Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2006. / Thesis directed by Maura A. Ryan for the Department of Theology. "September 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-245).

Author's dissertation (Ph.D.)--University of Amsterdam, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-284). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Catholic University of America, 1939. / Bibliography: p. 95-103.

<p> Everything we touch, sit on, use and lean against is designed. Design disciplines (e.g. architecture, landscape architecture, city/urban planning, interior design and industrial design) play an extremely significant role in shaping the man-made environment we live in. They help to populate it with cars, furniture, buildings, clothes, cell phones, and countless other artifacts and also play a significant role in producing innovations that drive successful companies in a challenging and fiercely competitive global market. Perhaps more importantly, the consumption and use of designed goods, spaces, and services produce, reproduce, and mediate our very identities and culture. </p><p> Despite their cultural, economic, and political significance, design professions are understudied in sociology. In sociology, the few available case studies of design professions emphasize professional practice and tend not to study the higher education system, where professional designers are produced. Moreover, there are no studies in sociology that examine academic design disciplines comparatively. </p><p> This dissertation undertakes a quantitative, macro-comparative study of the institutionalization and growth of design disciplines in the US during the past 26 years, 1984-2010, using a unique longitudinal dataset. Through analysis of the intra- and extra-institutional resources and conditions that promote the growth of design disciplines and comparing their growth to those of art and engineering, this study provides valuable insights to policymakers and administrators who seek to make meaningful interventions within the academy and will advance sociological understanding of the changing organization of academic knowledge.</p>

<p>The United States is an increasingly diverse society. The recent Supreme Court hearings on Affirmative Action have reiterated the need to study the impacts of changing demographics on organizations. Race-based policymaking fundamentally rests on a "diversity is good for the organization" ideology, yet there is relatively little research that directly measures the institutional effects of racial/ethnic diversity. Diversity within organizations (also known as structural diversity or organizational heterogeneity) is overdue for a broader range of scholarly attention. Building on an organizational demography framework, this study investigates whether or not there are relationships between diversity and outcomes at higher education institutions (HEIs) nationwide. It adopts a new theoretical approach, the &ldquo;Critical Mass in Context&rdquo; perspective, which includes not only demographic factors, but culturally-related, or <i>contextual</i> factors in estimating the effects of diversity on two organizational outcomes: student retention and the diversity of degree completers. The results of these comparative tests are mixed, and show that the effects of demographic diversity may be <i>either</i> positive or negative (or have no effect), and that these results are highly <i> context dependent</i>. In other words, diversity did not have wholly negative nor positive effects on the outcomes included in this study, and the type of institution played a role in determining these how these results varied. For instance, although student gender and racial/ethnic diversity had negative effects in models that measured student retention rates, faculty gender contributed positively to predicting this outcome. Contextual factors, such as the MSDI 4 (or very high diversity elements in an HEI&rsquo;s mission statement) and an HEI&rsquo;s urban index (or suburban locale) contributed positively. In models that used the racial/ethnic diversity of degree completers as the tested outcome, the race/ethnicity of <i>overall students</i> was the most important (indeed, nearly the only) predictor. So, not only do the research results depend on what <i>types</i> of organizational outcomes are considered, but also in what <i>context</i> and <i> how</i> they are measured. This study therefore adds new levels of understanding to what effects diversity may have on institutions and the importance that culturally related factors may have on these effects. </p>

<p> This study examined the use of technology-based training and development within expatriate populations after the 2008 global recession. A quantitative survey design was used to collect data. The study results were shared with a live, face-to-face group forum of training and development practitioners. A total of 46 participants answered the survey. Findings related to participant demographic data as well as their perceptions regarding the impacts of the 2008 recession, training timing and topics, and training methods were reported. The study findings indicated that the 2008 global recession did not have a strong impact on these participants. They also tended to receive training after they arrived onsite. Technology-based training was not viewed as highly effective by expatriates. Rather, it is traditional instructor-led classroom training that best prepared American expatriates for their work assignment abroad, second to blended learning of classroom and technology training.</p>

