This thesis provides a comprehensive approach to launching a successful parent membership-based fundraising program, an exploration of best practices in the United States, and a complete development plan for parent fundraising for a large public university. The research discussed is applicable to many different organizations who wish to start a parent fundraising program, with the strongest relevance on parent fundraising within large public universities. This thesis is intended for an audience familiar with the intricacies of fundraising; however, primary, secondary, and other higher education markets may be strongly interested in the research discussed.

Given the nature of the current political, social, and economic climates in the United States with home foreclosures, jobless rates, and high-school dropout rates hovering around record numbers, those who are indigenous to the plight of the people must play a role in securing policies and actions that will support better opportunities for better living. The faith community, especially the Black Church, can play a role by engaging in the development and maintenance of social policy and a responsibility to engage in social action that will energize and empower people in order to improve the quality of living. While there has been much time and effort dedicated to connecting the Black Church with social action, there is not a particularly large body of work encouraging the engagement of the Black Church in social policy. In order to address the need to have a relevant and substantial voice that will direct policies that will eradicate problems rather than always addressing consequences; the Black Church must allow the space for critical, analytical, and strategic treatment of the issues.

In this thesis, I examine novelist Sara Paretskys use of voice as power in the V.I. Warshawski series. The series gives Paretsky the opportunity not only to use her own voice, but also to create new ones. It is in V.I.s world that Paretsky is able to decide who gets to speak and what those speakers get to sayand what they do not get to say. In this study, I examine two categories of voices Paretsky uses throughout the series: the voice she creates and the voice she silences. The voice that Paretsky creates is revealed in the community of women that V.I. embraces. This community consists of strong individuals who are even stronger collectively, women who take care of themselves and each other, who speak against the stereotypes and violence that society tries to use against them. The voice Paretsky silences is that of patriarchy. This voice is revealed in the violent men who target V.I. and seek to silence her. It also is embodied in the women who act as an extension of these men. Throughout the series, the voices Paretsky creates and those she silences join together to promote an image that affirms, rather than demeans, women. In the end, Paretsky presents a series and a heroine that speak loudly, clearly, and defiantly.

Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein were the only national leaders ever to use large-scale missile launches against American forces and their wartime allies. In both cases, the missiles were too few in number and lacked the accuracy and warhead size to be militarily effective. Use of the V-2 and SCUD missiles showed that conventionally armed ballistic missiles have minimal tactical military value and are more suitable as terrorist weapons. Indeed, the goal of those two meglomaniacal dictators was to terrorize enemy civilians and achieve a political settlement of a hopeless military situation. Each leader hoped to split the Allied coalitions arrayed against him. Hitler turned his missile against London in 1944 hoping to crush British morale and compel public opinion to demand that Prime Minister Winston Churchill seek an end to the conflict short of total victory. Hussein launched his SCUDs to exploit Arab animosity toward Israel, calculating that terror attacks would trigger Israeli military intervention, provoking a defection of Arab coalition members and forcing the United States and its European allies into a political settlement that would avert military disaster for Iraq. The Allied forces in both cases learned lessons about the limitations of air power as a means of neutralizing a mobile target. Despite massive aerial bombing in both wars, the Allies stopped the mobile launchers only when ground troops overran the launching areas. In the Gulf War, satellites, air supremacy, and Patriot interceptor missiles failed to eliminate the SCUD threat, a task completed by the ground offensive, but such technological advances may prevent future terroristic uses of ballistic missiles. The employment of ballistic missiles has new strategic implications because of the events of September 11, 2001. The global war on terrorism involves the newly defined axis of evil, composed of states capable of producing ballistic missiles. Missile technology transfers to third world countries threaten world stability, in view especially of the possible use of nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. If rogue states judge previous missile attacks to be successful, such success could motivate other leaders or terrorists to use their missiles as instruments of terror.

In late October 1950, the People's Republic of China (PRC) committed approximately 260,000 troops to combat in North Korea. The initial Chinese decision to intervene in the Korean conflict was based on a misperception of American commitment to halt communist expansion. American actions seemed to communicate the desire to avoid confrontation. The withdrawal of U.S. troops and the limited equipping and training of the South Korean army implied Washington's lack of interest in the fate of Korea. Therefore, Mao endorsed North Korea's proposal for the military reunification of Korea. China stood to gain international prestige and access to Soviet equipment and training at little cost. But the North Korean attack collapsed following the commitment of American and United Nations forces. Chinese troops attacked and surprised the UN forces, inflicting heavy losses while driving them down the peninsula in disarray. Mao desired the quick expulsion of UN forces from Korea. To this end, the Chinese launched five brutal offensives between October 1950 and April 1951, but failed to realize their goal of imposing a communist government on an unified Korea. Following the commencement of hostilities, the Chinese exaggerated their own military capabilities and underestimated the firepower and general effectiveness of American forces. But the Chinese army was unable to assimilate modern weaponry and tactics and, facing immense logistical difficulties, could not use its superior numbers to overwhelm United Nations forces. Inaccurate political and military assessments by Chinese leaders served to deny the PRC its goal of a unified Korea while ensuring it would be embroiled in a long and costly war.

This paper looks at the effects of professional basketball on white culture. Traditional scholarship focuses on the impact this has on the African-American community. Very little attention is given to its effects on white America. The focus of this paper is to examine whiteness and to understand how it is socially constructed. In addition, this paper will examine how some elements of black style have been appropriated by white America and changed the definition of whiteness in America. White America's appropriation of limited aspects of black style has been facilitated by the culture that is associated with professional basketball. The economic and social contributions of these athletes have expanded the boundaries of traditional whiteness. This paper presents the argument that the parameters of historical whiteness has expanded to include certain elements of blackness, but this pattern does not alter traditional racist ideology.

