Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

From Theory To Practice: Establishing The Classroom As The Setting For Race Talk Through The Intentional Analysis And Discussion Of Poems By Authors Of Color, Cree Taylor

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Modern-day racism exists in mostly subtle ways and is often felt most keenly in the classroom. When schools began the legal integration process in 1954, Black teachers were fired, all-Black schools were closed, and Black students were bused to the formerly all-White schools. In this new environment, Black students and all Students of color were forced to accept and adapt to an educational system that favored Whites over all other racial groups. Today, White Supremacy in education affects the establishment of state and national standards, school and district boundaries, and the un-fair disciplinary action taken against Students of Color. In …

New Perspectives On Promoting Efl Teaching And Learning In Oman, Jihan Sulaiman Al Naabi

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is an accumulation of work that the author accomplished during her study in the program of Master of Second Language Teaching at Utah State University. It is an outcome of the author’s personal teaching experiences, insights gained from her master’s study, and several class observations as well.

The portfolio comprises three primary portions: (1) teaching perspectives, (2) research perspectives, and (3) an annotated bibliography. The teaching perspectives revolve around the author’s beliefs on the role of both teachers and students in L2 classrooms, the communicative teaching of grammar, and the value of a positive learning environment. The research …

Playing The Public Lands Game- Honr 3020: Engaging Utah's Public Lands, Libbie Anderson, Zach Archibald, Tessa Burrows, Corinne Clarkson, Connor Coles, Colten Dougher, Taylor Edwards, Emily Hales, Emma Hallock, Ivy Hansen, Chase Harward, Michael Herron, Hayden Hoopes, Kollin Keller, Nicole King, Jordan Lapp, Sarah Lueckler, Clarissa Nelson, Eliza Owens, Kinzie Randall, Mariah Richards, Nicholas Rodgers, Emmalee Rolfe, Daniel Sykes, Justin Tirrell, Alicia Oliver

Honors Think Tank

How to get involved with public land issues and learn what's at stake.

Join us as students present a guide that teaches how to locate, navigate, and participate in the various government and public processes for engaging in public lands debates.

Called To Serve: Understanding The Role Of The Woman’S Mission Decision Narrative In Latter-Day Saint Culture And Belief, Rachel Ross

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In my thesis I explore the role of mission decision narratives of women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before 2012, women could not serve missions until age 21. Once the minimum age was changed to 19 in October of 2012, many more women were able to serve on mission as the opportunity was less likely to disrupt their education or romantic relationships. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, missions are seen as a priesthood duty for men but a matter of choice for women. This ability to choose and the narrative that follows …

Metal Storytellers: Reflections Of War Culture In Silverplate B-29 Nose Art From The 509th Composite Group, Terri Wesemann

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Most people are familiar with the Enola Gay—the B-29 that dropped Little Boy, the first atomic bomb, over the city of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. Less known are the fifteen Silverplate B-29 airplanes that trained for the mission, that were named and later adorned with nose art. However, in recorded history, the atomic mission overshadowed the occupational folklore of this group. Because the abundance of planes were scrapped in the decade after World War II and most WWII veterans have passed on, all that remains of their occupational folklore are photographs, oral and written histories, some books, …

Licentious Legends: A Folklore Podcast, Alexandra L. Haynes

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Licentious Legends was created out of a need to both understand and educate about sexual contemporary legends; not just what they are and what defines them, but the effect that they have on those who experience them. The purpose of this podcast is not to shame, but to take what has been found and educate about the joys and dangers of these legends. These legends range from the everyday (such as "The Hook"), to legends about a young man killing himself with a plunger. In an effort to gather as many examples as they could, Faye interviewed several of their …

“Are You A Good Witch Or A Bad Witch?”: An Exercise In Suspending Judgment When Interacting With “Difficult” People, John S. Seiter, Christian R. Seiter

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Courses:

Interpersonal Communication, Health Communication

Objectives:

In this single-class activity, students gain awareness and practice in suspending judgments about “difficult” people in order to understand the reasoning behind certain objectionable behavior.

