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Principal Preparation Programs for Change-Based Leadership: Reimagining Principal Preparation Programs at Riverside University
No full textEd.D.Growing accountability measures as well as a persistent achievement gap adversely impacting Black, Latino, English Language Learners, special education, economically disadvantaged, and other marginalized student groups has contributed to increased scrutinyrelated to public education in the United States. This growing scrutiny has brought a concurrent evaluation of influencing factors in K-12 education, including school leadership. In an effort to better meet the needs of twenty-first century schools and an increasingly diverse student population this study focuses on university-based principal preparation programs at several institutions across the United States. Specific focus has been given to the curricular, pedagogical, experiential, and coaching elements within these exemplary programs with the ultimate goal of guiding and influencing the redesign of Riverside University’s principal preparation program. Critical to the identification and categorization of these key elements is the evaluation of where and how social justice-based and culturally-responsive leadership converges with each program’s design and implementation. This multi-faceted analysis has created a foundation for a new principal preparation program that successfully marries rigorous and authentic learning experiences with a comprehensive approach to culturally-responsive school leadership. The resulting recommendations provide a blueprint for the design and implementation of a responsive principal preparation program that meets the needs of aspiring leaders and the diverse communities they will serve.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
The Blindness Blues: Race and Disability in the American Country Blues
No full textPh.D.The study of music places scholars in a unique position to merge multiple academic disciplines. The music, lyrics, and lifestyles of southern blues musicians capture a wide swath of social life in the early 20th century American South. Blues songs reveal elements of race, gender, and disability in society. There are no other forms of popular culture with as many blind artists as the blues. The music of blind and visually impaired African American musicians mirror the transformations of black life. Their lyrics are texts to be analyzed. By reading deeply into their lives and music, their blindness, like their blackness, reveal critiques, resistance, and the everyday-life of American people. Their lives reflect the changing conditions of America and reveal the possibilities of social recognition, agency, and economic survival. Blind blues musicians and their music, perhaps more than any other art form, functioned as a site of cultural and social mobilization. Blues songs are often metaphors about oppression and expose the black struggle by stressing the urgent need felt by oppressed African Americans. This project reveals the relationships between songs, performances, society and their history. Music can, and often does, function as a method of protest. But just as often, music reveals the daily lives of musicians and their audiences. Music can foster social movements - reimaginings of original and traditional songs can provide spaces for cultural growth, conversation, experimentation, and audience participation. The songs of blind blues singers exist in multiple forms and contexts and this study will, in-part, rely on elements of James Scott’s "everyday resistance," and "hidden transcripts," along with disability studies concepts of otherness, passing, and masquerade. Together, a complex reading of blind blues musicians’ life and lyrics offers a way to analyze both protest songs and leisure songs revealing the radical black imagination as a countercultural moment. Music also reveals the apolitical feelings and desires of a culture. My claim is that by combining songs of protest and leisure scholars can capture a broader historical and political context of southern African American life. Finally, the music of blind blues singers critiques notions of normality to reveal gender, race, and disability perspectives. Gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability are related products of the same social processes and practices that shape bodies according to ideological structures. Representations of disability are a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be. Likewise, race and disability are just two of the many identities blind musicians employed. The disabled body is a complex set of social relations, so this manuscript seeks to understand the relationships among sensory impairment and the political, social and cultural environment that only blind blues musicians can reveal. In conclusion, I hope to complicate our understanding of the role blind blues musicians played in the creation and representations of African American culture, and proposes new ways of looking at music and lyrics in history and uncovering alternative texts to the dominant narratives.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Subalternity: Territoriality and Margination in Latin America
