This dissertation is concerned with a move toward community engagement within academia generally, and more specifically the concepts of legitimacy and belonging in engagement practices. My work contributes to a relatively recent shift toward community engagement classifications and designations for institutions of higher education (Saltmarsh and…

Power and authority exist in every relationship. The relationship between teacher and student is no exception. Legitimacy is the cornerstone of authority, yet there is a dearth of research into how teacher legitimacy affects the teacher/student relationship. In the current study, I sought to identify characteristics and behaviors teachers exhibit…

"Just Innovation" problematizes taken-for-granted assumptions about innovation in education as "just" about new devices like laptops, computers, or smart-phones. It also aims to open conceptual space for considering what is "just," or fair in twenty-first century contexts by investigating the cultural politics of…

There is a dearth of empirical evidence on the practice of academic capitalism at community colleges. The purpose of this case study was to examine how academic capitalism and neoliberalism are manifested in the mission, strategic plan, website, and perspectives of 24 mid-level administrators at a multi-campus suburban community college. Using…

Information systems are considered to be a critical and strategic part of most organizations today. Because of this it has become increasingly important to ensure that there is an effective information security program in place protecting those information systems. It has been well established by researchers that the success of an information…

The following study is an extended ethnographic case study of a "black intellectual insurgency" within the predominantly white space of the U.S. intercollegiate policy debate activity. A growing number of black students are entering the debate activity and insisting that "whiteness" be confronted and interrogated and that…

This project focuses on the dynamics of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a non-binding multistakeholder debate about information policymaking. Using the theory of structuration and critical discourse analysis, I explore how the nation-state-centric and the internet-community-centric perceptions of authority and approaches to decision-making…

This in-depth case study of classroom interaction illuminated how a white female teacher and African American students used talk to build positive authority relationships across their racial difference. Racial difference in classrooms can engender cultural misunderstandings between teachers and students around behavior, communication, and learning…