Increasing urbanization in a global setting of political and economic instability indicates that urban warfare may well be the major conflict scenario of the 21st century. The United States armed forces are not currently prepared to meet that challenge. The last major urban conflict involving the American military was the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War. As part of the Tet Offensive in 1968, Communist forces seized control of Hue and held it for nearly a month. Having undergone intensive tactical training for their mission, the enemy, solidly entrenched in buildings of various kinds, offered fierce resistance to the American and South Vietnamese troops who tried to reconquer the city. U.S. Marines bore the brunt of the fighting. Untrained and unequipped for street-fighting, they encountered immense difficulties in clearing Hue. Faulty intelligence, command and control problems, and a lack of proper equipment made the experience a nightmarish one and the human cost was considerable: 147 Marines and seventy-four soldiers lost their lives, while a combined total of 1,364 were wounded. Only through raw determination, superior firepower, and adaptive leadership were the Marines able to prevail. The Battle of Hue offered critical lessons for subsequent military planners. Later conflicts in places such as Somalia and Afghanistan suggested that Hue might be more relevant than expected for contemporary warfare. As a result, the U.S. armed forces have made significant strides toward correcting deficiencies in the areas of doctrine, training, and equipment. However, they remain under-prepared for urban warfare because they are still not training as a joint and combined arms team across the full spectrum of operations. This is in large part due to continued shortfalls in training infrastructure and lack of equipment. U.S. armed forces must continue to maximize urban operations training at every level in order to validate doctrine, learn how to fight, and develop specialized equipment for urban operations.

The battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943 was a pivotal battle of World War II. The defeat at Kursk placed the Wehrmacht on the permanent strategic defensive on the Eastern Front. The opening of the Soviet archives after 1989 has permitted more thorough analysis of that battle and produced greater appreciation of the Red Armys performance, while casting doubt on the notion that the Germans were close to an operational victory. Preceding the clash, both sides prepared feverishly, attempting to bring the units involved to their maximum capability by replacing personnel, upgrading equipment, and conducting training. The Germans delayed the attack several times to deploy the new armored vehicles. Soviet leaders gathered intelligence from their own sources as well as from ULTRA, which was the codename for British intelligence gained from the German Enigma machine. The Soviets, in anticipation of the onslaught, built a massive and intricate defense. Kursk began on July 4, 1943 with a German attack in the south to gain observation for artillery. The main battle began on July 5 when the Germans attacked both shoulders of the Kursk salient. The fighting was furious. In the north the frontlines quickly stabilized, but in the south German forces made progress. The critical moment occurred when they reached the village of Prokhorovka on July 12. The II SS Panzer Corps and the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank and Fifth Guards Armies fought to a tactical draw with hundreds of tanks lost on both sides. However, the Allied invasion of Sicily prompted Hitler to transfer panzer divisions from Kursk to the Mediterranean Theater, thus seriously reducing the assets available to Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, the commander of the German units in the south. This decision essentially ended the Battle of Kursk. Had Hitler given his subordinates more freedom to destroy the Soviet armored reserves, they might have mitigated the catastrophe. But the Germans at Kursk could not have achieved victory. It was a simple matter of the Soviets outnumbering the Germans in all categories, and the Red Army had improved its capabilities to the point it could execute devastating deep, combined arms operations against the Wehrmacht.

This study examines five films of Steven Soderbergh: <em>sex, lies, and videotape</em> (1989), <em>The Underneath</em> (1995), <em>Out of Sight</em> (1998), <em>The Limey</em> (1999), and <em>Traffic</em> (2000). For each film, themes and cinematic form and technique are analyzed with the intent of demonstrating a consistent authorial voice of the director. The investigation reveals that common themes include the protagonist at odds with the world about him, journey, ambiguities and uncertainties in the characters' worlds, and the nondichotomous nature of reality, especially in regard to morality. The study also argues that Soderbergh has evolved a style that favors a nonlinear narrative and parallel editing, frequent use of a hand-held camera, and systematic uses of color. It is concluded that such commonalities in theme and style provide evidence for an evolving artistic vision.

The 317th Infantry Regiment was reactivated on July 15, 1942 as a subordinate element of the 80th Infantry Division. The regiment trained for two years in Tennessee, Kansas, Arizona, California, and finally New Jersey before departing for England in June 1944. Entering the European continent after D-Day, the regiment experienced its first combat in August 1944 when it assisted in closing the gap at Falaise and spearheaded Third Army's attack on Nancy. The 317th sat through the logistics shortfall that stopped the Third Army's advance during the "October Pause" in the fall of 1944. But then in November the regiment moved through the Maginot Line and prepared to attack Hitler's West Wall. In mid-December, German forces launched the famous Battle of the Bulge with a surprise attack in the Ardennes forest with twenty-five divisions. The 317th was one of the first units to begin the movement north to relieve the beleaguered American troops in the Ardennes. The regiment continued fighting through January 1945 until some units were exhausted. When Third Army resumed the offensive in February, so did the regiment. On Valentine's Day, 1945, it entered the Reich, moved rapidly through the Eifel and Palatinate regions, and crossed the Rhine River. During this time, the 317th overran some of the concentration camps that were Hitler's answer to the "Jewish question." The regiment moved through Nuremberg and into Austria, where, as it prepared for what loomed as a ferocious battle, the war ended. After serving as an occupation force, the unit officially deactivated in January 1946, after three and a half yearsof valiant service. The 317th had fought its way from Evron, France to Kirchdorf, Austria,participants in the horror and glory of war. It left behind on the battlefields of Europe 312 officers and 7392 enlisted men - fallen comrades in the struggle to free Europe from Nazi tyranny.