Summit Institutional Repository @ PSU
Summit Institutional Repository @ Plymouth State University is a digital repository for gathering, indexing, preserving, and making available a treasury of research and scholarly work generated by PSU faculty, students and staff. Based on the principle of Open Access, one of Summit's key missions is to ensure that these scholarly and creative endeavors are accessible to the widest possible audience.
These collections are freely available, organized, made accessible by PSU's Lamson Library. They demonstrate the summit of academic production at the University and its commitment to encourage transformational teaching and connected learning, to advance the Plymouth State University motto - Ut prosim (That I may serve). The content is available to be used responsibly under fair use US copyright law for personal and educational purposes or with the permission of the authors and/or copyright holders. For more information about submitting your work to Summit, please contact us at psu-lamson-repository@plymouth.edu.
Recent Submissions
Item Confronting Hegemony in Environmental Science Education: Faculty Perceptions and Practices(2025)This qualitative study examined undergraduate environmental science faculty perceptions, attitudes, and practices related to curricular integration of critical perspectives and sociopolitical contexts. Emergent themes revealed faculty engagement with sociopolitical dimensions of environmental science is shaped by intersecting contextual factors—individual disposition, disciplinary traditions, departmental culture, institutional priorities, and the broader political landscape. Findings suggest that although most faculty acknowledge the importance of social political contexts, integration remains inconsistent, limited by individual sociopolitical development, disciplinary norms, time constraints, and lack of training or institutional support. Describing the spectrum of faculty awareness and praxis, ranging from acritical adherence to dominate norms to liberatory counter-hegemonic teaching, contributes to the understanding of how these factors shape, and in some cases limit, disciplinary discourse and impact.Item Building Consensus for School Librarian Collaboration: A Delphi Study(2025)This Delphi study engaged 38 national experts in school librarianship to develop a consensus-based model of school librarian collaboration (SLC) that reflects current practice. Through three iterative rounds the panel achieved strong consensus on a definition of SLC, a framework representing a continuum of collaborative practice, and necessary conditions for success. The resulting definition of SLC is "an educator-to-educator partnership to enhance student learning through complementary expertise that develops over time and is built on mutual trust, shared goals, and open communication." The seven levels continuum of SLC are: Autonomy, Curation, Contribution, Coordination, Integration, Partnership, and Assurance. These levels allow practitioners to identify current collaborative practice and plan for growth. This work extends prior theoretical models by incorporating critical environmental, cultural, and dispositional factors that impact collaborative efforts and by creating tools to operationalize the consensus model for practitioners.Item A Formative Program Evaluation of the "Creating a Culture of Care in Schools Using Restorative Practices" Implementation Team Training(2025)The Maine School Safety Center (MSSC) created the “Creating a Culture of Care in Schools Using Restorative Practices” program in response to requests from school leaders for assistance in training staff to equitably support the increasingly complicated and dysregulated behavior students were exhibiting. This need was complicated by the geography of Maine and its status as the state with the most rural schools (67%) in the U.S., which limits accessibility to training for many educators. This mixed method formative program evaluation, presented for the degree of Doctor of Education in Leadership, Learning and Community, grounded in the Ethic of Care, Sociocultural Theory and Restorative Justice Theory, examined the efficacy of the program’s implementation team training. Accessibility of programming for rural schools was also evaluated. Data was collected using a survey of implementation team training completers. Findings revealed success in responding to the needs of rural schools as a result of the MSSCs policy of on-site training. Respondents achieved foundational understanding of restorative practices and application, but desired additional opportunities to rehearse the skills in supported settings. Additionally, a discrepancy was revealed between school administrators and staff in the perception of potential staff and community buy-in. This research contributes to the growing body of scholarship that defines best practices in school based restorative practices implementation, particularly in rural settings.Item Housing and Residential Life Staffing: A Phenomenological Study Exploring the Lived Experiences of Residential Life Professional Staff(2024)This phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of entry-level live-in residential life professional staff at two University System of New Hampshire (USNH) institutions. An initial survey was conducted to gain insights into the characteristics of these individuals and perceptions of their lived experiences. Interested participants were then invited for virtual individual interviews to delve more deeply into these perceptions. The verbatim transcriptions of the interviews were analyzed thematically, which included two coding rounds to identify key themes. Participants viewed their experiences positively and identified motivating factors for pursuing roles in housing and residential life programs. Participants described barriers related to work-life balance while also sharing potential improvements related to the functions of their roles. Several sub-themes highlighted the importance of academic and behavioral interventions and student connections through programming and crisis response, underscoring these aspects as vital components of their roles. The participants emphasized that making meaningful impacts on students' lives by balancing enforcement with mentorship, providing resources, and building significant relationships contributes to a sense of fulfillment. The study concluded that the lived experiences of entry-level live-in residential life professional staff are complex and multidimensional. For higher education and housing and residential life leadership, the findings suggest a need to consider these complexities when recruiting, training, retaining, and developing staff in these roles. Understanding residential life staff members’ experiences can enhance the overall effectiveness and satisfaction of people in these positions, ultimately benefiting the students they serve.Item Career Anxiety in Post-COVID Generation Z College Students(2025)The COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented interruption during the early adolescent years, limiting the career exploration phase and interrupting career identity development. This descriptive qualitative phenomenological study was guided by the Career Constructivist Theory and grounded by the Ethic of Care, and explored the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students’ career-related anxiety. Disruptions to structured time and face-to-face communication led to prolonged alone time, increased social media use, and decreased social skill development. These conditions contributed to widespread mental health concerns, including increased social anxiety, leading to decreased motivation, increased procrastination, and greater indecision at the college level. Five years after the onset of the pandemic, social anxiety attributes that plague these emerging adults continue to interrupt the exploration of work experience opportunities, collecting career-relevant information, and gaining work skills in college. The findings underscore the urgent need for higher education institutions to acknowledge and address the ongoing social anxiety impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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