Digital Commons Network^™

Four Years Of Digital Initiatives: Defining Success Among Undergraduates, Anne A. Salter

Digital Commons Southeastern User Group 2016

A Journal of Undergraduate Research is an important and significant means of supporting student initiatives. From art work to honors thesis the range of possibilities are endless. What motivates students to submit their work; what defines success to a student who seeks publication. These themes will be discussed as well as examples of student success in publishing and examples of how being published helped them achieve graduate school initiatives.

Designing & Assessing An Ethical Global Service Learning Experience, Alexandra M. Jones, Chelsey Peterson, Casey L. Janko

Celebration of Learning

We discuss a service-learning experience in a developing country that we designed to be ethical not only for the people we served, but also for the students who served. We assessed the students' intercultural sensitivities and skills before, during, and after their participation in the SLE, and present our findings.

Uncovering The Changing Needs Of Older Adults: An Exploratory Qualitative Research Study, Gayle Kruger, Henriette N'Kodia, Rosa King, Brandon Mccollum

Symposium of Student Scholars

Atlanta, like the rest of the U.S., is experiencing a dramatic increase in its older adult population; by 2030, one in five residents will be over the age of 60. Recognized as a leading county-based senior service agency in metropolitan Atlanta, Cobb County Senior Services provides an array of aging services including multipurpose centers, volunteer and advocacy opportunities, resource development, and innovative partnerships. Due to the many challenges presented by the growth of the older adult population, Cobb County Senior Services is currently embarking on the development of a strategic plan to best meet the changing needs of older adults …

Reparations For Slavery In The United States, Alicia G. Kinsellagh

Creative Activity and Research Day - CARD

After the Civil War, freed slaves were promised “40 acres and a mule” to start new lives. This plan was opposed and following proposals for reparations have been opposed since. The majority of U.S. citizens believe that reparations are unnecessary because no living person is responsible for slavery, arguing that there is no “legacy of slavery.” However, others believe that African Americans today are still impacted by the vestiges of slavery. Thus, all U.S. citizens share responsibility for slavery’s legacy. This project explores the arguments for and against giving reparations to African Americans.

Keywords: reparations, “legacy of slavery,” collective responsibility

"Women On Women Aggression" Predictors Of A Belief In Double Standards, April D. Crabtree

Scholars Week

"Woman on Woman Aggression": Predictors of Beliefs in Double Sex Standards

The presence of double standards is a topic that has been widely researched for the past several decades. Sexual double standards are based on the belief that sexual behaviors by women are viewed differently than when similar behaviors are exhibited by men. Early research stated that double standards were no longer much of an issue as seen in archival research by Crawford and Popp (2003). As they pulled research from previous decades, they concluded that double standards were not much of an issue in the 1970’s but resurfaced a …

Wesleyanism, Fundamentalism, And The Dones, Mature Christians Who Are Done With The Institutional Church: Two Book Reviews, Craighton Hippenhammer

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Book #1: "Square Peg: Why Wesleyans Aren't Fundamentalists," written by Nazarene and published by the Nazarene Publishing House. Book #2: "Church Refugees: Sociologists Reveal Why People Are DONE with Church but Not Their Faith," by Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope, which tells why there are mature, highly educated Christians leaving the institutional church. The reasons why they are leaving are for the same four unexpected reasons. While these folks may not be large in numbers, they may be large in impact because they are doers and leaders at all levels of the church, so they may be leading the church …

Bilingual Language Distance Predicts Dementia Rating, Morgan Owens

Scholars Week

This study explored the differences in the languages spoken by bilingual people may lead to differences in cognitive reserve and the progression of AD. Individuals who speak distant languages (e.g., a Romance and a Germanic language) will have a different linguistic experience than individuals who speak two near languages (e.g., two Romance languages). Knowledge of distant languages may provide speakers with a large set of cognitive tools (e.g., linguistic constructs, concepts, schemas) that could increase cognitive reserve. We hypothesized that greater language distance would predict lower dementia scores in a clinical AD population.A subset of the data from the National …

Media Representations Of Offenders In Televison Series "Law And Order", Darcy L. Sullivan

Scholars Week

Media representations of offenders have varied over time; the rise of television media was an era in which offenders were depicted as active decision makers who committed deviant acts to attain their desires. Overtime, this image evolved into the current depiction of offenders as animalistic and inherently evil white males of upper socioeconomic status who are animalistic. Throughout the life of television media depictions of have ignored offender race, gender, and socioeconomic status, creating constructed realities that do not adequately reflect offenders in the United States. Thus, it is important to study how media depicts crime, criminals, and the criminal …

Put Your Shirt On: An Examination Of Provocative Versus Casual Clothing On First Impressions, Katelyn Geilear

Scholars Week

It is astounding how much information someone can gather about a person from a quick glance. We form first impressions of others based on a number of things, such as their appearance, demeanor, and other characteristics we can gather from a glance or two, and form impressions of a person’s personality, character, intentions, and motivations based on these factors. This can happen in mere tenths of a second. My research looked at how people form first impressions based on a person’s attire and gender.

A Mturk Facial Inference Study, Janine Swiney, Anthony Stahelski, Mary Radeke

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

This survey is one in a series of studies utilizing Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to investigate the facial inference process. Participants in this study were asked to infer the emotions and personality traits shown in three facial expressions (angry, sad, happy) of young white females and males in six photographs. Each picture was presented for 10 seconds followed by four questions about the individual in the picture. The first question asked participants to identify the emotion shown, from a list of six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise). The next three questions consist of condensed sets of the Big …

A Mturk Facial Inference Study, Janine Swiney, Anthony Stahelski, Mary Radeke

Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE)

This survey is one in a series of studies utilizing Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to investigate the facial inference process. Participants in this study were asked to infer the emotions and personality traits shown in three facial expressions (angry, sad, happy) of young white females and males in six photographs. Each picture was presented for 10 seconds followed by four questions about the individual in the picture. The first question asked participants to identify the emotion shown, from a list of six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise). The next three questions consist of condensed sets of the Big …

Nature Connection: Theory, Evidence And Practice, Matt V. Bukowski

Showcase of Graduate Student Scholarship and Creative Activities

This presentation explores scholarly work at the intersection of mental health and the natural world in a variety of disciplines. My intent is to provide an overview of theoretical perspectives, research-based evidence, and clinical practices that support the idea that experiencing the natural world can improve human mental health outcomes.

The Reliability Of Crowdsourcing: Latent Trait Modeling With Mechanical Turk, Matt Baucum, Steven Rouse Dr., Cindy Miller-Perrin, Elizabeth Mancuso Dr.

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing platform, has recently received increased attention in the social sciences as studies continue to suggest its viability as a source for reliable experimental data. Given the ease with which large samples can be quickly and inexpensively gathered, it is worth examining whether Mechanical Turk can provide accurate experimental data for methodologies requiring such large samples. One such methodology is Item Response Theory, a psychometric paradigm that defines test items by a mathematical relationship between a respondent’s ability and the probability of item endorsement. To test whether Mechanical Turk can serve as a reliable source of …

The Borg Revisited: Why Big Data Matters, David Evans

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

The Library System at Kennesaw State University has attempted to replicate the Library Cube initiated at the University of Wollongong (Cox and Jantti).The Library Cube is based on a multidimensional data warehouse that joins library usage data and student demographic data and students' GPA.