Welcome to Millersville University’s Spring 2017 edition of MUsings: The Graduate Journal. Since the success of last year’s inaugural edition, the mission of The Graduate Journal continues to be an outlet for our graduate students to delve into a myriad of topics and share their work with their peers, the University community, and the broader academic community.
Millersville University is at an historic moment in our development, recently launching three doctoral programs and achieving a high level of initial success by preparing those degree programs for the multiple layers of approval and admitting our first cohorts of doctoral students. Now, just two years later, those students are beginning their dissertation seminars and the arduous yet exciting task of developing research designs that will lead to publishable work. The inception of our doctoral programs has focused a great deal of attention on what is needed to build a comprehensive graduate research infrastructure, for master’s and doctoral students alike, in areas such as human subjects review; graduate research funds; and digital repositories for our students’ scholarly products. As we continue to make progress on those fronts, our graduate editors and design team have produced another exceptional edition of The Graduate Journal.
One of the features of our second edition is the rich variety of intellectual inquiry and diversity of our student authors’ disciplinary backgrounds. We have over 10 articles presented from authors studying for degrees in English, Social Work, Gifted Education, Technology and Innovation, Psychology, History, and Nursing.
Since graduate research helps to move our students from the role of consumer of the research of others to the vantage point of a creator of their own research, it is exciting to witness the blurring of boundaries, offering a glimpse at the cross-disciplinary nature of our educational future. Our graduate students are exploring topics which interest them, and often that means crossing boundaries—a nursing student writing about arts and humanities, a gifted education student describing a health care journey. Undoubtedly, you will be as inspired as I am!
Once again, I offer my sincere appreciation to the faculty, student editors, and student submitters who spent many hours on the writing and production of this edition. We remain committed to the goal of fostering creativity and innovation for our graduate student researchers by making resources available through the College of Graduate Studies and Adult Learning.
Best Regards,
Victor S. DeSantis, PhD
Dean, College of Graduate Studies and Adult Learning
Associate Provost, Civic and Community Engagement