This dissertation addresses a simple puzzle: why do governments use indiscriminate violence against civilians? To deter a population from rebelling, a government should make rebellion costlier than the alternatives. Yet indiscriminate violence can make neutrality costlier than rebellion. With the help of mathematical modeling, archival data and micro-comparative evidence from dozens of armed conflicts, I show that indiscriminate violence makes civilians less likely to remain neutral, but not necessarily more likely to support the opponent. There is a threshold level of violence, beyond which it can become safer for civilians to cooperate with the more indiscriminate side. As long as civilians believe that supporting the rebels will be costlier than supporting the government, they will generally support or not actively resist the government -- even if the government is responsible for more civilian deaths overall. The amount of violence needed to meet this threshold depends on the combatants' relative informational endowments. If a combatant can selectively punish her opponents, she can employ a relatively low level of violence. Where she lacks the information for selective punishment, she will use methods more indiscriminate in targeting and more massive in scale. Violence is a substitute for intelligence. / Government

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University-level transdisciplinary initiatives have become prevalent as institutions reorient disciplines around complex problems that are relevant to society. Transdisciplinary research initiatives, like those of interdisciplinarity in the previous decade, are reinforced by federal funding agencies because of their potential to yield technological innovation, and in turn, economic growth. However, the sustained development of transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary curriculum design remains limited due to the multiple competing factors that govern the curriculum. This dissertation research focuses on the implementation of the transdisciplinary initiative as it pertains to interdisciplinary curriculum design. I use public institutional documents to trace the transdisciplinary institutional initiative as it is enacted at different university levels and interviews to understand the initiatives in practice, drawing from administrators, faculty, and staff experiences as they develop interdisciplinary courses. Many university-level initiatives that purport transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary education fall short in their implementation because of academic structures that directly or indirectly inhibit sustainable interdisciplinary curricula. Instead, administrative organizations like the Registrar's Office, Office of Integrated General Education, and Transdisciplinary Initiative Office develop networks and artifacts that connect faculty who have experience bypassing academic structures with faculty who seek out these forms of institutional support. These emergent practices are an adaptation to the university system rather than a proactive measure that facilitates the large-scale structural change claimed by university-level transdisciplinary initiatives. This study contributes to the understanding of potential long-term implications through the examination of interrelated university initiatives as they exist through metrics and incentives provided by the upper administration and experiences of faculty and staff in developing interdisciplinary courses. / Doctor of Philosophy / There is a trend in universities across the United States of implementing initiatives that incentivize departments to focus their research and teaching on complex problems that span different disciplines. These initiatives are attractive to potential university donors due to their perceived societal relevance and reinforced by external funding agencies because of their potential to yield technological innovation. These initiatives can be short-lived, however, as they seek to disrupt the traditional university structure. The purpose of this study is to examine how faculty and staff translate and negotiate the complex university structures and initiatives as they design interdisciplinary courses. I use public institutional documents to trace the transdisciplinary institutional initiative as it is enacted at different university levels and interviews to understand the initiatives in practice, drawing from administrators, faculty, and staff experiences as they develop interdisciplinary courses. The findings show that even for faculty and staff working to create interdisciplinary classes in alignment with these initiatives, they are faced with challenges as the initiatives are limited in their structural reorientation. Instead, mid-tier administrative organizations have developed networks and artifacts that connect those who have experience bypassing academic structures with those who express interest in following their lead. This study includes a discussion of broader socio-political and economic factors that contextualizes layers of faculty and staff experiences, administrator perspectives, and the university's public messaging through the historical legacies of academia, the economy, and society at large.

Primary sources are at the heart of historical research, and in this age of digitized collections, accessing heretofore hard-to-find sources is easier than ever…except, as our panelists discovered, when one is researching institutional responses to racism. In the first part of the session, each of the presenters will share their experiences researching histories of school desegregation in the South. In the last part of the session, we will demonstrate, using one example (i.e., primary sources related to Autherine Lucy Foster, the first African American woman to attend the University of Alabama in 1956), how archival research can be used in the classroom to address current critical social justice issues.

