This research examines leadership as a social phenomenon by exploring how it is defined, produced, and negotiated within everyday institutional settings. While leadership is often treated as a natural and necessary part of social organization, it can also be unstable and contested, especially in environments where authority must be performed rather than assumed (Billsberry and O’Callaghan 2024). Using a summer camp as a case study, this project investigates how leadership is taught and practiced through counselor training, organizational structures, daily routines, and counselor-camper interactions. Summer camps provide a particularly useful site for this research because counselors are often former campers and only slightly older than the children they supervise, creating tensions between peer-like relationships and institutional authority. The research will include analysis of camp materials (such as mission statements and training guides) and interviews with current and former staff. This research examines how “good leadership” is defined and how young people learn to embody it.

Learning about students’ growth and development regarding civic engagement and dispositions, including civic mindedness and civic responsibility, social empathy, and collaborative efforts toward the greater good, is incredibly important. This is especially true for students in public archaeology, as public archaeology, when done correctly, 1) engages communities in research, preservation, and interpretation of the past through education, outreach, citizen science, digital media, and policy; 2) ensures that communities help shape how heritage is understood and managed; and 3) emphasizes dialogue, community involvement, and the democratization of archaeological practice, focusing on issues of public interest. This paper describes an ongoing initiative at Bridgewater State University to create discipline-specific frameworks for civic engagement as a core pedagogical and scholarly approach, in which students are engaged in real-world projects and grow capacity for civic dispositions for their future professional and personal lives. The ultimate goals of this initiative are 1) to turn students, starting at the first-year student level and up to and including our capstone Public Archaeology course, into publicly engaged leaders who participate in collaborative problem-solving, and facilitate inclusive and participatory processes that make a difference in the world; and 2) for students and faculty engaged in public research to ensure that their research and scholarship in archaeology serve public, not private, goals in a manner that is based in community needs and civic participation.

Racism as the phenomenon where people are placed in caste-like systems based on race is seen globally. The way we live is surrounded by the construction of race, whether explicitly or implicitly. Race as an idea and as a function of how society works has been woven into institutions, media, the economy, our culture and many facets of our daily lives that often goes unnoticed. So why do we see race in society when we know scientifically that there is no inherent biological difference between persons based on their race? There are many explanations as to why race within our society is enforced. History and historical context play a big role. One example of this comes when analyzing the history of slavery and Jim Crow laws with Southern States of the United States. During the establishment of America from the 1600s through 1865 slavery was legal and many forms of economic legislation, legal systems, and ideas about race as a social construction were built around the idea that people with darker skin were less equal than those with lighter skin. Even after slavery was abolished, southern states still were legally allowed to segregate people based on race. Although Jim Crow laws have been abolished for 60 years, America still sees racial issues in the form of law enforcement inequalities, gerrymandering, and education inequalities. Education also plays a significant role in how race is constructed within our lives even from a young age. Many facets of education display race as a function in our roles as people through unequal punishment for minority students, language, and unconscious biases. Race plays a role in education tangibly as well through school district borders, gerrymandering, and funding inequalities for predominantly minority communities there is still a division of race seen all throughout the country. Despite how prevalent the idea of race is in our society, it is known scientifically that race does not exist and that it is only a social construct. So what is it that keeps race socially meaningful and compelling even though it's not a biological fact? Through historical context, education, and many other aspects of our daily lives, the idea of how and why racism is constructed, perpetuated, and woven into our lives will be explained.

This research will examine the interaction between the Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system in Rhode Island and military veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), focusing on how veterans experience and evaluate the care they receive and the outcomes of that care. While most literature on this subject emphasizes better access and programs for evidence based treatments and symptom reduction, less attention has been paid to how institutional structures, provider practices, and systemic processes shape veterans’ engagement and outcomes with their care.

Using a case study design, data will be collected through surveys and semi structured interviews with veterans who have sought treatment for PTSD. Survey data may identify themes in reported provider communication and perceived clinical outcomes. Interviews will provide deeper insight into how veterans navigate the healthcare system, understand their treatment, and assess their health outcomes after treatment.

A section will center on the veterans’ recommendations for improving healthcare, including suggested structural and procedural changes that will increase positive outcomes for treatment. By including veterans’ lived experience, I hope to highlight gaps between clinical intention and patient experience. Rather than offering broad generalizations, this study will present a case analysis to show how systemic design and clinical practice intersect and shape care outcomes for veterans with PTSD.