Digital Commons Network^™

Inquiry, Art And Consummatory Experience: A Deweyan Account Of The Instrumental And Aesthetic Modes In Human Well-Being, Eric A. Evans

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation argues that a Deweyan reconstruction of philosophical theories of human well-being is needed. While philosophical interest about human well-being has existed for millennia, significant interest in such theories among philosophers has re-emerged during the past twenty-five years. During this same time there has been a resurgence of interest in the work of John Dewey. His critique of the “philosophical fallacy” is used to examine the legitimacy and value of the theories of human well-being offered by Plato and L.W. Sumner in which the target for evaluation is “happiness” and the criterion is, respectively, P-justice or preference fulfillment. It …

Empathy-Based Conservation: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Conservation Policy And Decision-Making, Kaitlyn Delashmutt

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

In the late 20^th century, neuroscientists in Italy discovered a neuron in the brain capable of mentally mimicking the emotions derived from the actions of others (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004). It is the process that makes your elbow ache when someone else knocks their elbow on the counter or the uncontrollable smile that creeps up when someone smiles at you. No questions asked, people intuitively sense what others are feeling. The old school of thought was that humans deduced through logic and reason the actions of others and interpreted the emotions through a rational process (Carew et al, 2008). …

Greeted Like Liberators: Media, Metaphor, And Myth In The Rhetorical Construction Of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Charles Franklin Bisbee

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Journalistic performance in covering the presidential argument to undertake Operation Iraqi Freedom drew almost instantaneous criticism from within the profession. The general line of criticism held that journalists failed a “watchdog” standard of applying scrutiny to the rhetoric of public officials in terms of fact-based and legitimate argumentation. Alleged causes, in the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom, are usually rooted in al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 terroristic attacks inside the United States. Some critics submitted that post-attack journalistic “patriotism” granted President George W. Bush an overly-generous benefit of doubt in framing an American response. Others faulted journalistic norms. But the criticism …

Exploring Global Competence With Managers In India, Japan, And The Netherlands: A Qualitative Study, Gerard J.M. Ras

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This qualitative study explores the meaning of global competence for global managers in three different countries. Thirty interviews were conducted with global managers in India, Japan and the Netherlands through Skype, an internet based software. Findings are reported by country in five major categories: country background, personal characteristics, experience in and adaptation to global business, developing global competence, and global competence. Themes were identified per country for each of these five major categories. The study’s findings were compared to the existing literature on global competence. Based on the findings and existing literature the study proposes a model of global competence …

Hyphenated Identities As A Challenge To Nation-State School Practice?, Edmund T. Hamann, William England

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This chapter concludes the edited volume Hyphenated Identities and affords a chance to juxtapose how transnational students negotiate school and identity with how school systems in turn view such students, and then it allows the examination of two different strategies -- situational ethnicity versus the assertion of hyphenated identity -- as a glimpse into the cosmology of transnationally mobile students as they come into adulthood.

(Re)Conceptualizing Intercultural Communication In A Networked Society, Damien S. Pfister, Jordan Soliz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

We offer four theses about how intercultural communication is altered in a digitally networked era. Digital media shape intercultural communication by (1) producing new public fora capable of (2) hosting rich, multimodal ‘‘spaces’’ of contact on (3) a scale of many-to-many communication that (4) challenges traditional modes of representation

Universal Bibliographic Control Of Publications In Nigeria: The Journey So Far, Anthony Agena Igbashal, Jessica Aheman Agoh

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Accessibility and use of written, printed and published records have become more imperative then ever before. It is natural, under normal circumstances that librarians should be inclined to suppose that greater orderliness in the production of bibliographic services would meet the demands of readers especially researchers. This calls for a pattern of effective recording and arrangement which result from systematic listing of the records of human communication. Researches on bibliographic control are essentially descriptive. They involve compilation of a defined set of materials (books, manuscripts, maps, audio-visual materials, serial, etc) so that they may be described, analyzed, classified or codified. …

The School Library As A Foundational Step To Childrens’ Effective Reading Habits, Isaac Oluwadare Busayo

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Reading is recognized as an art capable of transforming man’s life and his entire society. However, in the state of the World Children Report by (UNICEF,1999), it was stated that nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or write their names. The Hindu newspaper (2004) also put forward that in an age when browsing the net, playing with funky handsets and passing non-stop SMSs seem to be the order of the day, reading a book in a peaceful corner of a library has become an archaic idea for most people. While technology is slowly …

Increasing Higher Level Language Skills To Improve Reading Comprehension, Tiffany Hogan, Mindy Sittner Bridges, Laura M. Justice, Kate Cain

