As biomedical cognitive enhancement becomes more popular in competitive contexts such as schools, teachers and administrators will face new challenges related to cognitive enhancement and cognitively enhanced students. In this dissertation, I identify five of the most pressing ethical challenges presented by cognitively enhanced students in a…

Faculty are central to higher education and workforce development. Recent significant disruptions including the pandemic, student demographic shifts, and technology advancements in artificial intelligence are challenging faculty member's status quo in their teaching and research practices. Faculty members will need to actively engage in…

Many Graduate Medical Education Residents (GMERs) across American academic medical centers lack the necessary skills to research and publish their findings. This situation is critical as GMERs are future healthcare physicians who treat humans and strive to overcome disease, injury, and pain. Published biomedical research benefits physicians,…

High school science teachers require increased skills in science research literacy, so that their students develop research competencies in the classroom (Evans, Warning, & Christodoulou, 2017; Udompong, Traiwichitkhun, & Wongwanich, 2014). For teachers to promote a scientific atmosphere, literature points to training that fosters…

This dissertation is in two parts: Part 1 of the study focuses on investigating the feasibility of delivering turn-on rhodamine-based fluorophores through Glucose transporters (GLUTs) for biomedical applications, both "in vitro" and in vivo. Fluorescent GLUT targeting probes are essential for analyzing transport activity, monitoring…

This exploratory sequential mixed-methods case study explores the relationship between perceived self-efficacy and faculty mentorship with biomedical sciences graduate students. The intent of the study was to understand the extent at which faculty mentorship contributes to self-efficacy development in the population of biomedical sciences doctoral…

Today, artificial intelligence technologies (AI) add significant complexities to organizational learning, performance, and change, and these technologies are proliferating across all industries at rapidly increasing rates (West, 2018). However, most organizations do not understand how to make sense of AI (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2017), and the…

The interaction of proximate research universities is a multifaceted and increasingly relevant phenomenon in today's higher education landscape. The three essays herein add to science policy and innovation literature by exploring the challenges, opportunities, and expectations that arise when multiple universities operate in a region. The first…

The problem addressed in this study is that the performance of biomedical (BioMed) equipment technician (BMET) graduates from online programs is inferior to that of graduates from traditional vocational institutions. The purpose of this qualitative Delphi study was to build consensus among a panel of BioMed career field experts on key performance…

Biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate students take courses that allow them to develop skills in multiple disciplinary areas (e.g., biology, medicine, chemical, mechanical, electrical engineering) and as such, have a wide array of career opportunities available to them upon graduation. While their broad curricular exposure lends itself to…

While more underrepresented minorities (URMs) are graduating with their PhDs, especially in the biomedical sciences, many leave the academy for non-academic related jobs (e.g., government, nonprofits, industry, etc.) instead of pursuing faculty positions. This is a problem because faculty racial/ethnic diversity impacts URM student recruitment and…

Background: Influenced by "Embrace the World," Pitt's strategic plan for its global vision the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) has enhanced its involvement in transnational knowledge sharing endeavors over several decades. The School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh has been directly involved in a global health education…

The implementation of curriculum change, and innovative pedagogical theory, can help educators and administrators in higher education further the learning gains of students in the sciences. But the introduction of new methods of teaching, or curricular restructuring, can be interpreted by students differently, potentially affecting students'…

Health and biomedical science courses are meant to teach students the skills they need to be career ready; this includes digital literacy skills as technology in healthcare continues to grow. Blended learning is an instructional strategy that uses face-to-face and digital learning activities and has been shown to improve the digital literacy…

Biomedical research increasingly relies on the analysis and visualization of a wide range of collected data. However, for certain research questions, such as those investigating the interconnectedness of biological elements, the sheer quantity and variety of data results in rather uninterpretable--this is especially true for network visualization,…