Efforts to increase enrollment in engineering and enhance the participation and proficiency of engineers have long been priorities, as emphasized by the National Academy of Science and the National Academy of Engineering. This imperative underscores the need for both a greater quantity and a higher caliber of engineers—colleges and universities are charged with helping students successfully progress through their programs to earn a degree. Existing research predominantly focuses on specific academic interventions or discrete support factors in attempts to understand how to best support academic success. My work, on the other hand, takes a comprehensive examination that quantifies students' perceptions of support across a wide range of sources and explores the relationship between these perceptions and student engagement in different activities. Utilizing student support data collected from undergraduate students in Engineering, Science, and Mathematics at nine institutions during the spring of 2019, the study embarks on a multifaceted exploration that unfolds in three interconnected parts. The first part employs multiple comparison analyses to unveil distinct differences in perceptions of support among different student subpopulations. The second part delves into the relational dynamics between support perceptions and students' participation in co-curricular activities using binomial regression. The third part, employing multiple linear regression, scrutinizes this relationship from a reverse perspective, acknowledging the potential bidirectional nature by examining how the level of student engagement in a range of co-curricular activities relates to their perceptions of support. The findings continue to establish further validity evidence for the newly developed STEM-SPSI tool. It also has the potential to offer valuable insights for educators, administrators, and policymakers intent on enhancing the inclusivity and efficacy of their programs. This study's potential implications underscore the importance of targeted support factors in fostering a more enriching and equitable co-curricular experience for undergraduate students. Embracing a more integrated perspective, this research contributes to evidence-based practices aimed at fostering the success and retention of students in STEM fields. / Doctor of Philosophy / Efforts to increase the number of engineers and improve their preparedness are a national priority, as emphasized by organizations like the National Academy of Engineering. Colleges and universities play a critical role in helping students succeed in their programs and earn degrees in engineering. Although most research has focused on specific academic programs or single support services, my study takes a broader look at how students perceive support from multiple sources and how these perceptions relate to their participation in activities outside the classroom. Using data from undergraduate students in engineering, science, and mathematics at nine universities in 2019, the research examines three key areas. First, it compares how different groups of students perceive support in their academic institutions. Second, it looks at how students' participation in co-curricular activities relates to their feelings of support. Lastly, it explores the reverse: how students' levels of engagement in these co-curricular activities relates to their support perceptions. The findings provide additional evidence of validity of the newly developed STEM-SPSI questionnaire, which measures student support. This research can help educators, administrators, and policymakers create more inclusive and effective programs that enhance students' overall experiences. By examining support and student engagement together, this study contributes to practices that can improve student success and retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

Restorative Practices is a behavior management system that focuses on root cause analysis and repairing harms caused by those infractions. This study focused on the correlation between the knowledge that stakeholders possessed regarding Restorative Practices and their perceived impact on the school disciplinary program. In addition, the study sought to determine which aspects of Restorative Practices were most effective as well as examine the viewpoints of disciplinary stakeholders regarding Restorative Practices as a large, urban school district in central Florida. Recent literature shows that punitive and exclusionary discipline practices have an adverse impact on minoritized populations as the students are often penalized more harshly than their white peers for subjective infractions such as insubordination and disrespect. Zero-tolerance discipline policies came on the heels of the zero-tolerance gun laws from the 1990s, increasing the number of students suspended within schools and strengthening the school-to-prison pipeline for minoritized populations (Katic, Alba, & Johnson, 2020). The study was conducted as a mixed-methods study using a Pearson correlation and a Casual- Comparative analysis. The study focused on school leaders and discipline stakeholders from a large, urban school district in central Florida and was conducted through an electronic survey with 23 Likert- scale type questions, and four open-ended responses. It is anticipated that the results will provide insight into the correlation between the knowledge possessed by the stakeholders and their perceived impact on Restorative Practices as well as the mor productive strategies and effects of implementation and insight into how schools can improve implementation at their schools.

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Secondary administrative and leadership teams continuously search for practices that bolster cultural proficiency to address increasingly diverse student cohorts. This qualitative case study identifies the culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) behaviors and expressions of 24 high school administrative and leadership team members in a suburban school district in Utah. Data reveals how each team demonstrates the behaviors and expressions of CRSL framework and how these behaviors and expressions position each school on the culturally proficient continuum. Superimposing the CRSL behaviors and expressions on the cultural proficiency continuum provides a current reality for administrative and leadership teams to assess their tipping points and how to move toward cultural proficiency.

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Minoritized students in public schools in Texas and across the nation continue to underachieve academically compared to their white peers. Despite similar academic achievement and socioeconomic backgrounds, minoritized students are often perceived more negatively by a predominantly white teacher workforce. The idea of cultural dissonance or mismatch between teachers and their students has led to the development of pedagogical frameworks such as culturally responsive teaching (CRT) that seek to bridge this cultural gap. This embedded multiple case study examined the perceptions, lived experiences, and level of preparedness of four school principals and one assistant superintendent in a white-majority school district with rapidly changing demographics. My findings support previous studies that show the limited resources and continued failure of universities and school systems in building educator capacity in culturally responsive school leadership CRSL. Furthermore, culturally responsive and visionary leaders may be more critical than previously thought due to school systems imbued with the dominant white culture and its deeply ingrained stereotypical views towards minoritized individuals. Despite these findings, my study also provides compelling evidence that meaningful relationships and diverse experiences alone can play an important role in fomenting and enhancing individuals' cultural proficiency, regardless of their racial/ethnic background. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed in detail, followed by recommendations.

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