My Dissertation “The National Security Education Program and Its Service Requirement” is Now Available Online

Loyola University of Chicago eCommons made my dissertation available for download yesterday and should you have interest in the National Security Education Program you may find interest in my dissertation.  The suggested citation and link follow:

Comp, David J., “The National Security Education Program and Its Service Requirement: An Exploratory Study of What Areas of Government and for What Duration National Security Education Program Recipients Have Worked” (2013).Dissertations. Paper 509. http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/509

A Note of Thanks to Everyone Who Helped Me with my Dissertation

As this blog posts here on IHEC Blog I am participating in commencement at Loyola University Chicago and will receive my Doctorate in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, Comparative and International Education.  It was a long nine years to complete this degree and there are many to thank and I wish to specifically thank everyone who helped me with my dissertation and those acknowledgements follow:

THE NATIONAL SECURITY EDUCATION PROGRAM AND ITS SERVICE REQUIREMENT:  AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF WHAT AREAS OF GOVERNMENT AND FOR WHAT DURATION NATIONAL SECURITY EDUCATION PROGRAM RECIPIENTS HAVE WORKED

I would like to acknowledge everyone who has assisted me throughout my doctoral studies over the years.  I would first like to acknowledge my adviser, Dr. Noah Sobe, for agreeing to serve as my adviser and for his patience and feedback during the many courses I took with him and as I completed my dissertation.  Additionally, I would like to thank Dr. Robert Roemer and Dr. David Ensminger for agreeing to serve on my dissertation committee.  I truly appreciate all of their time and assistance as I navigated this process!

A very special thanks is due to my friend and colleague Dr. Kevin Gormley at the National Security Education Program for his encouragement dating back to a lunch meeting in Los Angeles in 2009 to our phone conversations and e-mail communications throughout 2010 and 2011 about my project.  This dissertation would not have been possible without Kevin’s support and assistance!  I also wish to thank the many staff members at the National Security Education Program including Dr. Michael Nugent, Judy Collier, Roy Savoy, Katie Davis, Alison Patz, and Stuart Karaffa for their approval of my project, their time in reviewing my survey instrument and providing valuable feedback at our meeting back in November 2010 and their assistance in launching my survey instrument.  I also wish to thank Genie Lomize, Treasurer of the Boren Forum, and Dr. Philip Lyon, Former Executive Director of the Boren Forum, for their support of my dissertation and for Dr. Lyon’s continued support and time to meet at the National Security Education Program Office in November 2010 to review and provide feedback on my survey instrument.  A note of thanks is also due to Christopher Powers, Director of the Boren Awards for International Study at the Institute of International Education for answering my e-mail questions about historical program dates.  I hope that the National Security Education Program, the Boren Awards for International Study and the Boren Forum will find some value in the results of my dissertation.

I also want to thank all of the National Security Education Program Alumni (Boren Scholars and Boren Fellows) who took time out of their busy schedules to complete my survey instrument!

Additional gratitude is offered to many colleagues in the field of international education who provided resources and feedback as I worked on my dissertation.  This list of individuals includes the following:  Dr. Gary Rhodes and Dr. Miloni Gandhi from the Center for Global Education at the University of California, Los Angeles for taking time out of their busy schedules to review and provide feedback on my dissertation proposal and survey instrument; Mickey Slind for sending me her personal collection of primary documents related to the early years of the National Security Education Program (they will always have a home in Bury Book International Education Library & Archive); Elizabeth Mandeville for sending me a valuable  primary document pertaining to the early years of the National Security Education program; Stephanie Kirmer for taking the time out of her schedule to meet with me and provide a statistics tutorial and for lending me one of her publications as I worked on the data analysis portion of my dissertation; Kyle Flynn for helping me better understand the statistical analysis of my results; and, Dr. Louis Berends for his friendship and support throughout our studies and time at Loyola University Chicago and beyond.

Further acknowledgement and thanks is due to my supervisor Christine Gramhofer at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  Her support for time off to work to research and write my dissertation was truly helpful and greatly appreciated!

Thank you to my mother Vicky and Sam, father Jim and Mary Ellen, and my mother and father-in-law Therese y Don Carlos for their encouragement and continued support over the years and their enthusiasm as I neared my goal.

Finally, but most importantly, I wish to thank my wife Ana and children Gabriela, Andrés y Lucas for their patience, assistance, support and faith in me.  The nights away from the family while attending classes and the days and nights away from them while writing my comprehensive exams and, in particular, this dissertation were truly difficult.

I could not have completed my research without the support of all these wonderful people!

