Digital Commons Network^™

"No Redemption In Nonfiction": Portfolio Reflection On The Queer, Anticapitalist Directions Of Creative Nonfiction, Bethany Fitts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I reflect on the current state of my artistic practice and discuss rapidly changing documentary methods in the 21st century as they relate to broader evolutions in the creative nonfiction genre. I then discuss these methods alongside my experimental short-doc Gameplay.

Dark Personality, Sexual Satisfaction And Sexual Perceptions: An Event-Contingent Study, Jasmine Whitney Rios

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has consistently linked Dark Personality (DP) to one’s mating tendencies (e.g., mating strategy, sexual behavior, sociosexual orientation) and sexual motivation. However, DP researchers have failed to expand the association between DP and sex beyond these common sexual dimensions. As such, there is little to no research linking DP to people’s sexual satisfaction and sexual perceptions. Additionally, personality research has predominantly investigated sexuality at the global-level (e.g., average/general report of sexual satisfaction) when studying aspects of sexual interaction at the interaction-level (i.e., soon after the interaction) can reduce various issues that accompany global measures. Thus, one purpose of this current …

Development Of A Novel Psychological Screening Tool For Young Children In Educational And Childcare Settings, Diana Tinsley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Young children experience psychological difficulties at comparable rates to school-aged children (Egger & Angold, 2006; Bufferd et al., 2011; Fuchs et al., 2013), yet few screening tools are available for this age range. Childcare and preschool settings present a unique opportunity to increase early screening efforts, particularly in terms of observing children among their peers. The current study presents initial steps toward the development of a new psychological screening tool for young children ages 1.5 – 5 years in childcare and educational settings. The aim of the study was to develop a brief and broad psychological screening tool that can …

Beliefs And Factors That Influence Intentions To Initiate Antihypertensive Medications, Omokhodion Alfred Eriakha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Primary nonadherence (PMN) to antihypertensives constitutes a problem for all stakeholders regardless of whose perspective is taken. Understanding patient beliefs and utilizing a theory could help move the needle in favor of antihypertensive medications initiation.

Objectives: To determine the predictive ability of an integrated model of the theory of planned behavior and health belief model on intention to initiate an antihypertensive medication and to rank the identified factors of intentions to initiate antihypertensive medications in order of relative importance.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted to evaluate beliefs and factors that determine intention to initiate antihypertensive medications. The sample …

Successful Aging And Turnover Intention Among Older Hospitality Frontline Employees, Thamsanqa Jongile

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This two-part dissertation delves into the intertwined precursors of successful aging and turnover intent in the hospitality sector. The first part applies a structural equation model to examine the link between perceived narcissistic leadership, successful aging, and turnover intentions. The author posits that work engagement, employee cynicism, and emotional fatigue are the mechanisms through which perceived narcissistic leadership affects successful aging and turnover intent. The findings affirm these conjectures, revealing that narcissistic leadership serves as a predictor of successful aging and turnover intent.

The second manuscript probes further into the antecedents of successful aging, evaluating a theoretical model in which …

Relations Between Parent Coping With The Stress Of Parenting And Symptoms Of Anxiety And Depression, Maxwell Jared Luber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is important to refine understanding of the impact of adolescent behaviors on parents. In particular there is a need to improve understanding of the potential increase in parental distress caused by challenging youth behaviors. Parenting stress may play a critical role in these processes. Various coping strategies have been associated with different psychosocial outcomes, including anxiety and depression. In contrast, less effective coping strategies are linked to a higher likelihood of meeting criteria for mood or anxiety disorders. Gender differences in stress coping between women and men may contribute to women reporting higher levels of psychological distress, depression, and …

Rocs: Robust Circular Seriation By Perturbation Entropy Minimization, Carla Rego

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifying and creating patterns enables humans to fulfill their fundamental desire to make sense of things. At the center of this endeavor, seriation is a process of arranging objects to reveal regularities in their characteristics. We present a method to arrange objects cyclically to achieve orderliness based on a novel concept of perturbation entropy, which models the randomness of a sequence under local perturbations on the ordering. We derive a sharp upper bound on the perturbation entropy and develop an algorithm to search for an ordering that minimizes the upper bound. Connections with the traveling salesman problem and the quadratic …

Leadership Matters: An Assessment Of The Mpower Leadership Program At The University Of Mississippi, Ryan Upshaw

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this manuscript is to examine the importance of student leadership development programs on undergraduate students using the framework of the Social Change Leadership Model. This document will specifically examine the MPower Leadership program held at the University of Mississippi. Student engagement and leadership is extremely important to college campuses as universities seek to prepare their students for the world of work and to become engaged citizens. Student leadership and engagement also has ties to academic success and persistence. A concrete plan that is focused on leadership development also benefits student affairs administrators who are responsible for coordinating, …

Increasing Primary Care Physicians Through Rural Medicine Curriculum, Margaret Pickering Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The citizens of rural areas encounter many challenges with accessing primary healthcare. Mississippi meets 52.1% of the needs of the state for primary care physicians, causing citizens to travel farther distances to access health care. Many rural hospitals within the state are struggling financially and are at high risk of closing, causing further barriers for rural citizens to access healthcare. Increasing primary care physicians help provide adequate healthcare access and provides rural citizens access to preventative care and early treatment for health problems.