No full textPh.D.Este proyecto abarca la idea del subalterno en la sociedad latinoamericana y cuáles son algunos de los aspectos que han influenciado a la marginación y explotación de estos individuos. Exploro la temática de subalternidad desde diferentes épocas y regiones para establecer un recorrido del desarrollo de esta idea en distintos países en Latinoamérica. Esta tesis expone cómo la subalternidad es un dilema que continua vigente en los países latinoamericanos. Establezco un recorrido a través de las diferentes obras que se enfocan en esta temática y demuestran al individuo marginado desde los conceptos de barreras, y cómo se utilizan como objeto de desintegración social. Luego, propongo que la epistemología ha funcionado como herramienta de inclusión en la sociedad. En esta parte, planteo cómo los letrados han utilizado su posición privilegiada para representar al subalterno. Sin embargo, las obras que examino en esta parte de mi investigación, demuestran la presentación del individuo oprimido desde la noción y experiencia del escritor. Finalmente, a través de un análisis eco-crítico planteo que esta época globalizada ha desempeñado un papel esencial en la continua opresión y marginación que observamos en la sociedad latinoamericana. Para demostrar estas ideas, en el primer capítulo examino el concepto de barreras y su función en la sociedad. Planteo que las barreras son herramientas que se utilizan para establecer segregaciones, provocando una inestabilidad dentro de la sociedad. A partir de este punto, analizo las obras El muro y La frontera de cristal, las cuales presentan esta idea de exclusión y marginación de la clase baja en Argentina y en la zona fronteriza entre los Estados Unidos y México. En el segundo capítulo incorporo la idea de representación y el papel que ha desempeñado el letrado en la inclusión del subalterno en el paradigma social de América Latina. Para elaborar sobre este tema, centro mi investigación en dos obras distintas La Bestia y Mamita Yunai. Finalmente, en el capítulo tres, presento las consecuencias socio ambientales derivadas de la globalización y sus efectos en la sociedad aquí se trabajan la película También la lluvia y la novela Única mirando al mar. A través de un esquema organizado, en esta investigación quiero mostrar las consecuencias que han influenciado en la marginación y exclusión del subalterno en los países latinoamericanos. De estos problemas surge la siguiente pregunta: ¿De qué manera la literatura trae conciencia a los problemas con los cuales se enfrenta el sujeto subalterno en el siglo XXI hasta el presente?**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Attending to Attention: An Empirical Examination of the Attention-Based View in Operations Management Contexts
No full textPh.D.Attention is shown to be an important antecedent in several strategic and information processing contexts both within and outside firm boundaries. We examine the key roles that attention plays in three distinct contexts in operations management (OM), and which involves extensive executive utilization and leveraging of information technology (IT) based capabilities. In the following three essays in this dissertation, we further understand the impacts of executive and external stakeholder attention on certain key performance outcomes of firms, which are important for maintaining sustained levels of competitive advantage. The first essay is set in the context of e-Business capabilities, and we examine the moderating roles of two distinct attention processes on the e-Business to firm performance relationship...The second essay examines the impact of executive attention in the context of firm omni-channel strategies. Firms usually design multiple channels for their customers, but research suggests that over time, firms should make conscious efforts to blur channel boundaries and hence create seamless customer transactions...We seek to bring together these two important streams of literature in this study. Specifically, we investigate the interactive roles of two distinct executive attention foci, called external focus and internal focus, and BOD heterogeneity, on the speed of omni-channel development. Data for the essay comes from annual reports and Compustat for the years 2009 to 2018 from firms consistently placed in the Fortune list, which belong to the SIC divisions of Retail Trade and Manufacturing (G and D).The third essay is developed in the context of cause-related marketing (CM) initiatives and their performance. Such CM initiatives are a subset of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of the firm. Extant research on CSR shows that firm size and advertising intensity are factors that are associated with media attention to CM initiatives. Due to advancements in IT capabilities, firms can design multiple channels, including retail, online, mobile and social media channels to facilitate customer transactions. Such channel proliferation entails active firm efforts to provide information about these CM initiatives across multiple channels for customers, in order to facilitate their engagement with these initiatives. We use event-based attention theory to examine the effects of cross-channel capabilities, firm size, advertising intensity, and their interactions, on media attention to such CSR initiatives. We demonstrate that firm size plays a moderating role in the relationships between both advertising intensity and media attention of firm CM initiatives, and cross channel capabilities and media attention of firm CM initiatives. We also show that media attention of firm CM initiatives mediates the relationship between cross-channel capabilities and the performance of CM initiatives. Firm size is shown to play a moderating role in this mediating process. We find broad support for our hypotheses by performing empirical tests on a sample of 322 observations between the years 2009 and 2017 from 44 unique firms featured in the Fortune list.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Advanced Oxygen-Reduction Cathode Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Proton-Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells
No full textPh.D.Due to increasing consumption of fossil fuel and the caused environmental issues, alternative renewable energy sources have drawn more worldwide attention than any other times in this modern society. Among them, hydrogen could be a promising one by taking advantages of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) to generate electricity. Although rapid development has been witnessed, limitations in several components, especially catalysts for cathode, still exist regarding to prohibitive cost and poor durability for large-scale fuel cell commercialization. The quality of catalysts in membrane electrode assembly (MEA) governs overall PEMFC performance. My research focused on the development and advancement of both platinum group metal (PGM)-free and Pt-based carbon nanocomposite catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) happening at cathode side of fuel cell, which is the core point of sluggish kinetics. For the first part of my work, we developed a new concept of using freestanding 3D hydrogel to design support-free Fe-N-C catalysts. A 3D polyaniline (PANI)-based hydrogel approach was used for preparing a new type of single atomic iron site-rich catalyst, which has exhibited exceptionally enhanced activity and stability compared to conventional Fe-N-C catalysts supported on amorphous carbon blacks. On the other hand, in order to decrease the produced Fenton reagent, which will oxidize the proton exchange membrane and ionomer in membrane electrode assembly (MEA), we produce Mn-based catalysts by this novel hydrogel method. This is the first time that Mn-based catalysts can show such outstanding performance in acid media. We believe the 3D polymer hydrogel approach would be a new pathway to advance PGM-free catalysts. For Pt-based catalysts, our research focused on both support material and Pt or PtM alloy nanoparticles. Carbon supports used in oxygen-reduction cathode catalysts for PEMFCs are vulnerable to corrosion under harsh operating conditions, leading to poor performance durability. To address this issue, we have developed a highly stable porous graphitic carbon (PGC) produced through pyrolysis of a 3D polymer hydrogel in combination with Mn. Compared to conventional carbons such as Vulcan, Ketjenblack, and graphitized carbon, the PGC provides an improved balance between high graphitization and hierarchical porosity, which is favorable for uniform Pt nanoparticle dispersion and enhanced corrosion resistance. As a result, Pt supported on PGC exhibits remarkably enhanced stability. Furthermore, we developed a novel and facile method to boost the Pt-cased catalysts performance by integrating with iron based active sites FeNx. Synergistic catalysis between Pt(PtCo) nanoparticles over a platinum-group metal (PGM)–free catalytic substrate derived from iron doped zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) led to excellent oxygen reduction reaction performance under both rotating disk electrode (RDE) and fuel cell testing. These comprehensive works can not only provide insights for the future research, but also hold great potential to advance the current application development of fuel cell technology.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Cardiovascular Disease Among Asian Immigrants in California
No full textPh.D.Cardiovascular disease (CVD) includes all types of diseases that affect the heart or blood vessels. Hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, overweight/obesity, physical inactivity, and cigarette smoking are major risk factors for CVD. Though it is a top cause of death worldwide and in the US, little attention has been paid to it from media and public, especially compared with cancer. Asian immigrants, the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the US, are the victim of health inequality due to low health insurance coverage, poor access to health care facilities, and language barriers. Logistic regression and chi-square tests are commonly applied to explore the key CVD risk factors for Asian immigrants and to compare it with native-born Whites. Due to the limitation of public health data – available only at large geographic levels (county, MSA etc.) and key variables to identify Asian immigrants missing – the spatial variations on a refined geographic level of CVD health among Asian immigrants are rarely studied. While many studies point out rural health disparity regarding CVD health in the US most of them have been analyzed on the MSA level. But this topic has rarely been studied among Asian immigrants, who tend to have different place choice patterns from native born population and are more like to live in big cities. In this study, I use a confidential dataset from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) on the individual level to allow me to investigate CVD health on a refined geographic level among Asian immigrants. The objectives of this research are (1) to asses and display spatial variations of CVD risk factors among Asian immigrant controlling for Asian subtypes and age groups; (2) to identify and map clusters of cases (with CVD) and controls (without CVD) among Asian immigrant's communities in California; (3) to investigate how different residential environments affect CVD outcomes and CVD risk factor exposures among Asian immigrants in California on the block group level. The results show that hypertension, diabetes, overweight and quit smoking have significantly negative effects on CVD health among Asian immigrants after controlling for age groups and Asian subtypes. Low spatial variations have been displayed among these significant variables. Major CVD clusters of Asian immigrants can be found in the Los Angeles MSA and the San Francisco – Oakland – Berkeley MSA. Four significant clusters locate close to the boundary