Higher education is facing national calls for increased graduation and retention rates (Good, Halpin, & Halpin, 2000; Obama, 2009). In an effort to answer these calls, administrators are using peer mentoring programs to provide social, personal, and academic support to first-year students (Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Jacobi, 1991). This study drew on the disciplines of business, medicine, and higher education to demonstrate the prevalence of mentoring (Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Buddeberg-Fischer & Herta, 2006; Scandura, 1992). Focusing on the area of higher education, the existing literature supports the positive effects of peer mentoring for mentees, but there is a dearth of information regarding the lived experiences of undergraduate peer mentors. As institutions continue to seek ways to support students from underrepresented populations through the use of peer mentor programs, it is critical for administrators to clearly understand both sides of the mentoring relationship in order to use it as an effective educational tool. Moreover, peer mentor programs also utilize the unique influence peers possess in order to create supportive environments for underrepresented students. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the lived experiences of undergraduate peer mentors who served underrepresented students at a predominantly white institution. Utilizing a phenomenological approach, this study adapted the psychosocial and vocational functions of mentoring in relation to the development of the mentor in order to understand how peer mentors experienced their role, interactions with mentees, and feelings of connectedness to the institution (Kram & Isabella, 1985). Additionally, Schlossberg's transition theory, specifically the coping resources of the 4S's (situation, self, support, and strategies) were utilized to understand how peer mentors experienced their transition from mentee to mentor (Goodman, Schlossberg, & Anderson, 2006, Seidman, 2006). / text

The Big City, Big Country Road Show (BC2BC) is a 2.5-year project designed to recruit non-traditional populations, urban and minorities, into post-secondary agricultural science degree programs. Through experiential learning, BC2BC introduces students to various agricultural communications skill sets in an effort to broaden students’ views of opportunities in agriculture. This study attempted to measure Texas urban high school students’ perceptions of agriculture as a subject, a college major, and a career, before and after participation in the BC2BC program in summer of 2007. The study also looked at students’ perceptions of careers attainable with an agricultural degree and students’ general agricultural knowledge levels, self-reported and tested. Pre–and post–test mean comparisons revealed positive increases in student perceptions of agriculture and an increase in self-reported agricultural knowledge levels after workshop participation. The results of this study have implications for year two BC2BC workshops and may serve as a potential model for recruitment programs of underrepresented populations into colleges of agriculture.

This case study examined ways elementary school students from diverse populations (minorities and children from low socioeconomic status environments) were included in a talent development program, and determined if that inclusion proved to be beneficial for gifted identification. With intentional regard for the idea of talent development, this study sought to uncover the nuts and bolts of one district’s effort to create a program for young elementary school students (K-3). This investigation used interviews, a focus group, document reviews, and standardized achievement measures to study how the talent development program for underrepresented students was created and implemented. A synthesis of data showed that the program resulted in the gifted identification of fourteen out of twenty-eight students by third grade from the program. The results of the study have important implications for educators desiring researched based strategies for increasing student diversity in their elementary gifted programming. This study suggests that an action decision has to be made by policy makers about those underrepresented in the gifted process or the inequities that have beleaguered the gifted field since the beginning will ensue. Lessons learned from the program are shared to inform practice. A commitment to developing talent in early elementary school students from diverse low socioeconomic backgrounds is a viable option and should be pursued and encouraged.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the use of strategic planning for diversity and inclusion in AAMC-member U.S. medical schools and its relation to underrepresented minority (URM) faculty. METHODS: We examined websites of 118 institutions for strategic plans to improve faculty diversity. Race/ethnicity data from the AAMC Faculty Roster were used to stratify schools into higher or lower/no increase in URM faculty (1998 to 2015). We searched for an association between these plans and change in URM faculty. We conducted qualitative sub-analyses of the most recent plans of institutions that expressed goals for faculty diversity. Analyses involved a modified-grounded theory approach, using a priori codes informed by an AAMC guide and a data-driven, constant comparison method. Plans were stratified into two groups by higher or lower URM faculty in 2015. Larger themes based on both a priori and emergent codes were identified. Sub-analyses for associations between AAMC Guide Adherence and URM faculty were conducted. RESULTS: Most institutions (72%) had plans for faculty diversity. There was no association between URM faculty change and a goal for faculty diversity (p=0.43) or plan duration (p=0.64). Qualitatively, four themes were accordant with effective strategic planning principles. Four emergent themes in both high and low URM groups reflected novel issues, two occurred in the low URM group, and one in the high URM group. Quantitative sub-analyses found no association between Guide Adherence and URM status (p= 0.86). CONCLUSION: Despite general adherence to best practices, strategic plans for diversity and inclusion are not associated with URM faculty presence or change. / 2019-06-09T00:00:00Z