This study, conducted at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, seeks to determine if rural medicine courses …

A Discrete Conley-Zehnder Index For Symplectic Polytopes, Yutian Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Hamiltonian system is a dynamical system governed by Hamilton’s equations. Hamiltonian systems provide a framework for studying classical mechanics. One fundamental principle in Hamiltonian mechanics is the conservation of energy along the flow of the Hamiltonian vector field. The smooth hypersurface of a Hamiltonian function on a symplectic manifold has a contact structure, and the associated Reeb vector field is, up to a scale, the Hamiltonian vector field. We are interested in the non-smooth case and a symplectic polytope makes a good model to study.

In this dissertation, we study the Reeb dynamics on the boundary of a symplectic …

Ceremony On The Frontier: An Analysis Of A Thirteenth And Fourteenth Century Multi-Phase Mississippian Structure At The Carter Robinson Site, Lee County, Virginia, Taylor Greene

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carter Robinson (44LE10, occupied from ca. A.D. 1200-1400) is a Mississippian mound site located on the frontier between the edge of the Mississippian world and the beginning of the Radford culture area in southwestern Virginia. Although several structures have been identified and studied in the past, only one structure has been featured intentional burning and reconstruction throughout the occupation of the site, and is designated as Structure 2. This structure is also unique due to its location at the site, on a small rise about 80-meters east of the mound, a construction area typically reserved for the homes of minor …

The University Of Mississippi’S First-Year Experience Course: A Quantitative Analysis, Rachael Durham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

First-year seminar courses have become increasingly popular for colleges and universities as they are expected to help aid in the transition to college and help students persist to graduation (Culver & Bowman, 2020).

Utilizing pre-existing data from the Office of Institutional Research Effectiveness and Planning (IREP), the scholar-practitioner evaluated EDHE 105, the freshman academic orientation course, at the University of Mississippi. The anonymized data file included demographic information of residency, gender, and ethnicity, high school grade point average, ACT composite scores, enrollment in EDHE 105, athlete and honors designations, first-semester grade point average, fourth-semester grade point average, fourth-semester hours attempted, …

Unveiling Mississippi's Artistic Souls: A Documentary Journey, Sandip Rai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This MFA thesis presents a short documentary film focusing on the lives and artistic processes of four distinct artists residing in Mississippi: Andrew Bryant, Anne Scott Barrett, Jared Spears, and Stephen Brown (5th Child). The film delves into the intricacies of each artist's creative journey, capturing their unique perspectives and offering invaluable insights into their artistic endeavors.

Over the course of more than a year, this documentary underwent numerous revisions and refinements to ensure its significance both to the public audience and, most importantly, to the featured artists themselves. As an artist, the filmmaker was deeply motivated to unravel the …

Cp Asymmetry Measurement In Ξ+�� → Σ+��+��− And Distributed Computing Development At Belle Ii, Anil Panta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This PhD thesis presents a measurement of the direct ���� asymmetry, AΞ������, in the singly Cabibbo suppressed charm baryon decay Ξ+�� → Σ+��+��− using simulated and real data from the Belle II experiment. The full analysis is performed on a simulated dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 426.6 fb−1. The Cabibbo favored decay Λ+�� → Σ+��+��− is utilized as a control channel to account for detection asymmetries. The analysis is validated usingreal data for the control channel and systematic uncertainties are studied using simulated and real data. The measured ���� asymmetry in simulation, where no ���� asymmetry is …

Exploring Messages About College Attendance And Graduation, Erin Talley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Successful completion of a college degree is a growing necessity in the United States of America. Concerns about workforce readiness and the cost of postsecondary education make completion of a college degree a burdensome necessity for individuals and society. Important implications from higher education research have been integral in establishing support programs to enhance college and university admissions, persistence, and graduation. Exploration of students’ home environments (Belasco, 2013; Wladis, Hachey, & Conway, 2018), preparation for college endeavors (Banks, 2022; Gilroy, 2014), fit in college institutions (Grillo & Leist, 2014; Lutz, Bennett, & Wang, 2017), and determination, or GRIT (Duckworth & …

