Digital Commons Network^™

Age Impacts Perineuronal Net Density In The Somatosensory Genital Cortex Independently Of Gonadal Steroid Hormones, Ian D. Warren

Masters Theses

A hallmark of pubertal development is the rise in gonadal hormone secretions and the subsequent onset of sexual behavior. The size of the somatosensory genital cortex increases in response to both this rise in gonadal steroid hormones and sexual experience. However, whether specific markers of brain plasticity are similarly impacted by gonadal hormones during puberty is not known. Perineuronal nets (PNNs) are specialized extracellular matrix structures that unsheathe neurons as they mature, and their maturation coincides with the closure of sensitive periods across several sensory systems. PNNs in somatosensory cortex, as an example, respond to experience-dependent plasticity. Although experience-depended changes …

The Student-Athlete Leadership Academy Experience: A Case Study, Hannah M. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study sought to advance the understanding of how leadership education affects student-athletes interpersonally, as athletes, and as students while providing insight into the importance of leadership development for institutions and athletic departments for student-athletes who participate in a yearlong leadership program. The purpose of this study is to explore how a yearlong leadership development program influenced the personal and leadership growth and development of student-athletes during the 2020-2021 academic year. Two research questions guided the present study: How does the Student-Athlete Leadership Academy curriculum and experience contribute to student-athletes’ progress through the theory on leadership identity development and understanding …

Exploring Changes In Functional Connectivity Associated With The Development Of Cognitive Flexibility During Middle Childhood, Meagan Smith

Masters Theses

Cognitive flexibility is a subset of executive function that involves flexibly adapting one’s behavior to meet the demands of a changing environment. In a cognitive task, this often entails shifts of attention between dimensions of a stimulus or flexibly changing response sets. This skill improves greatly throughout middle childhood and is supported by a frontal-parietal neural network. The level of synchrony in activation, or functional connectivity, between frontal and parietal regions has been reported to increase over development even after cognitive flexibility has stabilized. The current study aims to assess changes in functional connectivity across the age range when this …

Appalachia Abroad: The University Of Tennessee And Cold War Rural Development Programs In India, 1954-1972, Kaitlin Amanda Simpson

Masters Theses

This thesis outlines the work of the University of Tennessee’s Colleges of Home Economics and Agriculture in India as part of Cold War global development programs funded by the Technical Cooperation Mission to India and, later, the United States Agency for International Development. Through this program, the instructors from the University of Tennessee worked with Indian educators at agricultural and home science colleges and universities throughout India to “improve” home economic and agricultural education and foster pro-American sentiment in the region. By exploring the themes of gender, race, nationalism, rural life, and development, this thesis argues that while the home …

The Impact Of Objects’ Visual Properties On Infant Reaching Strategies, John Paul Connell

Masters Theses

The development of reaching in early infancy is a monumental milestone that signifies their independence and agency in their environment. Classically however, studies on infant reaching have been heavily limited to simple, single component objects that do not afford infants different areas from which to choose interest or reaching locations. Furthermore, the relationship between looking and reaching has been mainly derived from movement and kinematic analyses of the elements of the reach. To fully understand the impact of object properties on reaching, the visual patterns of the infants need to be accounted for during the reach towards and contact with …

The Decline Of American Entrepreneurship: An Analysis Of Causes Of Macro Market Trends And A Changing American Economic System, Owen Flomberg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Household Member Arrest And Adolescent Hopelessness: The Mediating Role Of Future Expectations, Caroline Victoria Begley, Elizabeth Inez Johnson Ph.D, Tanner Kilpatrick M.S

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

An External And Internal Understanding: Female Puberty, Shivani R. Patel

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Internally Displaced Persons' Burials In Pabbo Town Council In Northern Uganda, Wilfred Luke Komakech

Masters Theses

Hundreds of thousands of people were internally displaced in Northern Uganda during the war from 1986 to 2006. Tens of thousands of people died, and their bodies were buried in the displacement camps. Formerly Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have returned to their home areas and the region is recovering. The former IDP camp has been elevated from a Trading Center into a Town Council and the general socioeconomic improvement of people living in it is improving. All this progress is being slowed down by IDP burials that were left behind by family members who were in Pabbo IDP camp. To …

Breakups And Betrayals In Emerging Adulthood: A Developmental Perspective Of Relationship Dissolution And Infidelity, Jerika C. Norona

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes two studies that focus on romantic experiences in emerging adulthood (ages 18-25), romantic dissolution (Study 1) and extradyadic intimacy (Study 2), and their relationship with developmental and individual factors. Each study uses two unique community samples of emerging adults who have attended college as well as those who have not attended college in the past. Importantly, both studies examine romantic dissolution and extradyadic intimacy from a developmental perspective, taking into account the salient developmental tasks of independence and interdependence faced by young people. Additionally, individual factors, including perceptions of emerging adulthood (Study 1), attachment style (Study 2), …

Intersensory Redundancy And Infant Selective Attention To Audiovisual Speech, Kelly C. Roth