Despite boasting a long tradition of enterprise, the collective narrative of African-American entrepreneurship is one of marginal success, mainly because entrepreneurs experience an array of barriers, from segregation to lack of access to capital, that limits resiliency and increases susceptibility to shocks. Challenging this narrative are cases of entrepreneurial achievement that seem to coincide with periods of social change in the United States. This two-part study explored the effects of social movements on the trajectory of entrepreneurial firms. Study one delved into the business histories of six prominent African-American beauty industry entrepreneurs active during the First Great Migration, Civil Rights, and Black Lives Matter eras. Findings suggest that entrepreneurial opportunities and decision-making evolve as social action cycles progress. Study two scaffolded atop study one’s findings and concentrated on entrepreneurial actions inspired by change movements. Specifically, while movements are emergent, entrepreneurs respond to social and market constraints by introducing a service or product-based remedy. As movements progress, entrepreneurs carve and serve a defined niche while contending with whether to contract market positioning or expand it (bound-radiate paradox). It used the Golden Age of hip hop and its wake as the focal socio-cultural movement, along with its derivative streetwear fashion industry, to probe deeper into the interplay between social movements and entrepreneurial decision-making; it examined bound-radiate decisions and in doing so unlocked a novel value-based framework that motivates entrepreneurs to act, conceptualized via the Value-Based Three-States Model. Results expand the opportunity perception and realization literature and increase the knowledge base on conditions affecting the success of black-owned businesses. Study findings could be the foundation for a research-informed decision-making matrix that employs knowledge of patterns and trends to predict and respond to uncertainty and competition. The matrix could serve as a roadmap for aspiring and current entrepreneurs, along with their consultant allies, which helps read market directionality, informs strategic planning, and aids in the defter navigation of analogous circumstances. / Business Administration/Entrepreneurship

Low graduation rates in many Tennessee high schools present a significant problem. Many students are not prepared to graduate. Parent involvement advocates contend that the more involved parents are in their children’s education, from preschool through the secondary schooling levels, the better the probability their children will graduate from high school (Blendinger and Jones, 2003). The purpose of this investigation focusing on “best practices” literature in the area of parent involvement was to develop a strategic parent involvement model having potential for improving graduate rates among Tennessee’s high schools. The study explored the published works of Joyce Epstein, Jack Blendinger, and Linda T. Jones in the field of parental involvement for the purpose of developing a parent involvement model for implementation in Tennessee high schools confronted with low graduation rates. The model produced holds significant potential for increasing graduation rates. A qualitative research design, referred to as archival research, was used in this investigation. Data were collected for more than a 25-year period (1987-2015). Textual criticism provided an analytical method for determining practical applications regarding what educational researchers attempted to communicate in their published works. Blendinger and Adams (2015) developed a technique for data analysis involving published works that they called the majority text method. The technique employs close (critical) reading strategies for the purpose of examining similarities and differences occurring in the content provided in research reports, books, journal articles, and so forth produced by the same author or authors over a substantial period of time. Insight gained from examining the documents were transcribed in the form of notes. The notes were then carefully reviewed and analyzed. Reoccurring themes, patterns, and phrases that emerged were recorded. Themes and patterns were separated into categories to make connections between the archival data and the research question driving the study. Findings based on the published works of Epstein, Blendinger, and Jones led to the development of a strategic parental involvement model known as The Nifty Nine. The Nifty Nine consists of 9 parent involvement strategies designed to improve the partnership between home and high school.

