Digital Commons Network^™

Preface, Christopher Oscarson

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Quite often, we take writing for granted. The sublime simplicity of mere symbols or scratches on a page escapes our attention as we search for more significant sources of meaning in a memory that can be only fleeting and fragmentary at best. But what could be more fundamental to our source of self and community than language and, by extension, writing? Human beings could not be saved from living in an eternal present if they lacked the ability given them by language to reflect. Community with others can be formed only if there is a means of preserving and sharing …

Factors Influencing Employee Satisfaction In Nonprofit Organizations In The United States, Kristi Egbert

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Employees in nonprofit organizations are not paid as much as for-profit employees according to the United States 2014 Labor Statistics. Nonprofits work to meet community needs. Since turnover rates impact a company’s ability to these needs (Lee, 2015), it is important to learn what keeps employees satisfied. This review found that employees find the work itself satisfying when they see how they support the organization’s mission (Haley-Lock, 2007), chances to move up in the company, autonomy, (Weisberg & Dent, 2016), and inclusivity (Brimhall, 2019), and workplace relationships (Mathieu & Nabiak, 2016; Slater & Slater, 2018) are related with job satisfaction.

Feminist Pragmatism In The Nonprofit Sector, Elise L. Kieffer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

This thought paper explores the practical applications of the feminist pragmatism philosophy for modern nonprofit organizations confronting persistent issues. I argue that the integration of research, theory, education, programming, and administration serve as spokes strengthening the wheel that is the nonprofit sector.

Trauma Team Communication During Trauma Resuscitation: A Literature Review, Paula Barney

Student Works

Trauma teams nationwide are tasked with stabilizing and treating severely injured patients. Their work is unpredictable and must be carried out quickly to improve patient outcomes. Effective team communication is imperative. Team members communicating to form shared understanding of patient status and care goals supports high-level team function. Clear communication is essential. Team members should use closed-loop communication when appropriate, use brief and direct statements, and limit noise in trauma rooms. Team leaders support trauma team performance by providing updates on patient status and plans of care and fostering a culture of collaboration between team leaders and team members. Team …

“Surfaces And Appearances”: Character, Physiognomy, And Communication In Charles Dickens’S And Wilkie Collins’S A Message From The Sea, Rachel Gouff

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the way physiognomy works within Charles Dickens’s and Wilkie Collins’s novella, A Message from the Sea. The novella develops and promotes a version of physiognomy with limits, illustrating these limits through the experiences of its characters and through the symbolism of various objects such as tombstones, ghosts, and—most notably—the message in the bottle. Physiognomy, used repeatedly by various characters throughout the text, is nearly always able to correctly predict people’s general moral character. However, using physiognomy alone leaves a character’s history, motivations, and deep emotions as indecipherable as the parts of the bottle’s message where the ink …

An Examination Of The Associations Between Relationship Education, Trust, Communication, Relationship Satisfaction, And Sexual Satisfaction, Samantha Baker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Relationship education courses are commonly used by couples seeking to increase their relationship and sexual satisfaction. In this study, I examined the mediating roles of trust and communication between marriage education classes and relationship and sexual satisfaction. This study used data from the Couple Relationships and Transition Experiences (CREATE) study, a longitudinal, nationally representative survey of newlywed couples. While the present study did not find a significant relationship between marriage preparation and relationship and sexual satisfaction, it does not rule out the possibility of a relationship existing due to some limitations of the present study. This study did find significant …

Genomics-Informed Nursing Care: A Survey Of Nicu Nurses' Experience And Perspectives Related To Genomic Sequencing, Rachel I. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Genomic sequencing is used in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to diagnose babies with genetic disorders. Purpose: To explore the experiences and knowledge of nurses working in NICUs related to genomic sequencing. Methods: This was a mixed-methods, cross-sectional descriptive survey of NICU nurses attending a national conference. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Qualitative data were coded into categories and themes. Results: Of 188 NICU nurses, nearly half reported experience with genomic sequencing. Among nurses with experience, 62.7% rated the amount of discussion they had with families about genomic sequencing as "0". Additionally, 72.7% of participants reported …

Communication About Pornography And Relationship Quality In Different-Gender Couples, Rachel Ann Augustus

