April 3, 2025
The dissertation that appeared to the public in November 2024 should have never been approved by the committee.
In my own document, commencing with “Introductory Comments” and continuing in successive chapters, I provide a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned flaws and others. In doing so, I analyze each of the five chapters in the Sayles-Adams dissertation: Chapter I (along with “Acknowledgments” and “Abstract”), “Background of the Problem”; Chapter II, “Review of the Literature”; Chapter III, “Methodology”; Chapter IV, “Findings”; and Chapter V, “Discussion.”
As of November 2024, continuing into February 2025, the "embargoed" status of the Sayles-Adams’s dissertation ended and this doctoral thesis was listed on “Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato,” at link, https://cornerstone.lib.
According to librarians at University of Minnesota/Mankato, Sayles-Adams withdrew the dissertation from the Cornerstone listing on 17 February 2025.
Readers of my blog, my Journal of the K-12 Revolution: Essays and Research from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other platforms know that they may go to the above link to observe the current "withdrawn" status of the dissertation.
The current unavailability of the Sayles-Adams dissertation induces grave questions as to why Sayles-Adams is unwilling to submit her dissertation for public review. This runs counter to the very idea of doctoral dissertations, the purpose of which is to contribute to the intellectual universe of public knowledge.
As officers of student government at Minnesota State University/Mankato, I can imagine that you are offended by the prevailing circumstances surrounding this dissertation and will be motivated to contact President Inch and other university officials expressing your dismay.
Readers of my blog know that in African American Women Principals: A Phenomenological Study to Explore Their Experiences in K-12 Leadership, Lisa Sayles-Adams interviews five African American women school principals with the objective of determining how these principals coped with the challenges they faced because of their position at the intersection of race and gender, especially with regard to interactions with white men.
Sufficiently discerning readers of Lisa Sayles-Adams’s dissertation will readily observe the many flaws of English usage, the structural problems of the dissertation, the poorly executed interviews of the participant principals, the failure to follow up with questions that could have produced material of considerable value in understanding the experiences of these women, and the lack of any meaningful contribution to scholarly literature.
As readers now know, the dissertation is replete with misspelled and misused words, including a rendering of the word, tenet, as “tenant” two times; presentation of the word, “rein,” as reign; and the most brain-boggling of all: the four-times misspelled pseudonym (“Marica” rather than “Marcia) assigned to one of the five interviewees participating in this qualitative study; Sayles-Adams also once renders another pseudonym, Gwendolyn, as “Gwendoly.”
Natalie Rasmussen must issue a public apology for having served as chair of the committee that passed the wretchedly written dissertation of Lisa Sayles-Adams.
And you, as student government leaders, you should also make a public statement lamenting the bestowal of a doctorate at Minnesota State University/Mankato on the basis of such an insubstantial and error-ridden dissertation.
I would think, also, that you would argue for the dismissal of Natalie Rasmussen as Chair of the Department of Education at Minnesota State University/Mankato and encourage your colleagues at the Education Minnesota affiliate at Minnesota State University/Mankato to do the same.
As was the case with my email to others at Minnesota State University/Mankato, I am entering this communication on my blog as an open letter.
Be well, take action, and be in touch as guided by my identifiers as given below---
With best regards,
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