Digital Commons Network^™

Sense Of Program Community And Imposterism In Online Business Graduate Programs, Heather Leigh Rippetoe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Building off seminal works on community including McMillan and Chavis, Lave and Wenger, Graves, and Wenger et al, the Institutional, Program, and Professional (IPP) community framework for online allows students, faculty, administrators, and alumni the opportunity to consider how to support community beyond online courses into programs, the institution, and the early career (profession). At the same time, as this way of thinking about community in online learning is emerging, academia is increasingly acknowledging the presence of imposterism, also known as imposter feelings, Imposter Phenomenon, or Imposter Syndrome for students, scholars, and early professionals. Researchers are increasingly considering imposter feelings …

Shakespeare’S Economies Of Hospitality: Broken Comedies, Bad Hosts, And Troublesome Guests, John Henry Sauls

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Examining four Shakespeare plays for moments of hospitality and inhospitality, the question must be asked, “Is hosting and guesting necessary to maintain strong community?” In this exploration, hospitality is examined in four of Shakespeare’s plays, tracing its effects on the communities within those plays, showing that without hospitable performance, community falters and may eventually break apart. Such exploration of what goes well and not so well with hospitality offers a wealth of insight into cultural studies. Specific characters from these four plays are crucial to this study, as they provide concrete examples of human interactions gone awry and then …

Lived Experiences, Migration Journey, Religiosity, And Spirituality Depicted In Drawings By Latino Children And Youth Crossing The U.S. Mexican Border: A Qualitative Study., Doroty Magalhaes Sato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Widespread violence forces thousands of Central American children to endure a hazardous journey toward the U.S. Border seeking refuge. In the Latino community, faith serves as a social movement of resistance against oppression, playing a vital role in migration. There is a paucity of research documenting this experience and children's overall journey. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the lived experience of crossing international borders, religiosity, and spirituality depicted in Latino children's drawings used as coping methods to endure the journey toward the U.S. southern border. This investigation employed Art-based approaches to give voices to children's experiences by analyzing 63 …

Do-It-Together: Informal Transformative Sustainability Education, Derek Brannon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Climate Crisis is an urgent and inescapable reality students are thrust into. Learners must be prepared adequately for their futures, not only for their sakes but also because collective and transformative change is required. Transformative sustainability education provides one pathway to this transformation and focuses on radically altering students’ perceptions about the world and their agency in effecting change on ecological issues. The field of transformative sustainability education is emergent and thus is still fragmented, leaving gaps in the literature. Little research has been conducted on how informal and nonformal university spaces can be used to create transformative experiences …

What Unique Supportive Strategies Do Nonprofit Leaders Utilize To Promote Sustainability?, Mary Althea Edwards Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have been deemed important to communities. They are designed to fill gaps in community societal requirements by supplying resources, goods, and services that other companies in public sectors and neighborhoods do not offer. According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the country reportedly has 1.5 million nonprofit organizations (NPOs). There are many NPOs in the United States, but statistical projections indicate that over half will fail, with 30% failing within a few years of their creation. Researchers have shown that NPOs collapse yearly due to various factors, including a lack of money and resources. These organizations …

Leadership Development In Education For Sustainable Development: Evaluation Of Higher Education Students In Sustainable Development Programs, Michelle Dzurenda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) has been working decades towards reaching Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to create peace and prosperity for people and the planet. The 2030 Agenda was created as an urgent call to action, a global partnership, and a comprehensive plan to work towards the 17 SDGs. For this study, the focus is on Goal 4- quality education and the impact of leadership on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Leadership on ESD has been a more recent topic and under researched. By making advancements in leadership on ESD there will be positive …

Uncovering Testimonios Of Traditional Healing Practices Among Latinx College Students In El Nuevo Sur., Sarah Nuñez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Latinx college students in el Nuevo Sur face many barriers to their educational success. Latinx students in el Nuevo Sur live in a part of the country where few opportunities to embrace their cultures are present or centered in educational settings. Reclaiming and remembering their cultures within the higher education setting could act as a catalyst for their success and is the motivation for this dissertation. Through testimonios, photo/image-elicitation, and journal writing with ten participants, I listened to and witnessed the students’ stories. Through unfolding the students’ testimonios, I uncovered and supported students to rediscover healing practices as a tool …

Trustworthy Decentralized Last Mile Delivery Framework Using Blockchain, Ala' Alqaisi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The fierce competition and rapidly growing eCommerce market are painful headaches for logistics companies. In 2021, Canada Post’s parcel volume peaked at 361 million units with a minimum charge of $10 per each. The Last-Mile Delivery (LMD) is the final leg of the supply chain that ends with the package at the customer’s doorstep. LMD involves moving small shipments to geographically dispersed locations with high expectations on service levels and precise time windows. Therefore, it is the most complex and costly logistics process, accounting for more than 50% of the overall supply chain cost. Innovations like Crowdshipping, such as Uber …

