Meeting the Unique Needs of First-Generation College Students During COVID-19
This was the final assignment for EDLP 716: Principles for Professional Writing II completed during the spring 2021 semester. It was co-authored by three cohort colleagues that I had worked with closely as part of a team during the fall 2020 semester as well. We chose to focus on the impact that COVID-19 may have on first-generation college students and how universities can create strong support mechanisms to meet this student population’s needs and challenges. I am very proud of our work on this paper and it served as good preparation for the capstone project completed during the final year in the program.
The Importance of Acknowledgement, Authenticity, and Communication in Crisis Leadership
This was the final assignment for EDLP 708: Leadership Presence which I completed in Summer 2020. The assignment required each student to write a case study to apply the knowledge gathered in the course to a specific subject of interest to the student. The scenario could either be an actual one or a made-up scenario within higher education that denotes a leadership response to a critical issue in lieu of COVID-19. I chose to create a made-up scenario involving the recent topic of colleges and universities being asked to reduce tuition this fall if courses are taught primarily online.
The Connection Between Leadership Philosophy and Leadership Presence
This was another assignment from EDLP 708: Leadership Presence where I try to determine the most effective way to put my leadership philosophy into practice. In this brief paper, I discuss how my approach to leadership enables me to successfully connect my leadership philosophy to my leadership presence and how it guides my decision-making as a leader.
Ethical Leadership and Tradition in Higher Education
This is a co-authored paper that fellow Ed.D. student Daniel Lindstrom and I completed in Spring 2020 for EDLP 705: Frameworks for Decision-Making: Ethical Perspectives with Dr. Tomika Ferguson. The assignment was to respond to two case studies by stating the main facts of each case, considering relevant theories and scholarly research, analyzing the cases using one of the five ethical perspectives in Chapter 5 of Johnson’s Meeting the Ethical Challenges of Leadership: Casting Light or Shadow (2018), and providing possible recommended actions. As my first co-authored paper in the program, I’m very proud of the work that Dan & I did and how this paper came out.
Battling the Anxiety and Taking the Plunge
Jesús Nieto (2006) referred to a cultural plunge as “individual exposure to persons or groups markedly different in culture (ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and/or physical exceptionality) from that of the “plunger.” One of my assignments in EDLP 709 Equity and Leadership during my second term of the Ed.D. program was to experience others by engaging in a cultural plunge. This paper details my experience attending an Islamic prayer service in Fredericksburg, VA.
Axis of Leadership: A 360 Degree Assessment
This was my final paper for EDLP 702 Self As Leader: Theory & Data Analysis (Summer 2019). The assignment was to use a 360 Degree Assessment tool to gather information about my leadership practice from individuals that I work with and compare them with my own ratings in the same exact categories. I completed one of these at UMW in 2013 as part of a performance review so it was interesting to do one of these again, this time with the opportunity to analyze and discuss the gathered data. This paper was my favorite one from the first term of the program and I’m very proud of it. It brought me back to when I was finishing my bachelor’s degree in 1997/1998 at LIU/CW.Post. I had decided in my junior/senior year to add Psychology as my second major in addition to English so I took a ton of psychology classes during my last year before graduating where a lot of the papers were similar in style to this one (utilizing graphs, figures, discussing the collected data, analyzing it, etc.). It’s quite different from the MLA format I was usually immersed in for my English papers. During the writing of this paper, another classmate and I reviewed our papers as part of a peer edit process. This was also tremendously helpful. Apart from one reference citation change, this is the exact paper that I submitted for the assignment.
A Picture of Leadership in Four Frames
This was a frame reference paper for EDLP 702 Self As Leader: Theory & Data Analysis (Summer 2019). The assignment was to use Bolman and Deal’s Leadership Orientations Self-Assessment to analyze my leadership skill/comfort level with each of their four frames of leadership. This assignment also involved the first time within the Ed.D. Leadership program where we were assigned a classmate to conduct a peer review and edit. This was extremely helpful in finalizing the paper prior to submitting it. This is mostly the same paper I originally submitted for the assignment; I made some minor corrections based on feedback I received from my instructor.