Wildlife has been critically affected by human-induced change and in some areas, species extinction may be as high as 35%. Despite the overwhelming evidence of species extinction, habitat loss, and global climate change, current public support for conservation programs is low. One potential way to promote pro-conservation behavior is through transformative experiences as outlined in Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory (TLT). TLT works to explain the process through which people create new worldviews that can influence both attitudes and behaviors. This mixed methods dissertation seeks to understand transformative experiences and their short-term consequences in the context of wildlife viewing opportunities. Three studies were conducted to: 1) explore the key components of wildlife experiences that prompt transformation; 2) compare transformative experiences and visitor outcomes across captive and natural wildlife viewing opportunities; and 3) understand the short-term impacts of a natural gorilla-based wildlife viewing opportunity. The first study used semi-structured photo elicitation interviews. These interviews uncovered three major themes that provide evidence of critical components for fostering transformation during wildlife encounters. These themes were used to create two novel scales assessing transformative wildlife experiences. The second study used onsite visitor surveys to compare TLT and visitor outcomes at the North Carolina Zoo and at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund’s Conservation Gallery in Rwanda. Structural equation modeling showed that onsite transformation occurred at both sites and directly influenced conservation caring, which mediated the relationship between onsite transformation and species- and biodiversity-oriented behavioral intentions. The final study included a follow-up questionnaire for visitors from the gorilla trekking experience 4-months after their trek. Hierarchical cluster analysis revealed three distinct levels of short-term response to the trek. Qualitative results from the follow-up questionnaire were also considered in the context of the three groups. Overall, this dissertation adds to the growing body of literature examining the transformative nature of wildlife experiences and contributes two novel scales that can be used in future studies. In addition, it adds to the limited onsite research examining terrestrial, African wildlife experiences. The theoretical and managerial implications for the findings from all three studies are discussed at length.

ABSTRACT Food insecurity is a global concern and is acute in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa as well as pockets in the global North. In the lush green spaces of “God’s Own Country”, the state of Kerala in India, about 379,000 women are engaged in farming in about 75,800 groups. Spearheaded by Kudumbashree, the State Poverty Eradication Mission (SPEM) the women farmers, along with women who co-own other micro-enterprises, totaling approximately 4.5 million members in all, are part of a quiet revolution. Through a powerful statewide network of tens of thousands of well-trained community-based educators, SPEM facilitates non-formal education in farming, other livelihoods, and gender-based oppression. Boosted by this non-formal education and abundant informal learning, the women group farmers have taken matters into their own hands. Rather than wait for their male family members to rescue them from economic hardship, the women farmers learn to grow nutritious food both for family consumption and for sale. In the process, they are creating pathways for the practice of food justice in their families, villages, and the entire state. The study focuses on two women’s farming groups, one from the highly marginalized Adivasi (ancient inhabitants, or tribal population) and one from the general population. The primary research question is: “How do women in collective/group farming initiatives learn to build capacity for food justice?”. The study found the building of a robust set of capacities such as effective leadership, participatory decision-making, and shared power critical to community development, thereby generating income, financial literacy, and a sense of empowerment. The findings also suggest that the women farmers are making steady gains in the arena of women’s agency and empowerment in harmony with their families, aided by 50,000 community educators who focus on building awareness about gender-based oppression and ways to combat it. This study pertains to two concerns in community development: 1) The role of the “invisible” learning dimension in capacity building and 2) food justice. The study is relevant to communities everywhere, including food-insecure pockets both in the global south and the global north. Keywords: Learning, capacity building, the practice of food justice, women’s empowerment.

As African-American college attainment has consistently lagged in comparison to the European-American community, this quantitative study examined the relationship between the racial identity statuses and academic motivation styles of African-American college students. More specifically, the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI) (racial centrality, private regard, & public regard) was utilized to discover the racial identity statuses, and the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) (extrinsic & intrinsic academic motivation) was employed to determine the academic motivation styles of African-American college students. Approximately 211 African-Americans (81% women) were recruited via a Facebook group, which is a designed private space for African-American college professionals and students. The results revealed a propensity towards greater levels of Extrinsic Academic Motivation (EAM) while higher levels of Racial Centrality and Private Regard rendered positive relationships with EAM. Further, greater levels of Public Regard was shown to have a negative relationship with EAM, whereas greater levels of Public Regard was shown to have a positive relationship with Intrinsic Academic Motivation (IAM). These findings provide further implications for research concerning the American K-12 curriculum and American media sources regarding their impacts on the racial identity statuses and academic motivations of African-American college students and African-American K-12 students. Keywords: racial identity, MIBI, academic motivation, AMS, K-12, curriculum, American, media, African-American, socialization, community development

As of 2018, 61% of all jobs in Arizona require additional training/education beyond the high school diploma. With only 35% of Arizona’s population holding a post-secondary degree, there is high demand and need for more Arizonans to complete degrees or certificates in the coming years. As the largest minority population in the state and one-third of the college-aged population, Latinx students are not successfully attaining these degrees. While Latinx degree attainment has increased, this increase was due primarily to higher rates of high school and degree completion of Latinas. Of those Latino males that continue to post-secondary education, the majority (71%) will enroll at the community college level. However, the road to academic success at community college is dim. Despite their high enrollment rates at community college, 13% will leave after their first year, 35.2% after their second, and 56.7% after six years (Urias & Wood, 2015).