Transfer between community colleges and four-year institutions has become more common as student mobility increases. Accordingly, the higher education system has coped with the fluidity by establishing articulation agreements that facilitate pathways from one institution to another. The forward-facing policies and guides to inform students on those pathways are known to be complicated, leading to the development of web-based tools like Transferology to help students navigate the system. Still, credit loss is common, whether through misunderstandings, lack of awareness, or changing degree plans. A proliferation of literature examines the experiences of transfer students and other agents in the process like community college advisors, but few pieces interrogate the underlying website structures that facilitate those experiences as the unit of analysis. Information related to facilitating transfer from one institution to another is often fragmented across multiple webpages or policies and uses language not optimal for communicating with students – creating what are called "information asymmetries" between the students and institutions. The premise of an exchange having information asymmetries is that one or more parties in the exchange have more or better information than the others, leading to an imbalance in power. In the case of higher education, transfer students – and their advisors by extension – can be subjected to manipulation by the invisible hands of the four-year institutions through language gaps and scattered sources of information. Accordingly, this dissertation explored four-year university websites, a major point of contact students have with information on transfer, to address the following main research question: "How are information asymmetries in curricular policies/procedures apparent for engineering students on institutional webpages in terms of language and fragmentation?" The subsequent research question synthesized the results of the first question: "Looking across information asymmetry measures, what are the different narratives of information asymmetry that integrate themes of language and fragmentation across institutions?" A fully integrated mixed methods design using all existing data was employed to address the two research questions. A stratified random sample was taken with respect to institution size based on their Carnegie classifications (n = 38). The collection of relevant public webpages based on a set of keywords from the sampled institutions was transformed into three network measures - hierarchy, centrality, and nonlinear – that were used in cluster analyses to group the institutions based on their information structures. Sequential mixed methods sampling was used to choose institutions purposefully from each cluster based on notable features recorded during the first stage of data collection. Two-cycle coding followed the cluster analysis by elaborating on the networks formed during data collection. I used joint displays to organize the networks and In-Vivo codes in the same picture and develop themes related to fragmentation and language simultaneously. K-means and K-medoids cluster methods both produced the same four cluster solution illustrating one aspect of information asymmetries through fragmentation. The clustering solution highlighted four major network patterns, plus one cluster mixing two of the patterns: 1) linear browsing, 2) centralized expansive browsing, 3) branched browsing, and 4) mixed browsing. Further qualitative analysis of the sampled institutions revealed several types of missteps where information is obscured through language or dispersed in the network. I explored a subset of 16 institutions and identified four themes related to fragmentation (unlinked divergence, progressive disclosure, lack of uniformity, and neighborhood linking) and six themes related to language (hedging transferability and applicability, legalese handwaving, building rapport, exclusivity, deviance from common practice, and defining terms). The missteps were contextualized further using six narratives with institutional examples. This work characterized the information design for transfer students as a messy web of loosely connected structures with language that complicates understanding. Integrated narratives illustrate a landscape of loosely coupled information structures that become more expansive as state initiatives interact with already existing local agreements. Moreover, institutional websites describing transfer processes use communication strategies similar to private companies writing online privacy policies. In light of the themes of information asymmetries, opportunities for supporting transfer were highlighted. For example, institutions are encouraged to create visual representations of the transfer credit process, ensure terms are defined upfront while minimizing jargon, and avoid linking to information that is easily summarizable on the current page. This research would be of interest to institutions looking to improve the presentation of their transfer information by critically examining their designs for the missteps described here. In addition, engineering education practitioners and researchers studying transfer student pathways and experiences will find the results of interest – especially in considering how to support the students despite the large information gaps. Finally, those looking to implement a fully integrated mixed methods design or use existing/archival data in their own context will find the use of mixing strategies of interest. / Doctor of Philosophy / Transfer between community colleges and four-year institutions has become more common as student mobility increases, especially for engineering. Institutions have coped with this inter-institutional movement by establishing agreements with each other that facilitate pathways between programs. The forward-facing policies and guides to inform students on such pathways are known to be complicated, leading to the development of web-based tools like Transferology to help students navigate the system. Despite these advances, transfer students continue to struggle in their information search. The purpose of this dissertation was to describe the extent to which information for engineering transfer students is scattered across multiple web-based sources and written in a manner not conducive to understanding. I used a fully integrated mixed methods design to create narratives capturing the interactions between the more quantitative idea of scatter using network analysis and the more qualitative aspect of language-use using visually based two-cycle coding across 38 U.S. four-year institutions. All data was readily available online, which were transformed and combined using several mixing strategies to form integrated stories of information asymmetries. The resulting narratives characterized the information design for transfer students as a messy web of loosely connected structures with language that complicates understanding. Moreover, institutional websites describing transfer processes use communication strategies similar to private companies writing online privacy policies. In light of the themes of information asymmetries, opportunities for supporting transfer were highlighted. This work will be of interest to those interested in engineering transfer student experiences and pathways. Also, those looking to implement fully integrated mixed methods approaches or make extensive use of existing data, especially mixing during analysis, will see strategies applicable in their own work.

This investigation focused on identifying model foundational strategies to assist Canton Public School District (CPSD) officials in recruiting new teachers, successfully hiring them, and then retaining them the district. Located within the boundaries of the city of Canton, Mississippi, CSPD is geographically located in the central portion of the state. The district consists of 1 high school, 2 middle schools, 4 elementary schools and Canton Education Services Center. CSPD is continually affected by an ever-increasing teacher shortage because new teachers tend to leave the district after they are hired. More than 50% of new teachers leave their teaching positions in the district’s schools within 5 years. The investigation utilized published literature and other archival data (e.g., scholarly papers presented at conferences) accessible to the public in the form of books, chapters in published books, journal articles, and scholarly papers presented at learned societies and associations. Two research questions guided the investigation. The first research question asked: What does the published literature and related archival data (e.g., available scholarly papers retrievable from sources such as colleges, universities, foundations, conferences, etc.) accessible to the public reveal about recruiting, hiring, and retaining teachers? Overall, the material collected and analyzed yielded abundant information. Much of the available information proved valuable because the material focused attention the “how-to-do-it” aspects of recruiting, hiring, and retaining quality new teachers. The second research question asked: Will information gleamed from an analysis of the published literature and other archival data (e.g., unpublished scholarly papers) lead to the development of foundational strategies for assisting school district officials in recruiting, hiring, and retaining new teachers for CPSD? It was possible to develop a model holding potential for improving teacher recruitment, hiring, and retention at CPSD. The model that was developed features seven foundational strategies that if implemented, hold potential for improving teacher recruitment, hiring, and retention at CPSD. The seven strategies are: (1) identify the vacancy and write the job description, (2) announce and advertise the teacher vacancy, (3) develop a customized application form, (4) paper screening process, (5) interviewing process, (6) salary and benefit package, and (7) induction and mentoring.