In this case study, The King and Baxter Magolda (2005) Intercultural Maturity Model was utilized as the explanatory framework for the development of intercultural maturity in a globally networked learning environment (GNLE) with college students. Through ethnographic data collection strategies and qualitative analysis of interviews, observations, narrative inquiry, and student artifacts, I explored the developmental stages of the intercultural maturity of study participants in a GNLE with college students from three international universities in South Africa, Europe, and the United States. I sought to determine if any relationship existed between the development of intercultural maturity and the study of jazz. This research inquiry represented a distinct opportunity to examine if student activities in jazz subjects might ground new theories for the attainment of intercultural maturity. A globally networked classroom of jazz students presented a salient opportunity to observe if interactant traits could mature, instigated through jazz curricula, and whether such a model had explanatory potential in a web-based context. The findings were instructive for considerations comparative to traditional developmental models of intercultural maturity, with a particular focus on the efficacy of asynchronous and synchronous student interactions within the activities. The context of a GNLE, an interesting alternative to study abroad when considered as a teaching and learning paradigm instead of just a technology modality, facilitated rich descriptions and data to gauge students’ demonstration of the domains of the King and Baxter Magolda (2005) Intercultural Maturity Model. Adding jazz curricula and pedagogy to the GNLE environment, situated between cohorts geographically apart, allowed for a reimagining of the King and Baxter Magolda Intercultural Maturity Model to A Jazz Orientation of the Three-Dimensional Developmental Trajectory of the Intercultural Maturity Model.

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Although Congress enacted civil rights legislation in the 1960s to address racial inequities in income and employment, the executive branch and the courts have since retreated from efforts to pursue those policies aggressively. Meanwhile, anti-racism advocates, including the Montgomery County, Virginia based Dialogue on Race, have continued to promote strategies aimed at securing employment and income equity for all citizens. This study analyzed the social and economic costs of continued racial inequality in employment and income, and examined the ways in which local employers are addressing this challenge in the Blacksburg, Virginia region by exploring their self-reported rationales for action on the basis of economic efficiency or profit, moral obligation to fairness and justice, adherence to legal requirements, or leader influence. I addressed these concerns through population data analysis, key informant interviews, and a survey of major local employers. I found that New River Valley employers appear to be motivated by economic and moral reasons, as well as legal compliance. I conclude that activists should use this apparent openness to multiple rationales to work to help community leaders and local employers recognize racial equality as a moral imperative rather than as an instrumental claim incidental to its perceived utility. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

This dissertation examined the extent to which medical educational institutions adapt their curriculum to meet the needs of a marginalized patient population, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities. Because LGBTQ populations experience significant health and health care disparities in comparison to heterosexual and cisgender populations, medical education and medical curriculum about LGBTQ health has been described as a key area of intervention for improving doctor-patient interactions and health system structures to better accommodate these populations. Through a 10-month long ethnography of a medical school, I examined the formal, informal, and hidden curricula surrounding LGBTQ health to explore how medical schools train and thus adequately prepare medical students to provide care to these patients. To investigate these issues, I conducted over 100 hours of participant observation of medical classes and clinical rotations, with particular attention to clinical case studies and online learning modules that are relevant to LGBTQ health, and LGBTQ health initiatives on the academic medical center campus. I also conducted 46 semi-structured interviews with faculty, students, administrators, LGBTQ Health Center employees, and LGBTQ patients about LGBTQ health care at the medical school and about how these groups define and implement LGBTQ health at the institution. Findings suggest that the content, placement, and delivery of LGBTQ health in the curriculum influence how medical students learn to see themselves as capable of providing care to these patients. In particular, the nebulous nature of LGBTQ health makes it difficult for students to learn to enact it in practice. This research asserts that to create medical curriculum about LGBTQ health that will help alleviate health care disparities, medical schools cannot simply add LGBTQ health into their curriculum without fundamentally changing how they teach sex/gender and sexuality to their students as well as centering intersecting inequalities in their teaching. As such, this dissertation calls for a shift to queer health to decentralize sex/gender and sexuality binaries and focus on the practice of learning about LGBTQ health rather than fulfilling a competency. Ultimately, this research theorizes medical education as a space for the enactment of LGBTQ health whereby the complexity of sex, gender, sexuality, and identity gets negotiated by medical faculty, students, administrators, and LGBTQ community members. / Doctor of Philosophy / This research examined how medical schools change their curriculum to incorporate health topics related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities. Because LGBTQ populations experience worse health and in comparison, to heterosexual and cisgender populations, medical education about LGBTQ health has been described as a key area for medical educators to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of these patients. Medical educators hope to improve doctor-patient interactions and health system structures to provide better care to these populations. Through a 10-month long ethnography of a medical school, I examined the teachings surrounding LGBTQ health to explore how medical schools train and thus adequately prepare medical students to provide care to these patients. To investigate these issues, I observed over 100 hours of medical classes and clinical rotations, with particular attention to clinical case studies and online learning modules that are relevant to LGBTQ health, and LGBTQ health initiatives on the academic medical center campus. I also interviewed 46 people, including faculty, students, administrators, LGBTQ Health Center employees, and LGBTQ patients, about LGBTQ health care at the medical school and about how these groups define LGBTQ health. Findings suggest that where LGBTQ health is located in the curriculum as well as who teaches the subject influences how medical students learn to see themselves as able to provide care to these patients. In particular, the broadly defined nature of LGBTQ health makes it difficult for students to learn how to provide this care to patients. This research asserts that to create medical curriculum about LGBTQ health that will help alleviate health care disparities, medical schools cannot simply add LGBTQ health into their curriculum without fundamentally changing how they teach sex/gender and sexuality to their students as well as centering intersecting inequalities in their teaching. As such, this dissertation calls for a shift to queer health to focus less on sex/gender and sexuality binaries and to focus more on the practice of learning about LGBTQ health rather than fulfilling a competency. Ultimately, this research states that medical education is a space for the enactment of LGBTQ health whereby the complexity of sex, gender, sexuality, and identity gets negotiated by medical faculty, students, administrators, and LGBTQ community members