Theses and Dissertations

Scholars have begun to suggest factors that explain and influence the association between pornography use and relationship outcomes but further work is still needed. Communication about pornography is one variable that may be influential but it has yet to be considered in this way. Using a dyadic sample of 713 different-gender couples, I used Actor-Partner Structural Equation Modeling to analyze associations between pornography use (male pornography use, joint pornography use and female pornography use) and relational quality (from the perspective of each partner, respectively), associations between communication about pornography and relationship quality. Communication about pornography was also considered as a …

Confronting Barriers To Human-Robot Cooperation: Balancing Efficiency And Risk In Machine Behavior, Tim Whiting

Theses and Dissertations

In strategically rich settings in which machines and people do not fully share the same preferences, machines must learn to cooperate and compromise with people to establish mutually successful relationships. However, designing machines that effectively cooperate with people in these settings is difficult due to a variety of technical and psychological challenges. To better understand these challenges, we conducted a series of user studies in which we investigated human-human, robot-robot, and human-robot cooperation in a simple, yet strategically rich, resource-sharing scenario called the Block Dilemma, a game in which players must balance fairness, efficiency, and risk. While both human-human and …

Very Young Child Survivors Of Parent Suicide: Perspectives On Children's Literature For Bibliotherapy, Cortland L. Watson

Theses and Dissertations

The death of a parent by suicide is especially traumatic. Researchers estimate the number of children in the United States annually who experience their parent's suicide ranges from 7,000 to 30,000. These child survivors experience more complicated grief as compared to children bereaved by a parent's non-suicidal death. In particular, very young children have difficulty understanding that their parent completed suicide. Across time they struggle with confusion and intense emotions associated with their parent's suicide. Due to the stigma associated with suicide, feelings of guilt, and intense grief, surviving family members avoid talking about the suicide. Young children are often …

Watch Your Language: How A School District's Failure To Provide Meaningful Communication Has Impacted Students During The Pandemic, Amy Leipziger

BYU Education & Law Journal

This article examines some of the obstacles that LEP parents have experienced with the NYCDOE during the pandemic, the impact these obstacles have had on their children’s education, and whether the NYCDOE’s refusal to provide language access amounts to a denial of a sound basic education under state constitutional law.12 I chose to focus primarily on New York City because it boasts the nation’s largest school system, with nearly 1.1 million students, and is comprised of 1,876 schools.13 A large share of these students have significant language needs. In New York state, forty-six percent of children in low-income families have …

How Wicked Are Wicked Problems And How Do We Model Them, Alexey Voinov

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The concept of 'wicked problems' has emerged more than 50 years ago, and has been later on explored in numerous publications and applications. All the policy and planning problems in pluralistic societies have been identified as wicked, which means that they cannot be properly defined, cannot have any single solution, moreover, they cannot have any correct or false solutions at all. Systems modelling, especially participatory modeling have been proposed as useful tools to use when dealing with wicked problems. Attempts to address the 'wickedness' also gave rise to justifying further increases in complexity of models that are built. While being …

How Wicked Are Wicked Problems And How Do We Model Them, Alexey Voinov

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Abstract: The concept of 'wicked problems' has emerged more than 50 years ago, and has been later on explored in numerous publications and applications. All the policy and planning problems in pluralistic societies have been identified as wicked, which means that they cannot be properly defined, cannot have any single solution, moreover, they cannot have any correct or false solutions at all. Systems modelling, especially participatory modeling have been proposed as useful tools to use when dealing with wicked problems. Attempts to address the 'wickedness' also gave rise to justifying further increases in complexity of models that are built. While …

Make More, Work Less, Michael Sutton

Marriott Student Review

Although the status quo in the business world is to work long hours and supposedly produce more each workweek, studies show that working less and taking appropriately regulated breaks actually lead to more productivity in individuals and businesses as a whole. Specifically companies would be wise to implement a limit of 50 work hours per week, encourage frequent breaks (about 15 minute every hour), and encourage patterns of sufficient sleep. By reducing mental fatigue in your employees, their productivity will increase.