Masters Theses

The current study utilized eye-tracking to investigate the effects of intersensory redundancy on infant visual attention and discrimination of a change in prosody in native and non-native audiovisual speech. The Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis states synchronous and redundant presentation of bimodal stimuli selectively recruits infant attention to and facilitates processing of amodal stimulus properties (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000). Twelve-month-old monolingual English learning infants viewed either synchronous (redundant) or asynchronous (non-redundant) video clips of a woman speaking in English (native speech) or Spanish (non-native speech). Halfway through each trial, the speaker changed prosody from adult-directed speech (ADS) to infant-directed speech (IDS) or …

Infant Object Recognition: Two- And Three-Dimensional Visual Processing, Alexandra Chelsea Romano

Masters Theses

Visual attention and recognition memory in infancy are highly dependent on the type of stimulus the infant is familiarized to and the conditions of familiarization. For example, in studies that initially exposed infants to test stimuli in laboratory settings (e.g., Courchesne, Ganz, & Norcia, 1981; Reynolds & Richards, 2005), the Negative Central (Nc) event-related potential (ERP) component associated with infant visual attention has shown greater amplitude for novel compared to familiar stimuli. Conversely, when initial stimulus exposure occured outside of the laboratory and the stimulus was highly familiar, studies have shown greater amplitude Nc to familiar compared to novel stimuli …

Coaching Age-Group Swimming: Contradicting Perceptions And Practices, Samuel Dwyer Davy

Masters Theses

The current study investigates coach’s perceptions of sport specialization in age group swimming. Eleven swim coaches working with athletes under the age of 14 were interviewed. Despite the evidence in support of sport diversification over sport specialization, the study found coaches involved in youth swimming overwhelmingly support early sport specialization. This finding contradicts the literature. Three themes emerged: (1) support of sport sampling, (2) sacrifices connected to sport participation, and (3) coaches need for control. All 11 coaches acknowledged the role of other sports in the development of their athletes, but all 11 provided explanations as to why their athletes …

Does Globalization Improve Quality Of Life?, Laura E. Hirt

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Remittance Behavior Of Us Immigrants, Nathan Edward Trombley

Masters Theses

Remittances, the sending of a portion of an immigrant’s income to friends and family, have become an undeniable and significant part of the global economy. This is especially true in some common immigrant sending regions where remittances make up a dominant portion of the local economy. The New Immigrant Survey has released the second wave of data in its cohort study of immigrants recently achieving Lawful Permanent Residence status in the United States. In light of this newly available information, this study seeks to highlight demographic and background characteristics of immigrants that have a statistically significant relationship on their sending …

Academic Choices Matter For Collegiate Student-Athletes, Kendra Arielle Berry

Masters Theses

As college athletics has grown during the last two decades, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the governing institution of college athletics in the United States, has renewed its focus on academic reform and the academic performance of student-athletes (Petr & McArdle, 2012). Athletic administrators and academic support units have started to exert a greater amount of control over student-athletes’ academic lives. However, research with general samples of college students has suggested that having some degree of autonomy is important for academic performance. This raises questions about whether increased control (and reduced autonomy) is actually in the best interest of …

The Role Of The Architect In The Process Of Development, Christopher Alan Owens

Masters Theses

Population growth and cars have caused cities to sprawl from their downtown cores, resulting in a landscape of low density building. Far too often the empty lot at the edge of the city or along a highway attracts the next opportunity for development, furthering the gap between residential and commercial zones. The profession of architecture recognizes that urban site selection and mixed-use programming is vital to the social and financial health of a city, though it typically only participates in the design of the building. However, the visionary training and practice of architecture places the architect in a unique position …

Network-Based Development In Chattanooga, Tennessee: Processes And Potentials, Kathryn Ansley Taylor

Masters Theses

Chattanooga is a city of networks. The goal of this project is to provide examples of how developers, by tapping into Chattanooga’s most vital networks, can create buildings that speak to the city’s unique character, build interest in the city, and foster a stronger future for Chattanooga.

Chattanooga has four networks that serve as its backbone. They are the Cultural Network, the Blue Green Network, the Fiber Optic Network and the Dwelling Network. These networks are linkages between people and places, bound by common hopes and affinities. They are platforms for social connection, economic growth and physical change.

Three developments …

Everything Leaves A Trace: D. H. Lawrence, Modernism, And The English Bildungsroman Tradition, Justin Miles Mcgee

Masters Theses

During the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth-century, the Bildungsroman acted as a vehicle for artists’ reflections on the turbulent time. The Bildungsroman is especially well suited to capture the fragmentation and disillusionment characteristic of modernism because of its sensitivity to the community’s role in the individual’s social normalization. D. H. Lawrence’s autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913) embodies the jarring transition from the world of the Victorian Bildungsroman to modernity. While Lawrence’s novel still relies on characteristics of the Victorian Bildungsroman, it makes a significant attempt to break away from the Victorian Bildungsroman. Lawrence uses the …

How Technology Interacts With Emerging Adulthood Psychosocial Developmental Tasks: An Examination Of Online Self-Presentation And Cell Phone Usage, Samantha Lynn Gray

