Last week, on April 22nd at 4 pm, I successfully defended my dissertation, “Developing Digital Student Leaders: A mixed-methods study on student leadership, identity presentation and decision-making on social media.”
The day was a blur, with everything finally sinking in as we drove away from campus. The endless coding, analysis, writing and editing in one year resulted in 525 pages of my life’s work…so far.
In a future post, I will share my dissertation acknowledgments, recognizing those crucial to this journey. For today I acknowledge my amazing committee including my chair Dr. Edlyn Pena, methodologist Dr. John Hoffman and third member Dr. Diane Rodriguez-Klino for being so open and excited about this unexplored research topic.
I was joined not only by my committee (two were video-conferenced in around the world), husband, and friends but was able to live stream the presentation portion of the defense to family, friends and colleagues across the country. Thank you to CLU and my chair for approving this request, as I believe this may have been one of the first dissertation defenses streamed live. Hopefully, it is a trend we see more of in the field. I am thrilled to share with you that recording.
Also, you can find my slides below that gives a peek at some of my major findings.
Finally, at California Lutheran University, it is tradition to ring the bell after a doctoral candidate successfully defends. I share some highlights of the day, as well as a few featured thank you’s.
More on my acknowledges section in a future post! For now thank you everyone known and unknown that has supported this journey. Set your calendars for May 15th at 10am PST as I walk (or run) across the stage!