The Effect Of Mandated Disclosure On Liquidity Among Not-For-Profit Organizations, Erin Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines whether mandated disclosure under Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-14 affects not-for-profit (NFP) liquidity. ASU 2016-14 requires NFPs to disclose information that enhances financial statement users’ ability to assess an organization’s liquidity. Using panel data from fiscal years 2014 through 2019, I compare liquidity before and after the mandated disclosure for the top 100 revenue generating NFPs in 2019. I find that NFPs manage operating reserves, i.e., unrestricted liquid net assets, more closely to NFP sector guidelines after the disclosure mandate. Specifically, I find that NFPs with operating reserves above the recommended range prior to the disclosure mandate …

Analysis Of Dietary Micronutrient Intake Of Ncaa Track And Field Athletes, Haley Noelle Melton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vitamins and minerals play an important role in many functions within the body and contribute to maintenance of health and well-being of all individuals, including athletes. An athlete’s performance could be negatively impacted if micronutrient recommendations are not met consistently. The purpose of this study was to analyze the dietary micronutrient consumption of NCAA Division I Collegiate Track and Field athletes. Thirty-seven track and field athletes, 15 females and 22 males, participated in the study. Multiple 24-hr recalls were collected, including weekdays and weekends, and analyzed using NSDR to obtain average dietary micronutrient intakes, which could then be compared to …

Service-Learning: A Key To Effective Communication For Radiologic Sciences Students, Chelsea Palmer Stephens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many healthcare entities across the globe are moving away from the idea of only treating patients’ diseases to a model of focusing on the overall well-being of patients. Because of this change, healthcare academia must also focus on this change when helping educate clinical practitioners. One major proponent of this type of care is effective communication between the practitioner and the patient. In order to help students grow in this vital attribute, educators must think outside the normal realm of academia and incorporate experiential learning strategies. One method that is often used to place students in an active environment with …

The Champion Of "The Permanent Things:" The Imaginative Conservatism Of Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, And Richard Weaver, Xiang Xu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation deals with the intellectual thought of Russell Kirk, Robert Nisbet, and Richard Weaver. Renowned today as the prominent thinkers who inaugurated the postwar American conservative intellectual movement, these three thinkers by far have not received enough attention among historians as they deserved.

In my dissertation, by unpacking the central tenets of the conservative thought of the three thinkers, I try to demonstrate that their ideas were not just pertinent to the nascent American conservative movement emerging after the postwar decade, but their intellectual thought are in many ways enduring and timeless, transcending the barren limitations of their own …

Increasing Mathematics Proficiency And Growth Through Focused, Data-Driven, Professional Learning, Joye Camille Cullen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I aimed to improve elementary teachers’ mathematical instruction by enhancing their content knowledge and skills through the implementation of professional learning communities (PLCs) and professional development. The research design consisted of multiple evaluation steps conducted over time with a collaborative action plan the leadership team, mathematics specialist, and teachers developed. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from participating classrooms and were analyzed at different phases of the program evaluation.

The scope of the study addressed the lack of content knowledge among elementary teachers, which led to gaps in instruction and difficulties in explaining to students advanced mathematical …

Enhancing Student Engagement: Regional Campus Students’ Access To High Impact Practices And Co-Curricular Organizations, Angela Kristina Austin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Regional campuses serve a vital role in today's higher education landscape, extending access to college education for underserved locations and populations. The University of Mississippi’s university system has five regional campuses. The students at a regional campus, like their traditional main campus counterparts, aspire to attain bachelor's or graduate degrees. However, regional campus students often exhibit characteristics more akin to community college or non-traditional students.

While literature on regional campuses is limited, ample research supports the positive impact of student involvement in higher education. Even more limited is research on participation levels of non-traditional students in co-curricular organizations and high-impact …

Exploring Clinical Judgment In An Accelerated Undergraduate Nursing Curriculum, Marlie Lawrence Farrar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nurses play a pivotal role in the healthcare world. They play a role in many settings, caring for patients with chronic issues to patients in life threatening situations. These settings call for nurses to be able to analyze patient situations and correctly intervene. This skill is clinical judgment. However, Kavanagh and Swzeda (2018) have shown that new graduate nurses do not demonstrate this skill, potentially causing patient harm. Findings such as this one have led to a reformation of the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). The revamped exam called the Next Generation NCLEX (NGN) will focus on …

"Sealed With A Kiss On Your Artery": An Archive Of Southern Lesbian Desire, Sarah Margaret Heying

