101 class, an orientation to ASU resources (library, advising, etc.) and its community (student organizations, clubs, etc.). The residential college living experience has afforded students opportunities to intentionally engage in campus events, connect with other students, and develop a vision for success. The 101 class has provided students with opportunities to learn about resources and community that have enriched their first-year experiences. Together, these two key approaches have offered students pathways to building initial engagement at the institution. The current research study was conducted to examine the ways in which students became engaged during their initial semester at ASU. Student participants in this study all lived in the W. P. Carey (WPC) Residential College Community in Hassayampa Academic Village (HAV) and were enrolled in WPC 101—Student Success in Business. WPC 101 was focused on helping students navigate college and learn about campus resources.
In the study, the researcher infused three Engagement Workshops into the WPC 101 curriculum alongside pre-existing assignments to afford students learning opportunities for a richer, deeper exploration and reflection on their first-semester experience. Students participated in a pre- and post-intervention survey, contributed written narratives and reflections, and six students completed individual interviews.
Results of the study, particularly the qualitative results, indicated (a) quality of relationships, (b) ASU community, and (c) campus environment emerged as variables that served as the ‘roots of engagement’ for these first-semester students Thus, the current work extended previous research on engagement by identifying the initial developmental aspects of engagement among first-semester, university students. The discussion included detailed explanations of the results, limitations, implications for research and practice, lessons learned, and conclusions.
In the study, the researcher infused three Engagement Workshops into the WPC 101 curriculum alongside pre-existing assignments to afford students learning opportunities for a richer, deeper exploration and reflection on their first-semester experience. Students participated in a pre- and post-intervention survey, contributed written narratives and reflections, and six students completed individual interviews.
Results of the study, particularly the qualitative results, indicated (a) quality of relationships, (b) ASU community, and (c) campus environment emerged as variables that served as the ‘roots of engagement’ for these first-semester students Thus, the current work extended previous research on engagement by identifying the initial developmental aspects of engagement among first-semester, university students. The discussion included detailed explanations of the results, limitations, implications for research and practice, lessons learned, and conclusions.
ContributorsLeyson, Timothy Paul (Author) / Buss, Ray R (Thesis advisor) / Brown, Matthew (Committee member) / Shapiro, Cory (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
To investigate the impacts of an energy efficiency retrofit, indoor air quality and resident health were evaluated at a low‐income senior housing apartment complex in Phoenix, Arizona, before and after a green energy building renovation. Indoor and outdoor air quality sampling was carried out simultaneously with a questionnaire to characterize personal habits and general health of residents. Measured indoor formaldehyde levels before the building retrofit routinely exceeded reference exposure limits, but in the long‐term follow‐up sampling, indoor formaldehyde decreased for the entire study population by a statistically significant margin. Indoor PM levels were dominated by fine particles and showed a statistically significant decrease in the long‐term follow‐up sampling within certain resident subpopulations (i.e. residents who report smoking and residents who had lived longer at the apartment complex).
ContributorsFrey, S.E. (Author) / Destaillats, H. (Author) / Cohn, S. (Author) / Ahrentzen, S. (Author) / Fraser, M.P. (Author)
Created2015
Description
Do adult women survivors of childhood sexual abuse see their past victimization as having any relation to or impact on their current political engagement? While it is important to know how having experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA) impacts women survivors’ adult personal relationships, health, and wellbeing, more research must be done on how these abuse experiences affect women survivors’ political engagement. Nearly 25,900,000 women voters in the United States have likely experienced childhood sexual abuse (National Sexual Violence Resource Center 2011), therefore it is imperative and participation. This interpretive autoethnographic and ethnographic study examines the narratives of six women CSA survivors currently attending a counselling support group, and employs feminist methodology to conceptualize the women’s beliefs and feelings on the impact of CSA on their political participation. The findings of this study, however, do not seek to be generalizable to all women survivors of CSA, but instead reveal how six adult women survivors of CSA cope with and interpret their victimization as having an impact on their adult political engagement and participation. Utilizing interpretive concepts of power, citizenship, and civil society, this study finds that adult women survivors of CSA may be more politically active if they have a safe space to disclose their abuse experiences to fellow survivors of CSA. This study suggests that a civil society community of adult CSA survivors might be beneficial for survivors and may encourage survivors to see political engagement as a viable avenue for healing from the trauma of CSA.
ContributorsDykstra, Joelle (Author) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis advisor) / Colbern, Allan (Committee member) / Murphy Erfani, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This paper examines the intersections of faith, patriarchy, feminism, and institutional failure in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Members of the faith believe the paternal structure of the organization is God's plan. The paper focuses on home, church, and the public sphere to provide a more complete understanding of the ways in which the practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints blur the lines between public and private and asks how women, most centrally the author, navigate contradictions in the doctrine and the institution of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Finally, this paper examines the tension between critical thought from a feminist perspective and being a devout member in the eyes of the church.Data was collected and presented using interpretivist methodology, ethnography and autoethnography. The author draws upon her experience as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and examines the ways power is layered and instrumental to the patriarchal teachings which are often contradictory and in tension with women developing full personhood.
ContributorsLunt, Sue (Author) / Colbern, Allan (Thesis advisor) / Goksel, Nisa (Committee member) / Behl, Natasha (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
There are many historical inequities regarding housing in the United States, such as the lack of access to affordable and secure housing for people of color, which is a result of centuries of exclusion. These problems remain ineffectively addressed or unaddressed by policy. Indeed, many community-based organizations report that housing policies fail to address the needs of the people—especially those in marginalized communities. Top-down approaches are efficient and more broadly applicable but miss important community-specific problems. Meanwhile, bottom-up approaches excel in highlighting community perspectives and the lived experiences of residents, but they are challenging to generalize across jurisdictions. This thesis captures community-based understandings of policy through in-depth interviews with community-based organizations (CBOs) and applies these understandings to develop a new quantitative framework for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of housing policies that can be applied across the United States. The thesis also explores various housing policies through a multi-dimensional, intersectional, and forward-thinking analysis that centers marginalized communities.
ContributorsMoen, Anders Jacob (Author) / Colbern, Allan (Thesis advisor) / Pfeiffer, Deirdre (Committee member) / Lee, Sangmi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The increasing job opportunities abroad as spa therapists attract significant numbers of young Indonesian women. Although the placement process is conducted by licensed recruitment agents and supervised by government officials, migrant workers might be at high risk of experiencing work exploitation and physical or sexual abuse. To investigate the phenomenon of documented, yet still vulnerable, female migrant workers, this research conducts interviews with several former spa therapists who were working in Malaysia and some civil servants. This study highlights that individual or personal resistances could be a collective political struggles. Specifically, this research connects individual experiences with the bigger picture of social, economic, and political condition, which, together, constitutes a gender-based labor migration system. To do this, the research employs qualitative-interpretive research methods through discourse analysis and in-depth and open-ended interviews. It also employs an intersectional feminist approach to data analysis to reveal how Indonesian female migrant workers are marginalized and oppressed and the power dynamics at play.
ContributorsNabila, Asma Zahratun (Author) / Colbern, Allan (Thesis advisor) / Behl, Natasha (Thesis advisor) / Goksel, Nisa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021