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation outlines three distinct, yet interrelated, projects aimed at understanding the role of technology in relation to emerging adulthood developmental tasks: individuation & identity development. The first paper provides a context for understanding the developmental tasks of emerging adulthood, and the role that technology may serve in relation to those developmental tasks. This brief review of the literature on emerging adulthood developmental tasks provides a solid theoretical background and history for the theoretical premises proposed for the respective studies included in this dissertation. The second project is an empirical investigation that seeks to understand how the task of identity …

International Student Migration For Development: An Institutional Approach To The Norwegian Quota Scheme, Scott Eric Basford

Masters Theses

This paper addresses a call to acknowledge the varied actors that are involved in international student migration (ISM). In particular, this paper takes an institutional approach to investigate international education as a form of development aid. Research on ISM often omits non-student actors, which contributes to an incomplete understanding of the process. I study the Norwegian Quota Scheme to explore broader mechanisms of ISM. I first situate the Quota Scheme within literature on the internationalization of higher education and international education as development aid. I then use 26 interviews with 31 stakeholders at multiple scales of involvement in the Quota …

A Multidimensional Analysis Of The Great Green Wall: The Environmental And Social Effects Of Reafforestation In Senegal, Anna Eugenia Alsobrook

Masters Theses

The north-central region of Senegal is home to the Great Green Wall (GGW)—a reafforestation project aimed at restoring decades–old, degraded land conditions by establishing tree belts and community gardens. Its presence on the ground has changed the local landscape and altered the social institutions governing the daily lives of the people it aims to protect.

My study is an in-progress assessment of the GGW towards its two major goals: 1) improving the lives of the people of the Sahel and increasing their capacity to adapt to climate change and drought, and 2) improving the state of the ecosystem and increasing …

Sub-Saharan Africa: The New China?, Kathryn A. Hutcheson

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Tva Coal Ash Disaster And The Coal Calamity Continuum In Southern Appalachia, Erin Rae Eldridge

Doctoral Dissertations

Coal was once hailed as a means through which humans could free themselves from nature and enter a world of unending progress and growth. As a fuel for economic development, it has long been central to projects of capitalist modernity in the Appalachian South. It is also a resource that connects the central mining areas of the region to the development agendas of the Tennessee Valley. The 2008 disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee represents one of numerous calamities along the life cycle of coal in the region. The deluge of coal ash …

The Architect As Developer, Samuel David Funari

Masters Theses

The current architectural landscape of strip malls and big box stores is the antitheses of what nearly every practicing architect avails to while in the security of the academy. Upon entering the real world of budgetary constraints and hard deadlines, it seems that most architects are content to simply earn a paycheck rather than produce meaningful work. This destructive method of designing is a result of a supposed lack of choices, and can only be combated when architects have more to lose than their principles. By architects playing the role of both designer and developer, it is possible to see …

Translational Regulation In Arabidopsis Thaliana: Genetic And Functional Characterization Of Eukaryotic Initiation Factor 3, Bijoyita Roy

Doctoral Dissertations

Molecular functions of eukaryotic initiation factor 3 (eIF3) in translation are manifold, encompassing events from initiation complex assembly to translation termination. The contribution of the individual subunits of eIF3 to its multiple activities is quite unclear. It has been hypothesized that several of its 13 subunits contribute to mRNA specific regulation. Prior research had established that the h subunit of eIF3 in Arabidopsis was required for translation of specific mRNAs as well as for organ formation and meristem development. This study aims towards understanding the functions of individual subunits of eIF3 in the context of plant development and to further …

Gay Male Identity In The Context Of College: Implications For Development, Support, And Campus Climate, James M. Devita

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes three articles that explore the relationship between gay identity and the college environment. The college environment has been shown to affect students’ attitudes, beliefs, and personal development in various ways, including aspects of individuals’ identity and attitudes towards social and political issues in society. D’Augelli’s (1994) lesbian-gay-bisexual (LGB) identity development framework provides both a priori knowledge of issues associated with gay identity and a lens through which findings are analyzed in each of the articles included in this dissertation. The first article examines the relationship between first-year college students’ personal characteristics and their attitudes towards same-sex relationships. …

The Assumption Of Non-Coerciveness And The Total Food Market, Harwood Schaffer

Doctoral Dissertations

For the last 46 years, the countries of the world have tried to reduce the number of chronically hungry people. Despite all the efforts, the numbers have barely budged from the over 850 million people who were chronically hungry in 1974 until the 2007-2009 food price crisis, when the numbers increased to over 1.02 billion. The blame for this situation has variously been put on bad governance, the lack of adequate market reforms, the market reforms that were imposed on developing nations, and globalization. Food, like other products in this globalized world, is allocated using the market system. One likely …

Regulating The Global Politico-Economic Order: The Functioning Of The Development Assistance Provision Regime, Justin James Gann

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the provisioning of development assistance, as a major component of foreign aid. Conventional approaches to the subject have tended to focus on the determinate interactions of discrete agents as the principle units of analysis. This necessarily obscures the functional role development assistance fulfills in relation to the global politico economic order, however. This study, by contrast, properly situates individual programs of development assistance as belonging to a much larger historical pattern, or system of coordinated politico-economic behavior. The objective, therefore, is to apprehend the systematic and functional interrelations existing (i) among the various agents engaged in …