The Effects Of Telehealth Training On Parents Of Children With Autism In Albania, Freskida Griffiths

Theses and Dissertations

The present study evaluated telehealth training with parents on techniques for working with their children with autism spectrum disorder in Southeastern Europe. The purpose of this study was to research the effects of telehealth training on the parents and the increase of mands on the children. The participants of this study included three mothers and three children, which totaled six participants. Parents were trained on how to increase functional communication in their child. Telehealth training was based on an effective training package called Behavior Skills Training (BST). BST consist of instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. The resources needed for the …

How Responsiveness From A Communication Partner Affects Story Retell In Aphasia: Quantitative And Qualitative Findings, Tyson G. Harmon, Adam Jacks, Katarina L. Haley, Antoine Bailliard

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Because people with aphasia frequently interact with partners who are unresponsive to their communicative attempts, we investigated how partner responsiveness affects quantitative measures of spoken language and subjective reactions during story retell.

Method: A quantitative and a qualitative study were conducted. In study 1, participants with aphasia and controls retold short stories to a communication partner who indicated interest through supportive backchannel responses (responsive) and another who indicated disinterest through unsupportive backchannel responses (unresponsive). Story retell accuracy, delivery speed, and ratings of psychological stress were measured and compared. In study 2, participants completed semi-structured interviews about their story retell …

Trajectory Optimization And Design For A Large Number Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Jenna Elisabeth Newcomb

Theses and Dissertations

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm allows for a more time-efficient method of searching a specified area than a single UAV or piloted plane. There are a variety of factors that affect how well an area is surveyed. We specifically analyzed the effect both vehicle properties and communication had on the swarm search performance. We used non-dimensionalization so the results can be applied to any domain size with any type of vehicle. We found that endurance was the most important factor. Vehicles with good endurance sensed approximately 90% to 100% of the grid, even when other properties were lacking. If …

The Long, Long Letter, Karen Abbott

Children's Book and Media Review

Elderly Hetta is lonely. Hetta writes a letter to her niece and asks for a letter. The obliging niece sets herself at the table with a good old fashioned plume and writes a letter that is pages and pages and boxes of pages in length. When she has no more paper to write on, she sends it off with the postman. A fierce wind sweeps her letter out of the boxes and causes a swirling snowstorm of sheaves that circles the patient Aunt Hetta and buries her, her mailbox, and the entire farm. People swarm from miles around to see …

Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid The Traps, Create Unity, And Reap Big Results, Ryan Stenquist

Marriott Student Review

From the federal government to long-standing investment banks to small startups, every organization needs sensible and effective collaboration. Morten Hansen’s book, published by the Harvard Business Review Press, offers great frameworks for understanding what disciplined collaboration looks like and how our organizations are performing now.

Chicken Talk, Kaley Durney

Children's Book and Media Review

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Communication And Vehicle Properties On The Search Performance Of A Swarm Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Jenna E. Newcomb, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm allows for a more time-efficient method of searching a specified area than a single UAV or piloted plane. There are a variety of factors that affect how well an area is surveyed. We specifically analyzed the effect both vehicle properties and communication had on the swarm search performance. We used non-dimensionalization to examine the effect vehicle properties had on search performance so the results can be applied to any domain size with any number and type of vehicle. We found that even if vehicles could only sense 10% of the grid area at any …

Student Perspectives On Working In Interdisciplinary Teams To Implement Mhealth, Elina Chun

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Interprofessional education of students in healthcare professions can lead to positive outcomes for students that are unique in a university setting. The purpose of this thesis is to describe benefits and challenges students encounter when working with students of other majors. This study used a convenience sample of students working on a university project to implement mHealth. Participants responded to two surveys with quantitative and qualitative questions. Students reported greater appreciation for diversity, the necessity of communication skills, and self-awareness of their own responsibilities in a team.

Paraprofessional Counselors' Perceptions Of Storybooks To Facilitate Children's Communication Following Parental Suicide, Lindsay Jacalyn Regehr

Theses and Dissertations

A parent's death it is one of the most stressful and traumatic events in a child's life (Guldin et al., 2015; Worden, 1996, 2008). In particular, when bereavement is linked to a parent's suicide, children face unique challenges and are more vulnerable to potentially negative outcomes (Brent, Melhem, Donohoe, & Walker, 2009; Haine, Ayers, Sandler, & Wolchik, 2008; Pitman, Osborn, King, & Erlangsen, 2014; Young et al., 2012). Although many factors influence children's recovery following a parent's suicide, the surviving parent's emotional stability and emotional availability to support their children are of critical importance. Additionally, negative outcomes are often linked …

Book Review: Made To Stick, By Chip And Dan Heath, Danielle Adams

Marriott Student Review

This is a book review of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath.

