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Louisiana State University

LSU Master's Theses

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Louisiana

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A Geospatial And Statistical Analysis Of Dropout In Louisiana Public High Schools, Michael D. Stein Jul 2021

A Geospatial And Statistical Analysis Of Dropout In Louisiana Public High Schools, Michael D. Stein

LSU Master's Theses

Students dropping out of high school is a nationwide problem, plaguing communities and often greatly reducing the prospects of a quality life for those students who do not complete their high school educations. Louisiana consistently has among the highest public high school dropout rates in the United States, and often the highest. This geospatial and statistical study aims to identify the factors that correlate with high school dropout in Louisiana public high schools, specifically, and to produce detailed maps of the dropout rates across the state to identify the schools most afflicted.

Extensive school-level data from five academic years (2014-15 …


Changing Geographies Of Flood Mitigation Policies: A Case Study Of Central, Louisiana, Ria Mukerji Mar 2020

Changing Geographies Of Flood Mitigation Policies: A Case Study Of Central, Louisiana, Ria Mukerji

LSU Master's Theses

In 2016, the Baton Rouge region experienced what would come to be record-setting precipitation levels. The 1,000 year rainfall event dumped almost triple the amount of water on Louisiana than was seen during Hurricane Katrina (some areas received over 10 inches of rain in a matter of hours), with rain persisting from August 12th until the 17th. Previously a part of Baton Rouge, Central is a relatively new development that expanded into the 100 year floodplain in 2005. This thesis will present the changing geographies of flood mitigation policies since a major flood in 1983 to the …


The Effects Of Forced Migration On The Houma Of Louisiana, Jessica R. Parfait Nov 2019

The Effects Of Forced Migration On The Houma Of Louisiana, Jessica R. Parfait

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the effects of multiple forced migrations on the Indigenous Houma of southern Louisiana. The causes of these migrations have taken many forms such as the dispossession of land and relocating for access to resources. Through ethnographic interviews and historic research, I seek to critically engage the past to understand how it has molded the present and the lives of tribal citizens. I evaluate the power dynamics enacted upon the Houma who have recorded contact with Europeans dating to 1686 but have never been recognized as a sovereign entity by the United States.


Searching For Galveztown: Employing Multiple Methodologies To Identify Features Of The Galveztown Settlement, Ashlee Taylor Nov 2019

Searching For Galveztown: Employing Multiple Methodologies To Identify Features Of The Galveztown Settlement, Ashlee Taylor

LSU Master's Theses

Galveztown (1778-1806) was a Spanish fort and settlement located in southeastern Louisiana. This site was historically important as it provided protection for the city of New Orleans during a time of constantly shifting geopolitical environment. Today, this site is among the most important historical archaeological sites in Louisiana. Culturally, this site is significant as the descendants of the settlers still live within the Baton Rouge metropolitan area. Archaeologically, the site is significant due to the limited disturbance and lack of urban development at the location which has protected the archaeological record.

Galveztown is also one of the best documented Canary …


Falling On Deaf Ears: Social Workers’ Attitudes About Deafness, Hearing Loss, And Deaf Cultural Competence, Esperanza J. Garibay Apr 2019

Falling On Deaf Ears: Social Workers’ Attitudes About Deafness, Hearing Loss, And Deaf Cultural Competence, Esperanza J. Garibay

LSU Master's Theses

D/deaf and hard of hearing people have lower health literacy and higher rates of misdiagnosis of serious illnesses than their hearing counterparts (Sheier, 2009). This is, in part, a result of the inaccessible and culturally incompetent care provided to d/Deaf and hard of hearing individuals (Kuenburg, Fellinger & Fellinger, 2016; Hoang, LaHousse, Nakaji & Sadler, 2010 Sheier, 2009). Inaccessible and culturally incompetent care may be byproducts of human service providers’ attitudes towards d/Deaf and hard of hearing people (Ulloa, 2014; Cooper, Mason & Rose, 2005), and providers’ level of competence with properly caring for d/Deaf and hard of hearing clients …