"I Don't Want To Have A Weird Relationship With You, So I'M Trying": Relational Turning Points And Trajectories Of Ex-Lds Children And Their Active Lds Parents, Jared Worwood

Student Research Symposium

The doctrine and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the LDS or Mormon Church) require high levels of commitment and involvement. As a result, like many high-cost religions, not only does the LDS church influence the identities of its members, but it is also extensively integrated into the everyday life of LDS families (Scheitle & Adamczyk, 2010; Loser, Klein, Hill, & Dollahite, 2008; Airhart & Bendroth, 1996). Besides being instructed that it is their divine mandate to teach their children the gospel of the church (Nelson, 2001; Viñas, 2010), LDS parents are also …

Workplace Democracy And The Problem Of Equality, Jared Sterling Colton, Avery C. Edenfield, Steve Holmes

English Faculty Publications

Purpose: Professional communicators are becoming more invested in unique configurations of power in organizations, including non-hierarchical and democratic workplaces. While organizations dedicated to democratic processes may enact power differently than conventional organizations, they may fall short of practicing equality. This article explains the differences in non-hierarchical workplaces, considers businesses where democracy is a goal, and argues for considering equality as a habitual practice, particularly when writing regulatory documents.

Method: We conduct a review of the literature on non-hierarchical workplaces and organizational democracy, applying Jacques Rancière’s concept of equality to two examples (one using primary data collection and one using secondary …

Stories Behind The Berlin Wall: Lesson Modules, Nicholas Redmon

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I have grappled with my primary collection just as scholars and popular authors have with bringing these stories together with political histories. My goal is to create a digital map and analysis on specific themes like education and guard duty from the lives lived behind the Wall and their discourse with the government. I would like to explore how the divide impacted lives in 1961, created a GDR Society, and produced a division still felt in Germany today. The target audience of this project is U.S. students in high school and higher education. Students will be able to access timely …

Constraints Of Haunted Heritage Tourism In Logan, Utah, Kylie Schroeder

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

It has become common in Salem, Savannah, New Orleans, Edinburg, or Gettysburg, to witness groups of people being led through the darkened streets as part of a ghost tour or haunted history walk. An altered form of commercialized legend tripping, these companies offer guided tours, feature spooky stories, and often showcase local history. However, the trend of haunted heritage tourism, especially in the form of ghost walks and haunted history tours, has spread beyond places with national or international reputations for hauntings and is now growing in small towns whose stories are rarely shared beyond the local populace.

This thesis …

Crowdsourcing Consciousness: You Think, Therefore I Am, Justin M. Campbell

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The challenge to understand consciousness is a centuries-old interdisciplinary research program. The search entails fundamental questions about our nature - the desire to understand who we are has been around for nearly as long as experience itself. It is also one of the most important questions we can ask; meaning itself is predicated on having some sort of conscious experiencer for whom something can matter. Given the magnitude and intractability of explaining the paradox of how consciousness can be at once the most obvious thing in the universe, and also the most inaccessible, the endeavor is a tremendous undertaking. Until …

Allowing The Untellable To Visit: Investigating Digital Folklore, Ptsd And Stigma, Geneva Harline

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the introduction of 2012 issue of The Journal of Folklore Research, Diane Goldstein and Amy Shuman issue a “call to arms for folklorists … to concentrate on the vernacular experience of the stigmatized.” (Goldstein and Shuman, 2012:116). Drawing on this call to arms, this thesis investigates how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is portrayed in social media through memes and captioned images. I argue that the genres of memes and captioned images in digital folklore work to help mitigate the stigma of PTSD because the veneer of anonymity in the digital world allows people with PTSD to be willing …

How To Rate A Book: Goodreads, Taste, And Reading In The 21st Century, Dylan Burns

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

“What shall the individual who still desires to read attempt to read this late in history?” asks Harold Bloom. Writing at the end of the 20^th century, Bloom’s quote anticipates the information explosion that the age of the internet brought to the reader (even if his emphasis is on the unpopularity of reading rather than the explosion in options). Social media sites like Goodreads prove that reading is still popular, yet Bloom’s question of what does someone read is still salient. More than ever, reading is a social activity, to be shared, debated, and justified between millions of would …

Promoting Intercultural Competence In Diverse U.S. Classrooms Through Ethnographic Interviews, Ekaterina Arshavskaya

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

To meet the demands of contemporary society, students needs to develop the ability to interact effectively with people from different cultures. To advance this goal, a project involving ethnographic interviews was introduced to an intercultural communication course. Participating students' attitudes toward other cultures were measured on a Likert scale at the beginning and end of the project. The findings show that through the interviews, the students developed greater awareness of their own cultures and of themselves within their culture and deepened their knowledge of other cultures. Yet, the majority of the students did not show greater interest in learning a …

Effectively Teaching A Second Language: Principles And Practices, Alexander Gatica