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines southern lesbian feminist print culture of the 1970s-2000s, which produced some of the most intersectional work to come out of second-wave feminism— especially in terms of creative and critical challenges to anti-Blackness, classism, metrocentrism, and regional exceptionalism. A central contribution of “Sealed with a Kiss on Your Artery” is its reimagination of archival reading practices from a queer-feminist literary studies perspective. Each chapter examines the archive of a particular lesbian feminist figure and demonstrates a corresponding interpretive practice; I seek to encounter these historical figures in a manner befitting not only the facts of their contributions to …

Quitting: A Phenomenological Study On The Factors Contributing To Mississippi Teacher Exits During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Krystal R. Cormack

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This transcendental phenomenological study focused on determining the factors contributing to teacher exits from Mississippi schools during and since the global COVID-19 pandemic. Developing a more robust understanding of the teacher labor market and teacher exits is vital to ensuring that students can access a high-quality education. Participants identified the COVID-19–related factors that influenced their decision to exit the classroom and factors unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants felt the COVID-19 pandemic worsened their teaching experience and created additional work. One educator exited due to complications from long COVID disease. Three major findings unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic emerged …

L2 Perception Of The S-Aspirated Phone In Spanish, Raúl A. Gamboa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with the perception of the aspirated coda /s/ by Spanish L2 learners. Second language research, with some exceptions, focuses on whether L1English–L2 Spanish learners can perceive the aspirated variant, showing that only advanced learners with time spent in s-weakening regions succeed at the task. L2 studies about s-aspiration have yet to investigate the perception of the aspirated coda /s/ in different environments across actual phrases and sentences. This study focuses on the intelligibility of pairs of ambiguous phrases and sentences perceptually differentiated only by the aspirated coda /s/. Additionally, it investigates the prosodic stress´ influence on the …

High-Resolution Hybrid Printing Of 3d Electronics, Nusrat Yasmin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Highly integrated on-demand printed electronics have gained lots of popularity recently. Most of the fabrication methods that are currently used in the industry are constraints to one technology and also one material class. These also limit the geometry design and the resolution of the finished products. To address this problem, the hybrid printing process is a promising technique to effectively fabricate 3D electronics. Hybrid printing is the future of printed electronics.

In the study, a high-resolution (~100 microns) hybrid printing process has been developed which combines extrusion-based printing (EBP) and Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing with polymeric and metallic material respectively. In …

Implementing Culturally Relevant Pedagogies For Black Students Through Targeted Professional Learning Communities, Willie Reece

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This action research emphasizes the need to implement curricula to engage marginalized students as well as promote literacy and high levels of academic achievement. Marginalized students include minority students who perform far below their White peers on state assessments. In Chapter I, the action research problem of practice is explored. The major issues at Genesis Elementary School are revealed, and they are targeted through culturally relevant pedagogies. Chapter II outlines relevant literature related to the research topic, and the researchers provide frameworks to guide the study. Chapter III focuses on the preparation and implementation of the action plan for the …

The Effects Of Google Smart Compose On The Process Of Open-Ended Writing, Sijan Shrestha

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, a lot of new natural language models have been developed which help individuals with writing. One of the widely used tools is Google’s Smart Compose which is a text-predictive system that helps individuals to write by reducing the need for repetitive typing. Though this tool has been well established and used by a lot of people, there is a lack of studies on its impact on open-ended writing.

In this thesis, we investigate the effect of Google’s Smart Compose in open-ended writing. To do this, we built a custom software that collects data while the users are writing on …

Saudi Perspective On Using Efl Resources To Improve Their English Pronunciation In Saudi Public Institutions, Khadija Abdullah Alzahrani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to the lack of a pronunciation curriculum and materials in Saudi universities, EFL students individually select use different resources to help with their English pronunciation difficulties. Therefore, this study aims to describe (a) Saudi students' perspectives and attitudes toward pronunciation resources that may help with their pronunciation (b) if they use them to help with their weaknesses, and (c) the teachers’ perspectives on their students' pronunciation difficulties, their knowledge of the resources the universities provide, and what they use to help the students' pronunciation learning and development. This study investigates what Saudi students think they need to learn pronunciation, …

On Security And Privacy In Machine Learning, Thomas Cilloni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the use of social media platforms, surveillance cameras, and vision-enabled devices and services has increased exponentially. While the mere use of a device or service is not a privacy issue, Machine Learning use has also drastically increased, and it exposes a number of privacy and security threats, especially towards online users. Privacy legislation around the world prohibits to use of data unfairly, but the conversion of laws to technical applications is often subject to interpretation. Such ambiguity opens a gap for data owners to potentially misuse data, violating end users’ privacy.

The overall objective of this doctoral …