The pursuit of underrepresented and underserved graduate students who attend Predominantly White Institutions to pursue disciplines and careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Despite the increase in the number of underrepresented minorities in graduate school, underrepresented and underserved graduate students in STEM disciplines are encountering experiences that directly affect their graduate matriculation. This study took a case study approach to investigate the Virginia Tech George Washington Carver Assistantship Program's impact on supporting underrepresented and underserved graduate students in STEM disciplines and to assess further the extent to which their participation in this support program influences their academic and career success. Given the substantial financial resources allocated to the program and the annual student enrollment, a comprehensive case study needed to be conducted to gain deeper insight into the Carver program and the stakeholders that engaged with the program to enhance future programming and sustainability. It was essential to assess the Carver program's effectiveness in promoting student success and addressing the factors that impact underrepresented and underserved graduate students in STEM fields. Triangulation is used in this study to inform and strengthen the research findings from past program scholars, current scholars, and faculty. The Carver program is not generalizable to other programs, students, and faculty because the experiences are specific to the participants in this study. The findings illustrate that the evolution program's evolution cultivates a culturally engaging culture and climate to foster graduate student success. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study explores how a Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences institutional program, the George Washington Carver Assistantship Program, supports underrepresented and underserved graduate students in STEM disciplines. Despite an increase in the number of underrepresented minorities entering graduate school, these student populations faced challenges that impacted their graduate matriculation. This study utilized a case study approach to examine the impact of the Carver program on students' academic and career success. By taking a deeper look into the experiences of past program scholars, current program scholars, and faculty members, this study aims to gain deeper insight into the program's effectiveness on student success beyond supporting students through funding. While the study findings shed light on how the Carver program creates a supportive environment for graduate students, it is important to emphasize that the Carver program does not apply to all programs, students, and faculty. The experiences are specific to the participants in this study. This study highlighted that the Carver program has successfully supported students toward reaching student success by establishing a culturally engaging campus environment. Recommendations for future work in this study are to utilize a systems thinking approach to examine the program more broadly and investigate the systems in place that allow the program to function and be sustainable.

While disciplinarity still dominates college and university life, enthusiasm for interdisciplinary approaches has increased over the past three decades. Proponents often present interdisciplinarity as an a priori good, but scholars have noted that we have not yet sufficiently evaluated the efficacy of interdisciplinary initiatives. Most assessments of interdisciplinary initiatives have focused on tangible outcomes such as grants, papers, and patents. This is an unfortunate critical gap in the examination of interdisciplinarity, as it is possible that engagement in interdisciplinary activities changes student and faculty thinking in significant ways. This dissertation proposes to address the gap in the examination of interdisciplinarity regarding interdisciplinary learning outcomes by investigating the intellectual impact of interdisciplinary initiatives on students and faculty. Utilizing a manuscript approach for the dissertation experience, this series of qualitative studies is organized around three areas of inquiry related to learning in interdisciplinary contexts: (a) how systematic interdisciplinary training affect doctoral students' epistemic beliefs, that is, how they view the construction of knowledge and the nature of scholarship; (b) what faculty learn from engaging in interdisciplinary research initiatives, and what tools mediate this interdisciplinary learning process; and (c) whether an interdisciplinary training effort promotes the creation of an alternative community of practice for participating students and faculty. The studies were part of a larger mixed methods assessment of the efficacy of the EIGER program. Participants were selected based upon their affiliation with one specific interdisciplinary graduate training initiative, the EIGER program, at Virginia Tech, and came from the hard sciences, engineering, and social sciences. Informed by grounded theory, analysis of the data revealed that both graduate students and faculty achieve interdisciplinary understanding as a result of their interdisciplinary training and research experiences. Furthermore, faculty interdisciplinary learning is mediated by other people and two categories of tools, problem platforms and solution mechanisms, and is achieved by both borrowing and lending of disciplinary expertise. Finally, results suggest that programs like the EIGER may constitute emerging communities of practice that serve as alternatives to traditional disciplinary communities. / Ph. D.