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Reading comprehension involves two primary processes: (a) decoding printed text and (b) understanding language accessed through the process of decoding. In the early years of reading development, children’s ability to comprehend text is largely constrained by individual differences in decoding printed text; however, once decoding becomes automatized, reading comprehension is largely dependent upon one’s skills in language comprehension (Catts, Hogan, & Adlof, 2005). In recent decades, numerous studies have investigated how children develop decoding skills and how, when these skills do not develop normally, educators can effectively intervene (e.g., Denton & Mathes, 2003; Simmons et al., 2008; Vellutino, Scanlon, Small, …

The Armenians Of Palestine 1918-48, Bedross Der Matossian

Department of History: Faculty Publications

For the Armenians of Palestine, the three decades of the Mandate were probably the most momentous in their fifteen hundred-year presence in the country. The period witnessed the community’s profound transformation under the double impacts of Britain’s Palestine policy and waves of destitute Armenian refugees fleeing the massacres in Anatolia. The article presents, against the background of late Ottoman rule, a comprehensive overview of the community, including the complexities and role of the religious hierarchy, the initially difficult encounter between the indigenous Armenians and the new refugee majority, their politics and associations, and their remarkable economic recovery. By the early …

The French Colonial Mind, Volume 2, Martin Thomas

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

olence was prominent in France’s conquest of a colonial empire, and the use of force was integral to its control and regulation of colonial territories. What, if anything, made such violence distinctly colonial? And how did its practitioners justify or explain it? These are issues at the heart of The French Colonial Mind: Violence, Military Encounters, and Colonialism. The second of two linked volumes, this book brings together prominent scholars of French colonial history to explore the many ways in which brutality and killing became central to the French experience and management of empire. Sometimes concealed or denied, at …

Defying Maliseet Language Death, Bernard C. Perley

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Today, indigenous communities throughout North America are grappling with the dual issues of language loss and revitalization. While many communities are making efforts to bring their traditional languages back through educational programs, for some communities these efforts are not enough or have come too late to stem the tide of language death, which occurs when there are no remaining fluent speakers and the language is no longer used in regular communication. The Maliseet language, as spoken in the Tobique First Nation of …

The French Colonial Mind, Volume 1, Martin Thomas

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

What made France into an imperialist nation, ruler of a global empire with millions of dependent subjects overseas? Historians have sought answers to this question in the nation’s political situation at home and abroad, its socioeconomic circumstances, and its international ambitions. But all these motivating factors depended on other, less tangible forces, namely, the prevailing attitudes of the day and their influence among those charged with acquiring or administering a colonial empire. The French Colonial Mind explores these mindsets to illuminate the nature of French imperialism. The first of two linked volumes, Mental Maps of Empire and Colonial Encounters brings …

A Distance-Delivered Teacher Education Program For Rural Culturally And Linguistically Diverse Teacher Candidates, Gayla Lohfink, Amanda Morales, Gail Shroyer, Sally Yahnke, Cecilia Hernandez

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article describes a collaborative, distance-delivered, teacher preparation program for rural, culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) teacher candidates. Multiple institutions partnered with one university in order to diversify the teaching force in the region and meet the needs of CLD students living there. In describing the program's design and implementation phases, a focus on cultural responsiveness to the candidates ' needs, their rural settings, and high populations of Latino/a students in the rural areas in which they were trained is presented. Assessment of each implementation phase guided program practice for the participants ' training as effective teachers. Relevant discussion indicates …

Negotiating Tensions Across Organizational Boundaries: Communication And Refugee Resettlement Organizations, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Voluntary non-profit organizations play a critical role in mediating the transition of refugees into their new host communities in the United States. Furthermore, mediation is fundamentally a communicative phenomenon, as social services are provided in through communication between nonprofit workers and clients. Critically, for voluntary mediating organizations to create empowering spaces for refugees, communication is central. In this study, I emphasize the tensional processes inherent to mediating interactions and explore how refugee resettlement organizational staff members and refugee-clients describe and manage the communicative tensions which emerge when they interact with one another.

I conducted eighteen in-depth interviews with fifteen organizational …

Use Of Information Resources And Services At Delhi Public Library (Dpl): A Survey, Sunil Tyagi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This research sought to determine the use of Information Resources and Services at Delhi Public Library, Delhi. A well structured 120 questionnaires were distributed among DPL users during the academic session 2010-11 to find out the use Information Resources and Services at Delhi Public Library. The questionnaires were checked and out of 109 filled questionnaires returned 105 (96.33%) were found fit for analysis and out of which 04(03.67%) were considered unusable. The present study demonstrates and elaborates the various aspect of use of information resources and services, physical facilities available and collection of DPL. Identifies the levels of use of …

