Digital Commons Network^™

Associations Between Avian Spruce-Fir Species, Harvest Treatments, Vegetation, And Edges, Brian W. Rolek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Habitat loss is the primary cause of species loss and declines of global biodiversity. Several birds associated with the spruce-fir forest type (hereafter spruce-fir birds) have declining populations across the continent in the Atlantic Northern Forest, and the extent of coniferous forest has declined in some areas. This region is extensively and intensively managed for timber products.

To investigate the influence from harvest treatments on the spruce-fir bird assemblage during the breeding and post-breeding period in lowland conifer and mixed-wood forests, we used avian point count detection data to test for associations between avian assemblages and seven common harvest treatments. …

In Translation: An Examination Of Esl Policy On Paper As It Relates To The Realities Of Implementation, Grace M. Cuevas

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This honors research project explores the features of Title III requirements as they relate to the actual experience of students and their families. This paper synthesizes my experience researching English as a Second Language (ESL) specific supports and policy to inform my time spent accompanying an upper-level administrator for the Harrisonburg City Public School (HCPS) system, and interviewing professionals at an area school. In this paper I outline the results of interviews with 13 service providers. Interviews examined the “letter of the law” and the subsequent “spirit of the law” through application of a social work lens to the different …

Community, Preservation, And Street Art: A Proposal For San Francisco’S Mission District, Marissa Nadeau

Master's Projects and Capstones

The Latinx community is an integral part of San Francisco’s rich history. From Mexican missions in the late 1700s to an influx of immigrants from various Latin countries starting in the early 1900s, the Mission District (‘the Mission’) of San Francisco has served as a hub for this mix of residents, fondly called “Raza,” emphasizing the people of a community rather than the country they have come from. Wars and issues dealt in their homelands were close to the hearts of the entirety of the Latinx population of the Mission, and their voices and opinions were heard through a type …

School Based Flu Clinics, Jessica Sanchez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice provides health care in an ethically responsible, affordable, caring, and professional manner. The department of Community Services, focuses on providing traveling clinics to maintain a community healthy. School Based Flu Clinics were implemented under the Community Services department. These clinics address the excessive number of Monterey County residents becoming ill from influenza (flu) each flu season. The project was an event that immunized the community as well as provided education, about the importance of the flu shot. The four clinics, were open to the public, targeting students, parents, friends, and district employees. Flu vaccine …

Monterey County District Attorney's Funeral Protocol, Greg Steinbeck

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The investigators working for the Monterey County DA’s Office put their lives on the line protecting people in their community each and every day. Some of the high risks of this line of work often involve violent altercations involving individuals disobeying the law. Those risks may often involve severe injury or possibly death on the job. The Funeral Protocol is meant to provide full assistance to the families of the officers involved in these accidents. This project provided a set guidelines for the office to follow so that the families will not have to lift a finger in their times …

Forming A New Reality Through Art, Lorena Alvarez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone explores a deeper understanding of what it means to provide an effective outlet for children and adults in low socioeconomic communities. Working closely with Sons of the Sun, a nonprofit organization aimed at providing an arts studio space for the “studio-less,” the realization that it takes more than being provided a space to express yourself and take part in self-growth, flourished. Through self-reflection, observations, and interviews came the understanding that in order to formulate change in underserved communities, exposure to the arts, parent relationships, and community involvement can help make even the slightest difference for some children’s realities. …

Building Shared Values In The Community: Culture Of Health, Donnelle D. Storrs

Doctor of Nursing Practice

The zip codes where patients live are stronger determinants of health outcomes than the frequency of visits with a primary care provider. Providers have a unique opportunity to extend health care beyond the clinic walls and engage in efforts to improve the communities where their patients grow, live, work, and age. In order to impact the health of patients, a culture of health needs to be developed. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation culture of health action framework directed the build of a foundation of health as a shared value in a neighborhood with high morbidity and mortality rates in southwest …

Nutrition Education To Improve Health Outcomes In Community Dwelling Older Adults, Sara Giessinger