While numerous efforts have been made across different educational contexts aimed towards increasing demographic diversity in STEM education, career decision-making content related to the potential pursuit of health professions education has failed to reach all students. Thus, there is a need for a more consistent and targeted sharing of information, including from the graduate level (where students must meet detailed requirements for specific healthcare disciplines), down to the community college and high school levels where students often make life-changing career-direction decisions without sufficient information to inform these decisions. At the other end of the spectrum, the conventional learning experiences in graduate health professions education have failed to adequately adapt to the expanding diversity of the patients they serve or to emphasize the depth and unique insight that students of color can bring to patients, their communities, and to the health professions classroom (Warshaw, 2016). In this context, this dissertation seeks to understand the experiences of a sample of Black women who have successfully entered or completed a graduate health professions degree program. Using a qualitative methodology, this study will explore and identify factors that first influenced their exploration into a health professions field, what barriers they overcame in their educational process, and how these experiences and meaning can be used by educational leaders wishing to improve access and inclusion for health professions education in the future.

In information technology, few women of color hold senior level executive leadership positions in the United States. Currently, in the high-tech industry, Asian and Black women hold 1.7% of executive/senior-level positions, and only 0.2% are in CEO positions. The purpose of this research was to understand professional executive women of color experiences in career advancement in the high technology fields. The study's conceptual framework included organizational culture theory, Krumboltz's theory of career counseling, and the leadership pipeline model. The overarching research question and subquestions addressed the lived experiences of 15 professional senior executive women of color in relation to career advancement in high technology to understand their perceptions, feelings, and values through a transcendental descriptive phenomenological approach. Through the use of Colaizzi's method of data analysis, 8 major themes and 11 subthemes emerged from interviews with the participants. The results indicated that women of color needed to have access to internal opportunities for advancement, adjusting to longer work hours in a male dominated work environment, and the need to establish networks of women of color for support. This study may support positive social change by prompting organizational leaders to develop gender-neutral, comprehensive strategies that do not impede women from obtaining technical executive positions. If women were extended the same opportunities as their senior executive male counterparts, women executives could thrive as senior leaders.