"If You Stand On This Corner, People Know What You're About": Powerful Geographies Of Airline & Goodwood In #Justiceforalton, Shannon Kathleen Groll Jun 2018

"If You Stand On This Corner, People Know What You're About": Powerful Geographies Of Airline & Goodwood In #Justiceforalton, Shannon Kathleen Groll

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the multiple geographies of Airline & Goodwood, a site of protest occupied nightly during a part of summer 2016 in response to the police shooting of Alton Sterling. Through a methodology of observant-participation, interviews, and oral histories, I make the case that the politics of this site differed from other contemporaneous protest sites in the city through specific place-making activity which highlighted the site’s powerful contemporary and historical geographies. I connect protest at this site to the precarity of Black life and death in Baton Rouge through interviews and oral histories which discuss the historical …


An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil Aug 2017

An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the racial ideologies of four newspapers in New Orleans at the beginning and end of Radical Reconstruction: the Daily Picayune, the New Orleans Republican, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Weekly Louisianian. It explores how each paper understood the issues of racial equality, integration, suffrage, and black humanity; it examines the specific language and rhetoric each paper used to advocate for their positions; and it asks how those positions changed from the beginning to the end of Reconstruction. The study finds that the two white-owned papers, the Picayune and the Republican, while political opponents, both viewed …


Tropospheric Ozone Prediction With Land Cover Regression In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Mallory Nance Thomas Jan 2016

Tropospheric Ozone Prediction With Land Cover Regression In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Mallory Nance Thomas

LSU Master's Theses

Ground level ozone (O3) is a pollutant of great public health concern. Spatial interpolation techniques provide powerful tools in estimating O3 exposure, but many fall short when predicting O3 on complex surfaces, especially given the high local variability typically associated with O3 data. Like most other locations, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, O3 non-attainment zone (BRNZ) is plagued by a sparse density of O3 monitoring stations. This research explores land use regression (LUR) as an alternative spatial prediction method in and around the BRNZ. Multiple years of data are used to partially compensate for the small sample of spatial points. To …


In The Shadow Of Big Oil A Media Content Analysis Of The 'Big Oil' Stigma, Camille Nicole Ivy-O'Donnell Jan 2015

In The Shadow Of Big Oil A Media Content Analysis Of The 'Big Oil' Stigma, Camille Nicole Ivy-O'Donnell

LSU Master's Theses

This study examined media frames newspapers use in their coverage of the oil and gas industry. A content analysis was conducted to analyze if the oil and gas industry was portrayed positively or negatively in Louisiana newspapers compared to Texas newspapers and how the coverage between states differs. This comprehensive content analysis of print media coverage analyzed newspaper articles and provided a detailed explanation of results about how the oil and gas industry was portrayed over a five-year period of time as compared to other studies, which only analyzed the industry during a crisis period. Through categorization of the frames …


Framing Theory And Its Application To The Fracking Controversy In St. Tammany Parish, Lindsay Colleen Rabalais Jan 2015

Framing Theory And Its Application To The Fracking Controversy In St. Tammany Parish, Lindsay Colleen Rabalais

LSU Master's Theses

When Helis Oil & Gas Company announced it was interested in drilling for oil in Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish, it ignited a firestorm. The proposed drilling project would use hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking” – causing some residents to voice their concerns for the parish’s wellbeing. My thesis looks to framing theory to analyze how local media covered the issue, as well as the effects those frames might have on public policy and the lawsuits that arose out of the proposed drilling operation. I performed quantitative and qualitative content analyses of local media coverage of this issue from April 2014 …


Can You Hear The People Sing: Community Theater, Play And The Middle Class, Heather Marie Moats Jan 2014

Can You Hear The People Sing: Community Theater, Play And The Middle Class, Heather Marie Moats

LSU Master's Theses

Over the last century community, or “little”, theaters have popped up all over the United States as a way for amateur actors to perform. Academic research in both anthropology and theater studies have greatly overlooked and dismissed these theaters. Using data collected via ethnographic methods over the course of two musical productions, approximately seven months total, at a community theater in Baton Rouge, Louisiana I hope to demonstrate both why individuals, predominately within the middle class, with limited leisure time choose to spend it volunteering at a community theater as well as some of the social and interpersonal benefits it …


