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Bob Bosselman, Academic Chair and champion of this special and successful program; Dr. Tianshu Zheng, both guide and friend whose perspective I value; Dr. Russell Laczniak, whose insights helped me find the right direction; and Dr. Douglas Bonett, who came to my rescue in a time of need. If you undertake a journey that is also a life changing pilgrimage, you will wish to have a cicerone. And if you knew the difficulties of that journey before you embarked upon it, you would want that cicerone to be Dr. Ann Marie Fiore, mentor-guideguru-pilot-role model. Her generosity is exceeded only by her standard of excellence. I am forever in her debt for an expedition of discovery filled with powerful memories, flashes of clarity, positivity, and kindness, all the while on a path marked often by muddy and pitted roads, detours, and doubts. On every journey, we encounter fellow travelers to whom we are grateful for their camaraderie. I thank my fellow travelers-my classmates in the doctoral program at Iowa State, especially my dear friend and inspiration Barry Bloom; our "class president" the generous Michael P.