of Los Angeles county and Orange county. Rural health disparity has been confirmed also among Asian immigrants. Overweight/obesity is a key risk factors in suburban areas and rural and towns; smoking habits are significant in urban and 2nd city; hypertension and diabetes are significant regardless of urban/rural context. The results emphasize that one statewide policy is not necessarily applicable to all residents. To have more effective intervention of CVD health towards Asian immigrants, it needs to be tailored towards culture, offered in multiple languages and discussed on the community level. Furthermore, by using individual data, costly to generate and to obtain, results indicate that the use of public data is sufficient to capture the general pattern of common risk factors, but refined geographic level data is necessary to be able to reach community level results, for example clusters, and to serve as a foundation for local policy making. For studies conducted over a large area, which has a higher potential of variation in underlying population characteristics, health behaviors, and environmental conditions, localized methods and data might yield better results.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
A Matter of Place
No full textPh.D.Places matter to people, especially the familiar places that embody their personal and cultural histories and support the social interactions and routines of everyday life. My primary goal in this dissertation is to show how the mattering of places to people is at root an aesthetic phenomenon. I develop a framework of place-based aesthetic value centered on the notion of familiarity to draw out the truth of this claim, and in doing so I explore the aesthetic dimensions of the other values (e.g., ethical; epistemological) that are commonly associated with place and unite well-being. My secondary goal is to use this framework to examine how changes to the aesthetic character of people's everyday living environments — particularly due to global climate change — can detract from their ability to live well and flourish. People's everyday living environments have a familiar aesthetic character. This familiarity determines expectations and supports the happenings of daily life, giving rise to a sense of permanence, comfort, and security that is life-affirming and promotes human flourishing. Climate change transforms the aesthetic character of these environments, slowly rendering the familiar unfamiliar, and undermining aesthetic expectations and the positive values they support in the process. This gives rise to a sense of place-loss that cannot be accounted for solely in material terms. Drawing on the experiences of those living at the frontlines of climate change, I show how the breakdown of everyday aesthetic familiarity can cause people to experience feelings of displacement without being physically displaced. In this way, I provide a basis for rethinking the way we attribute aesthetic value to everyday living environments, in both formal (policy) and everyday contexts.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Evaluating the Potential of Pentoxifylline as a Hypoxia Modifier in Head and Neck Cancer
No full textM.S.Purpose: Hypoxia is a major source of resistance to radiation therapy (RT) in most solid tumors including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). As a result, there is an active interest in identifying agents that can alleviate hypoxia and sensitize tumors to RT. Pentoxifylline (PTX) is a clinically approved agent known to increase red blood cell deformability and improve blood flow. To date, there is limited in vivo evidence on the effects of PTX on tumor vascularity and hypoxia. In this work, we examined the activity of PTX against HNSCC in vitro and monitored the effects of PTX on tumor growth and vascularity in vivo using ultrasound (US) with co-registered photoacoustic imaging (PAI). Methods: Experimental studies were conducted using orthotopic (i) human FaDu tumor xenografts established in immunodeficient mice, and (ii) murine RP-MOC1 tumors established in immunocompetent C57BL/6 mice. Tumor-bearing mice were treated with PTX 200mg/kg and acute changes in tumor vascular function were evaluated over a 24 hour period using combined US-PAI. Percent vascularity (PV) was calculated from Power doppler. Tumor oxygen saturation (%sO2 average and sO2% total) and total hemoglobin concentration (HbT) were measured using photoacoustic imaging (PAI). Body weight measurements were acquired throughout the study to assess acute toxicity. Results: PTX did not sensitize cells to RT in vitro. We noted a higher number of colonies formed in the group treated with PTX+RT compared to RT alone group. Treatment with PTX (200 mg/kg) resulted in a significant increase in PV and %sO2 1hour post injection in FaDu tumors. In comparison, a transient increase in HbT average at 15 minutes post PTX injection (dose?) in RP-MOC1 tumor model. Conclusion: US-PAI detected transient improvement in tumor perfusion in HNSCC following PTX treatment. The observed effects were time- and tumor-dependent. Further investigation into the biological effects of PTX alone and in combination with RT against HNSCC is warranted.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
The World in Common - Towards a New Politics of Sexual Difference
