Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-238).

Thesis (M.S.)--Eastern Illinois University, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-108).

This thesis, a social novel in the tradition of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is all at once an attentive first-person study of a twenty-something man close to his cracking point in his first post-college job, a detailed expose of national fraternities, and the sweeping panoramic view of an entire generation of over-programmed college students searching for direction. Frat Star follows a fragile college graduate named Charles Washington, who takes a position as an "Educational Consultant" with a national fraternity in his first semester after graduation. For sixteen straight weeks, he drives across the country, from college to college and fraternity house to fraternity house, meeting with alumni and students, and living on frat house couches and in seedy off-exit hotels. As he travels, the pressure mounts for Charles to convince his family and friends back home that this is a "Real Job" and that his work actually matters to the business world, but at each new fraternity house he visits, his yearning for the old college atmosphere grows--the beer, the parties, the girls!--threatening to send him into a frightening tailspin. How can he be a professional when the temptations of youth still seem so attractive? And before Charles can sort out what is happening in his own life, he finds himself stuck in a vicious tug-of-war between students, alumni, administrators, and the national fraternity, when he must deal with one particularly abrasive undergraduate fraternity and the aftermath of its disastrous decisions. Spanning thousands of miles, from Florida to California, from Illinois to New Mexico, this thesis takes us inside fraternity houses, into their attics and their basements, behind the scenes of their rituals and ceremonies, inside their parties, inside their heads, giving us a view not only of the power of the national fraternity, but the disconnect between alumnus and student, between Baby Boomer and Generation X and Millennial. Incorporating research as varied as the generational studies of Howe and Strauss, and Alexandra Robbins' psychological study of the "Quarterlife Crisis," Frat Star stretches across the country, stretches across genre, stretches from text to illustration, but is ultimately the human story of a young man's longing for morality, independence, and purpose in a world he simply has not been prepared to understand.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2001. / Title from title page screen, viewed April 11, 2006. Dissertation Committee: James Palmer (chair), Dianne Ashby, Paul Baker, William Tolone. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-137) and abstract. Also available in print.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Background. Traditionally, departmental appointment type (basic science or clinical) and/or degree earned (PhD, MD, or MD-PhD) have served as proxies for how we conceptualize clinical and basic science faculty. However, the landscape in which faculty work has considerably changed and now challenges the meaning of these cohorts. Within this context I introduce a behavior-based role variable that is defined by how faculty spend their time in four academic activities: teaching, research, patient care, and administrative duties. Methods. Two approaches to role were compared to department type and degree earned in terms of their effects on how faculty report their perceptions and experiences of faculty vitality and its related constructs. One approach included the percent of time faculty spent engaged in each of the four academic activities. The second approach included role groups described by a time allocation rubric. This study included faculty from four U.S. medical schools (N = 1,497) and data from the 2011 Indiana University School of Medicine Faculty Vitality Survey. Observed variable path analysis evaluated models that included traditional demographic variables, the role variable, and faculty vitality constructs (e.g., productivity, professional engagement, and career satisfaction). Results. Role group effects on faculty vitality constructs were much stronger than those of percent time variables, suggesting that patterns of how faculty distribute their time are more important than exactly how much time they allocate to single activities. Role group effects were generally similar to, and sometimes stronger than, those of department type and degree earned. Further, the number of activities that faculty participate in is as important a predictor of how faculty experience vitality constructs as their role groups. Conclusions. How faculty spend their time is a valuable and significant addition to vitality models and offers several advantages over traditional cohort variables. Insights into faculty behavior can also show how institutional missions are (or are not) being served. These data can inform hiring practices, development of academic tracks, and faculty development interventions. As institutions continue to unbundle faculty roles and faculty become increasingly differentiated, the role variable can offer a simple way to study faculty, especially across multiple institutions.