Adapting Resilience To A New Hazard: Oil And Oysters In Coastal Louisiana, Audrey Maass Jan 2014

Adapting Resilience To A New Hazard: Oil And Oysters In Coastal Louisiana, Audrey Maass

LSU Master's Theses

Inherently resilient practices are one mechanism that communities engage in to cope with disruptive events. A community retains and passes down the practices associated with inherent resilience in their collective memory. The inherent resilience of a community is developed over time, yet the explanation provided by Colten et al. lacks a genesis of how this process developed particularly in relation to the oil industry’s entry into Louisiana. The foundations of these practices will be explored through historic court documents to find encounters between oystermen and oil spills. In addition to legal resources, I also investigate newspaper articles and other historic …


Digital Image Analysis Of Selected Tchefuncte And Alexander Series Ceramics, Peter Albert Cropley Jan 2014

Digital Image Analysis Of Selected Tchefuncte And Alexander Series Ceramics, Peter Albert Cropley

LSU Master's Theses

In this study, I used digital image analysis to quantitatively describe and detail the prehistoric pottery associated with the coastal Tchefuncte culture (ca. B.C. 800—100 A.D.). The first step was to select and procure samples of Tchefuncte Plain var . Tchefuncte, var. Mandeville, Baldwin Plain var. O’Neal, and two decorated Alexander series wares from the Tchefuncte site. Two samples of var. Tchefuncte from the Bayou Jasmine site (16SJB2) and two Alexander series samples from the Tennessee-Tombigbee area were included for comparison. The sites represented by the samples from the Tennessee-Tombigbee region are the Kellogg Village Site (22CL527) and the Sanders …


The Blessing Of The Fleet : Heritage And Identity In Three Gulf Coast Communities, Audriana Hubbard Jan 2013

The Blessing Of The Fleet : Heritage And Identity In Three Gulf Coast Communities, Audriana Hubbard

LSU Master's Theses

Annual Blessing of the Fleet festivals are held throughout communities all along the Gulf Coast; each year boats parade down local waters to receive the blessing of the priest before the opening of the shrimp season. The shrimping industry has a long history in the area and has become intrinsically tied to local individual and community identities. This thesis investigates three festivals held in Chauvin and Morgan City, Louisiana, and Biloxi, Mississippi to understand how the festival is used by participants as a way of negotiating their shrimping identities in a changing socio-economic environment. The tourism and the oil industries …


A Cohort Study Of A History Of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus And The Risk Of Incident Type 2 Diabetes In Louisiana Women, Yujie Wang Jan 2011

A Cohort Study Of A History Of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus And The Risk Of Incident Type 2 Diabetes In Louisiana Women, Yujie Wang

LSU Master's Theses

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is one of the most common pregnancy complications. It has been shown that a history of GDM is associated with an increased risk of incident type 2 diabetes in women. In this project, we aim to investigate 1) the trend of GDM incidence in Louisiana State University Health Care Services Division (LSUHCSD) hospital system during 1997 to 2009; 2) the race-specific association between a history of GDM and the risk of incident type 2 diabetes and how the risk changes over years after the index pregnancy. We conducted a retrospective study among women aged 13-50 years. …


Crop Coefficients For Cotton In Northeastern Louisiana, Sean Allen Hribal Jan 2009

Crop Coefficients For Cotton In Northeastern Louisiana, Sean Allen Hribal

LSU Master's Theses

Daily crop coefficients (Kc) were determined for irrigated cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) at the Louisiana State University (LSU) AgCenter Northeast Research Station near St. Joseph, Louisiana, in 2007. Kc values were calculated using daily crop evapotranspiration (ETc), which was measured using paired weighing lysimeters, and daily reference evapotranspiration (ETo), which was calculated using the Standardized Reference Evapotranspiration Equation (SREE) for a short crop. Meteorological data for input into the SREE were obtained from a nearby Louisiana Agriclimatic Information System (LAIS) weather station and an on-site portable weather station. Averaged Kc values were 0.15, 0.64, and 1.39 for the initial (day …