Dynamic Distributed Energy Resources For Expansion Of Ontario’S Greenhouse Sector, Lysandra Naom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The vegetable greenhouse sector is rapidly growing and adopting technology advances like supplemental lighting. Supplemental lighting has a dynamic impact on the demand and consumption of a greenhouse’s electricity load. There is uncertainty on the rate of adaptation of technologies and the impact this could have on the power consumption of the sector. Without electricity availability, the sectors innovation and expansion can come to a halt. This research focused on investigating greenhouse electrical load models and lighting trends to forecast demand on electricity grids and discover potential for Distributed Energy Resource (DER) applications.

This thesis presents a series of studies …

Leading For Sustainability In School-Community Partnerships, Kimberly Renee Benavides

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Schools receive support in the form of partnerships with organizations such as businesses, churches, and non-profits for many reasons, and such partnerships are beneficial to students and the school community. The purpose of this participatory qualitative study was to determine behaviors of elementary school principals that result in the sustainability of school-community partnerships beyond the initial year of implementation. Elementary school principals in an urban public school district in North Texas were interviewed along with leaders from their corresponding community partners to determine the role of the principal in school-community partnership work. Through an in-depth analysis of interview transcripts, the …

A Systematic Review Of Studies Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Horticultural Therapy For Increasing Well-Being And Decreasing Anxiety And Depression, Claudia Andrea Lasater

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study is a systematic review of published research on the effectiveness of horticultural therapy and related interventions in reducing stress. Since the beginning of time, the great outdoors has been humanity’s source of thriving on earth. However, as industrialization, urbanization, technological, and digital advances continue to expand, human life has changed, resulting in many negative outcomes, such as mental health concerns related to stress and lack of outside engagement. The mental health and related health concerns in previous studies show to be depression, rumination, anxiety, mood and salivary cortisol, anger, general health, existential issues, and many more all show …

Facilitators To Becoming And Remaining Open Defecation Free In Uganda: Implications For Community-Led Total Sanitation Programming, Danette Lee Cagnet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Poor sanitation behaviors, including open defecation, present risks for diarrhea, which is credited with 600,000 deaths a year in children under age five. Although CLTS is a solution to ending open defecation, more than half of the investment in producing open defecation free (ODF) communities is lost during the maintenance phase. The purpose of this qualitative, case study was to understand stakeholder perceptions of the facilitators and hindrances to becoming ODF certified and maintaining ODF status and sanitary behaviors in a small village community located in Uganda, East Africa. The researcher held individual interviews and in-person focus group discussions to …

The Influence Of Faculty Peer Network Communication In The Diffusion Of A Centralized Cure, Nicole L. Scheuermann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) provide students the benefits of undergraduate research participation by incorporating authentic scientific research into laboratory courses. CUREs are a relatively young pedagogy and are therefore innovative. Roger’s (2003) diffusion of innovations (DOI) framework posits that the diffusion of innovations, such as CUREs, is a highly social process. Most existing CURE research has focused on the impacts to students and the critical elements of CURE design. Investigation into instructor peer network communication is largely absent from the existing CURE literature. This study investigates the structure and function of a CURE community – the Malate Dehydrogenase CURE …

Formulation, Structure, And Applications Of Therapeutic, Amino Acid, And Water-Based Deep Eutectic Solvents, Md Sajjadur Rahman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the design of greener chemicals, deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are considered as one of the most versatile alternative solvents with widespread applications. DESs have the advantages of being nonflammable with negligible vapor pressure compared to traditional solvents. They share many characteristics of ionic liquids, but DESs are cheaper to formulate, typically nontoxic, recyclable, biodegradable, and are suitable for use with biological systems. In my Ph.D. research, three types of emerging and unconventional types of DESs, namely therapeutic DES (THEDES), amino acid-based DES (AADES), and water-based DES (WDES), have been investigated. To formulate these DES easily available and cheaper chemicals, …

Mobility Of Older Adults In Mexico City: A Mixed Methods Approach, Jessica Villena Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation covers the topic of the mobility of older adults in Mexico City using a mixed methods approach. First, I looked at the literature to uncover what is known about elderly mobilities coming from the Global South. Second, I analyzed the 2017 Household Origin Destination Survey to reveal travel behavior patterns and transport mode choice of older adults in Mexico City. Third, I revealed mobility experiences from older adults living in different neighborhoods in Mexico City by conducting twenty two telephone interviews. Lastly, I created joint displays that included both previous results to better understand how the findings from …

