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The integration of work and family continues to be a challenge for women and men of the academy (Gatta & Roos, 2004). Much of the research on worklife balance in the post-secondary education setting focuses on the lives of instructional faculty (Bailyn, 2003; Bassett, 2005; Drago et al., 2006; Drago & Williams, 2000; Gatta & Roos, 2004; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1999; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2004). There is also a need to understand how university administrators juggle the demands of work and personal life. The primary purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to make meaning of the lived experiences of mid-level student affairs administrators by examining worklife balance. A secondary purpose was to gather administrator perceptions of their environment to gain insight into infrastructures that may promote or hinder worklife balance efforts. Respondents consisted of 30 mid-level student affairs administrators from an array of post-secondary institutions across the United States. Data were generated from semi-structured telephone interviews and two projection exercises. Findings suggest that mid-level student affairs administrators describe their worklife experiences as driven by a shortage of time. Administrators maintain that time is a limited resource that causes difficulty when juggling competing worklife demands. Their involvement in multiple, interdependent roles is rewarding but presents ongoing personal and professional challenges. Administrators report that shortage of time, coupled with the demands of multiple roles impacts personal well-being and career satisfaction. Mid-level student affairs administrators also identified environmental infrastructures that promote and/or hinder worklife efforts in the context of several cultural dynamics. Formal and informal support mechanisms such as policies, programs and resources, effective supervision and campus support networks assist administrators in mitigating worklife challenges. This is in contrast to expectations, behaviors, and values that reinforce unhealthy workplace norms. In addition, the lack of organizational policies and programs and poor supervision also hindered worklife efforts. / Ph. D.

Mid-level administrators are underrepresented within the literature despite years of research on university administration. Moreover, there is significantly less knowledge about administrators of color in higher education. While the reason for their decreased prominence is unclear, Jackson and O'Callaghan (2009) offer that people of color were historically not part of the leadership landscape as an explanation for the minimal formal analysis and categorization of them and their work. Despite the surge of research interest in Black administrators, there still remains limited knowledge about who they are, their professional lives, and their overall lived experiences. As such, the purpose of this study was to understand the career journeys and the experiences of Black mid-level student affairs administrators (BMLSAAs) as they navigate transitions and advancements within their careers. Guided by a conceptual framework using tenets of Critical Race Theory, Space and Place, and the Great Migration, this study investigated the following questions: (1) What are the career migration patterns of BMLSAAs? (2) What role does race and racism combined with location play in the career journeys of BMLSAAs? (3) How do BMLSAAs make meaning of their career journey and their experiences? I employed a qualitatively driven multimethod research design consisting of narrative inquiry and a Critical Race Spatial Analysis (CRSA) with a sample size of 11 BMLSAAs across the U.S. Data sources included a demographic questionnaire, documents (i.e., current resume/curriculum vitae), a career journey map, and a semi-structured interview. Findings provided insight into the racialized engagement of spatial features throughout participants' career journeys; on the campuses where they worked and the geographic regions where participants have lived. Ultimately findings expressed what it is like being Black not only in a mid-level student affairs administrative role, but also traversing one's career as a Black person. Additionally, this study has implications for research, practice, and policy. / Doctor of Philosophy / As a whole, middle managers in higher education are underrepresented in university research. There is even less knowledge about administrative leaders of color in higher education because they have been historically excluded from those roles. Despite an increase of interest in researching Black administrators, there still remains limited knowledge about who they are, their professional lives, and their overall lived experiences. As a result, the purpose of this study was to understand the career journeys experiences of Black administrative leaders, specifically those in middle management who are employed in student affairs departments. Through interviews and map making, this study explored patterns within Black mid-level student affairs administrators (BMLSAAs) career moves; the role that race and racism combined with location played within their careers; and how BLMSAAs made sense of their career journey experiences. Findings provided insight into what shaped participants' careers; how they navigated their careers; their career related experiences; and how they thought about the futures of their careers. Findings also illuminated participants' racialized experiences navigating campus organization structures; work cultures and environments; and living in the different geographic regions where they were employed. This study has an impact on higher education employment research, professional practice, and policy.

Two separate lines of research in object recognition are studies of materials perception and studies of real-world object size perception. Recent object size investigations of texture indicate mid-level features may cue representations of object size in the absence of object identity. However, these findings are somewhat controversial, and beyond that what mid-level features cue object size is not clear. Mid-level features have always been the focus of materials perception studies of gloss and specular highlights, but to date no research has been conducted that attempts to link findings on the perception of materials to high-level object features like real-world object size. Three separate experiments were conducted to study the relationship between perceived surface glossiness and specular highlights, and perceived real-world object size. Previous research on the relationship between perceived object size and real-world object size were replicated. A significant two-way interaction between ratings of perceived glossiness, object size, and texture was found. Follow-up analyses indicated that perceptions of gloss were present across categorical differences in real-world object size in both the object image and texture image task groups. For the normal object images, small objects were perceived as being glossier than big objects. For the texture images, big objects were perceived as being glossier than small objects. Between the conditions, small normal and small texture object images were not significantly different in perceived glossiness. Between the conditions, glossiness ratings for big texture object images were significantly greater than those for the normal big object images. / Doctor of Philosophy / The goal of this project was to understand if category level perceptions of surface gloss (i.e. dull/matte surface reflectance versus shiny/glossy surface reflectance) could predict category level differences in the "actual" size of the objects in the real-world (i.e. small objects versus big objects). Previous research on the relationship between perceived object size and real-world object size were replicated. Moreover, in an experiment in which human subjects were tasked with rating the glossiness of images depicting small and large manmade of objects, category level distinctions in the average perceived glossiness of objects also extended to category level distinctions in perceived real-world object size; on average, small objects were perceived as being glossier than big objects. Similar effects were also found for synthetic textures created from the ordinary real-world object images; on average, big objects were rated as being glossier than small objects. Although categorical distinctions in perceived glossiness extended to real-world object size across image conditions, because there were no significant differences in the average perceived glossiness of small objects across the normal image and texture image conditions, the change in perceived glossiness for the big object images suggests that the texture algorithm used may not have preserved the surface reflectance characteristics of the big objects. Furthermore, statistical investigations of the pixel brightness for the stimulus images provided some evidence that the category level differences in perceived glossiness across object size and image condition may have been driven by differences in factors related to naturally occurring optical artifacts that are introduced when photographing small and big objects. Overall, results of this study are important because they indicate that the real-world spatial properties of objects may be jointly encoded with perceptions of object glossiness.

