--- breaking the silence ---Toward a Theory of Women's Doctoral Persistence
© Roberta-Anne Kerlin, 1997
Acknowledgements
In following my own path toward completion of the doctorate I have learned many lessons - both vicariously through the stories of the seven women who participated in my research and first hand - about the use and misuse of power in faculty relationships and the struggle to shape one's own voice as an emerging scholar. Not all the lessons were wanted or appreciated; however, they have served to make me wiser and to deepen my appreciation for the systemic nature in which power is embedded into the structure of institutions of higher learning.
I am appreciative and thankful for the support of my dissertation chair, Dr. Sheilah Allen, and the members of my committee. Without their support this dissertation would not have been written. They have modelled a lesson I will gladly carry forward with me in my future work with graduate and undergraduate students.
I would also like to express my thanks and appreciation to Dr. Jane Gaskell, University of British Columbia, as my external examiner, for her thoughtful questions at my defense. Her questions focused on the absence of my own voice in this dissertation and provided an important validation of my views about qualitative research.
I would also like to express appreciation to my friend, Lona McRae. Over the past seven years Lona has been witness to the many ups and downs of my own dissertation process and no one could ask for a better friend in life than she has been to me.
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