“I Done Been Through Hell”: An Existential Phenomenological Study Of The Lived Experience Of Fathers Who Have Lost A Child, Dynisha Wigginson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rise in American pediatric death led to a shift in pediatric end-of-life care from focusing care only on the dying pediatric patient to include focus on the family. Most literature has focused only on mothers’ experiences or the combined experiences of mothers and fathers. Fathers’ experiences at their child’s end of life, as an individual phenomenon, is overlooked and ignored. Hence, significant knowledge gaps exist related to the repeated exclusion of fathers’ individual experiences. This study aimed to begin to fill this gap. Using the lens of Merleau-Ponty, this existential phenomenological study aimed to describe the lived experiences of …

Culturally Responsive School Leadership Agility: A Journey Through Critical Self-Reflection, Deborah Mckelvey Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how school leaders can differentiate their approach using a self-reporting psychometric instrument called the Emergenetics® Profile when engaged in critical self-reflection. Using a multiple case study approach, three urban school leaders engaged in the deconstructing and reconstructing of knowledge frameworks specific to deficit thinking. The Emergenetics Profile served as a lens to critically self-reflect in order to differentiate their approach to the disrupt deficit thinking practices in their schools (Browning 2007; Khalifa, 2018; Shields, 2018). This study integrated these insights from critical self-reflection and the awareness gained by school leaders through their Emergenetics preferences to change their …

This Garden: Oysters And Place Along Florida's Forgotten Coast, Annemarie Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

THIS GARDEN is an audiovisual installation that tells the story of oyster farmers and place in Spring Creek, Florida. I use the oral history interviews and documentary photography I made there to explore aquaculturists’ deep relationship with the surrounding environment. To these farmers, the bay is a garden. They work within those often-unpredictable waters to cultivate new life. This accompanying thesis builds a chronological narrative of oyster aquaculture industry along Florida’s Forgotten Coast. It connects Florida’s burgeoning aquaculture industry to the long history of human involvement along the Gulf Coast in commercial fishing and wild harvest oyster operations. Lastly, I …

A Program Evaluation Of A Rural Nursing Academic Partnership, Meagan A. Spencer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education continue to promote the implementation and creation of literature on academic partnerships, a Christian university, sought to evaluate its academic partnership with a for-profit hospital for the first time in regard to student perspectives. The purpose of this mixed-methods program evaluation was to describe the student perceptions of the academic partnership in trusting, collaborating, and engaging nursing students and recruiting and retaining nursing graduates to rural hospitals and health care facilities. Measurable impacts included both qualitative and quantitative coding of the levels of trust, collaboration, and …

Soil Nutrient And Contaminant Assessment In Community Gardens, Louisville, Kentucky., Jessica Lynne Eggleston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urban population impact on environmental warming has inspired interest in vegetative coverage to mitigate human influence. Community gardens are proposed to increase green space and access to fresh food, improve health, and quality of life. The potential for soil contamination in post-industrial cities is high presenting a health risk for gardeners. Three Louisville, Kentucky community gardens were chosen for analysis of soil texture, pH, concentration of trace nutrients and metals using Mehlich 1 Extraction. In two community gardens, relative absence of heavy metals suggest they are currently safe for gardening. One garden had a concentration of copper and zinc over …

The Development Of A Culturally-Informed Cervical Cancer Screening And Prevention Mhealth Intervention For African American Women., Ariel Washington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Background: Significant strides have been made in reducing the burden of cervical cancer and HPV. Between pap smear screenings and HPV vaccinations, there has been a reduction in cervical cancer incidence in the United States. Unfortunately, those reductions have not been experienced by all ethnic groups. Cervical cancer disparities are a threat to the health of African American women, and innovation in education and the healthcare experience is needed to eliminate this threat. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a culturally tailored intervention using mHealth services to improve cervical cancer and HPV knowledge. Methods: The development and evaluation of …

Identifying A Customer Centered Approach For Urban Planning: Defining A Framework And Evaluating Potential In A Livability Context, Golnaz Sarram

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In transportation planning, public engagement is an essential requirement forinformed decision-making. This is especially true for assessing abstract concepts such aslivability, where it is challenging to define objective measures and to obtain input that canbe used to gauge performance of communities. This dissertation focuses on advancing adata-driven decision-making approach for the transportation planning domain in thecontext of livability. First, a conceptual model for a customer-centric framework fortransportation planning is designed integrating insight from multiple disciplines (chapter1), then a data-mining approach to extracting features important for defining customersatisfaction in a livability context is described (chapter 2), and finally an appraisal of …

Impact Of Coaching By Extension Professionals On Rural Wellness Coalition Success, Taylor Willhite

