The ethnic demographic composition of the United States is changing (NCES, 2014). The increase in diversity in the country, has changed the ethnic demographic composition in public schools. In the 1980s the United States saw an increase in minority educators in public schools (Ingersoll and May, 2016) that continued to rise over the next two decades. Currently, the percentage of minority students in public schools exceeds the percentage of White students. Specifically, in the Commonwealth of Virginia 49% of public school students are ethnic minorities (TDVEP, 2017). The increase in diversity in both students and teachers did not create proportional representation between the two groups. The hypothesis that a school division with a proportionate ethnic demographic representation of teachers and students will increase student academic performance can be measured by determining whether a disparity between licensed minority teachers and minority students exist. This study investigated the status of student academic performance based on the ethnic demographic representation of public middle school teachers and students in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The ethnicities of teachers and students in all comprehensive middle school students were collected and reported by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). The Reading and Mathematics Standards of Learning Pass rates data were also collected and reported by the VDOE. There were seven key findings collected from this study. The first finding was when reviewing for disproportionality of targeted subgroups, the teacher student ratio indicated an overrepresentation of White teachers to White students. The second finding was five of the eight middle schools with the highest Hispanic disproportionality rates when considering the ratio of Hispanic teachers to Hispanic students were in the Commonwealth of Virginia's, Superintendent's Region 4. Finding three indicates that Asian students, even in schools with high disproportionality rates, exceeded state benchmarks for SOL pass rates in Reading and Mathematics. Finding 4 revealed seven of the eight middle schools (88%) with the highest disproportionality rates for Black students had reading SOL pass rates below the state benchmark. Finding 5 indicates that when reviewing the number of schools with disproportionate representation for any of the subgroups, disproportional representation of Hispanic teachers to students was the most frequently identified. The sixth finding was When reviewing the number of schools with disproportionate representation for any of the subgroups, disproportional representation of Black teachers to students was the second most frequently identified. Finally, finding seven displays Hispanic students in all eight schools with the highest disproportionality rates of Hispanic teachers to Hispanic students fell below the state benchmarks in SOL pass rates. / Doctor of Education / For the first time in decades, the percentage of minority students in public education has exceeded the percentage of White students in the United States public schools. The increase in the number of minority students in public schools changes the demographic makeup of schools across the country. While research has cited an increase in minority teachers in public schools, there has also been research to show the disparity between student and teacher demographics. Specifically, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, there is a greater disparity between teacher and student ethnic representation than its regional counterparts. The demographic gap between teachers and students in public schools has been connected to the achievement gap between minority students and White students. It is argued that schools that have a teaching staff whose ethnic demographics match the ethnicities of their student population show positive trends in student academic performance. This argument can only be measured by finding whether a disparity between licensed minority teachers and students exists. This study investigated the status of student academic performance based on the ethnic demographic representation of public middle school teachers and students in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The ethnicities of the teachers and students in Grades 6-8 each in each comprehensive middle school were gathered by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). The Reading and Mathematics Standards of Learning Assessment data were also gathered by the VDOE. This study found that there is an overrepresentation of White teachers and students. The most frequently identified disproportional representation teachers to student was Hispanic, followed by Black.

Washington D.C. is a city of multicultural richness difficult to surpass. The huge diversity of languages, cultures, and people found in the city are the bases of its identity. Countless diplomatic missions, international organizations and agencies are a dramatic proof that Washington D.C. is currently the center of the world, the Rome of modern times. To this extent, each country that holds a diplomatic mission strives to make its representation, its presence to the host country, as good as possible. With this in mind, architecture is provided with a great opportunity to showcase the spirit of each country through the buildings that represent them, their embassies. The desire that sparked the idea of making a thesis about the Embassy of Chile may be traced to the experience of being a foreigner, a Chilean, living in Washington D.C. In the same manner that a person may represent its country, an embassy building gives the opportunity to express and show a lot of what that country is about; it has the potential of becoming a symbol for it. Although this may seem a very straightforward theme, it's actually very broad, and may be regarded in a number of ways. How do we represent Chile? What do we show? What don't we want to show? How do we express it? And even how can we define Chile. These were questions that had to be addressed before even thinking about designing the embassy. In order to this, the concept that had to be adopted had to be capable of handling this selective process. It's a process in which the person doing the representation also takes part in it. In other words, it's a process by which you are presenting yourself. Through research done at this stage of the thesis, the best way to describe the procedure was by making a Self Portrait. By adopting this concept we were given the possibility to create our own image of what Chile was, and to reveal and conceal whatever we thought was appropriate. / Master of Architecture

