Digital Commons Network^™

The Decline Of American Entrepreneurship: An Analysis Of Causes Of Macro Market Trends And A Changing American Economic System, Owen Flomberg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Household Member Arrest And Adolescent Hopelessness: The Mediating Role Of Future Expectations, Caroline Victoria Begley, Elizabeth Inez Johnson Ph.D, Tanner Kilpatrick M.S

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

An External And Internal Understanding: Female Puberty, Shivani R. Patel

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Breakups And Betrayals In Emerging Adulthood: A Developmental Perspective Of Relationship Dissolution And Infidelity, Jerika C. Norona

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes two studies that focus on romantic experiences in emerging adulthood (ages 18-25), romantic dissolution (Study 1) and extradyadic intimacy (Study 2), and their relationship with developmental and individual factors. Each study uses two unique community samples of emerging adults who have attended college as well as those who have not attended college in the past. Importantly, both studies examine romantic dissolution and extradyadic intimacy from a developmental perspective, taking into account the salient developmental tasks of independence and interdependence faced by young people. Additionally, individual factors, including perceptions of emerging adulthood (Study 1), attachment style (Study 2), …

Infant Object Recognition: Two- And Three-Dimensional Visual Processing, Alexandra Chelsea Romano

Masters Theses

Visual attention and recognition memory in infancy are highly dependent on the type of stimulus the infant is familiarized to and the conditions of familiarization. For example, in studies that initially exposed infants to test stimuli in laboratory settings (e.g., Courchesne, Ganz, & Norcia, 1981; Reynolds & Richards, 2005), the Negative Central (Nc) event-related potential (ERP) component associated with infant visual attention has shown greater amplitude for novel compared to familiar stimuli. Conversely, when initial stimulus exposure occured outside of the laboratory and the stimulus was highly familiar, studies have shown greater amplitude Nc to familiar compared to novel stimuli …

Does Globalization Improve Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Remittance Behavior Of Us Immigrants, Nathan Edward Trombley

Masters Theses

Remittances, the sending of a portion of an immigrant’s income to friends and family, have become an undeniable and significant part of the global economy. This is especially true in some common immigrant sending regions where remittances make up a dominant portion of the local economy. The New Immigrant Survey has released the second wave of data in its cohort study of immigrants recently achieving Lawful Permanent Residence status in the United States. In light of this newly available information, this study seeks to highlight demographic and background characteristics of immigrants that have a statistically significant relationship on their sending …

Academic Choices Matter For Collegiate Student-Athletes, Kendra Arielle Berry

Masters Theses

As college athletics has grown during the last two decades, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the governing institution of college athletics in the United States, has renewed its focus on academic reform and the academic performance of student-athletes (Petr & McArdle, 2012). Athletic administrators and academic support units have started to exert a greater amount of control over student-athletes’ academic lives. However, research with general samples of college students has suggested that having some degree of autonomy is important for academic performance. This raises questions about whether increased control (and reduced autonomy) is actually in the best interest of …

How Technology Interacts With Emerging Adulthood Psychosocial Developmental Tasks: An Examination Of Online Self-Presentation And Cell Phone Usage, Samantha Lynn Gray

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation outlines three distinct, yet interrelated, projects aimed at understanding the role of technology in relation to emerging adulthood developmental tasks: individuation & identity development. The first paper provides a context for understanding the developmental tasks of emerging adulthood, and the role that technology may serve in relation to those developmental tasks. This brief review of the literature on emerging adulthood developmental tasks provides a solid theoretical background and history for the theoretical premises proposed for the respective studies included in this dissertation. The second project is an empirical investigation that seeks to understand how the task of identity …

International Student Migration For Development: An Institutional Approach To The Norwegian Quota Scheme, Scott Eric Basford

Masters Theses

This paper addresses a call to acknowledge the varied actors that are involved in international student migration (ISM). In particular, this paper takes an institutional approach to investigate international education as a form of development aid. Research on ISM often omits non-student actors, which contributes to an incomplete understanding of the process. I study the Norwegian Quota Scheme to explore broader mechanisms of ISM. I first situate the Quota Scheme within literature on the internationalization of higher education and international education as development aid. I then use 26 interviews with 31 stakeholders at multiple scales of involvement in the Quota …

A Multidimensional Analysis Of The Great Green Wall: The Environmental And Social Effects Of Reafforestation In Senegal, Anna Eugenia Alsobrook

Masters Theses

The north-central region of Senegal is home to the Great Green Wall (GGW)—a reafforestation project aimed at restoring decades–old, degraded land conditions by establishing tree belts and community gardens. Its presence on the ground has changed the local landscape and altered the social institutions governing the daily lives of the people it aims to protect.

My study is an in-progress assessment of the GGW towards its two major goals: 1) improving the lives of the people of the Sahel and increasing their capacity to adapt to climate change and drought, and 2) improving the state of the ecosystem and increasing …

The Tva Coal Ash Disaster And The Coal Calamity Continuum In Southern Appalachia, Erin Rae Eldridge

Doctoral Dissertations

Coal was once hailed as a means through which humans could free themselves from nature and enter a world of unending progress and growth. As a fuel for economic development, it has long been central to projects of capitalist modernity in the Appalachian South. It is also a resource that connects the central mining areas of the region to the development agendas of the Tennessee Valley. The 2008 disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee represents one of numerous calamities along the life cycle of coal in the region. The deluge of coal ash …

The Assumption Of Non-Coerciveness And The Total Food Market, Harwood Schaffer

Doctoral Dissertations

For the last 46 years, the countries of the world have tried to reduce the number of chronically hungry people. Despite all the efforts, the numbers have barely budged from the over 850 million people who were chronically hungry in 1974 until the 2007-2009 food price crisis, when the numbers increased to over 1.02 billion. The blame for this situation has variously been put on bad governance, the lack of adequate market reforms, the market reforms that were imposed on developing nations, and globalization. Food, like other products in this globalized world, is allocated using the market system. One likely …

Regulating The Global Politico-Economic Order: The Functioning Of The Development Assistance Provision Regime, Justin James Gann

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the provisioning of development assistance, as a major component of foreign aid. Conventional approaches to the subject have tended to focus on the determinate interactions of discrete agents as the principle units of analysis. This necessarily obscures the functional role development assistance fulfills in relation to the global politico economic order, however. This study, by contrast, properly situates individual programs of development assistance as belonging to a much larger historical pattern, or system of coordinated politico-economic behavior. The objective, therefore, is to apprehend the systematic and functional interrelations existing (i) among the various agents engaged in …