Teaching Effectiveness, Availability, Accessibility, And Use Of Library And Information Resources Among Teaching Staff Of Schools Of Nursing In Osun And Oyo State, Nigeria, Moses Oladele Adeoye, S. O. Popoola

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study investigated the influence of availability, accessibility and use of library information resources on the teaching effectiveness of the teaching staff of schools of Nursing in Osun and Oyo States of Nigeria. The population used was the entire teaching staff of the eight (8) schools of Nursing in Osun and Oyo States. The research instruments used were questionnaires and observation. One hundred and fifty eight (158) questionnaires were distributed one hundred and forty seven (147) were returned giving a response rate of 93.04%. The findings of this research show that teaching effectiveness has significant positive correlation with educational qualification, …

Graduate Connections- August 2011

Graduate Connections: A Newsletter for UNL Graduate Students

In This Issue:

Navigating Graduate School ..................................1

Big Red Joins the Big Ten

Seeking and Selecting a Mentor

Advice for Graduate Students

Good Practices in Graduate Education ..................4

Academic Integrity Resources

Professional Development…………………....5

Quick Tips on Writing with Statistics

Resources for Graduate Teaching Assistants

Teaching Tip .......................................6

First Day of Class

Funding Opportunities .......................7

The Graduate Writer...............................9

Writing Tips from the Masters

Announcements ...................................10

Graduate Bulletin

Registration and Financial Aid

Health Insurance

Call for Award Nominations

Events ................................12

Campuswide TA Workshops for Graduate Teaching Assistants

New Graduate Student Welcome

New International and Transfer Student Orientation

Doctoral Graduation …

Initial Mlu Predicts The Relative Efficacy Of Two Grammatical Treatments In Preschoolers With Specific Language Impairments, Paul J. Yoder, Dennis L. Molfese, Elizabeth Gardner

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty and Staff Publications

Purpose—We sought to confirm predictions based on past findings that pre-treatment mean length of utterance (MLU) would predict which of two grammatical treatments would best facilitate generalized and maintained grammatical development in preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI).

Method—The participants were 57 preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI). A randomized group experiment was used. The two grammatical treatments were Broad Target Recasts (BTR) and Milieu Language Teaching (MLT). MLU was assessed at Time 1 in two conversational language samples. Growth rate of productive grammar was quantified using growth curve modeling on the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) from …

The Difficulties And Opportunities Chinese Transfer Students Encounter In An American University: A Learning Perspective, Hui Chen

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Scholarship

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties and opportunities that Chinese transfer students encounter in learning in one American university. The researcher also explored the strategies that transfer students used to deal with the difficulties and opportunities.

The study employed qualitative survey and interview methods. Ninety-seven students who transferred from Zhejiang University City College and Xi’an Jiaotong University City College to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were invited to participate. These students came to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln through the Partner Degree Program (PDP). Forty-one individuals completed the online survey and two students participated in interviews. The participants …

Delayed Beginnings, Jump Start? The Combined Effects On Early Literacy Of Age At Entry Into Kindergarten With Experiences Prior To Entry, Kathryn A. Wilson

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As the first compulsory grade in the elementary school program, kindergarten is designed to prepare students for the numbered grades. Students are eligible for entrance into kindergarten if they turn five before a state-determined cut-off date. These dates range from the June before the start of school until the January after. Because some states do not require that children attend kindergarten until 6, 7, or even 8 years old, some parents are delaying their child’s entry into the program on the assumption that their child will benefit from an extra year to grow cognitively, physically, and emotionally. The result is …

A Longitudinal Examination Of The Relationship Between Corporate Financial Performance And The Corporate Persona Revealed In The Annual Report, Samuel A. Nelson

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the relationship between organizational financial performance and the levels of charisma and optimism revealed in the annual report. Hypotheses were developed based on the meta-theory of the organization as a social actor and previous empirical results regarding the relationship between organizational financial performance and the constructs of charisma and optimism. Based on previous research it was hypothesized that organizational financial performance would be positively related to charisma and optimism at the within-firm and between-firm levels of analysis. A content analysis of annual reports was performed and financial performance was collected for each company in the study for …

Immigration To The Great Plains, 1865-1914 War, Politics, Technology, And Economic Development, Bruce Garver

Great Plains Quarterly

The advent and vast extent of immigration to the Great Plains states during the years 1865 to 1914 is perhaps best understood in light of the new international context that emerged during the 1860s in the aftermath of six large wars whose consequences included the enlargement of civil liberties, an acceleration of economic growth and technological innovation, the expansion of world markets, and the advent of mass immigration to the United States from east-central and southern Europe.1 Facilitating all of these changes was the achievement of widespread literacy through universal, free, compulsory, and state-funded elementary education in the United States, …