A Taphonomic Model Of Concealment: Decomposition And The Postmortem Interval (Pmi) In A 55-Gallon Barrel, Lauren Rebecca Pharr Jan 2009

A Taphonomic Model Of Concealment: Decomposition And The Postmortem Interval (Pmi) In A 55-Gallon Barrel, Lauren Rebecca Pharr

LSU Master's Theses

Three 80-pound pigs used as human models were sealed inside 55-gallon black metal drums to monitor the rates and stages of decomposition of concealed, child-sized remains. Visual assessments of the anaerobic decomposition processes in each of the drums for Pigs A and B were possible through a Lexan window installed on each drums’ lid. The third pig—Pig C—was placed inside a drum with four one-half-inch holes permitting insect access and oriented in north, south, east, and west positions around the drum’s upper perimeter. Visual assessments of Pig C were made by lifting the drum’s lid; these assessments revealed that the …


Separate But Equal?: The Archaeology Of An Early Twentieth-Century African American School, Dena Lyn Struchtemeyer Jan 2008

Separate But Equal?: The Archaeology Of An Early Twentieth-Century African American School, Dena Lyn Struchtemeyer

LSU Master's Theses

The written and historical record is frequently flawed, as it most often written by a single dominant group. The history of Morganza Elementary, an early twentieth century African American school in Morganza, Louisiana, was both omitted from the historical record and as a result, was slowly being erased in the minds of the community. Archaeological excavations were undertaken in order to better understand the lifeways of both the community and the students as well as the daily practices of both. In conjunction with the archaeological excavations, oral histories were completed with former students. Through this combination, new light was shed …


Spatial And Temporal Distribution Of Solar Radiation In Louisiana, Michael Ulric Kemp Jan 2007

Spatial And Temporal Distribution Of Solar Radiation In Louisiana, Michael Ulric Kemp

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine temporal and spatial trends in surface global horizontal solar radiation in Louisiana using a 30-year dataset (1961-1990) of the four stations in Louisiana from the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRD) and a 6-year dataset (2001-2006) of the 25 stations in the Louisiana Agriclimatic Information System (LAIS). Three of the four NSRD stations exhibit a downward linear trend in surface solar radiation over the 30-year period of record, similar to the global trends uncovered in previous studies. Only one station exhibits a slightly upward trend. Surface solar radiation exhibits a positive correlation with …


Burn Scar Mapping In The Sabine National Wildlife Refuge Using Landsat Tm And Etm+ Imagery, Chris Pennington Jan 2006

Burn Scar Mapping In The Sabine National Wildlife Refuge Using Landsat Tm And Etm+ Imagery, Chris Pennington

LSU Master's Theses

Marsh fires burn on a regular basis on the Southwestern Louisiana Coast from both natural and anthropogenic ignitions. Remote sensing based studies of these fires are scarce. Several burn scar mapping techniques have been developed and implemented for study of forest fires in the American West but have not been applied to marsh fires. Erdas Imagine and ArcGIS Software was used to process Landsat imagery of the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge in accordance with the most commonly used burn scar mapping spectral indices and tested for accuracy against manually digitized burn scar maps. Indices tested included the Normalize Burn Ratio …


From The Top Down And The Bottom Up: The Contemporary Practice And Choice Of Midwifery In Louisiana, Michelle M. Wydra Jan 2006

From The Top Down And The Bottom Up: The Contemporary Practice And Choice Of Midwifery In Louisiana, Michelle M. Wydra

LSU Master's Theses

This research examines the contemporary practice of midwifery in Louisiana, a state that very early on had progressive legislation, yet remains a tough place for a midwife to practice. What, then, are the social forces that affect the ability to practice midwifery in Louisiana? I try to answer that question by examining the narratives of midwives and their clients, and evaluating the options these women have access to in this state. The narratives provide opportunities to observe the authoritarian knowledge of biomedicine in our society, and apply Foucault’s theory of power/knowledge. I describe that although Louisiana’s regulation of the practice …