No full textPh.D.In my comparative dissertation, I juxtapose the Chinese thought of Yin-Yang and Western theories of Hannah Arendt and Luce Irigaray in order to evaluate and re-evaluate the relationship among sexual difference, cross-cultural dialogue, and the sharing of the common world. In my interpretation, the fluid relationality of Yin-Yang can offer a non-anthropocentric model of the sexualized world. This, in my view, goes beyond the subjective and intersubjective patterns that Western thinkers, for example Irigaray and Arendt, formulate in their theories. Yin-Yang, however, offers new possibilities of conceptualizing the shareable common world. I argue that Arendt not only lacks understanding of sexual difference as the precondition of natality but also offers a limited relationship between the world and nature. Therefore, Arendt does not help human beings to find their natural identities in the world. By contrast, Irigaray employs sexuate difference (of men and women) in order to rethink the relation between nature and culture. On this basis, she articulates that sexual difference is a new approach to the world itself. However, Irigaray appears sometimes rigid in her interpretations of sexual difference. It is precisely in this context that the Chinese thought of Yin-Yang offers a different, more dynamic, and less anthropocentric understanding of difference, which allows us to rethink the sexuate nature of the world. However, the traditions of Yin-Yang did not develop the feminist culture that Irigaray calls for. Yin-Yang also lacks an understanding of the tension between human plurality and equality in public space, which Arendt defends. Through the triangular critiques I develop in my dissertation, I propose a new way to think about the world in common in a cross-cultural and gendered context.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Detection and Monitoring of Multiple Myeloma Measurable Residual Disease by High Sensitivity Flow Cytometry
No full textPh.D.The ability to identify residual myeloma cells (e.g. measurable residual disease; MRD) can provide valuable information pertaining to a patient's depth of response to therapy and risk of relapse. Multiparametric flow cytometry (MFC) is an excellent technique to monitor MM MRD and has been demonstrated to correlate with patient outcomes post-treatment. The implementation of MFC as a clinically useful assay for MRD testing faces several obstacles and these include: (i) the need to employ a high sensitivity flow cytometric assay as conventional staining methods are not optimized to process and acquire large numbers of cells; (ii) the administration of antibody-based immunotherapy such as daratumumab can hampered the detection of CD38 on PCs; and (iii) the lack of a standardized approach for a flow cytometric data analysis causes major heterogeneity in MM MRD analysis and interpretation. We set out to address these issues in this study.To achieve the high sensitivity (one abnormal cell in 105 − 106 cells) required for MRD evaluation, millions of cells have to be acquired and conventional immunophenotyping protocols are unable to attain these numbers, indicating the need for alternative flow cytometric staining procedures. A bulk, 'Pre-lysis' method is the current consensus approach for staining large number of cells; it requires two red blood cell lysis steps which can adversely affect epitope density. In this study, we tested the 'Pooled-tube' and 'Dextran Sedimentation' staining procedures and correlated them with the 'Pre-lysis' method as potential alternative approaches. The second goal of this study is to address the impact of immunotherapeutic intervention that employed antigen-specific drugs on the detection of PCs by MFC. Daratumumab is an anti-CD38 immunotherapeutic drug that has increasingly been used to treat patients with heavily pre-treated and relapsed/refractory MM. In so doing, the detection of CD38 antigen on PCs by MFC is unnecessarily impeded, and alternative markers that can be used in place of or in addition to CD38 antibody for detecting plasma cells are urgently needed. This study evaluated the expression profiles and stability of 16 alternative markers on PCs. The ability of selected markers to detect PCs were further evaluated in BM samples treated ex vivo with daratumumab. Our third goal is to address the inconsistencies of flow cytometric data analysis and interpretation in MM MRD testing due to the current lack of a standardized approach. As an increasing number of laboratories are adopting MFC for MM MRD testing, the implementation of a standardized approach to ensure reproducibility of test results is important. We hypothesized that a standardized analysis approach can be implemented to reduce variations seen with flow cytometric data analysis and reporting...Taken together, our study addressed some of the most important considerations when implementing MFC for MM MRD testing. Our study established and validated both 'Pooled-tube' and 'Dextran Sedimentation' staining procedures as alternative high sensitivity flow cytometric assays to 'Pre-lysis' that are suitable for MM MRD testing. For circumventing the issue with the detection of CD38 by MFC when daratumumab is administered, we determined CD319 (SLAMF7) to be the most suitable alternative because (i) it produced the best separation between PCs and other contaminating hematopoietic cells, (ii) it was stably expressed by PCs despite prolonged storage at 4oC, and (iii) elotuzumab (clone 162.1) did not interfere with plasma cell detection. Our results showed that a panel used for monitoring MM MRD could be modified by combining CD38 and CD319 into the same detection channel to detect PCs in daratumumab or elotuzumab treated patients. Finally, to improve the reproducibly of MM MRD testing by MFC, we created a consensus document that detailed standardized flow cytometric gating approaches and analysis strategy for handling MM MRD data files. We found that the adoption of a harmonized data analysis approach can reduce result discrepancies between different laboratories.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*