Many thanks to my fellow graduate students and lab mates at the University of Michigan who have been wonderful mentors and tremendous sources of support over the years. I look forward to having you all as colleagues and friends for many years to come. I would also like to thank Kahlil Ford, Maurice Melbourne and Roderick Morris for their general support and assistance in editing, as well as providing feedback on the readability of this work at several different stages. I also thank Beverly Araujo for being a great confidante and source of encouragement through all of the challenging times in our graduate school careers, I look forward to many more years of continued friendship and research collaboration.
Thank you to my family for their love, and their support of my academic and research endeavors over the past five years, even though they may not have fully grasped what I have spent all this time trying to accomplish. I especially thank my parents for all of the sacrifices that they have made over the years to ensure that I had a strong foundation upon which to build my career and my life. This book is a reflection of their hard work.
Finally, I thank Romanieo Golphin. Without your continued support and belief in my abilities, I do not think I would have completed the Ph.D. You have continually encouraged me when the process was challenging and I wanted to give up. You were a constant reminder of why this work is so important. But more than that, you have been an important example of perseverance in your unrelenting pursuit of your own goals. I look forward to many years of continued friendship and collaboration to achieve the social change and progress that we both believe in, and know must happen so that we do not fail the next generations to come.