Leadership is a socially constructed concept shaped by the context, values and experiences of society (Klenke, 1996); the historical context of gender and ethnicity in society affects views about leadership and who merits a leadership role. Therefore, developing an understanding of Hispanic women students’ leadership identity development is critical in broadening how we define leadership and develop leadership education. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore and describe the leadership identity development of a select group of women leaders at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in the southeast. A psychosocial approach to the study was utilized. In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted with 11 self-identified Hispanic women students of sophomore, junior or senior standing with varying degrees of involvement in leadership activities at Florida International University. Participants were asked questions related to four topics; (a) leadership, (b) gender, (c) ethnic identity, and (d) influences that contributed to their understanding of self as leader. Five topics emerged from the data presented by the participants’: (a) encouraging relationships, (b) meaningful experiences, (c) self development, (d) the role of gender, and (e) impact of ethnicity. These themes contributed to the leadership identity development of the participants. Findings indicate that leadership identity development for Hispanic women college students at this HSI is complex. The concept of leadership identity development presented in the literature was challenged as findings indicate that the participants’ experiences living and attending a school in a majority-minority city influenced their development of a leadership identity. The data indicate that leadership is not gender or ethnicity neutral as differences exist in expectations of men and women in leadership roles. Gender expectations posed particular challenges for these women student leaders. The prescriptive nature of stage-based models was problematic as findings indicated leadership identity development a complicated and continuing process influenced strongly by relationships and experiences. This study enhanced knowledge of the ways that Hispanic women students become leaders and the influences that shape their leadership experiences which can assist higher education professionals in developing leadership programs and courses that address gender, multiculturalism and awareness of self as leader.

Accurately predicting the success of graduate students is an important aspect of determining which students should be admitted into graduate programs. The GRE is a pivotal factor to examine since it is one of the most widely used criteria for graduate school admission. Even though the GRE is advertised as an accurate tool for predicting first year graduate GPA, there is a lack of research on long term success factors such as time to degree and graduate rate (Luthy, 1996; Powers, 2004). Furthermore, since most studies have low minority sample sizes, the validity of the GRE may not be the same across all groups (ETS, 2008b; Kuncel, Hezlett, & Ones, 2001). Another gap in GRE studies is that few researchers analyze student characteristics, which may alter or moderate the prediction validity of the GRE. Thus, student characteristics such as degree of academic involvement, mentorship interactions, and other academic and social experiences have not been widely examined in this context. These gaps in the analysis of GRE validity are especially relevant given the high attrition rates within of some graduate programs (e.g., an estimated 68% of doctoral student never complete their programs in urban universities; Lovitts, 2001). A sequential mixed methods design was used to answer the research questions in two phases. The quantitative phase used student data files to analyze the relationship of two success variables (graduation rate and graduate GPA) to the GRE scores as well as other academic and demographic graduate student characteristics. The qualitative phase served to complement the first phase by describing a wider range of characteristics from the 11 graduate students who were interviewed. Both proximal and distal moderators influence student behaviors and success in graduate school. In the first phase of the study, the GRE was the distal facilitator under analysis. Findings suggested that both the GRE Quantitative and the GRE Verbal were predictors of success for master’s students, but the GRE Quantitative was not predictive of success for doctoral students. Other student characteristics such as demographic variables and disciplinary area were also predictors of success for the population of students studied. In the second phase of the study, it was inconclusive whether the GRE was predictive of graduate student success; though it did influence access to graduate programs. Furthermore, proximal moderators such as student involvement, faculty/peer interactions, motivational factors, and program structure were perceived to be facilitators and/or detractors for success.

This Master’s thesis deals with IMS architecture problems. This thesis describes its creation and progress, also structure of this architecture is mentioned. Text of this thesis describes function of the most important parts of the architecture, such as Proxy-CSCF, Interrogating-CSCF, Serving-CSCF and HSS. IMS architecture uses SIP protocol for establishment, maintenance and closing session and Diameter protocol for network management functions. That is why this thesis also describes characteristics of these two protocols. Next part of the thesis is focused on Open-source platform Open IMS Core and its installation. Open IMS Core platform was developed for testing IMS technologies within an internal project at the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS in Berlin. Nowadays it is used by major part of vendors and providers for testing their products and services. As a main theme of this thesis, there was made a simple network, which consists of three users. This network is established on fundamentals of IMS and it was made in Open IMS Core. So in one chapter is outlined a process of its creation. There is described a process of adding a user list to database server HSS. In the next part there are mentioned some information about setup of virtual IMS terminal. Eventually there are shown some possibilities of how to catch traffic in the network. In this chapter there are also state diagrams, which describe a process of registration of IMS terminal and also a process of establishment, maintenance and closing session.

No description available.

The masters thesis consists of introduction, two chapters, conclusion, bibliography and two appendices. In the theoretical part of the study, a general idea of the socio-psychological adaptation is given, definitions of concepts such as "adaptation", "socio-psychological adaptation" are given. In the practical part of the work, a characteristic of the enterprise is presented, on the basis of which the study is conducted: the results of socio-psychological adaptation at the enterprise of persons released from serving sentences in the criminal correction systems of the Russian Federation. A study of the level of socio-psychological adaptation, the results of implementation the program of socio-psychological adaptation at the enterprise of persons released from serving sentences in the criminal correction systems of the Russian Federation. In conclusion, the conclusions obtained during the work are summarized in accordance with the tasks set. / В работе дано общее представление о социально-психологической адаптации, даны определения таких понятий как «адаптация», «социально-психологическая адаптация». Представлена характеристика предприятия, на основе которого проводится исследование: изучены результаты социально-психологической адаптации на предприятии лиц, освободившихся от отбывания наказания в уголовно-исправительных системах РФ. Проведено исследование уровня социально-психологической адаптированности сотрудников, описаны результаты внедрения программы социально-психологической адаптации. В заключении обобщены выводы, полученные в ходе работы, в соответствии с поставленными задачами.