University departments that offer graduate programs require feedback to assess the quality of the education they offer. Feedback on the quality of education is provided in the form of program evaluation. In the general approach to program evaluation, outsiders, i.e., people who are not parts of a program, do the evaluation. This descriptive study starts out with the belief that the best feedback in program evaluation can only come from insiders, i.e., faculty, students, and alumni, who are parts of a particular program. In order to capture the perspectives of insiders on the quality related characteristics of a program, this study evaluated a master&rsquo / s degree program in TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) at an American university in a practical and cost-effective way, using a minimum number of evaluators. All faculty, students, and alumni of the program form the participants in this study. Regular program evaluation studies are conducted to do one type of evaluation only and they do not seek insiders&rsquo / opinions. Unlike such studies, this evaluative research study aims to go beyond that familiar narrow focus and provide a richer description of the program it evaluates. Its research design and the data collection methods employed in it are chosen to achieve that goal. These enable the present study to have a broader scope than those of the regular program evaluation studies as the collected data can be used for more than one type of analysis. The results of data collection show that all parties express positive opinion on the aspects of the program that are directly related to the teaching that takes place in classes. Areas of the program that need improvement are also introduced, and recommendations to overcome them are presented.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / The objective of this thesis is to estimate and explain the effects of graduate education and other factors on promotion to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (O-5) in the US Army. Our focus was primarily on determining whether graduate education provides officers with higher promotion probabilities. Besides graduate education, data that were analyzed include basic demographic traits, the officers' prior enlisted status, and their commissioning source information. The data used in this study were taken from the Active Duty Military Master File for fiscal years 1981 through 2001. This study develops multivariate logit regression and classification tree models to examine and explore the structure of the data sets. Both the regression models and the classification trees yielded positive results for the effect of graduate education on promotion. According to the regression model results, the odds ratio associated with graduate education is between 1.79 and 2.25. Military Academy and ROTC/Scholarship graduates have higher promotion probabilities than those from other sources, and married officers have higher rates than single officers. Additionally, age has a negative effect on promotion; that is, promotion probability decreases with age. Prior enlisted status, number of dependents, gender, race, and DOD primary occupation code do not seem to have statistically significant effects on promotion. / First Lieutenant, Turkish Army

Advanced laboratory techniques for Microbial and Molecular Biology at the graduate level are presented in this thesis. The procedures for the laboratory experiments are set forth in detail. This laboratory is conducted as two parts, each by a different professor. Part 1 covers the experiments conducted by Dr G.A.O. Donovan. These experiments include an introduction, staining procedures, biochemical reactions, mutagenesis experiment, essays,. preparation and analysis of plasmid DNA and various other topics. Part 2 covers the experiments conducted by Dr. Daniel Kunz and includes various topics like media preparation, phenotyping strains, conjugative transfer of plasmids, SDS-PAGE, induction and measurement of enzyme and transposon mutagenesis

Art therapy training programmes around the world feature a unique type of course based on dynamic art-work experience and conducted in the context of a core student group. The course is usually called an 'experiential group course'. There is world-wide practical recognition in the professional art therapy literature of the need for dynamic experiential artwork-based courses in art therapy training. What is new is that Israeli lecturers have extended this 'experiential group course' into what I term 'a topic-led dynamic experiential artwork-based course'. The nature of this course in Israel and how it is deployed, planned and conducted is the subject of this thesis. The data for this dissertation were collected from in-depth and wide-ranging interviews with three groups of persons: (a) 11 of Israel's 40 lecturers lecturing on Master's degree and Masters-level plastic art therapy training programmes. All have taught in the teaching mode under investigation here for many years and I looked on them as partners with me on a journey of discovery into the essential nature of this teaching mode in Israel; (b) 15 working art therapists who graduated from Israeli training programmes 3-15 years before participating in this research and who had been working as art therapists since then. They provided a reflexive analysis of what it was like to take a topic-led dynamic experiential artwork-based course. (c) three directors of art therapy training programmes (one current, two former). provided me the background to the theoretical development of art therapy training in Israel. In addition, as an insider researcher, a senior art therapist who has herself designed and taught topic-led dynamic art-based experiential mode courses for many years, I have used my own experience and example from my practice to illustrate and corroborate the points made by my interviewees. The interviews indicated that over the forty years the dynamic experiential teaching mode has been deployed in Israeli art therapy training its use has been extended to the design and teaching of a wide range of theoretical topics and that this extension occurred at approximately the same time on all Israel's recognised art therapy training programmes. From the point of view of the theory of art therapy training this thesis argues that the professional literature displays a significant gap. Many scholars have stressed the vital contribution made by dynamic experiential artwork-based courses to future practitioners' training but no researcher has yet clarified when and for what purpose certain theoretical courses are taught in this mode, how such courses are designed and conducted, and how they produce on students the effects the students say they do—what so many students term their 'magic'. And yet the lecturers who make use of this teaching mode declare it to be indispensable to the transmission of art therapy's concepts, language and methods to the next generation of art therapists. The object of this doctoral research, then, is to explore and expose the nature of topic-led dynamic experiential artwork-based courses in Israel and their particular contribution to Israeli art therapy training. (The research does not aim to investigate what theory of art therapy these lecturers represent nor what body of psychological and other theory they transmit to their students). Given a constructivist epistemology, a phenomenological research paradigm is deployed to investigate how dynamic experiential artwork-based courses achieve their aims. Interview data are analysed by the inductive Socratic analysis method and by theoretical reading, taking a heuristic approach. The key contribution of this thesis to knowledge about art therapy training methods in Israel, is that it unlocks and conceptualizes the transformation of these topic-led dynamic experiential artwork-based courses which the thesis also demonstrates to be transformative for their students. A central argument is that, to achieve these transformative insights lecturers integrate three content elements — theoretical material, artwork-based experiential workshops, and the emotional materials evoked from the students by and during the workshops. They adapt and adjust their workshops and the art materials offered the students to the needs of the theoretical topic they wish to teach. And they make dynamic use of the responses of individual students and the student group to the art materials and the artworks produced from them for the purpose of conveying/ instilling this theoretical topic. The five elements of lecturer, individual students, core group, art materials/ artworks and the learning space created by the lecturer interact uniquely within a dynamic relationship in response to the course topic in what I term in this thesis a 'pentagonal potential space'. It is the integration of the five constituent elements of this relationship and the interrelationships between them that make the courses 'transformative'. In a nutshell, these courses (a) take students on an inner emotional journey which allows the self to adjust to a dynamic therapeutic perception of the course topic; (b) enable students to investigate the given topic to great depths of experiential and intellectual insight and be changed by this insight; and (c) generate in both individual students and the student group emotional processes relating to the topic, which shape their therapeutic development with respect to that topic. These three effects together generate in the student a meaningful and critical development of their therapeutic self as art therapist, a development which so many of them call 'magical'.