<p>This study explored biographicity as the process through which individuals repeatedly shape and reshape their lives to meet their own needs and desires in response to conditions of life in late modernity, a time of rapid social and economic change. The study highlighted the particular issues faced by marginalized populations, and especially urban young adults, who were the focus of the study. </p><p> Using biographical research methodology, the study sought to understand the complex interplay between individuals and the constraints and/or supports of social structures and contexts. Seventeen adults, aged 23 to 32, participated. The participants attended high-poverty urban schools where historically fewer than 50% of students receive a high school diploma. Each was the first in the family to attend college. Participants told their life stories in extended, unstructured interviews, producing their own <i>narrated life</i>. Interpretation of this interview <i>data</i> was an iterative, abductive process that explored the life stories through structural descriptions of the narratives, process structures of the life course, and thematic horizons that emerged from the life stories as told. </p><p> Three thematic horizons (expectations/imagining a different future, suffering, and belonging) formed the foundation for the exploration of patterns of meaning that concluded that certain consistent elements were essential to participants&rsquo; exercise of biographicity. These elements led to a configuration that allows scholars and practitioners to understand biographicity as a complex, organic process that cannot be reduced to simple characteristics or a linear set of variables. The study concluded that learning and biographicity are inseparably linked, forming an <i>enactive ecology of learning</i> in which individuals engage in processes that allow them to interact with their environment across the learning domains of cognition, emotion, and social interaction as well as participatory sensemaking and autonomy/heteronomy. In addition, experiences of recognition are essential to the exercise of biographicity. Biographicity was found to be a continual process of learning from one&rsquo;s life experiences and enacting a desired future as a form of lifelong learning. Finally, these particular participants provided insights that contribute to recommendations for theory, research, and practice that reflect their own experiences of biographicity. </p>

<p> Human beings organize and navigate their experience of everyday life and their interactions with others through the creation, presentation, and representation of myths. This dissertation expands the definition of myth beyond stories of gods and humans to include social narratives used by groups and individuals to contextualize and define everyday situations. As such, they perform vital social functions. These include providing common narratives that have the power to bind otherwise independent beings into more or less coherent collectives capable of joint actions, as well as reducing feelings of individual isolation and existential anxiety by narratively making sense out of the violence, unpredictability, and discontinuity that accompany life. Myths are constructed narratives that masquerade as common sense; they appear to have a supernatural or supra-human basis or origin. Their created nature is collectively, and often unconsciously, denied by those who adhere to them. </p><p> This dissertation outlines an approach to mythology grounded in sociological principles as an alternative to the more familiar approaches of the humanities, religious studies, or psychology. Synthesizing principles drawn from the sociological schools of social constructionism and symbolic interactionism, this dissertation proposes that humans, as users of complex, symbolic language, necessarily experience the world through a matrix of narratives both written and unwritten. But this approach is not simply social constructionism or symbolic interactionism with a mythological gloss. Instead, it serves as a bridge between the macro view of social constructionism and the micro view of symbolic interactionism. </p><p> This dissertation treats myths not as currencies of belief, but rather as currencies of behavior and consequence. For illustration, three examples from the modern world are presented: 1) How same-sex inclusion challenges traditionalist myths of marriage; 2) How myths of divine providence and expansionism have influenced American domestic and foreign policy from the nation's inception to the present; and 3) The role that the propagandizing of engrained cultural myths and stereotypes played during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Ethical and moral implications of human-constructed myths are also considered.</p>

<p> Educators have recommended the integration of engineering and the liberal arts as a promising educational model to prepare young engineers for global economic, environmental, sociotechnical, and ethical challenges. Drawing upon philosophy of technology, engineering studies, and educational psychology, this dissertation examines diverse visions and strategies for integrating engineering and liberal education and explores their impacts on students' intellectual and moral development. Based on archival research, interviews, and participant observation, the dissertation presents in-depth case studies of three educational initiatives that seek to blend engineering with the humanities, social sciences, and arts: Harvey Mudd College, the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, and the Programs in Design and Innovation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The research finds that learning engineering in a liberal arts context increases students' sense of "owning" their education and contributes to their communication, teamwork, and other non-technical professional skills. In addition, opportunities for extensive liberal arts learning in the three cases encourage some students to pursue alternative, less technocentric approaches to engineering. Nevertheless, the case studies suggest that the epistemological differences between the engineering and liberal arts instructors help maintain a technical/social dualism among most students. Furthermore, the dissertation argues a "hidden curriculum," which reinforces the dominant ideology in the engineering profession, persists in the integrated programs and prevents the students from reflecting on the broad social context of engineering and critically examining the assumptions upheld in the engineering profession. </p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed Aug. 8, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-236).