Assessing Secondary And College Students’ Implicit Assumptions About The Particulate Nature Of Matter: Development And Validation Of The Structure And Motion Of Matter Survey, Marilyne Stains, Marta Escriu-Sune, Myrna Lisseth Molina Alvarez De Santizo, Hannah Sevian

Chemistry Department: Faculty Publications

Development of learning progressions has been at the forefront of science education for several years. While understanding students’ conceptual development toward “big ideas” in science is extremely valuable for researchers, science teachers can also benefit from assessment tools that diagnose their students’ trajectories along the learning progressions. In this paper, we describe the development and validation of a teacher-friendly survey, the Structure and Motion of Matter (SAMM) survey, designed to measure students’ trajectories along aspects of a research-based learning progression on the particulate nature of matter. Specifically, the survey assesses students’ implicit assumptions about four concepts: the structure of solute …

A Study On Facility Planning Using Discrete Event Simulation: Case Study Of A Grain Delivery Terminal., Sarah M. Asio

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The application of traditional approaches to the design of efficient facilities can be tedious and time consuming when uncertainty and a number of constraints exist. Queuing models and mathematical programming techniques are not able to capture the complex interaction between resources, the environment and space constraints for dynamic stochastic processes. In the following study discrete event simulation is applied to the facility planning process for a grain delivery terminal. The discrete event simulation approach has been applied to studies such as capacity planning and facility layout for a gasoline station and evaluating the resource requirements for a manufacturing facility. To …

Ibn Arabshah: The Unacknowledged Debt Of Christopher Marlowe’S Tamburlaine, Ahlam M. Alruwaili

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis suggests strong relations between Marlowe’s Tamburlaine I & II and Ibn Arabshah’s 1436 account of Tamerlane’s Life (‘Ajaib al-maqdur fi nawa’ib Timur: The Wonders of Destiny Concerning the Calamities Wrought by Tamerlane), clarifies controversial issues, and explains previously baffling allusions editors have pondered long. In general, the thesis enriches our understanding of Marlowe's wide ranging sources, im­plies a critique of western-biased source scholarship, and opens possibilities to re-evaluate eastern contributions to the Renaissance in general. The first chapter high­lights some well-recognized events in the play and in historical sources (the caging of Bayazid and ill-treatment of his …

English Language Learners’ Connection To School And English Through The Digital Storytelling Process, Megan J. Mcelfresh

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Thanks to the developing technology of digital storytelling, English Language Learner teachers at Maple Elementary may have a potential answer to help 2nd grade students with their growth in English and connection to school. The questions that guided this inquiry into digital storytelling in the ELL classroom were the following: Are there particular benefits to ELLs in digital storytelling? Do ELL students see connections through the digital storytelling process to their growth as a writer and role in the school community? Research has previously shown the success of ELL students is strongly linked to the instruction they receive and sense …

Reactivate, Kelly Hiskey

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

[Question]

How can communities be incorporated onto the site of a closed military base?

[Signifcance]

The Government owns billions of square feet of unused property across the United States. In fact, the United States Government owns over 50% of the land in the Western half of the country. Military facilities

occupy the largest area of federal land, aside from parks and forests. Many of these military sites are being left to their own demise. In fact, 27% of the nation’s military installations have been closed by the Department of Defense, via the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) initiative, leaving millions …

Review Of The Dead Sea Scrolls And The Hasmonean State, By Hanan Eshel, Sidnie White Crawford

Sidnie White Crawford Publications

The purpose of this volume by the late Hanan Eshel is to “summarize the contributions of the scrolls to the understanding of the political history of the Hasmonean state” (p. 1). Eshel, an archaeologist, linguist, and historian who edited several manuscripts from the Judaean Desert finds and excavated in the region of Qumran, was committed to mining the Qumran scrolls for historical information, a position that has come into a certain amount of disfavor in recent scholarship. However, in this balanced and careful volume, Eshel demonstrates that the Qumran scrolls do contain nuggets of valuable information that add to our …

Perceptual And Acoustical Comparisons Of Motor Speech Practice Options For Children With Childhood Apraxia Of Speech, Amy Nordness

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) need intensive and accurate practice to establish an accurate motor plan and improve their speech production. Computer-led practice led to a greater quantity of practice and was preferred over parent-led practice. Further knowledge regarding children’s accuracy of speech during independent practice is needed to determine if computer-led practice is a viable practice tool. Twelve children diagnosed with CAS, between 3-0 and 7-11 years of age, participated in speech practice during computer-led, parent-led, and clinician-led practice. Comparisons of perceptual accuracy of consonants and vowels, acoustical accuracy of stops, vowels, and fricatives, and variability of …