abstract: Concert bands as we know them today started in the nineteenth century. The repertoire at that time consisted primarily of orchestral transcriptions penned almost exclusively by people who identified as white male. In the twentieth century, even as the creation of original works for concert band became common place, the rate of compositions written by someone other than a white male was minimal. Composers from other communities were seldom played or introduced into the canon. Today, the instances of concerts including only white male composers are increasingly rare. Diverse and innovative programming have become much more the norm and the opportunities for composers from underrepresented communities have never been greater. This project describes the commissioning and recording process of six new compositions for concert band from composers of traditionally underrepresented communities and backgrounds. And since several of the pieces are playable by public school bands, it also includes a pedagogically-based performance guide for each work. / Dissertation/Thesis / Bahay Kubo for Wind Ensemble by Francisco Javier de Alba / !? (interrobang) by Janet Song Kim / Shearwater for Wind Ensemble by Emily McPherson / Reflections for Concert Band by Cait Nishimura / Allied with Pride for Concert Band by Cody Ray / Incendio for Concert Band by Kristian Rodriguez / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2020

Diversity in the judiciary is essential to ensure impartiality, public confidence, and the perception that all members of society are represented on the bench. Minorities and women are significantly underrepresented as judges in Florida in proportion to their numbers in the general population. Because we live in an increasingly global world, diversity is best described when people of different races, colors, ethnicity and genders work to develop a mutual respect for each other. It was important to use diversity in this research because it required recognition, understanding, and acceptance of the special contribution that each member of a group can make. The documentation review method was used to measure the data collected in this research. The advantages for using this method were first, to obtain comprehensive and historical information that already exists and secondly, to obtain data which demonstrates few biases about the information. I used correlation as a non-experimental, description method because the variables are not directly manipulated, as they would be if used in an experimental method. This method of research is really more of a mathematical technique for summarizing data. This study was designed to determine the degree and direction of relationship between two or more variables or measures of behavior. Diversity in 2004 judicial appointments is a high priority in Florida's present administration. Their goal is to have a judicial system composed of judges who reflect the people they serve. Since judges have so much influence over the lives of people of the state, it is important that all Floridians perceive the judiciary legitimate. Having a diverse judiciary serves the goal. The Bush/Jennings team appointed; 1) the first African American woman, Judge Peggy Quince to the Florida Supreme Court (with the agreement of Governor Lawton Chiles); 2) minorities to 53 judicial positions including the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero to the Supreme Court; 3) 26 African American, 26 Hispanics, 1 other); 4) women to 66 judicial position; and, 5) the first Haitian-American judge, Judge Fred Seraphin to the Miami Dade County Court. The judicial system has an obligation to provide equal opportunity to the extent that females, minorities, and people of color have the temperament, the legal educational background, the skills, and the abilities necessary to sit on Florida's bench. The legal profession also has an obligation to encourage more minorities and women to consider a career in law. The governor's most recent selections indicate that he is serious about improving diversity on the Florida bench.

The purpose of the current study was to determine if participation in a TRIO program at the community college would lead to academic success for transfer students at the 4-year university. Specifically, the researcher collected data for students who participated in a TRIO program at a community college from 2010-2020 to see if they had higher rates of graduation, higher rates of enrollment and completion, and higher GPAs as compared to similar students who were not involved in TRIO at a community college. The independent variables were TRIO participation, gender, first-generation status, Pell status, transfer GPA, and transfer credit hours earned. A total of 2193 transfer students from two community colleges in the southeastern region of the United States were included in this study. There were 77 transfer students who were involved in a TRIO program at a community college and 2116 transfer students who were not involved in a TRIO program. There were 8 students who were involved in a TRIO program at both institutions. A binary logistic regression was run to determine how TRIO participation affected graduation, enrollment and completion, and GPA for transfer students at the 4-year university. Transfer TRIO participation, gender, and Pell status were not significant predictors of graduation. First-generation status, although research has shown that continuing-generation students graduate at higher rates than first-generation students, was significant in terms of graduation for transfer students. Transfer GPA, and transfer credit hours earned were also found to be significant predictors of graduation for transfer students at the 4-year university. Transfer TRIO participation and Pell status were not significant predictors of enrollment and completion. Gender, in terms of females when compared to males, was a significant factor for whether a student was still enrolled or completed their degree. First-generation status, transfer GPA, and transfer credit hours earned were also significant predictors of enrollment and completion. Transfer TRIO participation, gender, Pell status, and first-generation status were found to be significant for GPA.

