Dissertation Defense Announcements

This dissertation explores notions of belonging among minority Honors students through student self-identifying questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. One objective of this study is to explore how the Honors educational environment impacts minority student populations and their overall sense of belonging. Another objective of this study is to examine the influence of race, class, gender, culture, and educational experiences prior to entering the Honors College. In the context of this study, a minority classification refers to the student’s self-identification as one or more of the following groups: LatinX, Indigenous American, Black/African American, Pacific Islander, and/or Middle Eastern. The findings indicate that having a fostered identity before entering the Honors College, minority representation, community, and social/emotional safety are aspects of the Honors educational experience that contribute to the participants’ notions of belonging. The study presents implications for diversity, equity, and inclusion in Honors programs, as well as institutional and systemic changes to help promote minority student success.

Autonomous exploration using mobile robots, commonly referred to as robotic exploration, entails simultaneously performing robot perception, localization, and motion planning to explore an unknown environment. Most prior indoor robotic exploration algorithms focus on exploring the entire environment. We consider exploration under deadlines dynamically imposed either by the robot’s battery or by the environment. Such time-sensitive robotic exploration is critical in dangerous environments as it provides vital initial information about the geometric structure and layout of the environment for subsequent operations. For instance, firefighters can utilize an initial map generated by this deadline constrained robotic exploration to rapidly navigate a building on fire. In the presence of deadlines, the robots should identify the semantically significant regions of the environment (e.g., corridors) and prioritize those that enable them to determine the environment's geometric structure and return to the starting position before the deadline.
This dissertation addresses the problem of autonomous exploration in indoor environments with dynamic deadlines. The problem is NP-hard and requires exponential time to solve optimally. Therefore, we present a short-horizon exploration algorithm, the priority-based greedy exploration algorithm, and several long-horizon exploration algorithms; these include adaptations of the orienteering problem and the profitable tour problem for single-robot and multi-robot exploration of unknown environments with dynamic deadlines. Furthermore, we present a test suite of environments and exploration metrics to benchmark the real-world efficiency of exploration algorithms in office-like environments. Our single-robot experiments reveal that the priority-based greedy exploration algorithm, which focuses on exploring semantic regions with higher connectivity, consistently outperforms the baseline cost-based greedy exploration algorithm in terms of environment layout identification and exploration efficiency. Moreover, the priority-based greedy algorithm was found to be on par with the computationally expensive long-horizon exploration algorithms in terms of percent of the area explored within the deadline. Long-horizon exploration algorithms on the other hand exhibit consistent performance with low variance over repeated experiments. Moreover, the multi-robot priority-based greedy exploration algorithm demonstrated better performance compared to the multi-robot baseline exploration algorithm and performed on par with the multi-robot long-horizon based exploration algorithm while being computationally faster.

This three-article format dissertation presents a comprehensive examination of the 2017 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), focusing on its measurement properties across diverse community college student populations. Study 1 centered on the validity of the internal structure of CCSSE. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed evidence to support an eight-factor model of student engagement. This model encompasses dimensions such as personal development, interactions with faculty and peers, and institutional support. This study marks a methodological and theoretical shift, advocating for a multidimensional perspective on student engagement in community college. Study 2 employed multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to examine the measurement invariance of the CCSSE across gender, age, race/ethnicity, and enrollment intensity. The results affirmed the CCSSE’s capacity to consistently measure engagement at configural, metric, scalar, and strict levels measurement invariance. This verification underlined the survey’s reliability in capturing authentic group differences. This study also uncovered lower engagement scores among men and part-time students. Study 3 explored the concurrent and predictive evidence of validity of the CCSSE, investigating how engagement indicators correlate with and predict key student success outcomes. It offered new insights into the complex effects of factors such as interaction with faculty and peers and advising services on academic outcomes.

This study explored teacher and student perspectives on mandated school uniforms. Debate exists over the appropriateness of uniforms, with some stakeholders suggesting positive outcomes while others bemoan limits on student expression. This study sought to fill a gap in research specific to middle school uniform use by exploring teachers' and students' perceptions. This research also considered the intersection of gender and diversity issues with uniform policies because these topics are becoming more prominent in the discussion. Four focus groups were conducted, two at a suburban school and two at an inner-city school. Findings suggested that teachers and students at the suburban middle school experienced uniforms more positively than their counterparts in the inner city. Additionally, findings indicated that female students had more negative experiences with uniform policies and their enforcement. From a social identity perspective, this study suggests that the group experience of the same uniform could have a positive or negative impact. When people feel the need for a positive group self, they demonstrate ingroup bias, which could help or hamper the implementation of school uniforms. This research helps bridge the gap in empirical literature within the context of social groups and critical theory to offer recommendations for administrators and policymakers regarding school uniforms in public middle schools. Results can direct further research while raising awareness of issues administrators should address when considering the implementation of a school uniform policy.