ANN ARBOR, Mich., August 30, 2007 - The best selling dissertation of 2006 was written by intelligence community veteran George L. Tanner, Ph.D., currently Chief Learning Officer for the Department of Homeland Security.   In his piece, "The Problem of 'World Order' When the World is Your Village Versus Your Globe", Tanner addresses key issues with 'world order', and suggests other future political orders and their probability of mass acceptance.   This is Dr. Tanner's fourth time on ProQuest's Best-Selling Dissertations list and his second time as the #1 best seller, an unprecedented accomplishment.

Dr. George L. Tanner is the Chief Learning Officer for the Department of Homeland Security.  In this role, Dr. Tanner is responsible for the training, education, and professional development needs of all DHS employees.  Dr. Tanner is a retired active-duty Army officer who spent most of his service time as a member of the military intelligence community.  He spent the majority of his last decade of military service at the Joint Military Intelligence College serving in a variety of positions, including Associate Dean for College Programs, and Academic Department Chairman.  He is married to Tanya M. (Wenzel) Tanner, the Principal Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security.  George and Tanya reside in Alexandria, Virginia and are the proud parents of two children-Richard (10) and Andrew (8).

When contacted by ProQuest and informed of his success, Dr. Tanner expressed his deepest appreciation to his dissertation chair, Dr. Richard Chadwick of the University of Hawaii. Tanner said, "in the 1993/94 Academic Year, Dr Chadwick spent well over 100 hours of time with me during one semester alone, working me through about fourteen drafts of my dissertation and getting it to the point where it was releasable to all committee members for their review. He stuck by me through the oral defense of the dissertation, guided my research and chapter development, and led me to the successful defense of my dissertation in the summer of 1996. Dr. Chadwick professionally mentored and developed me as no one ever has and without his support, I would probably have never finished my dissertation. Now, well over a decade later, I try to emulate Dr. Chadwick's dedication and patient professionalism in my dealings with people that work with and for me at the Department of Homeland Security".

Richard Chadwick, professor at the University of Hawaii, was chairman of Dr. Tanner's dissertation committee.  Chadwick said, "To come to grips in actual decision making situations with the many dimensions of globalization and to do it with the high level of intelligence it demands, you need all the help you can get from various decision methodologies.  Dr. Tanner's dissertation follows him around because it is a multi-method look at the many meanings and dimensions of globalization, and explores a number of 'cutting edge' decision aiding and analysis technologies in the process.  In the intelligence community, I would expect it to be assigned reading, both for its substantive and its methodological content."

When more than 70,000 new graduate works are added to the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) database each year, the demand for older dissertations illustrates that some of these constitute the seminal work on a particular topic.  "Not only do dissertations highlight the leading edge of research every year in hundreds of disciplines," said Austin McLean, Director, Scholarly Communication and Dissertations Publishing, "but the PQDT database makes classic works discoverable and accessible as well.  Users from around the world are able to track new trends in scholarship and remain current in their research disciplines by reviewing the new dissertations which are added weekly to PQDT."

This year also marks a major milestone for the PQDT database as it now has more than 900,000 PDF's of dissertations and theses in the database.  ProQuest adds 1,000-3,000 full-text PDF's to the database each week and expects to hit the 1 million mark by mid 2008.   PQDT in total has more than 2.4 million citations of dissertations and theses in the database, with the full text of nearly 2 million of these titles also available in paper and microform formats. 

The PQDT includes bibliographic citations for materials ranging from the first U.S. dissertation accepted in 1637, to those accepted as recently as last semester. The Library of Congress has designated the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses digital collection as the nation's official off-site repository for digital dissertations & theses.  PQDT is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. 

The 2006 top ten reflect the disciplinary diversity of graduate research and include topics in art history, industrial engineering, education, and a variety of business and financial subjects. 

BEST SELLING DISSERTATION LIST FROM 2006:
1. "The problem of "world order" when the world is your village versus your globe" by Tanner, George Lewis, Ph.D., University of Hawai'i, 1996, 345 pages; AAT 9713989 

2. "Critical analysis of school supervision in Taiwan" by Tsu Shou Li, Educat.D., Columbia University Teachers College, 1984, 386 pages; AAT 8505403 

3. "A correlational analysis of servant leadership and job satisfaction in a religious educational organization" by Anderson, Kelly Preston, D.M., University of Phoenix, 2005, 146 pages; AAT 3162292

4. "Mergers and acquisitions: A phenomenological case study" by Rowlett, Richard Dean, D.M., University of Phoenix, 2006, 278 pages; AAT 3202466

5. "RFID in supply chain management" by Gaukler, Gary M., Ph.D., Stanford University, 2005, 96 pages; AAT 3187292

6. "From Chu to Western Han: Re-reading Mawangdui" by Huang, Bingyi, Ph.D., Yale University, 2005, 349 pages; AAT 3168915

7. "A case study examining the retention of teachers in their first five years of the profession" by Connors-Krikorian, Maryann, D.Ed., Boston College, 2005, 185 pages; AAT 3173658

8. "High performance product development: A systems approach to a lean product development process" by Morgan, James M., Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2002, 385 pages; AAT 3058023

9. "Corporate governance and financial reporting credibility" by Dey, Aiyesha, Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2005, 180 pages; AAT 3177709
10. An assessment of the relationship between organizational culture and continuous knowledge management initiatives by Kangas, Lisa Marie, Ph.D., Capella University, 2006, 161 pages; AAT 3196728

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