The purpose of this study was to examine patient attitudes and opinions regarding the advancement of a mid-level dental provider, such as the ADHP, in an effort to better understand the perceptions of those who may one day be in a position to receive care from this type of provider. In this quantitative study, I analyzed the differences between those with and without access to dental care and evaluated differences among respondents based upon their socioeconomic and demographic attributes. I collected data from patients treated at Mt. Juliet Family & Cosmetic Dentistry and at the Coweta Samaritan Clinic via a 17-item questionnaire. Most respondents would be willing to accept treatment from someone in this role. The majority of respondents also believed it would be a positive step towards meeting the needs of the uninsured and underserved. Demographic data had no significant impact on their opinion of this role.

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to determine the perceptions of practicing respiratory therapists (RT) and respiratory care educators regarding the role of RTs serving as physician extenders. Methods: The survey instrument was an electronic questionnaire that consisted of 17 questions. Participation was voluntary and participants were selected through random and convenience sampling techniques. Results: Of 506 respondents, 234 were respiratory care educators. Overwhelmingly, the respondents held the Registered Respiratory Therapist credential (92.7%). Respondents were about equally split among three education levels: 31.7% associate degree, 31.7% bachelor’s degree, and 27.3% master’s degree. Of the respondents 62.45% had considered pursing a degree in physician assistant (PA). Respondents expressed a preference for an Advanced Practice Respiratory Therapy (APRT) program (77.9%) rather than a PA program. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents reported they felt that a master’s degree should be the minimum level of education for an APRT. Conclusions: This study suggests that practitioners and educators alike are strongly supportive of advanced practice in the profession of respiratory therapy.

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Robot mapping is a major field of research in robotics. Its basic task is to combine (register) spatial data, usually gained from range devices, to a single data set. This data set is called global map and represents the environment, observed from different locations, usually without knowledge of their positions. Various approaches can be classified into groups based on the type of sensor, e.g. Lasers, Microsoft Kinect, Stereo Image Pair. A major disadvantage of current methods is the fact, that they are derived from hardly scalable 2D approaches that use a small amount of data. However, 3D sensing yields a large amount of data in each 3D scan. Autonomous mobile robots have limited computational power, which makes it harder to run 3D robot mapping algorithms in real-time. To remedy this limitation, the proposed research uses mid-level geometric features (lines and ellipses) to construct 3D geometric primitives (planar patches, cylinders, spheres and cones) from 3D point data. Such 3D primitives can serve as distinct features for faster registration, allowing real-time performance on a mobile robot. This approach works in real-time, e.g. using a Microsoft Kinect to detect planes with 30 frames per second. While previous approaches show insufficient performance, the proposed method operates in real-time. In its core, the algorithm performs a fast model fitting with a model update in constant time (O(1)) for each new data point added to the model using a three stage approach. The first step inspects 1.5D sub spaces, to find lines and ellipses. The next stage uses these lines and ellipses as input by examining their neighborhood structure to form sets of candidates for the 3D geometric primitives. Finally, candidates are fitted to the geometric primitives. The complexity for point processing is O(n); additional time of lower order is needed for working on significantly smaller amount of mid-level objects. The real-time performance suggests this approach as a pre-processing step for 3D real-time higher level tasks in robotics, like tracking or feature based mapping. In this thesis, I will show how these features are derived and used for scene registration. Optimal registration is determined by finding plane-feature correspondence based on mutual similarity and geometric constraints. Our approach determines the plane correspondence in three steps. First step computes the distance between all pairs of planes from the first scan to all pair of planes from the second scan. The distance function captures angular, distance and co-planarity differences. The resulting distances are accumulated in a distance matrix. The next step uses the distance matrix to compute the correlation matrix between planes from the first and second scan. Finally plane correspondence is found by finding the global optimal assignment from the correlation matrix. After finding the plane correspondence, an optimal pose registration is computed. In addition to that, I will provide a comparison to existing state-of-the-art algorithms. This work is part of an industry collaboration effort sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), aiming at performance evaluation and modeling of autonomous navigation in unstructured and dynamic environments. Additional field work, in the form of evaluation of real robotic systems in a robot test arena was performed. / Computer and Information Science / Accompanied by two .mp4 files.