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Minority And Majority Student Group Perceptions Of Preferred Change Within A University Setting, John G. Bradberry

Master's Theses

The present study tested the usefulness of a non -traditional method of gathering and structuring qualitative data regarding minority and majority group perceptions of a shared organizational environment. The goal of the method was to minimize the investigator's direct control over the information gathering process, thereby accurately capturing the subjective realities of the groups without relying on a single, externally imposed standard. An item-sorting methodology and subsequent hierarchical cluster analytic procedures identified two major issues differentiating participant groups: (1) the generation and categorization of ethnic-content items, and (2) levels of emotionality in the generation and rating of items. The present …

Canadian Federal Policy Towards Indian Education Since Confederation: Policy Making And Its Philosophy, Ling Yang

Master's Theses

Canadian Indian education is a complex problem in Canada's history. For the native people, education is the only way to preserve their cultural tradition. For the government, it has been the main means to assimilate the natives into the mainstream of the society. Because the majority culture has dominated Canadian society for more than two centuries, the Canadian federal government's policy and its making are the keys to understanding Indian education. Based on research in official records in the National Archives of Canada and field-research in Canadian Indian Reserves, this thesis shows that the federal government did not accept "Indian …

James Branch Cabell's Jurgen : Fulfillment And Paradox, Elizabeth Witham Loving

Master's Theses

James Branch Cabell's controversial, Jurgen, is the novel that propelled him into fame. Suppressed as pornography only months after its publication, Jurgen drew attention from many areas. While Cabell's peers protested the suppression and praised the novel as a masterpiece, other readers were only interested in the forbidden "racy" language. Unfortunately, it was for the second reason that Jurgen became the most widely read of Cabell's works. The general public was not interested in his talent as a writer, but it was interested in a scandalous book. The novel's suppression received so much publicity, that everyone wanted to read …

Antebellum Southampton County, Virginia, 1840-1860, Richard Tyler Kanak

Master's Theses

This thesis is a descriptive account of life in antebellum Southampton. Established by the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1749, Southampton County gained notoriety as the site of Nat Turner's slave rebellion. Fears of another armed slave revolt prompted the Virginia General Assembly to enact a series of stringent slave codes, which remained in effect until the Civil War. Primary sources consulted in the preparation of this thesis include corporate records, church manuscripts, court order books, reports of county and state officers, tax journals, and personal papers of the county's contemporary citizens.

Investigating The Viability Of Yeast Expressing Histone From Extrachromosomal Dna : Progress In Construction Of A Plasmid Bearing One Copy Of Each Yeast Histone Gene, Ralph Donaldson Hellams Jr.

Master's Theses

Much of the current information on histones has been based on in vitro studies. The original goal of this research was to construct a mutant strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae containing all chromosomal copies of the yeast histone genes made nonfunctional. This project would demonstrate whether such a strain could be rescued by a plasmid carrying the wild-type copies of the four core histone genes. Furthermore, this yeast strain construct would allow future investigations to take advantage of histone mutant analysis in vivo. The critical step in beginning this work was the construction of a plasmid which contained the genes …

The Effects Of Self-Esteem, Performance Feedback, And Behavioral Verifiability On Self-Serving Biases, Diana C. Slatopolsky

Master's Theses

The present study examined the psychological processes underlying the self-serving bjas, the tendency to portray one's own qualities as more favorable then those of others. Subjects were asked to predict future success on a behavioral task for themselves and for the average student at their university after receiving performance feedback on the same task. It was proposed that self-enhancing predictions would be moderated by subject's self-esteem (high or low), the verifiability of task performance (high or low), and performance feedback (success or failure). The results revealed that subjects with high self-esteem displayed a self-serving bias regardless of performance verifiability or …

A Critique Of The Southern Baptist Sunday School's Attitude Toward Children Based On Current And Historical Analyses, Amy Joyner

