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

This thesis aims to provide a subjectivist account of women and people of colour's leadership experiences within a specific social context, in order to offer a contribution to the largely acontextual leadership literature. A multi-level, intersectional analytical framework was used to explore the experiences of people who are marginalised in their attempt to access and practice leadership. The study used the South African private sector as a social context with unique and interesting gender and race dynamics to conduct this case study. The experiences of significantly underrepresented groups in organisational leadership were explored by means of 60 in-depth, face-to-face interviews with women and people of colour in strategic leadership positions, aspiring leaders in leadership development programmes and key informants, all from the South African private sector. Interviewees were grouped according to their intersectional identities and responses were analysed considering individual-level challenges and enablers, organisational-level challenges and enablers and also by considering responses within the socio-historic and socio-legal context. Key findings include evidence of the problematic nature of theorising leadership as an element of the leader; support for theoretical frameworks of occupational segregation and embodied social identities; evidence of the internalisation and rationalisation of institutionalised discrimination; evidence of social identities being mutually constituting, reinforcing and naturalising; evidence of the conflation of gender, race and merit in the equality debate; as well as a strong aversion among research participants towards positive discrimnination initiatives. The findings also suggest several areas of possible further research. This study addressed the limitations of leadership research, which is characterised by leader-centricism, romanticism, objectivism, gendered and racialised norms and additive theorising. Findings make theoretical and policy contributions by problematising merit, exposing leadership in the South African private sector organisations as a site of intersectional identity salience, disrupting key assumptions underpinning leader-follower relations, highlighting the potential for leveraging adversity and also by demonstrating the importance of leadership language in either disrupting or reinforcing inequality.

Students' retention in STEM-related careers is of great concern for educators and researchers, especially the retention of underrepresented groups such as females, Hispanics, and Blacks in these careers. Therefore it is important to study factors that could potentially influence students' decision to stay in STEM. The work described in this dissertation involved three research studies where assessments have been used in college chemistry courses to assess students' prior content knowledge, chemistry-self-efficacy, and attitude toward science. These three factors have been suggested to have an influence on students' performance in a course and could eventually be a retention factor. The first research study involved the development and use of an instrument to measure biochemistry prior knowledge of foundational concepts from chemistry and biology that are considered important for biochemistry learning. This instrument was developed with a parallel structure where three items were used to measure a concept and common incorrect ideas were used as distractors. The specific structure of this instrument allows the identification of common incorrect ideas that students have when entering biochemistry and that can hinder students' learning of biochemistry concepts. This instrument was given as pre/posttest to students enrolled in introductory biochemistry courses. The findings indicated that some incorrect ideas are persistent even after instruction, as is the case for bond energy and the structure of the alpha helix concepts. This study highlights the importance of measuring prior conceptual knowledge; so that instructors can plan interventions to help students overcome their incorrect ideas. For the second research study, students' chemistry self-efficacy was measured five times during a semester of preparatory college chemistry. Chemistry self-efficacy beliefs have been linked to students' achievement, and students with stronger self-efficacy are more likely to try challenging tasks and persist in them, which will help them to stay in STEM. Using multilevel modeling analysis to examine potential differences in students' self-efficacy beliefs by sex and race/ethnicity, it was found that there were some differences in the trends by race/ethnicity. In particular, we found that for Hispanic and Black males the trends were negative when compared with White males. This study highlights the importance of measuring self-efficacy at different time points in the semester and for instructors to be aware of potential differences in their students' confidence when working on a chemistry task. The third research study involves the use of the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) in an introductory chemistry course. A shortened version of the instrument that includes three scales, normality of scientists, attitude toward inquiry, and career interest in science was used. The first purpose of this study was to gather validity evidence for the internal structure of the instrument with college chemistry students. Using measurement invariance analysis by sex and race/ethnicity, it was found that the internal structure holds by sex, but it did not hold for Blacks in our sample. Further analysis revealed problems with the normality scales for Blacks. The second purpose was to examine the relationship between the scales of TOSRA, achievement in chemistry, and math prior knowledge. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) it was found that two of the TOSRA scales, attitude toward inquiry and career interest in science, have a small but significant influence on students' achievement in chemistry. This study highlights the importance of examining if the scores apply similarly for different group of students in a population, since the scores on these assessments could be used to make decisions that will affect student. The research studies presented in this work are a step forward with our intention to understand better the factors that can influence students' decisions to stay or leave STEM-related careers. Each study has provided psychometric evidence for the use of three different assessments in college chemistry courses. Instructors can use these assessments in large and small lecture classrooms. Information obtained from these assessments can then be used to make target interventions to help students learn and/or be more confident on a given task. Also, it highlights the importance to look at different group of students, such as the underrepresented groups, since response trends may be different. Being aware of students' diverse needs will help us to understand some of the challenges that student face in the chemistry classroom. Understanding some of these challenges will help instructors be more prepared for teaching.

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INTRODUCTION: Students from low-income backgrounds (LIB) have been underrepresented in Canadian medical schools for over fifty years. Despite our awareness of this problem, little is known about the experiences of aspiring physicians from LIB in Canada who are working towards medical school admission. As a result, we do not have insight into the barriers and facilitators that may be used to increase the representation of students from LIB in Canadian medical schools. METHODS: This thesis describes a qualitative description interview study aimed at understanding the experiences of aspiring physicians from LIB as they attempt to gain entry to medical school. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 participants at different stages of their undergraduate, master’s, and non-medical professional education. RESULTS: We used the theories of intersectionality and identity capital as a theoretical framework for identifying barriers and facilitators to a career in medicine. Participants experienced social, identity-related, economic, structural, and informational barriers to a career in medicine. Intrinsic facilitators included motivation, self-confidence, attitude, strategy, information seeking and sorting, and financial literacy and increasing income. Extrinsic facilitators were social, informational, financial, and institutional in nature. CONCLUSION: This study fills existing gaps in the literature by identifying the pre-admissions barriers and facilitators encountered by aspiring physicians from LIB. This information will be useful to medical schools, organizations, and researchers interested in supporting underrepresented groups. Given that medical students from LIB are more likely to serve underserved populations, this is relevant to Canadian medical schools’ social accountability commitment to producing physicians that meet the health needs of marginalized and vulnerable patients. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / GOALS: This thesis describes an interview study aimed at understanding the experiences of aspiring physicians from low-income backgrounds (LIB) as they attempt to gain entry to medical school. Interviews were conducted with 15 participants at different stages of their undergraduate, master’s, and non-medical professional education. CONTRIBUTIONS: This study fills existing gaps in the literature by identifying the pre-admissions barriers and facilitators encountered by aspiring physicians from LIB. Participants experienced social, identity-related, economic, structural, and informational barriers to a career in medicine. Intrinsic facilitators included motivation, self-confidence, attitude, strategy, information seeking and sorting, and financial literacy and increasing income. Extrinsic facilitators were social, informational, financial, and institutional. This information will be useful to medical schools, supportive organizations and researchers interested in supporting underrepresented groups.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-79).