DBA Graduate Highlights
Kevin Paterson Studies Different Factors Related to College Student Retention
09/2023
After five years of studying while working full-time as the Director of IT over Workforce Digital Services Automation at USAA, Kevin Paterson graduated with his Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree in May 2023. He worked with Dr. Adam Guerrero to study the factors related to college student retention and published “Factors related to college student success: The case of a state university in the Midwest” and “Predictive Analytics in Education: Considerations in Predicting versus Explaining College Student Retention” in the Research in Higher Education Journal.
In addition to software engineering and business administration, Dr. Paterson has extensive experience in operational support and customer-focused initiatives in the area of Information Technology (IT). Prior to joining USAA, he worked for Lockheed Martin, Western Digital, and most recently IBM where he achieved the IBM Master Inventor designation. Additionally, he holds an MBA from the University of the Incarnate Word with an emphasis in Asset Management and a BA in Mathematics from San Jose State University with an emphasis in Computer Science.
Nekilee Hughes' Journey of Service, Education, and Impact in Healthcare
09/2023
As a veteran, who honorably served the United States Army for eight years, Nekilee went on to earn a Bachelor of Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, an MBA, an ASQ Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, and certification in Long-Term Care Administration.
Nekilee began her career in healthcare as a Long-Term Care Assistant Administrator. During that tenure, Nekilee developed meaningful relationships with residents and a passion for strategically defining, developing, and implementing quality-of-care improvements for older persons. Eventually, she resigned from the high demands of being second in command of a large 330-bed skilled nursing facility to fulfill her responsibilities as a single parent.
That decision led to Nekilee's 20-year career at one of the nation's premier academic medical centers, where she oversees healthcare quality initiatives and processes required by regulatory purview. This experience has allowed Nekilee to develop and pen the organization’s step-by-step instruction manual, "Guide to Attain Disease-Specific Certifications."
Nekilee decided to pursue the Doctorate of Business Administration program at UIW to amalgamate her military, professional, and academic skill sets. She describes key program elements that shaped her DBA experience.
Nekilee notes that some courses require collaboration with community-based organizations to complete the course project and explains, “this gives students the experience to apply textbook theories to real-world practice.” Nekilee gained hands-on experience by working on a (course-related) process improvement project with her organization's Lean Six Sigma team. The success of this project resulted in Nekilee becoming the administrator of this regulatory required function at her organization.
Another key experience Nekilee describes was when Dr. Lehenbauer expressed interest in joining as a co-author on her research paper “The Persistent Problem of Gender Pay Gap.” Upon completion, they met at the Southwest Social Science Association annual conference, where Nekilee presented in April 2022. “Having the opportunity to co-author with a professor, then Dr. Lehenbauer passing the baton allowing me my first presentation at a professional conference, albeit four months into my dissertation, was a tremendous experience I gained.”
The highlight of Dr. Nekilee Hughes' DBA experience was completing her phenomenological dissertation “VOICE: Views of Informal Caregivers and the Elderly” with guidance and support from her committee members, Dr. Diana Garza (Chair), Dr. Annette Craven and Dr. Adam Guerrero. Dr. Hughes’ passion for working on behalf of older adults propelled her ambition to conduct a study that explored the post-hospital experience from the perspectives of older adults and their informal caregivers. Dr. Hughes is optimistic that this study's contribution will lead to healthcare policy reform and help healthcare practitioners develop proactive family-centered post-discharge interventions by incorporating the Informal Caregiver Assessment and Profile ® diagnostic tool to help identify and meet the needs of elderly patients and their informal caregivers.
Currently, Dr. Hughes is working with faculty to publish studies stemming from her dissertation and has future goals to become a professor and help other scholars reach their academic goals. This is best exemplified when Dr. Hughes fulfilled Dr. Lunsford’s request and shared her dissertation literature review template with the DBA program to assist future students in collecting and synthesizing their research during their Culminating Experience coursework.