Digging Through Discarded Identity: Archaeological Investigations Around The Kitchen And The Overseer's House At Whitney Plantation, Louisiana, Erika Sabine Roberts Jan 2005

Digging Through Discarded Identity: Archaeological Investigations Around The Kitchen And The Overseer's House At Whitney Plantation, Louisiana, Erika Sabine Roberts

LSU Master's Theses

During the mid-nineteenth century, the Haydel family was prominent sugar planters in southern Louisiana. Their plantation, Whitney Plantation (16SJB11), lies on the highway 18 on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Wallace, Louisiana. During the summer of 2002 archaeological investigations were conducted around the kitchen and the overseer’s house, in order to collect a sample of materials associated with these occupants. I hoped that the artifacts could yield information on how the planter and overseer family represented themselves materially. Although what I excavated was the discarded remnants of the Haydel family’s life, these remnants offer an understanding of …


Using Brownfield Redevelopment To Mitigate Technological Hazards In Shreveport, Louisiana, David Farritor Jan 2005

Using Brownfield Redevelopment To Mitigate Technological Hazards In Shreveport, Louisiana, David Farritor

LSU Master's Theses

Brownfields are "abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination" (USEPA 2003a). This thesis focuses on the practices of public and private institutions to redevelop brownfields in Shreveport, Louisiana, as a means of mitigating potential technological hazards. The theoretical concept framing this analysis is hazards-of-place, a model of vulnerability that proposes interactions among physical vulnerability, social vulnerability, and mitigation efforts. In this model, vulnerability is a process that involves not only the likelihood of a hazardous incident but also the processes of hazard creation and mitigation that occur …


Sinker Cypress: Treasures Of A Lost Landscape, Christopher Aubrey Hurst Jan 2005

Sinker Cypress: Treasures Of A Lost Landscape, Christopher Aubrey Hurst

LSU Master's Theses

Sinker cypress (Taxodium spp.) logs are timbers that were lost during transit from harvest locations in the swamps and mill sites during the industrial cypress harvest from 1880-1930. A small industry has developed, concentrated on the recovery of sinker logs. Most of the persons involved in the recovery of sinker cypress, mill the logs into lumber, and sell the timber directly to consumers or to distributors. A smaller number of pullers retain the logs for personal use. Recovery operations are a costly endeavor and require a significant investment on the part of the harvesters. Most pullers are owner/operators who do …


Extreme Precipitation Events In East Baton Rouge Parish: An Areal Rainfall Frequency/Magnitude Analysis, Michelle Marie Russo Jan 2004

Extreme Precipitation Events In East Baton Rouge Parish: An Areal Rainfall Frequency/Magnitude Analysis, Michelle Marie Russo

LSU Master's Theses

Severe rainfall events are one of the most frequent weather hazards in the United States. These events are particularly problematic for the southeastern United States because of its subtropical climate. For these reasons, and because of the recent urban growth in the parish, East Baton Rouge Parish officials are concerned whether the current stormwater drainage system can keep pace with development. As a result, this project evaluated the rainfall frequency/magnitude for parish-wide extreme events and their synoptic forcing mechanisms. To this end, this research mapped parish-wide storms and compared three interpolation techniques. It also compared two methods of areal summation …


The Changing Face Of Hiv/Aids: An Anthropological And Epidemiological Study Of The Baton Rouge Area, Erica Brooke Gibson Jan 2002

The Changing Face Of Hiv/Aids: An Anthropological And Epidemiological Study Of The Baton Rouge Area, Erica Brooke Gibson

LSU Master's Theses

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the resulting Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) became widespread in the early 1980’s. At the beginning of the epidemic, HIV/AIDS was affecting mainly gay men. As the disease began to spread, more diverse populations were affected. Now, two decades later, the face of HIV and AIDS has changed. In the year 2000, the Baton Rouge area (which includes the parishes of Ascension, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, and West Feliciana) had the highest detected rate of HIV/AIDS cases in the state, and the 16th highest detected rate of …