This thesis consists of two projects I worked on simultaneously throughout my PhD. Although neither project builds on the other, both investigate social systems as networks, and draw on a common set of statistical tools and methods.In the first project, I analyse the academic employment and doctoral education of tenure- track faculty at all…

The purpose of this dissertation is to study the consistency of the structures and the centrality of mathematics courses in the curricula of the universities in the Minnesota State University system. This research will be based on the curriculum prerequisite networks for the seven universities in the Minnesota State System. These networks will be…

This dissertation examines the role of digitalization in new venture internationalization in three studies: a systematic literature review, a quantitative study, and a qualitative study. The systematic literature review synthesizes existing literature in the research domains of digitalization and international opportunity recognition, as well as…

A research question that is of interest across many disciplines is whether and how relationships in a network are related to the attributes of the nodes of the network. In this dissertation, we propose two joint frameworks for modeling the relationship between the network and attributes. In the joint latent space model in Chapter 2, shared latent…

Effectively building, coordinating, and enhancing large, decentralized networks of professionals remains a vexing challenge, despite the rise of digital tools and social media platforms. This study examines the evolution of a nascent research- and policy-focused network, spanning more than 60 university groups and policy institutes in the United…

When highly effective educators move into school leadership, their learning and growth are put on the back burner. Oftentimes, school leaders operate in silos within their school districts with little to no authentic collaboration with other school leaders or district administrators. The goal of this participatory action research study was to…

This phenomenological study examined ways in which a coordinated and proactive network of professionals could support justice involved individuals in their postsecondary educational pursuits. A critical qualitative methodology was applied to explore context and opportunities for services to be used across organizations, governmental agencies and…

Due to the myriad of complex decisions that BCBA candidates must make, both in academic and clinical settings, the use of Equivalence Based Instruction (EBI) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT) in concept instruction may aid in the ability to make such decisions which require derived relational responding across arbitrary dimensions (Roessger et…

With the rise in popularity of social media and e-commerce platforms, "discrete math" is at the heart of our online experiences, playing a front-end role in the recommendation of what to click, watch, or buy, or who to follow or friend, as well as a back-end role in data storage, access, and transfer. This thesis focuses on two such…

Over the past 10-15 years, self-described "statewide networks of support" have emerged to serve students experiencing foster care (SEFC) who seek to access postsecondary education. These networks, designed to foster communication between professionals in higher education and their counterparts in the child-welfare system, consist of…

Public community colleges must adapt to ever-changing student populations to increase student retention and completion levels. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how community college students described their academic experiences and social interactions in a coordinated studies learning community at an urban community…

Graph Signal Processing (GSP) plays a crucial role in addressing the growing need for information processing across networks, especially in tasks like supervised classification. However, the success of GSP in such tasks hinges on accurately identifying the underlying relational structures, which are often not readily available and must be inferred…

Mid-level administrators occupy a complex position within higher education institutions, a role defined by "middleness" (Gleeson & Shain, 1999, p. 488), which characterizes their place in institutional hierarchies between superiors and subordinates. Mid-level administrators often feel isolated since they cannot be seen as having…

While the capstone experience of student teaching is sometimes perceived as a time where everything from one's teacher preparation neatly comes together, that is often not the case. Student teachers frequently find themselves positioned at the intersection of competing discourses as they consider: who am I, and what does that mean for how I teach?…

Institutions of higher education seek to promote global citizenship among students. International Service-Learning (ISL) programming is a common approach to further those ends. While ISL programming has been shown to promote global citizenship in the short term, few studies have persuasively demonstrated its impact is lasting. It has been…