Honors Theses

Sunday School, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For some, Sunday School elicits a host of positive memories and current images: playing games, making bread, singing songs, coloring, reciting memory verses, studying Scripture, enjoying refreshments, talking with friends, laughing and sharing. For others, Sunday School is simply a waste of time. In fact, in 1957 Life magazine labeled Sunday School ''the most wasted hour of the week." It seems that more and more Americans in recent decades have agreed with this pronouncement, for Sunday School attendance among mainline denominations has continued to drop at a steady rate. …

"This Enterprise Non Shall Partake With Me." : Milton's Conquering Of His Precursors Through Orphean Allusions, Kathryn Nyreen Cooke

Master's Theses

Within his poetry and prose, John Milton shows a respect for the authors of antquity while simultaneously seeking his own voice, a style that makes him different from and better than his predecessors. Milton's works contain expressions of these Renaissance characteristics: the appreciation of the Classics, the search for a more personal relationship with God, and the attempt to achieve some individuality; however, even in the smallest of literary figures such as the Orphean allusions, the need to combine a respect for the past with the ambition for a uniquely personal voice as a poet exists. The isolation of the …

Defining Codependency : A Factor Analytic Approach, Kimberly A. Elliott

Master's Theses

This study examined the construct validity of the Friel Inventory, via relationship with the ACL. A factor analysis of the ACL scores collected from 89 introductory psychology students was conducted. These factors were then correlated with the items of the Friel Inventory, which was from the same subjects. The purpose was to determine if codependence, as measured by the Friel Inventory, was a unique construct or a combination of well researched personality traits, as measured by the ACL. The findings supported the former as the correlations among the Friel Inventory items and the ACL factors yielded no relationships above that …

Vietnam In Turmoil : The Japanese Coup, The Oss, And The August Revolution In 1945, Edward Tayloe Wise

Master's Theses

World War II brought about the demise of colonialism. The Japanese overthrew the French Indochinese government in March 1945. Their establishment of a puppet government encouraged the Vietnamese to seek independence. Ho Chi Minh, who had a Communist background, was ready to lead his nation, and was assisted in that undertaking by the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. This work explores Ho Chi Minh's nationalist and Communist background along with the role that the OSS played in his rise to power in 1945.

Primary sources include U.S. Government documents and many …

Atrial Natriuretic Factor In Meriones Unguiculatus, The Mongolian Gerbil, Kyriakos Tarasidis

Master's Theses

The basis for the great osmoregulatory ability in Meriones unguiculatus, the Mongolian gerbil, has been studied previously, but as yet no clear mechanism has been determined. The present study investigated the level of cardiac atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) under high and low sodium stress. In addition, cardiac ANF values for the Mongolian gerbil were compared with another desert mammal (Mesocricetus auratus, the Syrian golden hamster) and a non-desert mammal, (Rattus norvegicus, the white rat). ANF was found to exist in the hear atria of the Mongolian gerbil at a level of 388±66 µg ANF/g tissue. High and low sodium stress …

Virginia, The United States And The World : The Effects Of Political, Cultural And Economic Factors On Export Activity, Kimberly Sue Williams

Master's Theses

During the Middle Ages, the "marketplace" may have consisted of one village; products were made and sold locally. From a business person's perspective, there was little need to find out about the preferences of people in another town, let aone on another continent. In the middle of the twentieth century, American made products were sold in America; there was not much incentive to find about the tastes of people in another country. Business in the 1990's is different. Today there is a "global marketplace." Technology has made the planet smaller, facilitating communication and transportation between nations. The world today, in …

The Voice Unbound : Mary Shelley's Vision Of Romanticism, Courtenay Noelle Smith

Master's Theses

Mary Shelley was propelled into fame while still a teenager because of her powerful and "gothic" novel Frankenstein. This novel and several facts about the author's personal life have kept her in the public eye since her death. Though Frankenstein has long been a subject of scholarship, Mary Shelley has been little studied directly in relation to the great literary movement, Romanticism, in which she participated Romantic literature is pervaded by numerous political and aesthetic tensions, in particular the paradox of the ideals of genius and fellowship. In many of the Romantic works readers and scholars will find that the …

Cumberland County, Virginia, In The Late Antebellum Period, 1840-1860, William Maphis Whitworth Jr.

