ABSTRACT
The findings in this text are framed by the concept of thriving. In the higher education literature, thriving is most commonly used in relation to students. Schreiner’s (2013) work frames college student thriving as rooted in five essential factors: engaged learning, academic determination, positive perspective, social connectedness, and diverse citizenship. In sum, when students are provided and take advantage of opportunities to actively participate in their education, they learn more and understand the purpose of the educational endeavor. For employees, the socially embedded model of thriving (Spreitzer et al., 2005) argues that learning and a sense of vitality are the foundations of thriving. Below we detail these two frameworks and how they apply to this work. Then, in each of the findings chapters to follow, we relate the findings back to the concept of thriving.