Master's Projects and Capstones

Abstract

The proportion of people age 60 and over is growing faster than other age group, and will double by 2050 from approximately 605 million to 2 billion worldwide, in addition to the 80 and over population quadrupling by the same time. Non-communicable diseases such as obesity, cancer, coronary heart and lung disease, diabetes, hypertension, insulin resistance, and hyperlipidemia,represent 63% of deaths annually worldwide. Due to the immense contact nurses have with clients, they play a key role in screening, referrals and education to guide this demographic to improved health outcomes through nutrition and physical activity interventions (Xiaoyue, Parker, Ferguson, …

Healthy Lifestyles: How A Community-Based Intervention Is Helping Low-Income Patients Battle Chronic Disease, Gina Baik

Master's Projects and Capstones

Background:This project aimed to evaluate a weekly group medical visit provided at a federally qualified health center, called Healthy Lifestyles + Open Source Wellness. The weekly group provides guided movement, mindful meditation, nutritious snacks, health education, group health coaching, and clinical monitoring for low-income patients with chronic conditions. The group aims to promote positive lifestyle changes to manage and treat various chronic conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, chronic pain and obesity.

Methods:Interviews were conducted with four staff members, six steadily engaged patients, and seven disengaged patients who visited and did not return to the group. Weekly observations of …

Privacy-Preserved Linkable Social-Physical Data Publication, Xu Zheng

Computer Science Dissertations

In this dissertation, we investigate the privacy-preserved data publication problems towards pervasively existing linkable social-physical contents. On the one hand, data publication has been considered as a critical approach to facilitate numerous utilities for individuals, populations, platform owners, and all third-party service providers. On the other hand, the unprecedented adoption of mobile devices and the dramatic development of Internet-of-Thing (IoT) systems have pushed the collection of surrounding physical information among populations to a totally novel stage. The collected contents can provide a fine-grained access to both physical and social aspects of the crowds, which introduces a comprehensively linkable and potentially …

Rhetorics Of Opacity, Social Change, And Communal Cultivation: Case Studies Of Glbtq Christian Advocacy During The 1960s And Early 1970s, Joshua Holman Miller

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation probes questions about community and advocacy, analyzing four case studies involving GLBTQ Christian advocacy from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. Each case study involves the use of rhetoric to hide or downplay markers of the at-the-time stigmatized “homosexual” identity. The examined case studies are Bayard Rustin’s advocacy work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, William Johnson’s ordination paper, and the 1973 Christian Reformed Church’s study report. To engage these texts, the dissertation develops theories about and methods for examining rhetorics of opacity—silence, hidden appeals, discourse that obscures, rhetorics of …

Academic Communities Of Engagement And Their Influence On Student Engagement, Kristian Joy Spring

Theses and Dissertations

Learner engagement is a critical aspect of education. While technology is rapidly developing to act in increasingly personalized, and in some dimensions human, ways, we submit that a human community may uniquely support increased student engagement. This research explored the characteristics and effects of the interactions and relationships that constitute three distinct communities in education and examined their influences on student engagement.In the format of a multiple-article dissertation I present three articles. The first article reviewed relevant literature about interactions, relationships, and communities in education. It focused specifically on online and blended contexts and their connections to student engagement. Interactions, …

Tanks And Tinsel: The American Celebration Of Christmas During World War Ii, Samantha Desroches

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

“Tanks and Tinsel: The American Celebration of Christmas during World War II” is an examination of the American celebration of Christmas during World War II. As the first comprehensive investigation into the most well-known holiday in Western culture and its role in shaping Americans’ experience and understanding of the war, it contributes to historical scholarship in three ways. First, it continues the trend of blending analyses of society into military-focused narratives of the war, and it expands the scope of this by fusing the literature of War and Society with that of Holiday History. Second, it challenges traditional views of …

Information Freedoms And The Case For Anonymous Community, Rachel Melis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

What we have witnessed in the last decade in the context of social upheaval, social activism, and resulting social movements is testament to the need for a re-evaluation of what constitutes community in a networked world, and what role the individual subject plays within social networks, systems of social, corporate, and state control, and networks of resistance. New processes of subjectivation are emerging and rather than being grounded in identity, sociality is being reconfigured, and it is in this process that this dissertation focusses on anonymity as a means of working through these new configurations. This integrated article dissertation explores …

Implementing A Caps Simulation To Increase Nursing Education Practice Students’ Self-Awareness Of Attitudes And Beliefs About Poverty, Melissa Ehmke

Dissertations

Problem. The purpose of this project is to determine if college students who are currently in nursing school, will benefit from the addition of a poverty simulation to positively influence their self-awareness and individual-level beliefs and attitudes towards poverty, therefore being able to serve those in poverty fully and guide them to appropriate resources.