Changing types of posts here on IHEC Blog

If you have been following IHEC Blog for a while then you may have noticed changes in the way I have been posting.  IHEC Blog and my related activities are secondary to my family, employment and academic lives and things have gotten so busy over the past 6-12 months that I have had to change the way I post.  I still strive to post to IHEC Blog daily (Monday-Friday) but over the past several weeks I've managed only two to three posts per week.  What you will also notice is that I have been embedding much more video, documents and widgets into my posts with links to other resources than writing substantive pieces.  Of my last ten posts (not including this one) I have embedded five videos, one document and one twitter feed widget and the three other posts were short paragraph posts.  While these posts are less time intensive to prepare I do hope that they are informative and add some value to your work.  My current posting patterns will most likely continue for some time as I work to complete my dissertation.  About the dissertation...from July 18-29 I am taking off of work to focus on my dissertation and will probably not post anything (unless I write something this week and schedule to post or it is something I cut and discard from my dissertation that I think IHEC Blog readers may find of interest).  To that end, posts to IHEC Blog's Facebook page and to Twitter will also decrease substantially.


Thanks for coming along for the ride so far and I hope you continue!


Photo credit:  purpleslog (extra credit:  Do you know the name of or location of this clock?)

A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations

Continuing with my history theme...This IHEC Blog post, however, really has nothing to do with international education other I will be following this style guide for my dissertation which will be on an international education topic.  This IHEC Blog post has more to do with The University of Chicago where I work and the historical influence this institution has had in academia.  It is truly an amazing place to work and it makes you be at the top of your game everyday.  

For this post, I'm writing some information about a style guide that I have to follow for formatting my dissertation.  I had always heard about Turabian Style but never knew anything about it or its history so I thought I would copy and paste some interesting (at least to me) information and history from Wikipedia (with links to The University of Chicago Press) about Kate L. Tirabian and her style guide. "A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations" by Kate L. Turabian is a style guide for writing and formatting research papers. Except for a few minor differences, Turabian style is the same as The Chicago Manual of Style. However, while The Chicago Manual of Style focuses on providing guidelines for publishing in general, Turabian's Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations focuses on providing guidelines for student papers, theses and dissertations. The most recent version of Turabian (7th ed.) enables use of footnotes and/or endnotes in combination with parenthetical referencing. Turabian was the graduate school dissertation secretary at The University of Chicago from 1930 to 1958. The school required her approval for every master's thesis and doctoral dissertation.

Citation: all text copied and pasted from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_L._Turabian and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Manual_for_Writers_of_Research_Papers,_Theses,_and_Dissertations

Dissertation Proposal Writing -Stage 2

There will be a limited number of IHEC Blog posts (and Facebook and Twitter posts) this week as I'm on the second stage of my dissertation proposal writing (all is getting down to the wire) and all my focus outside of my family and job is on reading and writing.  The photo to the left are the books I had the pleasure of consulting last night and will revisit again tonight.  It will be a late one again tonight!  We'll see what happens...

Looking Forward to Finishing my Dissertation!

The last week or so I've been working under a very tight timeline to submit a draft of my dissertation proposal which is due tomorrow.  I will still need to work on the draft for the final submission in a few weeks.  A special word of thanks goes out to my wife with all of her help and for flying solo much of this past weekend with my three wonderful [but tiring] kids, who also deserve a word of thanks for putting up with daddy!

Once my proposal is approved I will be able to talk and post more about my topic and will most likely turn to IHEC Blog, Facebook and Twitter if I have questions or in an attempt to learn of tips on where to find additional information and resources!  I haven't been able to respond to most e-mail messages or work on other projects that we may have communicated about but I hope to be able to return to them soon.  Last Friday I created my own Google search story [you can create your own you search story here] about my time in graduate school to date which follows...

IHEC Blog is Going on a "Dissertation Proposal Vacation"

Embedded within last Friday's "Who Will Grade Your Work" video of the week post I mentioned that I'm taking a short break from posting to IHEC Blog as I'm working on my dissertation proposal and it is a bit of a time sensitive issue.  My "Dissertation Proposal Vacation" will, of course, be no vacation....

I do have about four or five posts ready to go out over the next few weeks (about once a week) so you will still see some new content on IHEC Blog.  It just won't be every day (Monday to Friday).  My presence on IHEC Blog's Facebook page and on Twitter will also be significantly reduced.

Photo credit: edanley

Video of the Week - Who Will Grade Your Work

IHEC Blog (and its subsidiaries) are going on vacation for a little while.  The reason is that I need every extra minute of the day to work on my dissertation proposal.  I do have a few posts already written and scheduled to post next week and the following week but a little break is needed.  My dissertation will be related to international education and once my proposal is approved (I guess it has to be written first...) I will be able to share more and will probably post to IHEC Blog from time to time about my research and/or seeking information.

For this video of the week I have selected "Who will grade your work" which is a montage of PhD Comics with the "Who will grade your work" song playing (adaptation of a Jewel song).  I recently discovered "Piled Higher and Deeper" a grad student comic and love it!  You can check it out at http://www.phdcomics.com/.  Additionally, you can sign up for future comics via e-mail, RSS feed or Facebook.