This essay aims to understand in which degree the Sami people as a minority andtheir language are represented in textbooks aimed towards secondary school andteachers’ thoughts about said representation. The methods used in this study aretextbook analysis and a questionnaire survey. The result of the textbook analysisshowed that the older textbooks gave the Sami people and their language lesserspace than the newer textbook did, and that the contents of the newer books weremore detailed than the older books. The answers to the questionnaire surveyshowed that many teachers found the content regarding the Sami people and theirlanguage in the textbooks they use to be lacking and many of them felt the need touse additional teaching material to cover the subject properly.

Data acquisition systems were developed for three-dimensional representation and analysis of surface topography and surface temperatures in tribological processes. 3-D information about the topography of surfaces was obtained from parallel traverses of the stylus of a Talysurf 4 profilometer. MOVIE.BYU and Tektronix graphics terminals were used to display the models of the surfaces. Surface temperatures generated by friction were measured using a Barnes RM-2A Infrared Radiometric Microscope. The sliding system consisted of a pin (or sphere)-on-disc mechanism. An optically flat, transparent sapphire disc was used as the rotating member. A computerized data acquisition system (consisting of an IBM PC a.nd a Data Translation 2805 I/O system) was interfaced with the IR microscope and its accessories to help scan the region of contact and record data to generate maps of the radiance distribution over the scan-area. MOVIE.BYU and Tektronix graphics terminals were used to display the radiance maps in three dimensions. A method for studying fast thermal transients in the sliding system is suggested and demonstrated. This method uses the unfiltered signal from the IR microscope to detect the transients. Some simple tests were conducted to observe the general performance of the systems mentioned above. The test results along with suggestions for possible areas of improvement are discussed. / Master of Engineering / incomplete_metadata

Contemporary aesthetics includes a project directed at understanding the nature of pictorial representation. Three types of theories enjoy recent favor. One explains pictorial representation by way of resemblance or experienced resemblance between the picture and what it represents. A second employs interpretation: the spectator looks at a picture and interprets conventionally determined symbols found therein to mean what it represents. The third describes pictorial representation as a matter of experience. On this approach, when the spectator looks at a picture she has a visual experience of the thing represented. Key components of representation include the representation bearing artifact and the human activity that produces it. An adequate account of pictorial representation must neglect neither. Theories focusing on resemblance fail to account for the human role in representation so that a picture may represent only what it can resemble. Theories making interpretation of conventional symbols the key fail to account for the role visible properties play in grounding representation. Wollheim's experience based theory, however, unifies the visible properties of the artifact and the intentions of the artist in a single experience, called seeing-in, whereby a spectator sees in a picture what an artist intends to represent. Wollheim fails to specify just how visible properties of the artifact ground seeing-in. His account of seeing-in raises other curiosities as well. These issues can be dealt with if we apply phenomenological concepts developed by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception to our experience of pictures as a method of enriching Wollheim's account of seeing-in. / Master of Arts

Making the decision to live abroad means departing from a known culture and language. I know the culture and language of my home country Germany, and living here makes it easy to learn the culture and language of the United States. But for one who does not have the opportunity to live abroad learning the culture and language of a foreign country is a challenge. Germany is relatively well represented in Washington D.C.: the German embassy and its information center on Foxhall Road, the Goethe-Institut on 7th Street NW, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies on Massachusetts Avenue, and the German Historical Society on New Hampshire Avenue. But as one can see from the list the institutes are spread throughout the city. The Goethe-Institut is the most public institution, and I therefore chose it to be the main user of the planned German Cultural Center. I am seeking to bring all of the named institutions together into one building, with the exception of the embassy itself. Through this effort a center of language and culture will be made, where one can go to learn and experience a foreign country within another country. The institutions themselves will profit from the collaboration with each other, minimizing their financial obligations and at the same time profiting from the collaboration with the other institutes. This thesis project seeks to prove that it is possible to represent a country with its language and culture through a good building. Germany has much more to offer than the typical cliches and the New German Cultural Institute will be the place to experience this other side of the country. / Master of Architecture

