In August of 2015, I began to pursue a Doctorate of Philosophy in Adult Education at Auburn University. I feel it is important to continue my graduate work in the field of education in order to be best prepared to guide students in achieving their goals. While my M.Ed. in Higher Education Administration involved student development theory and student affairs management, the Ph.D. Adult Education program encompasses education across multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, higher education. This degree will help me learn how to support our students and encourage them to be life-long learners and to seek out training and educational opportunities beyond their collegiate experience.
The non-traditional undergraduate student is the population on which I plan to focus for my research and dissertation. More and more we are realizing that the non-traditional student is a rapidly growing demographic on college campuses, and as an advisor we need to be aware of the unique difficulties this group faces. I would like to study what is being done for this population and what are some new ways an institution can recruit and support the non-traditional undergrad and retain them through graduation.
Please click on the links below to see some of my work in the Ph.D. Adult Education program.
In the Educational Research Survey Design course I spent the semester learning about all the important factors that go into creating a reliable, valid survey to use for my dissertation research. This is the final survey project discussing my survey in Qualtrics. I am very happy I added this course to my studies, as it was much easier to develop a usable research instrument during a class with the guide of a knowledgeable faculty member rather than trying to go it alone.
For the University & College Teaching Certification, my practicum course was teaching an incoming freshman First Year Experience Learning Community course titled "Engineering the World Class Student" During this class I developed lesson plans, activities, and short lectures to teach 16 pre-engineering freshmen Success Strategies and skills to ease the transition from high school to college.
I decided to add the University & College Teaching Certification to my Ph.D. studies. In the Seminar of College Teaching course I was challenged to create a Teaching/Learning Philosophy. This is my personal philosophy of teaching and learning grounded in published studies that we explored and discussed during this course.
In the Curriculum & Program Planning course I was challenged with designing a training curriculum for adults. For this project I focused on training faculty members to become effective faculty advisors. Many people think that all advisors do is tell students which courses to take for their degree requirements, but advising is much more than that. Through this project, I was able to show faculty advisors that part of advising is directing to resources on campus for a student's various needs, be they academic, mental health services, career services, etc. This was one of my favorite projects so far in my Ph.D. studies because it not only dealt with advising, which is my chosen field, but also allowed me to teach others how to be an effective agent of referral for our students.
During the course of my Program Evaluation class I created a plan for an evaluation of the 2+2 Program between Auburn's Biosystems Engineering Dept. and Shanghai Ocean University. In this program, SHOU students study two years at the university in China and then transfer over to study for two years at Auburn University. This is the rough plan for evaluation developed through several challenging assignments throughout the semester. I learned quite a lot in the course of this semester about how to structure an evaluation, how to plan for an evaluation budget, and how to use an evaluation to suggest changes in a program.
In this Foundations of Education course I was able to learn about educational systems in different cultures. For this midterm research paper I explored six of the major topics covered in the course and how multicultural education can be used to improve relations between races and across cultural divides, a skill that is imperative in the 21st century.
I presented this poster at the SSC Campaigns Professional Development Session on April 28, 2016 to colleague advisors at Auburn University, and it was also displayed at the "Advisorpalooza" meetings at Auburn on May 18, 2016. SSC, or Student Success Collaborative, is a new software Auburn uses as a tool for advisors to be able to take and share notes on student advising sessions, look up important information about student advisees, and to run "campaigns" with the software that creates lists that can be exported as Excel files. Campaigns can help with enrollment reports, monitoring at-risk students, keeping up with special populations of students, and many other aspects of advising.
This poster and presentation was also my professional development assignment as part of my Curriculum & Program Planning course.
This ePortfolio that you are visiting was a project for my Workforce Education course. It has been one of my favorite projects so far in my Ph.D. coursework! Creating this ePortfolio gave me a place to collect assignments I've done for classes and showcase them for job promotion and potential employers. I also use ePortfolio in the course I teach, as I view it as an invaluable tool for students to showcase their work, and I feel it is important for freshmen especially to develop their ePortfolios as they go through their college careers rather than trying to remember everything in their senior year.