Methods. Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) and Doctoral Nursing Practice (DNP) students participated in a three-hour Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS). A twenty-one item Attitude Toward Poverty Scale short form (ATPS) survey was completed pre and post-simulation participation.

Results. Significant improvements resulted in three of …

The Uses Of Community In Modern American Rhetoric, Cody Ryan Hawley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the functions of the term “community” in American social and political rhetoric. I contend that community serves as a god-term, or expression of value and order, which rhetors use to motivate actions, endorse values, include/exclude persons, and compensate for modern losses. Informed by the philosophy of Kenneth Burke, I explore the general features of “rhetorics of community,” including community’s ambiguity and status as an automatic good, the relationship between community and modernity, the myth of communal loss, and the uses of community as a site of political unity and contest. I analyze the writings of John Humphrey …

The Systemic Issues Associated With Violent Crime In Predominantly African American Communities, Abraham Coles

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate the issues associated with violent crime in African American communities. The study discusses the theory of racism as a key factor in the societal conditions African Americans live in the United States. The researcher explains the methodology used. The study is a qualitative study, based on interviews of eight participants answers to twenty questions. The study discusses the research sites, who participated in the research study, and how the participants were selected. The study outlines the sampling method and why this method was chosen. The descriptive statistics of participants in the study …

Rural, Urban, And Suburban School Communities And Their Impact On School Psychologists, Claire Crosier

Honors Theses

School psychologists play an important role today in the education of students by helping those with and without diagnosed disabilities. Their role as a school psychologist entails assessing students, providing interventions, consulting with teachers and more. This study looks to see if school psychologists have a different role depending on their community location, specifically rural, urban and suburban locations. Past research is outdated and finds varying results with some finding that the role differs depending on the setting, while others find more similarities than differences. This study found both similarities and differences in characteristics of school psychologists, the population of …

Integrating Art Therapy And Horticultural Therapy To Best Serve The Needs Of At-Risk Adolescents: A Literature Review, Kara Rodecker

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This capstone thesis examines existing literature on art therapy, horticultural therapies, and positive youth development, as they specifically meet the emotional needs of at-risk adolescences. The following paper provides an overview of the adolescent stage of development and how early attachment styles and environmental risk factors contribute to youth being labeled as at risk. At risk adolescents are more likely to have missed out on early attachments that are necessary to experience empathetic attunement, which should serve as the foundation of relationships throughout their life. The multiple environmental risk factors contribute to a sense of lack of control over their …

Do The Expressive Arts Therapies Aid In Identity Formation And Authenticity In The Latina Community? A Community Engagement Project, Amanda Bravo

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Identity reflections lie at the core of empowerment and take place in a variety of settings. Unfortunately, many of these settings are tailored to serve the majority group, as well as the individual running the exploration, leaving “others” left out. So how do we transform the “others” from a state of questioning “Who am I?” to an empowered state of declaring “Who I am!”?

This project explored how the use of art, dance movement, narrative, and the uniting of a group of ones can promote identity explorations and empowerment of self and others so that the state of “Who I …

Promoting Community Through Caring Leadership: An Action Research Project, Hazel Claros

M.A. in Higher Education Leadership: Action Research Projects

The overall purpose of this study was to increase collaboration across USD’s decentralized graduate admission departments through the approach of caring leadership (Uusiautti, 2013). The study was guided by the overarching question: How can I use caring leadership (Uusiautti, 2013) within academic affairs to encourage effective collaboration and understanding and foster a sense of community across departments? It was also guided by the sub-questions: Does gender impact the practices of collaboration and exchange of ideas within decentralized admission offices? If so, how does the current culture and structure of USD’s graduate admission offices aid/impede the practice of caring leadership (Uusiautti, …

Blackdom: Interpreting The Hidden History Of New Mexico's Black Town, Austin J. Miller