Research on Latino males in higher education has been primarily focused on access, persistence, and retention at the university level. Further, research has been centered on identity, critical race theory, language behaviors, and engagement of Latino males in higher education. Little to no research has been done to identify the factors, characteristics, or the internal will that propels a Latino male community college student to complete their degree. This research is intended to contribute to this void in research, utilizing a human behavioral theoretical approach to address the phenomena of Latino male attrition.

This exploratory mixed method research approach incorporated both qualitative and quantitative instruments to test the validity of the Theory of Planned Behavior as a plausible model to assess intention of Latino males to graduate from community college. The research examined whether intention to graduate could be assessed on the behavioral beliefs associated with a Latino male’s attitude, perceived norms, and their perceived behavioral controls towards completing a degree. Further, the research sought to determine that if the theory could accurately assess intention, could the model assess differences in intention for first-year versus second-year students, and currently enrolled students versus those who have dropped out. The premise was that if the theory is an acceptable model to predict intention, the study could also model behavioral interventions to support Latino male student persistence and completion.

The results indicate that the Theory of Planned Behavior is an acceptable model to assess and predict behavioral beliefs that drive Latino male intention to graduate from community college. Latino male students’ attitudes toward degree attainment is the most significant factor in predicting their intention to graduate. Additionally, behavioral beliefs of enrolled students are significantly different than their peers who dropped out. However, there is no significant difference in the behavioral beliefs of students in their first-year of enrollment versus those in their second-year of enrollment.

Using the theory’s behavioral intervention implementation strategy, the research provided implications for practice that support Latino male student recruitment, retention, and completion measures for community colleges. Additionally, the research provides implications for future research that supports more studies on Latino male community college degree attainment, and for preparing more Latino men for the workforce needs of Arizona.

Cities and towns are creatures of the state. There is a constitutional hierarchy between levels of governments, and cities and local governments are structurally at the bottom of this hierarchy. However, despite this established dynamic of power, local governments in the State of Arizona have traditionally maintained a significant level of autonomy when it comes to enacting their own policies. In the face of slow-moving state and national governments, local governments have operated on a level that is quick to respond to the needs of its citizens, and cities have assumed the role of filling in the policy and administrative gaps of higher levels of government. However, relatively recently, there has been increased conflict between cities and the State of Arizona. The state legislature has passed various measures restricting local governments on a variety of topics ranging from elections, labor, firearms, immigration, environmental regulations, and more, preempting cities at a wide level.

Participation in competitive sports by athletes who are physically disabled has increased dramatically in recent decades. Given this growth in participation, sports for disabled athletes represents a worthy area of exploration. The purpose of this research is to further understand what motivates people and athletes with physical impairments to partake in adaptive recreation and sport. This study will explore motivations for participation in adaptive sport within theoretical lenses of Achievement Goal Theory (AGT), Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the Five-Factor Model by Omar-Fauzee and colleagues (2010). In addition, this study examined the relationship between motives with sense of community and life satisfaction. Seventy-one participants completed the online survey regarding the questions of interest. In order to determine if different motivations or achievement goals predicted sense of community, life satisfaction and psychological well-being, five regression models were tested. Descriptive statistics were utilized to assess the strongest motivators. Within the five-factor model, interest represented the strongest motivator followed by competency. Within the SDT framework, relatedness emerged as the strongest motivation factor. When AGT was tested, individuals with disabilities were found to be more task-oriented then ego-oriented. This indicates that people that participate in adaptive athletics value social connections, sense of freedom and developing their knowledge for sport-specific activity.

Resettled refugees face numerous challenges including unsafe living conditions, loss of permanent shelter, adjustment to a new culture, loneliness, and separation from family, friends, and community. Of particular importance is the lack of a feeling of sense of community (SOC) within their new surroundings. SOC is not only worthwhile as an outcome of its own, but may also predict additional positive outcomes such as resilience and cultural adjustment. Literature has shown participation in sport can develop youth positively and build social skills, while studies in other regions of the world have also found a sport team setting to be a place for immigrants to experience SOC. In this study, I use a congruent mixed methods approach to both explore the experience of SOC for youth refugees in a soccer club, and examine the relation of SOC to resilience and cultural adjustment. Using photo-elicitation and semi-structured interviews with 11 youth participants, the qualitative portion of the study explored SOC among youth participants. Findings note the presence of SOC as matched to theoretical frameworks both specific to sport, and to a more general theory of SOC. Further data were collected through questionnaires distributed to club members. Results from the quantitative analysis indicate a significant positive relation between SOC and resilience, and SOC and perceived acculturation. This study’s contribution is to illustrate how refugee youth in a sport club in the United States experience SOC, and the impact of that SOC. Results suggest practical implications for sport managers who wish to provide positive sport experiences for youth refugees.

