UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2008 - 20102

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    RECLAIMING THE EDUCATION DOCTORATE: THREE CASES OF PROCESSES AND ROLES IN INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
    (2010) Perry, Jill Alexa; Imig, David G.; Weible, Thomas; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The purpose of this study is to understand how change takes place in schools of education by examining three institutions involved in the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. More specifically, this study will investigate how schools of education and their academic departments adopt, adapt, or reject change efforts and how faculty in a change agent capacity describe and understand their role in this process. The theoretical framework that guided this study is Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation model which examines how innovative ideas are disseminated through an understanding of the innovation, the communication channels through which the innovation is described, the influences of the social system on the process, and the time it takes for a decision to adopt the innovation is made. The methodology employed in this study was an embedded, multiple-case study. The two units of analysis were the school or academic department and the CPED primary investigator. Data was collected in three forms-- documents, interviews, and observations. Case reports for each institution were generated and a cross-case analysis was conducted. Findings reveal that leadership, internal characteristics, external characteristics and change agent roles and strategies are significant in defining and shaping the change process.
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    Commanding Men and Machines: Admiralship, Technology, and Ideology in the 20th Century U.S. Navy
    (2008-08-05) Hagerott, Mark Regan; Sumida, Jon T; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation engages the important historical and sociological question: how do organizations develop leaders? As technological complexity increased, the military struggled to produce leaders who could understand technology and yet integrate the operations of disparate parts of large organizations. In the late 20th century, the senior leader model in the U.S. military shifted from a 'generalist' to what can be described as a 'technical specialist' model. The commanding elite that resulted have been criticized as overly technical in orientation, and the system of leader development has been subject to several reform efforts. Missing from the reform debates is an historical understanding of how and why the officer system changed. This study contributes to the history by exploring the shift in U.S. Navy leader models from 'generalist' to 'technical specialist'. It is widely believed in military circles that the shift in leadership models from 'generalist' to 'specialist' was natural, an inevitable consequence of technological change. Among scholars, the shift in the U.S. Navy from 'generalist' to 'specialist' is typically associated with aviation, circa 1935-47. This dissertation challenges these notions. The shift in leader models was not fated by technology, but was the result of highly contingent bureaucratic battles fought between general line officers (generalists) and nuclear reactor specialists for control of the development of young officers. Chance events-- in particular, the sinking of USS THRESHER-- also shaped officer policy. This study argues that for six decades--from 1899 to 1963-- navy leadership affirmed the 'generalist' as the preferred model for commander. But in the 1960s the Navy abandoned the 'generalist' model. Admiral H.G. Rickover was largely responsible for the change. In the space of a decade, Rickover restructured assignment and education processes to produce technically expert officers for his nuclear machines. Naval Academy admissions criteria and curricula were changed such that specialized technical majors replaced general degrees and universal language education. The restructured processes encouraged officers to value specialized technical expertise over general knowledge, that is, integrated operational, strategic, and cultural knowledge. Aviators and surface officers followed Rickover's cue and by the 1970s adopted more specialized models of development for their respective officers.