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: To quantitatively assess coaches perceived confidence in coaching rural wellness coalitions and to qualitatively determine barriers and facilitators to success in coaching rural wellness coalitions.
Design: A mixed methods design was utilized with quantitative (scorecard) and qualitative (key informant interviews) methodologies.
Setting: Six rural South Dakota wellness coalitions.
Participants: Extension wellness coalition coaches (n=7), one previous and six current.
Intervention: A component of the broader SDSU Extension 1416 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) intervention.
Analysis: STATA was utilized for the quantitative scorecard data by running paired ttests. NVivo was utilized in the …

Building Efficacy In Early-Career Teachers: An Applied Research Study On The Role Of Professional Development On Teacher Efficacy, Duncan Gray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teacher efficacy is closely connected to student achievement and teacher retention. The applied research explored how rethinking certain aspects of professional development would impact the efficacy of the teachers in an upper elementary building. The research program included two distinct components. School administrators redesigned after school professional development sessions in order to allow teachers to facilitate their own learning and lead sessions on areas of interest. The second component was a structural model that alloearly-career educators to visit other classrooms. Both of the components shosome promise for increasing teachers’ sense of efficacy, but the response from the after-school sessions was …

Potable Water Leakage Prediction And Detection Using Geospatial Analysis, Jacob Tittle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Due to increasing water treatment costs and conservation needs, traditional water loss analysis and acoustic leak detection methods are becoming heavily scrutinized by water utilities. This study explores water loss in Johnson City, Tennessee and how geospatial data analysis techniques improve water loss mitigation. This project uses sample water system pressure data and ordinary kriging spatial interpolation methods to identify leakage areas for further investigation. Analysis of existing geographic information system (GIS) water utility datasets with interpolated hydraulic grade values at sample water pressure points produce manageable survey areas that pinpoint areas with possible water leakage. Field detection methods, including …

"The Dream Is In The Process:" Environmental Racism And Environmental Justice In Boston, 1900 To 2000, Michael J. Brennan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The following work explores the evolution of a resident-directed environmental activism that challenged negative public perception to redevelop their community. Beginning in the 1950s, city leaders justified the dislocation of non-white residents from Boston’s South End with the argument that they failed to maintain personal property and degraded community institutions. Most of these minority residents were forced to move to Roxbury. From 1963 to 1983, Roxbury lost 2,200 housing units. The vacant lots led to illegal dumping, and increased toxicity in the air, water, and soil from undesirable land use businesses such as asphalt plants. As a result, banks, supermarkets …

Evaluating Fluid Fluxes From Deep-Sea Seepage Habitats, Leigha E. Peterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The permanently dark deep-sea, located at oceanic water depths greater than 200 m, represents the largest potential habitat space on Earth. The physicochemical conditions of the planet’s largest biome are tightly coupled to the exchange of matter and energy from terrestrial and sea-floor end-members. In fact, global ocean and climate systems are significantly impacted by deep-sea processes. Seafloor vents and seeps appear to act as geologic exchange conduits, returning recycled materials to the hydrosphere to sustain another generation of life. Despite submarine seepage having control on global elemental cycling, it is estimated that less than 1% of the deep-sea has …

Memphis Low Line And Community Hub: Creating A Place For Refuge, Andrea Del Cisne Jimenez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today’s society, when people migrate to a new setting, it can either be a welcoming or neglecting experience. It affects one’s sense of place, his or her relationship to the community and, therefore, his or her being. The challenge is to work toward the restoration of the site and respect the old, while still embedding a sense of refuge and identity to the place.The intent of this thesis is to create intimate and social gathering spaces with multi-sensory experiences that produce a meaningful attachment to place, community, and one’s self. The design process of this thesis demonstrates that the …

Local Food Policy & Consumer Food Cooperatives: Evolutionary Case Studies, Afton Hupper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Darwin’s theory of natural selection has played a central role in the development of the biological sciences, but evolution can also explain change in human culture. Institutions, mechanisms that govern behavior and social order, are important subjects of cultural evolution. Institutions can help stabilize cooperation, defined as behavior that benefits others, often at a personal cost. Cooperation is important for solving social dilemmas, scenarios in which the interests of the individual conflict with those of the group. A number of mechanisms by which institutions evolve to support cooperation have been identified, yet theoretical models of institutional change have rarely been …

Supporting Learning In 3d Virtual Environments: The Impact Of Intergenerational Joint Media Engagement, Robert Michlowitz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Studies have indicated that intergenerational relationships can assist children to learn more efficiently by providing support. As new forms of media have emerged and become pervasive in our society, it is important to understand how children use them to learn. Just as television coviewing has been observed by past researchers to aid youths to learn with parents and grandparents, three-dimensional virtual learning environments (VLE) are being investigated for their potential. This study seeks to examine the potential learning impact on children, ages 8 to 13, encountering a three-dimensional virtual learning environment with their grandparents. The primary research question this study …