Denver, Colorado is experiencing an unprecedented growth spurt, particularly in the downtown neighborhoods. As such, the city has proposed a multitude of urban revitalization projects in its urban core. This pattern of revitalization has unintended consequences including changes in residents’ meanings assigned to their neighborhoods and subsequently changes in residents’ attachment to those neighborhoods. Given this, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to use a symbolic interactionist perspective to uncover resident meanings of their neighborhoods and discover how redevelopment efforts are affecting those assigned meanings. Participants, recruited through the snowball sampling method in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods in downtown Denver, were interviewed during spring of 2017. Photo-elicitation techniques were used as part of the interviews. Additionally, secondary data available through public documents were analyzed to provide a context for understanding the changes that are taking place in the selected neighborhoods. This data aids in guiding future research, which may ultimately better inform the government agencies and private organizations who are looking to redevelop low-income neighborhoods similar to the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods in the given study.

“¡No hay problemas en España! (There are no problems in Spain!) My professor exclaimed, grinning at his American students’ first day jitters. I arrived in Granada, Spain on January 7, 2012 and instantly noticed a dramatic shift in priorities; the term “quality of life” took on an entirely new identity. Quality of life studies have become increasingly popular, and many researchers have realized there are more meaningful ways to measure the wellbeing of a community that transcends gross domestic product. Instead of merely measuring financial progress, quality of life studies emphasize that communities rich in health and happiness may be more valuable to its residents and the world than those only concerned with financial wealth. The United Nations Development program takes life expectancy into account, but not the quality of the years lived (Schimmel, 2009). As long as it is a formal economic interaction, gross domestic product accounts for it, including negative aspects of a community like natural disasters and divorce (McKibben, 2007). “Under the current system... the most ‘economically productive citizen’ is a cancer patient who totals his car on his way to meet with his divorce lawyer” (McKibben, 2007, p. 28). If the polluted air causes higher rates of cancer in a population, the costs paid into the economy for medical treatment transfer right into our GDP. GDP does not distinguish between the economic transactions that improve our lives and those that hurt them. The graph below displays the false yet passively accepted idea that an increase in economic development necessarily leads to a higher sense of wellbeing. Although GDP per capita in the United States has risen threefold since 1960, happiness levels have not changed (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2012), and as the ultimate goal of human beings (Bergheim, 2006), we should be dedicating more research to accomplishing happiness, rather than a higher income. In fact, money only correlates with happiness up to a certain point, and depending on which researcher you ask, that number is between $10,000 per capita income (McKibben, 2007) and $50,000 per capita income (Shadyac, Shimizu, & Belic, 2011). Individuals included in Forbes magazine’s wealthiest Americans list have the same happiness as the Amish in Pennsylvania, and only slightly higher happiness than Swedes, as well as Masai tribesmen (McKibben, 2007). This phenomenon is worldwide, as Costa Ricans are happier than the Japanese and the French are equally satisfied as the Venezuelans (McKibben, 2007).

Short-term medical volunteer work via a nongovernmental organization is a popular tool for students in the health care field to gain experience, while further providing communities that normally lack health care options the opportunity to receive free care. One such organization, VIDA Volunteer Travel, has been successful in implementing this model in Central America. However, organizations of this form have not been evaluated for effectiveness or improvement. This exploratory study examines the effectiveness of VIDA based on six qualifying characteristics that make up a successful NGO. The researcher conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 21 individuals, including VIDA staff members in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, health professionals working for VIDA, local community leaders, and volunteers participating in VIDA's programs. Summaries and quotes of these interviews were uploaded and analysed using Atlas.ti to identify common words and themes from the interviews. Informants frequently identified the organization as sustainable, both from a fiscal and ecological standpoint. The organization also successfully managed volunteers, although post-trip follow-up was lacking. Adherence to the mission statement and distribution of supplies allowed for improved organization and successful structure of the organization. Education and health promotion was also emphasized, although implementation of this education into the communities was lacking. Collaboration with the community and volunteers allowed for stringent, successful treatment to be given to patients, and ethical guidelines set up by the organization allowed for self-governance and improvement of the NGO. This study suggests future research opportunities for the organization, to evaluate its own impact and opportunities for improvement. Furthermore, suggestions are addressed that allow the organization to improve upon its well-implemented infrastructure, and allow for future organizations to use VIDA as a model for improvement.