This thesis explores stakeholder engagement in complex networked governance and adaptive management structures. It analyzes the adaptive capacity, multi-level learning, and stakeholder engagement and inclusion processes organizations engaged in transboundary environmental planning employ for effective governance. Over the last few decades, networked governance and adaptive management have become increasingly popular within natural resource management, while public demand for and expectations of stakeholder engagement within government funded programs has grown. There is a need to better understand networked governance arrangements' structures and strategies for local stakeholder engagement, and how these structures and strategies support inclusive determination and implementation of regional planning and funding priorities. Research for this project involved a qualitative study of local stakeholder engagement within the Chesapeake Bay Program using document analysis and semi-structured interviews of Bay Program staff, advisory committee members, and partners. This paper finds that inclusive stakeholder engagement, practiced in both episodic and institutionalized forms, is critical to the social learning and change required for successful natural resource management within regional partnerships. Networked governance arrangements can strategically employ engagement practices that create spaces for network and social learning and increase diversity through inclusion. Informal subnetworks play a key role in developing new engagement strategies (e.g., trusted sources) and preparing organizations for change (e.g., alternative decision-making methods). This research makes the following recommendations for stakeholder engagement: prioritize DEIJ in engagement design; identify engagement goals, values, and roles; strengthen networks to support diversity in participation and inclusion; create mechanisms to operationalize engagement learning; and regularly evaluate engagement practices. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning / This thesis explores stakeholder engagement in complex networked governance and adaptive management structures. It analyzes the adaptive capacity, multi-level learning, and stakeholder engagement and inclusion processes organizations engaged in transboundary environmental planning employ for effective governance. Over the last few decades, networked governance and adaptive management have become increasingly popular within natural resource management, while public demand for and expectations of stakeholder engagement within government funded programs has grown. There is a need to better understand networked governance arrangements' structures and strategies for local stakeholder engagement, and how these structures and strategies support inclusive determination and implementation of regional planning and funding priorities. Research for this project involved a qualitative study of local stakeholder engagement within the Chesapeake Bay Program using document analysis and semi-structured interviews of Bay Program staff, advisory committee members, and partners. This paper finds that inclusive stakeholder engagement, practiced in both episodic and institutionalized forms, is critical to the social learning and change required for successful natural resource management within regional partnerships. Networked governance arrangements can strategically employ engagement practices that create spaces for network and social learning and increase diversity through inclusion. Informal subnetworks play a key role in developing new engagement strategies (e.g., trusted sources) and preparing organizations for change (e.g., alternative decision-making methods). This research makes the following recommendations for stakeholder engagement: prioritize DEIJ in engagement design; identify engagement goals, values, and roles; strengthen networks to support diversity in participation and inclusion; create mechanisms to operationalize engagement learning; and regularly evaluate engagement practices.

It is projected that the majority population will become the minority population by 2050. In order to serve the needs of an ethnically diverse U.S. population, corporate agribusinesses are encouraged to employ an ethnically diverse workforce. The purpose of this research was to understand how attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control in the workplace affects the intent of underrepresented groups to remain in working for their current corporate agribusiness. In current agriculture research, there are very few studies that focus on the experiences of underrepresented groups in corporate agribusinesses. There is also very little research and public information that provides the number of underrepresented students who are recruited and retained in corporate agribusinesses from year to year. For this reason the author sought to explore the experiences of underrepresented groups who work for agricultural organizations and gain an understanding of factors that impact their intentions to maintain a career in the field. Using a phenomenological qualitative research study design, individual interviews were conducted with underrepresented employees from various corporate agribusinesses from across the United States. A review of the findings indicate that underrepresented groups who work for corporate agribusinesses are satisfied with their jobs in terms of compensation, work/life balance, and the opportunities for advancement. Yet, they are sometimes faced with micro-aggressions, at times feel they are treated differently because of their race, and often work in cultural climates that lack inclusion and/or cultural intelligence. As a result the majority of the participants who participated in the study felt that they would remain with their corporate agribusiness employer until they found a new company to work for, started their own business, or a better opportunity presented itself. The findings from this study also show that anyone seeking employment in corporate agribusinesses need to have effective communication skills, cultural and emotional intelligence, agricultural competency, and a true passion for their field of agriculture in order to be successful in the industry. Other findings show that underrepresented groups and their White counterparts need to be educated on the contributions that underrepresented groups have made to the agricultural field in efforts to change the negative perceptions that underrepresented groups have about agriculture. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

