This dissertation aims to: 1) characterize the range of beliefs museum practitioners have about racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity; 2) their understanding of the role of race, culture, and ethnicity in minoritized learners’ sensemaking; and 3) the areas of tension and symmetry between practitioners’ values and their perception of their...
Understanding the chemical complexity of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and how chemical, biological, and physical cues bring changes to the behavior of cells has remained a grand challenge. Addressing these questions requires not only achieving systematic control over the interactions between cells and the ECM but also utilizing suitable analytical...
This dissertation demonstrates how related initiatives to reform narcotics laws and protect consumers from dangerous medicines – taking hold in the 1950s and institutionalized in the mid-1960s – created the foundation for a massive expansion of federal policing of illicit drugs. Centered on the history of the Food and Drug...
My submission is a data dashboard that depicts global trends for new and total COVID-19 cases between Jan 01, 2020 and March 08, 2021. It contains two tabs (new and total cases) with three interactive visualizations. Two maps, an original and a log-scale-filled, show the number of new COVID-19 cases...
This dissertation explores the reciprocal relationship between international politics and digital computation since the 1960s by examining the first attempts to use computer simulation to credibly forecast our planet’s economic and environmental future on a global scale. In particular, this project offers the first sustained historical analysis of the origins...
Achievement gaps between students from different SES and racial/ethnic backgrounds stubbornly persist despite decades of policy interventions. My dissertation focuses on several unexpected sources of stress and disruption that may be related to the achievement gap: sunlight exposure, a sister’s teen childbearing, and nearby violent crime. I demonstrate that these...
This paper examines the relationship between a party'’'s descriptive representation of women and its ideological proximity to female and male voters. I find that male and female voters are both objectively closer to parties with more females in their delegations. However, males are more likely to subjectively assess parties with...
To analyze institutional dynamics, it is first necessary to determine when change has occurred, when not, and the nature and magnitude of change. If social institutions are defined in terms of rules, then a change of rules forms the core of institutional change. A number of complications arise from the...
What are the origins of race-based affirmative action in college admissions? With only a few exceptions, there remain few evidence-based accounts of when and why such programs emerged among selective institutions of higher education; how heavily they weighed racial considerations; and how exactly race was taken into account. This paper...