Gender equality is a much-debated topic today with e.g., EU putting pressure on the labour market through Sustainable Financial Disclosure Regulations (SFDR) and the UN through their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). However, gender equality is not a simple matter of only distributions and setting goals; it also refers to attitudes, norms, values, and ideals that affect the lives of women and men in society. Currently the labour market is implementing policies and taking initiatives for increased diversity however, women are still lagging behind men and women’s hierarchical advancement is experiencing a slowing trend. One industry with a strong male dominance is the investment banking industry, an industry that has been struggling to increase the gender split. Multiple attempts have been taken to recruit more women, but the industry struggles with retention rates and is still a heavily male-dominated sector. To be able to know which policies to implement it is important to understand how the organization is gendered and to understand its willingness to change. What happens within organizations can also be seen in society, politics, and media. Research on gendered organizations provide visibility and nuance on how gender is created by society. This research has studied how the industry investment banking is gendered and the perspective on change. The study has been conducted through a qualitive method using structural interviews with guidance of Sarah Rutherford’s model on excluding factors. The interviewees were employees on a junior level in the hierarchy, at different investment banks in Sweden. The study shows an industry with multiple cultural aspects that can work as excluding towards women; the long-hour culture, language & communication, work ideology and gender awareness. The study found both a denial and unawareness of the existing gendered process. The junior team themselves were a mix of different resistors: open, hidden and neutral. There was also a strong belief that the inequalities would fade over time and that they were heavily dependent on the gender split rather than the terms and conditions at the workplace. / Jämställdhet är idag ett omtalat ämne som engagerar samhällen på alla nivåer, Eu med sin Sustainable Finance Regulation (SFDR) som ämnar sätta press på arbetsmarknaden och FN med deras Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), är bara några exempel på samtida engagemang. Jämställdhet är dock inte så enkelt att det kan reduceras till betraktandet av distributioner och målsättning; det refererar också till attityder, normer, värderingar och ideal som påverkar kvinnor och mäns liv i många delar av samhället. Arbetsmarknaden arbetar aktivt med att implementera policys och ta initiativ för att uppnå jämställdhet. Det pågående arbetet till trots kan vi dessvärre se en negativ och avtagande trend vad gäller kvinnors avancemang i professionella hierarkier och fortsatt hamnar steget efter män i dessa miljöer. En av många mansdominerande branscher är investment banking, en bransch som länge kämpat med en ojämn könsfördelning. Flera försök till att rekrytera kvinnor till branschen har gjorts men dessvärre utan önskat långsiktigt resultat då man bland annat har problem att behålla kvinnorna. För att förstå vilka policyer som ska implementeras är det viktigt att förstå hur en organisation är könsmärkt och dess vilja till förändring. Det som sker i organisationer kan också identifieras i samhället, politiken och media. Forskning på könsmärkta organisationer ger insyn och nyansering till hur kön är skapat i samhället. Denna studie har undersökt hur investment bankindustrin är könsmärkt och hur den ser på förändring. Studien har genomförts med kvalitativa metoder där strukturella intervjuer med Sarah Rutherfords modell om exkludering utgör studiens grund. De valda intervjurespondenterna befinner sig på en junior nivå i branschens hierarkisystem och är eller har varit representerade på olika investmentbanker i Sverige. Studien visar en bransch med flera kulturella aspekter som resulterar i exkludering av kvinnor, dessa var; arbetstider, språk & kommunikation, arbetsideologi och könsmedvetenhet. Vidare påvisar studien en existerande förnekelse och omedvetenhet av den könsmärkta organisationen, där respondenterna visade sig vara en blandning av den öppne, dolda och neutrale jämställdhetsmotståndaren. Det fanns också en stark tro på att en utveckling mot jämställdhet sker av sig själv då problematiken upplevdes vara såväl en generations- som en distributionsfråga och inte en fråga om olika villkor och förutsättningar på arbetsplatsen.

The population in the United States is expected to increase an estimated 42% by the year 2042; ethnic minorities will become the majority group. Marketing executives must understand the environment in which consumers from diverse cultures respond to marketing stimuli. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies senior marketing executives use to implement successful multicultural marketing campaigns. The target population consisted of senior marketing executives from 3 profitable companies in the state of Michigan with experience in the implementation of successful multicultural marketing campaigns. The conceptual framework was the critical multicultural marketing theory. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and organizational documents. Data were analyzed using Yin's 5 stages of analysis: compiled and organized, disassembled into fragments, reassembled into a sequence of groups, interpreted for meaning, and conclusions were drawn. Methodological triangulation and member checking were used to validate the trustworthiness of data interpretations. The findings showed 3 emerging themes: marketing using diversity and inclusion strategies; segmentation, target marketing, and positioning strategies; and cultural competence strategies. The information gathered in this study is valuable to current and future marketing managers with an interest in marketing to multicultural consumers. The implications for positive social change include creating and sustaining an environment of inclusion that proactively and strategically engages underrepresented populations of consumers.

Given the reality of a diverse and multicultural workplace in Canada, and the benefits of inclusion for both employees and employers, it is reasonable for employers to consider the inclusion of immigrants. This study explored (a) skilled immigrants’ perceptions of inclusion in an energy company in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, (b) what these perceptions revealed about the diversity climate in the workplace, and (c) how these perceptions could inform and challenge the inclusion practices in the company. Eighteen participants were interviewed in-depth to determine their perceptions of a number of indicators of inclusion. The participants identified that communication (language and culture-specific communication styles), relationships, and organizational practices were salient in their experiences. Immigrants who had previous relevant work experience in the country reported the most positive experiences. The climate of the company led to strong perceptions of satisfaction and belonging, but low perceptions of fairness and equity. Suggestions for the company to improve its diversity and inclusion climate included attending to the experiences and development of women, contractors, and immigrants who are new to Canada or the company. Recommendations included initiatives to support relationships amongst employees, intercultural training and support for internationally educated professionals and Canadian colleagues including leaders, and talent management that would result in more cultural diversity at the senior leadership levels of the company.

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