Silence And Self-Harm: Understanding Unconventional Voices, Sarah Cannon

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This essay explores the connection between silence, self-harm, and communication in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. It shows how viewing silence and self-imposed violence as modes of communication contributes to a more productive understanding of trauma and increases the opportunity for healing.

Does Family Communication Matter? Exploring Knowledge Of Breast Cancer Genetics In Cancer Families, Sarah Harmon Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Knowledge of breast cancer genetics is critical for those at increased risk whomust make decisions about breast cancer screening options. The purpose of this study was toexplore cognitive and emotional variables that might influence knowledge of breast cancergenetics.Methods: This descriptive, exploratory study analyzed theory-based relationships amongvariables related to knowledge of breast cancer genetics in cancer families. Participants includedfirst-degree relatives of women with breast cancer who had received genetic counseling andtesting; participants themselves did not have breast cancer and had not received geneticcounseling or testing. Data were collected by telephone interview and survey. Variables analyzedinclude numeracy, health literacy, cancer-related distress, …

Does Family Communication Matter? Exploring Knowledge Of Breast Cancer Genetics In Cancer Families, Sarah Harmon Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Knowledge of breast cancer genetics is critical for those at increased risk whomust make decisions about breast cancer screening options. The purpose of this study was toexplore cognitive and emotional variables that might influence knowledge of breast cancergenetics.Methods: This descriptive, exploratory study analyzed theory-based relationships amongvariables related to knowledge of breast cancer genetics in cancer families. Participants includedfirst-degree relatives of women with breast cancer who had received genetic counseling andtesting; participants themselves did not have breast cancer and had not received geneticcounseling or testing. Data were collected by telephone interview and survey. Variables analyzedinclude numeracy, health literacy, cancer-related distress, …

Effects Of Parent-Implemented Interventions On Outcomes For Children With Developmental Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis, Tina Taylor, Timothy B. Smith, Byran B. Korth, Barbara Mandleco

Faculty Publications

A large body of literature exists related to parent-implemented interventions for children with disabilities, so it is helpful to synthesize the results of outcome-based interventions for children with developmental disabilities. Specifically, what are the effects of parent-implemented interventions intended to improve children’s (1) social behaviors, (2) life skills/adaptive behavior, and (3) communication skills? Using meta-analytic aggregation of effect sizes across 30 studies with a total of 1,356 participants, this review examined the association between parent-implemented interventions and intended outcomes for young children with developmental disabilities. Across all 30 studies comparing children’s outcomes to control groups, the random-effects-weighted average effect size …

From Play To Performance: Building An Effective Organization, Jessica N. Selee, Jade Johnson, Jocelyn N. Murray, Anna Samuelson, Jasmine Li, Andrew Lacanienta, Mat D. Duerden, Mark Widmer

Marriott Student Review

Under the Mentored Experience Grant, six students studies the impact that non-work activities (recreation or leisure) have on individual contributors or organization. Some employees refrain from participating in Leisure-at-Work (LAW) due to lack of time or skill, to cliques, to differing preferences, or fear of negative connotations. Employees report that LAW increases productivity, establishes and enriches social interactions, improves communication, attracts and retains employees in a company, and facilitates a culture of engagement, trust, and camaraderie. At the conclusion of our analysis, we identified areas of future research and recommendations for best practice.

The Experience Of Parents Of Early-Returned Missionaries, Kristine J. Doty-Yells, Harmony Packer, Malisa M. Drake-Brooks, Russell T. Warne, Cameron R. John

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

This paper shares the results of a mixed methods study designed to understand the lived experiences of parents of early-returned LDS missionaries. Researchers conducted two focus groups of parents (n = 7) and developed and administered a survey (n = 199). The study considered the phenomenon through the theoretical lenses of Kübler-Ross’s model of grief and Boss’s model of ambiguous loss. The results suggested that parents struggle with the early-return process, the lack of communication with mission presidents, a perceived lack of support from some church leaders and ward members, and personal adjustment to their child’s early return. Clinical implications …