History ETDs

This master’s thesis recovers the history of Blackdom, New Mexico. Founded by an African American family from Georgia, Blackdom is a ghost town that existed in the early decades of the twentieth century near Roswell, New Mexico. Blackdom was initially imagined as both a refuge from the hostilities of Jim Crow society and as a for-profit enterprise. Entanglement in land-fraud scandals hindered the town’s early development, but Blackdom eventually grew to nearly three hundred residents, with its own school, Baptist church, post office, and general store. Blackdom settlers practiced a variety of agricultural methods, including dry farming and irrigation from …

Moving Through Grief With Mindfulness, Compassion, And Community, Yasemin Isler

Mindfulness Studies Theses

Grief resulting due to death of a loved one is devastating and life altering. Traditional

approaches, in the Western cultures, to support grieving persons usually include counseling, grief therapies and grief support groups. Grief is a unique experience for each person; however, common responses are observable. Mindfulness based interventions and compassion practices have become acceptable ways to support conditions including stress, anxiety, depression, fatigue and sleep disorders. Some of these symptoms are also present with grief. Grieving persons may not be familiar with mindfulness based interventions or practices. They may not be considered as qualified participants for these programs in …

An Exploration Of Community Mural Making In The Context Of Art Therapy And Social Action: A Literature Review, Sarah Wilkie

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Abstract

This literature review examines and discusses the various aspects of mural making in the context of both traditional art therapy and social action art therapy. The goal of this literature review is to explore and examine the therapeutic benefits of the artistic medium of mural making within the context of art therapy. In the context of traditional group art therapy, research indicates that mural making can assist in developing social and communication skills, conflict resolution skills and result in a sense of accomplishment and enhanced self-esteem. Including a brief introduction and history of mural making in America, key themes …

Building Community Among Distance Learning Graduate Students​, Erin Meyer

Leadership Education Capstones

No abstract provided.

An Assessment Of The American Civil War (1861-1865) Period Archaeological Deposits At The Buchanan House Site In Bells Bend, Nashville, Tennessee, Kathryn F. Phillips

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the historic and architectural significance of the Buchanan House in Bells Bend, Nashville, Tennessee, in hopes that it will be protected and conserved. Artifacts from the University of Tennessee surveys conducted by David Anderson and Derek Anderson in 2009 and 2010 were used to establish whether or not there were any intact American Civil War period deposits. Spatial analysis was used to identify locations of activity areas. Historic documents were used to establish the occupants of the Buchanan House. This thesis concluded that while there were no definitive Civil War period deposits, the Buchanan House still provides …

Cultural Embrace, Jeremy Penja

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Cultural embrace creating an identity on a larger scale in modern society. Architecture is a symbolic catalyst of a threshold, it is bound by the physical presence as well as “enriched by both the memory and dreams, past and future” Juhani Pallasmaa. It captures the sensibility of expectation and fulfillment, sense of symbols that resonated within. It evokes the absolutely necessary association of visual-tactile and identity to connect the history to present. It is an absolute cultural responsiveness and symbolism that cultural embrace strives for. Spaces have become empty container lacking true essence. The current architecture does little to address …

Hurricane Communities, Katie Masters

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Hurricane Communities: An Analysis of Florida Housing is a thesis that aims to reexamine how we can, as architects, design for hurricanes more effectively at the residential scale, through investigations of lateral forces, form, structure and site. The intent is to minimize the physical and emotional damages that are left behind. The thesis examines wind uplift and changes in water level as hurricane category rise.

Music Making, Teaching, And Learning In Chiptune Communities, Jon M. Stapleton

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Music education has long identified “life-long and life-wide” musicianship within community contexts as a primary goal of formal music instruction in and outside of public schools. In music education research, scholars often seek out (and study) musical communities to inform formal curricula and pedagogy, with the goal of better preparing students to participate in musical communities outside of formal institutions.

In this study, I explore music learning practices at play in one corner of contemporary musicianship—chiptune. Chiptune is music that references videogame sounds and videogame music. Some chiptune artists make music for videogames, others release albums and play live shows. …

A Green Dialogue For Aging Society, Dian Tan

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis addresses the issue about disconnections of communication between human to human, and human to environment. It seems like we got connections with other people via various smart devices, meanwhile we are so disconnected with the people and environment where we are currently living. Technologies sometimes hinder the communicating ability of human. Architecture could become a media that contains more messages send to human, helping on the communication between human to human, and human to environment.