The purpose of the present study was to establish evidence for the suggested integration of the theories of connectionism and leadership. Recent theoretical writings in the field of leadership have suggested that the dynamic representations generated by the connectionist perspective is an appropriate approach to understanding how we perceive leaders. Similarly, implicit leadership theory (ILT) explains that our cognitive understandings of leaders are based on a cognitive structure that we use as a means of understanding and categorizing the behaviors of individuals we believe to be leaders. It was predicted that when asked to select a leader from a group of potential leaders, individuals select the leader based on personal belief alignment when the context of the leader selection is personally relevant, or based on cognitive expectations when the context is low in personal relevance. In addition, when experiencing moments of greater personal relevance, individuals will experience a more dynamic cognitive representation of a leader that those experiencing the moment as less personally relevant. Sixty-seven individuals provided usable data from a repeated measures design that asked participants to record their cognitive representations of a leader, participate in a leader selection task, and provide information about their cognitive representations of a leader after the selection task. The results of the study provide support the expectations of the experimenter and the suggestions of the connectionist perspective. / Master of Science

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This dissertation examines how leaders explain the way shifts in leaders responsibilities, shifts in institutional pressures, and minority representation at the Senior Executive Service level influence how they integrate equity and diversity programs in federal agencies. When federal agencies address the issue of minority representation in Senior Executive Service (SES), the degree to which leaders institutionalize diversity and equity programs varies. Leaders at different levels have their own motivation for how they respond to institutional pressures. There have been shifts in responsibilities and pressures over time. Using semi-structured interviews, 18 leaders explain how these shifts influence them. This research, which also includes supporting documents, seeks to contribute to neoinstitutional theory, equity and diversity literature, and representative bureaucracy, extending the perspective of how institutional pressures impact organizations to how pressures influence leaders in federal agencies. / PHD / This dissertation examines how leaders explain the way shifts in leaders’ responsibilities, shifts in institutional pressures, and minority representation at the Senior Executive Service level influence how they integrate equity and diversity programs in federal agencies. When federal agencies address the issue of minority representation in Senior Executive Service (SES), the degree to which leaders institutionalize diversity and equity programs varies. Leaders at different levels have their own motivation for how they respond to institutional pressures. There have been shifts in responsibilities and pressures over time. Using semi-structured interviews, 18 leaders explain how these shifts influence them. This research, which also includes supporting documents, seeks to contribute to neoinstitutional theory, equity and diversity literature, and representative bureaucracy, extending the perspective of how institutional pressures impact organizations to how pressures influence leaders in federal agencies.

By conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis of data from interviews and game content, I examine representations of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary video-game narratives. I use data from interviews to show how they view their representations in this medium and to set categorical criteria for an interpretive content analysis. I analyze a sample of top-selling narrative-driven video games in the United States released from 2016-2019. My content coding incorporates aforementioned interview data as well as theoretical-based and intersectional concepts on video game characters and their narratives. The content analysis includes measures of narrative importance, narrative role, positivity of representation, and demographic categories of characters, though the scale of this study may not allow for a full test of intersectional theory of links between demographics and roles. Interview and content analysis results suggest an overrepresentation of white characters and extreme under-representation of non-white women. / I examine representations of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary video-game narratives. I use data from interviews to show how people view their representations in video games and to set a guide for analyzing the games themselves. I analyze a sample of top-selling narrativedriven video games in the United States released from 2016-2019. My content coding incorporates aforementioned interview data as well as theoretical-based and intersectional concepts on video game characters and their narratives. The content analysis includes measures of narrative importance, narrative role, positivity of representation, and demographic categories of characters, though the scale of this study may not allow for a full test of intersectional theory of links between demographics and roles. Interview and content analysis results suggest an overrepresentation of white characters and extreme under-representation of non-white women.