Emotion socialization is defined as how socializers teach children about emotions, and one way socializers do this is through reminiscing about past emotional events. In the current study, I build on prior research on maternal emotion socialization by examining grandmothers' role in socializing children's emotions, given the prominence of grandparents' involvement in caregiving tasks for minority and underrepresented families. I also incorporate indirectness, a concept that is well-established in linguistic research. Rather than focusing on what family members say during emotion-related reminiscing, indirectness assesses how family members communicate reminiscing content. Participants for Study 1 – the Family Interaction Study – were 18 grandmother-mother-child triads (5 Latinx and 13 Appalachian) with children in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade. Families discussed two past, shared emotional events together, one positive event and one negative, in both triadic and dyadic interactions. Grandmothers', mothers', and children's speech was coded for use of emotion labels and explanations, using an established coding scheme in the emotion socialization literature, as well as for indirectness, using a coding scheme created in my previous work. Grandmothers and mothers completed questionnaires about children's social outcomes (emotion regulation and social competence), and children self-reported on their own social behavior. Grandmothers and mothers also completed questionnaires about their beliefs about children's emotions, as well as their experiences related to being underrepresented. Finally, grandmothers and mothers responded to an open-ended prompt about their race, ethnicity, and culture in relation to emotion and family values. Descriptive analyses for the Family Interaction Study were conducted to examine similarities and differences between grandmothers' and mothers' speech during familial conversations. Descriptive results indicate that grandmothers and mothers were involved during reminiscing conversations to a similar extent. Given the small sample size for this study, I was not able to conduct the planned within- and across-group tests for associations between grandmothers' and mothers' experiences and beliefs, their emotion-related discourse, and children's social outcomes. Grandmothers' and mothers' responses to the open-ended prompt were analyzed with a thematic analysis. Qualitative results identified themes present in existing literature, such as those regarding emotion expression, emotion regulation, and teaching of emotion, as well as themes not yet identified in the literature, such as the role of religion in the socialization of children's emotions. Participants for Study 2 – the Online Grandmothers Study – were 150 grandmothers (52 African American, 51 Latinx, and 50 Appalachian) with grandchildren in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade. Grandmothers completed the same questionnaires as the participants in the Family Interaction Study about grandchildren's social outcomes, as well as their beliefs about children's emotions, and their experiences related to being underrepresented. Quantitative analyses for this study were conducted to investigate associations between grandmothers' social position, beliefs about emotion, and grandchildren's social outcomes. Results for the Online Grandmothers Study indicate links between grandmothers' value of positive emotion and children's lower lability/negativity, lower internalizing behaviors, and lower externalizing behaviors, particularly for African American families. Further, for Appalachian families, results indicate a link between grandmothers' belief in parental guidance of children's emotions and children's lower externalizing behaviors. Thus, results suggest that grandmothers play a unique role in children's socio-emotional development, one that is both similar and different to the mother's. This role may pertinent for development in middle childhood for a few reasons, including grandmothers' influence on children's developing sense of self, promoting children's positive coping as they transition into adolescence, as well as providing salient experiences regarding race/ethnicity that may serve as a basis for racial-ethnic identity (REI) development. Overall, findings highlight the importance of considering intergenerational shared caregiving in minority families and the roles of grandmothers as socializing agents. / Doctor of Philosophy / Grandmothers are important for family functioning and influence how children develop social skills. In the current studies, I examined grandmothers' emotion talk, beliefs about emotions, and experiences as underrepresented, as well as links to children's social skills. Participants for Study 1 – the Family Interaction Study – were 18 grandmother-mother-child triads (5 Latinx and 13 Appalachian) with children in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade. Families discussed past events together and speech was coded for emotion talk. Grandmothers and mothers completed questionnaires about their beliefs about children's emotions, children's social outcomes, as well as their experiences as being underrepresented. Finally, grandmothers and mothers responded to an open-ended prompt about their race, ethnicity, and culture in relation to emotion and family values. Descriptive results indicate that grandmothers were involved during reminiscing conversations to a similar extent as mothers. Themes were identified in grandmothers' and mothers' conversations about the open-ended prompt. Notably, grandmothers and mothers identified religion as an important influence on emotion in their families. Participants for Study 2 – the Online Grandmothers Study – were 150 grandmothers (52 African American, 51 Latinx, and 50 Appalachian) with grandchildren in the 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade. Grandmothers completed the same questionnaires as in Study 1. Results for the Online Grandmothers Study indicate links between grandmothers' value of positive emotion and better social skills, particularly for African American families. Further, for Appalachian families, results indicate a link between grandmothers' belief in parental guidance of children's emotions and children's better social skills. Findings illustrate the importance of grandmothers in underrepresented families and as influences on children's social skills.