The National University System Repository exists to increase public access to research and other materials created by students and faculty of the affiliate institutions of National University System. Most items in the repository are open access, freely available to everyone.
Recent Submissions
Item Bridging Language and Culture: Best Practices for Bilingual Counsellors Working with Immigrant Populations(2025-12-15)This capstone project explores best practices for bilingual counsellors working with immigrant populations through a qualitative literature review. Grounded in linguistic code-switching theory and multicultural counselling theory, the study synthesizes current research to examine how language, culture, and identity interact to shape the therapeutic process. Findings reveal that bilingual counselling enhances therapeutic alliance, emotional expression, and client trust by allowing communication in clients’ preferred languages. However, bilingual clinicians face ethical and professional challenges, including blurred boundaries, transference, countertransference, and risks of burnout. The review identifies significant gaps in training and supervision, particularly in the Canadian context, where bilingual counselling practices remain underdeveloped despite the country’s linguistic diversity. Clinical implications outlined emphasize the intentional use of code-switching as a therapeutic tool, ongoing cultural humility, and awareness of intersectionality. This project concludes with recommendations for developing structured training, supervision, and policy initiatives to support culturally and ethically competent bilingual counselling practices.Item How Meaning-Making Impacts Identity Formation within Posttraumatic Growth(2025-11)Meaning-making impacts identity formation within posttraumatic growth, yet the linkage is described unevenly across the literature. This project examines how meaning processes shape identity formation and clarifies the mechanisms, conditions, and boundaries under which identity repair is most credible. The methodology adopted is a critical literature review and analysis. Thirteen core studies were reviewed. The majority were quantitative studies. Due to most included designs being correlational, conclusions are framed as practice-relevant inferences rather than causal claims. Findings cluster into three areas. First, mechanisms, identity repair appears most credible when discrepancy between global and situational meaning narrows, reflective style shifts toward more deliberate processing, and clarified purposes are enacted in roles that others can recognize. Second, contextual conditions, belonging, routine, and realistic access to roles support enactment, while material strain and service limits require careful pacing. Third, boundaries, single-time self-report is not sufficient for durable claims, so monitoring pairs brief self-report with behaviour-adjacent indicators and applies cultural and ethical safeguards. Implications for Alberta practice include a brief, clinician-facing workflow that reads self-report alongside role-based indicators to keep change visible under session caps and documentation demands. Recommendations include integrating light, role-based monitoring into short-term services and strengthening cultural adaptation and longitudinal designs in future research so identity repair is assessed through both reflection and enacted change.Item Integrating Nature-Based Therapy Interventions in Schools: Supporting Students with Anxiety in a Post COVID-19 World(2025-10)This capstone explores the impact of heightened anxiety in children and adolescents in the post–COVID-19 era and examines nature-based therapy (NBT) as a complementary intervention to support student well-being. Drawing from recent research, this capstone highlights the prevalence and neurobiology of anxiety, the ways in which the pandemic intensified mental health challenges, and the potential of integrating natural environments into school counselling practice.Item The Efficacy of Therapeutic Factors Associated with Memory Reconsolidation in Trauma Therapy(2025-12-08)In this capstone, I examine the efficacy of therapeutic factors from memory reconsolidation (MR) research that can be applied in trauma therapy. In this context, trauma therapy includes only the treatment of memories affectively encoded in fear. Furthermore, this capstone focuses on behavioural interventions as opposed to drug interventions and on clinical trials in human populations as opposed to animal studies. Primary studies are synthesized and analyzed to explore the efficacy of specific therapeutic factors that induce MR through behavioural intervention. I elaborate upon an emergent understanding of how to theoretically access MR in trauma therapy for fear-based memories by exploring four inductive themes from this topic. Firstly, MR itself is briefly introduced. This introduction is followed by an inductive thematic analysis, which describes prediction error, taxing working memory, emotional schemas, and timing considerations as the four therapeutic factors that can theoretically elicit MR, as measured by symptom reduction, in clients who are experiencing trauma symptoms connected to fear-based memories.Item Women in Leadership and Perceived Factors of Success(2025-12-06)Women working in U.S. companies face underrepresentation in upper-level leadership roles. This qualitative phenomenological study examined the perceived success factors that enable women to overcome sexism and achieve upper-level leadership roles. Recruitment occurred through purposeful and snowball sampling. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews. This study was guided by concepts from feminist theory (Brunell et al., 2023; Wollstonecraft, 2016), role congruity theory (Schein, 1975), and status characteristics theory (Berger et al., 1977). RQ1 asked: What are the lived experiences of women around overcoming sexism while working in large U.S. companies? SUB1-4: explored perceived barriers, experiences reaching leadership, success factors, and identity traits. Transcripts were analyzed and interpreted for critical terms, then coded for themes (Peoples, 2021; van Manen, 2016). Five themes emerged: (a)Ambition, (b)Culture, (c)Network, (d)Resilience, and (e)Trust. Findings suggest that women need to take risks and be proactive about having conversations with their leaders and skip-leaders, specifically around career progression and constructive feedback, to overcome sexism and other barriers they face. Champions were most critical in early and mid-career time periods. Personal and professional challenges occur throughout all stages of women’s career journeys, but self-imposed barriers were a common barrier that all participants had to overcome to find success. Five recommendations are: (a) clarity of promotional pathways, (b) utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to identify candidates for promotion, inform employees of their potential and options inside their organization (c) creating feedback loops, (d) create/implement resource groups for employees for skills- based coaching, mentorship, and subject matter learning, and (e) offering therapy and coaching to counter self-imposed barriers. Future research should (a) expand study to other groups; (b) compare women in large for-profit companies to nonprofits or smaller size companies; (c) implement a longitudinal study of phases of career progression; (d) study how reorganizations and restructuring affects promotion; (e) explore male perceptions of underrepresentation of women in leadership inside large, medium, or small companies; (f) explore the lived experiences of women inside nonprofit U.S. companies; and (g) a longitudinal study of the use of AI to identify and inform organizations and candidates about leadership positions currently open, being created, or becoming vacant.
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