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and describe the lives of the citizens of a rural, agricultural Virginia County which had a social and economic order based on the institution of slavery. This system was dominated by a wealthy white minority which had the ability to use the existing components of government to perpetuate itself. All aspects of the county were explored, including its origins, geography, population, county court system, representation in state and federal government, economy, transportation, communication, religion, education, and health care.

There was an abundance of available primary sources which gave insights into the county's …

The Origin Of Integration In Virginia's Public Schools : A Narrative History From 1951-1959, James Morrman Weigand

Master's Theses

This thesis traces the origins of integration in Virginia's public schools from a strike for equal facilities by black students in Prince Edward County in 1951 to Governor Almond's capitulation of the resistance movement in 1959. The 1951 student strike became a law suit challenging the constitutionality of Virginia's segregation laws. It was one of four cases heard collectively before the United States Supreme Court in 1954 as Brown v. Board of Education. Virginia resisted the Court's decision until 1959.

The thesis relied upon newspaper accounts and personal interviews. It concluded that a fear of amalgamation of the races and …

A Re-Evaluation Of The Aesthetics Of Jean-Baptiste Dubos And Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, John Grayson Nichols

Honors Theses

Horace did remark "ut pictura poesis," as in painting so

poetry. But the rest of the pronouncement, rarely quoted, - "one

work seizes your fancy if you stand close to it, another if you

stand at a distance" - refers to how the arts can been viewed

from similar angles, not that the arts are essentially created

with the same purposes. Yet, misreadings of that quotation

began a history of debate over the qualities of painting and

poetry. In particular the eighteenth century became a

battleground over the ut pictura poesis formula. To the modern

reader, this controversy may seem …

The Benefits Of Women's Education : Warming Up A Cold College Climate For Women Undergraduates, Shannon Riley

Honors Theses

The existence of sex discrimination in American college classrooms, and the harmful effects of such discrimination on women students have been well established. The present study sought to determine if exposure to women's education could aid students in overcoming some of these deleterious effects. Twenty-eight female introductory psychology students and eleven women's studies students read various pieces of research and discussed the readings in experimental sessions. The introductory psychology students in the control group were educated about various well documented gender differences, while the introductory psychology and women's studies students in the experimental groups learned about sex discrimination in college …

Happiness And Satisfaction : Subjective Well-Being In The Work Force, Lori J. Sohns

Honors Theses

Workers from seven southeastern companies (80 subjects) completed surveys consisting of demographic information and subjective well-being (SWB) indicators. Results indicate significantly lower life satisfaction in females than in males; income level and education do not show significant positive relationships with happiness, however, total household income does; and a statistically significant positive relationship between job satisfaction and general satisfaction were found and were strongest in males. Correlations between six of the SWB measures revealed highly significant correlations between five of the measures. A multiple regression analysis of satisfaction and happiness revealed several variables which were predictive of these constructs.

Alientation And Internal-External Locus Of Control As Predictors Of Student Political Participation, Joanne M. Miller

Honors Theses

Seventy-two undergraduates (ages 18-23) from The University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University participated in this study to examine the potential predictors for student political participation. After methodological problems of past research - such as the confounding of activism and ideology and the specific focus on activism in the 1960's - were corrected, Dean's (1961) Alienation scale, Rotter's (1966) Internal-External Locus of Control scale, and Olsen's (1969) Alienation scale were used to predict political activity levels, as measured by Kerpelman's (1972) Activity scale. A stepwise multiple regression procedure showed that futility (a subscale of Olsen's Alienation scale) was the only …