No description available.

Educational attainment among Hispanic populations in the United States remains a challenge, particularly among Mexican Americans who exhibit lower rates of degree completion. This dissertation examined the influence of cultural factors, specifically familism and collectivism, on the educational experiences of Mexican American undergraduate women at San Joaquin Delta College (SJDC) in California's San Joaquin Valley. The study aimed to elucidate how levels of familism and collectivism predict social, academic, and psychological support needs, as well as success strategies among this demographic. Literature highlights the significance of familism, emphasizing familial obligations, and collectivism, prioritizing group harmony, within Mexican American communities. Mexican American daughters often face conflicting demands between familial responsibilities and educational aspirations, a phenomenon previously underexplored in quantitative research. The research employed a quantitative survey design, distributed to undergraduate Mexican American female students at SJDC. The survey included scales measuring familism, collectivism, and social support, as well as researcher-developed scales for academic support, psychological support, and success strategies. Data collection and analysis adhered to rigorous standards, including IRB approval and comprehensive statistical analyses. Results revealed significant correlations between familism and the need for social and psychological support. Students with higher familism scores reported greater reliance on family networks for emotional sustenance but also experienced increased stress from balancing family obligations with academics. Collectivism was positively associated with utilizing peer study groups and seeking academic support. Interestingly, students with moderate levels of both familism and collectivism demonstrated the most effective use of success strategies, such as time management and goal setting. These findings informed tailored interventions at SJDC to enhance support services and promote academic persistence. Recommendations included developing family-inclusive academic counseling programs and culturally sensitive peer mentoring initiatives. This study contributes to discussions on addressing educational inequities and fostering inclusivity within Hispanic-serving institutions. It underscores the importance of considering cultural factors in designing support systems for underrepresented student populations. Future research directions include longitudinal studies to track the impact of culturally informed interventions on graduation rates and career outcomes for Mexican American women in higher education.

<p dir="ltr">Immersive applications such as augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) often need to perform latency-critical analytics tasks on every frame captured on camera. These tasks, often powered by deep neural networks (DNNs) for their superior accuracy, necessitate offloading to edge servers with GPUs due to their computational intensity. Achieving high accuracy and efficient AR task offloading faces two fundamental challenges untapped by prior work: (1) In practice, multiple DNN-supported tasks need to offload concurrently to achieve the app functionality -- how to schedule such offloaded tasks on the client which compete for shared edge server resources to maximize the app QoE? (2) Concurrent AR clients from a large user base offload to a cluster of GPU servers -- how to schedule the offloaded tasks on the servers to maximize the number of clients served and lower the operating cost?</p><p dir="ltr">To tackle the first challenge, we design a framework, AccuMO, that balances the offloading frequencies of different tasks by dynamically scheduling the offloading of multiple tasks from an AR client to an edge server, thereby optimizing the overall accuracy across tasks and hence app QoE. Our design employs two novel ideas: (1) task-specific lightweight models that predict offloading accuracy drop as a function of offloading frequency and frame content, and (2) a general two-level control feedback loop that concurrently balances offloading among tasks and adapts between offloading and using local algorithms for each task.</p><p dir="ltr">We tackle the challenge of supporting concurrent AR clients in two steps. We first focus on maximizing the capacity of individual edge servers, where we present ARISE, which untangles the intricate interplay between per-client offloading schedule and batched inference on the server by proactively coordinating offloading requests from different AR clients. In the second step, we focus on a cluster setup of heterogeneous GPU servers which exposes the synergy between diversity in both DNN layers and GPU architectures, manifesting as comparable inference latency for many layers in DNN models when running on low-class and high-class GPUs. We exploit such overlooked capability of low-class GPUs using pipeline parallelism and present a novel inference serving system, IPIPE, that employs pool-based pipeline parallelism with a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP)-based control plane and a data plane that performs resource reservation-based adaptive batching.</p>

This study departs from the assumption that the environmental literacy of educators is significant in the effective implementation of environmental education. The study explores and interprets the environmental literacy of currently serving educators (in-service educators) in the towns of Makwassie and Wolmaransstad. Semi-structured and unstructured interviews were used for data collection in this qualitative, case study-based research inquiry. The interview schedule was designed to cover six concepts/issues, namely, pollution, global warming, the ozone layer, water, human population growth, and sustainable development. The findings reveal that the level of environmental literacy varies from educator to educator and that various factors influence the environmental literacy of educators. The study recommends meaningful, ongoing educator training and support, more research in the area of educator environmental literacy, as well as an investigation into classroom practice in order to determine the level of the implementation of environmental education. / Science and Technology Education / M.A. (Comparative Education)

This study investigated employees’ perceptions about workplace spirituality in a national government department located in KwaZulu-Natal. A constructivist and qualitative approach was followed to gain an in-depth understanding of employees’ perceptions of spirituality, based on their personal understanding and experiences. A sample of 16 participants employed in the department was interviewed using a semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis was used to transcribe and assess the interviews. The findings revealed different notions of spirituality and the significance of workplace spirituality. In the workplace, employees continue to search for meaning in their work – meaning that transcends economic gain. Spirituality was perceived as being valuable for the interconnectedness and harmony that it brought to members of the organisation. / Industrial and Organisational Psychology / M.Com (Industrial and Organisational Psychology)