Objective. To determine the perceptions of junior pharmacy faculty members with US doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degrees regarding their exposure to residency, fellowship, and graduate school training options in pharmacy school. Perceptions of exposure to career options and research were also sought. Methods. A mixed-mode survey instrument was developed and sent to assistant professors at US colleges and schools of pharmacy. Results. Usable responses were received from 735 pharmacy faculty members. Faculty members perceived decreased exposure to and awareness of fellowship and graduate education training as compared to residency training. Awareness of and exposure to academic careers and research-related fields was low from a faculty recruitment perspective. Conclusions. Ensuring adequate exposure of pharmacy students to career paths and postgraduate training opportunities could increase the number of PharmD graduates who choose academic careers or other pharmacy careers resulting from postgraduate training.

Objectives. To develop and validate an instrument to assess subjective ratings of the perceived value of various postgraduate training paths followed using expectancy-value as a theoretical framework; and to explore differences in value beliefs across type of postgraduate training pursued and type of pharmacy training completed prior to postgraduate training. Methods. A survey instrument was developed to sample 4 theoretical domains of subjective task value: intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value, and perceived cost. Retrospective self-report methodology was employed to examine respondents’ (N=1,148) subjective task value beliefs specific to their highest level of postgraduate training completed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques were used to evaluate and validate value belief constructs. Results. Intrinsic, attainment, utility, cost, and financial value constructs resulted from exploratory factor analysis. Cross-validation resulted in a 26-item instrument that demonstrated good model fit. Differences in value beliefs were noted across type of postgraduate training pursued and pharmacy training characteristics. Conclusions. The Postgraduate Training Value Instrument demonstrated evidence of reliability and construct validity. The survey instrument can be used to assess value beliefs regarding multiple postgraduate training options in pharmacy and potentially inform targeted recruiting of individuals to those paths best matching their own value beliefs.

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In My Gothic Dissertation, I perform an intertextual analysis of Gothic fiction and modern-day graduate education in the humanities. First, looking particularly at the Female Gothic, I argue that the genre contains overlooked educational themes. I read the student-teacher relationships in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818, 1831), and Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) as critiques of the insidious relationship between knowledge and power. Part literary critic and part literary journalist, I weave through these readings reports of real-life ‘horror stories’ of graduate school, arguing that the power imbalance between Ph.D. advisors and their students can be unexpectedly ‘Gothic’ as well. Drawing on research from the science of learning—developmental psychology, sociology, and pedagogical theory—I advocate for more a student-centered pedagogy in humanities Ph.D. training. Following in the footsteps of A.D. Carson and Nick Sousanis, I have produced My Gothic Dissertation in a nontraditional format—the podcast. Mixing voice, music, and sound, I dramatize scenes from the novels and incorporate analysis through my narration. The real-life “Grad School Gothic” stories are drawn from personal interviews. Much of the science of learning is drawn from personal interviews with researchers as well, though some material comes from recorded presentations that have been posted to public, online venues such as YouTube. The creative/journalistic style of reporting is heavily influenced by programs such as This American Life, Invisibilia, and Serial, with the dual aims of engaging a broad audience and expanding our modes of scholarly communication beyond the page.