As young women merge into the business world, the business environment structure often asks them to adjust or change their identity to be accepted by their male peers. Such identity changes include adopting masculine forms of professional dress, building relationships in the workplace, and dealing with personal life. Through a qualitative research methodology, the study explores the communication practices that women engage in to succeed in the masculine business/corporate environment. Research indicates various types of limitations in masculine environments in connection with the flexibility of schedule, equal pay, and balance between professional and family life, leading to emotional and psychological impacts. Moreover, findings indicate the use of resistance tools to assist women in the corporate/business environment in leadership mentoring, education, and information found on apps and social media. I highlight practical implications, discuss limitations, and provide recommendations for future directions.

Building on research on family communication and forgiveness, this study seeks to understand how families communicate the value and practice of forgiveness. Through semi-structured interviews, the study asks participants to recall their formative conversations and experiences about forgiveness with their family members and to discuss how those conversations influenced their current perspectives on forgiveness. Interviews from five female undergraduate students yielded seven main themes from where individuals learn how to forgive: 1) Sibling conflicts, 2) Family conversations about friendship conflicts, 3) Conversations with Mom, 4) Living by example, 5) Take the high road, 6) “Life’s too short”, and 7) Messages rooted in faith and morality.

This research investigates what aspects of certain college students' quarantine experience were contributing to specific changes in gender identity. For this project, a general survey was distributed, and multiple interviews were conducted with willing survey participants to gauge more in-depth information about this phenomenon. Through the survey portion of the research, I found that many Barrett students felt that their identity had changed over the course of the pandemic, and a unique subset of these students experienced a change in their gender identity. Interviews with these folks highlighted several mechanisms that fostered this phenomenon: first, that quarantine allowed them a time to introspect, second, that they were not being policed or scrutinized in public for their gender performance, and third, that this was taking place in a supportive physical and/or virtual environment. This new research provides insight into the specific experiences of nonbinary college students whose identity shifted over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring factors that can influence identity development. While this is a unique and niche situation, it illustrates changing trends in how younger generations view themselves and their gender identity.