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is the amalgamation of the author’s research and experience during his time in the Master of Second Language Teaching program. The first section contains the Teaching Philosophy, which centers on applying effective teaching methods, increasing learner motivation, and incorporating technology into the classroom. The next section consists of three artifacts in which the author further investigates specific aspects of language teaching. The language paper focuses on the effect that identity has on motivation to learn a language. The literacy paper discusses how to increase vocabulary acquisition via a mobile-assisted language learning application called Duolingo. The culture paper addresses …

Shallow Bones, Brian Lee Cook

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The research for this thesis examined historical and recent events embodying persecution both directed towards and perpetuated by the Mormon church. In order to convey the complexity of persecution, I examined stories told by church members, accounts written during the early years of the religion, and scholarly pieces written about the church's history. These stories revolved around the assassination of Joseph Smith and the Mountain Meadows massacre.

To portray the events surrounding the Mountain Meadows massacre, I performed a site visit, documented scenery, and discussed the massacre with others visiting the site. The great majority of my Mountain Meadows descriptions …

From Crisis To Crisis: A Big Data, Antenarrative Analysis Of How Social Media Users Make Meaning During And After Crisis Events, Adam R. Bair

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Crisis events are now common, ranging from computer errors, which might cause only minor inconvenience, to floods, which can cause loss of life and significant property damage. Such events can affect people’s ability to pay bills, trust food sources, or deal with events that could impact the environment and lives for decades. Understanding how crisis information is presented to audiences, how these audiences interpret and respond to a crisis will help researchers develop new approaches to improve communication among and with people affected by crisis.

To understand how individuals make sense of crisis events, I applied David Boje’s theories and …

The Urban Prison: Socioeconomic Vortexes In Latino Neighborhoods, Armando Porras, Aaron Wyatt

Research on Capitol Hill

This research shows how metropolitan cities throughout the United States are continuously impacting the lives of ethnic minorities.

In the United States, Latina/o individuals have been born into socioeconomic vortexes. In other words, they have grown up in areas where secure jobs have disappeared and a variety of other factors force them to live in damaged communities that do not foster economic and social progression.

By analyzing several works of literature written by Latina/o authors who lived in barrios that faced these challenges, as well as research addressing crime and the lack of law enforcement in marginalized neighborhoods, we have …

Teaching Chinese As A Foreign Language: A Foreigner's Perspective, Frederick J. Poole

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio reflects the author’s beliefs on effective methods for teaching Chinese as a second language. The first section includes the author’s teaching philosophy, which focuses on communicative language teaching, developing literacy, integrating culture into instruction, and employing technology to facilitate learning. Following the teaching philosophy are three artifacts that were written throughout the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program. First, the language artifact presents a study conducted by the author regarding three different approaches to teaching beginners of Chinese. Second, the literacy artifact is a proposal for a study that examines the effect of reading Chinese via an …

Guerrilla Warfare Theory And Praxis: The Case Of Revolutionary Leader Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Anna Maria Guadarrama

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Guerrilla warfare is an ancient style of armed conflict that continues to be practiced throughout the world to the present day (Guevara, "A Method" 266, Tzu 168, Taber 149-150), and many countries and peoples have either taken part in guerrilla warfare or have sought to counteract irregular war with counterinsurgency methods, for example the United States (Anderson, Guerrillas xi ; West xiii; Guevara, G. Warfare 18; O'Neill vii-xi). 1 Guerrilla warfare heavily impacts every aspect of society, ranging from the family unit to foreign policy decision-making. Only through properly understanding the motivations, strategies and nature of guerrilla warfare will we …

American Debtors' Prison: The Rise Of The New York Citizen As A Commercial Participant During The Early American Republic, 1800-1836, Ryan M. Braeger

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The following research explores the development of financial culture in the early American republic through the examination of New York's use of debtors' prisons. Beginning with the construction of the historical context surrounding the passage and abolition of the National Bankruptcy Act of 1800, the project takes use of a series of archival sources that exemplify the character of credit in early American economic practices. The emergence of republican financial culture was often at odds with federal judicial and legislative action, the result of which was the creation of state policy and third party organizations dedicated to solving the plight …

Extending A Geographic Lens Towards Climate Justice, Part 2: Climate Action, Claudia Radel

Claudia Radel

There has been a recent increase of interest within the academic literature on the justice issues posed by climate change and the human responses to its present and forecasted effects. In two parts (here and in a previous article), we review and synthesize the recent literature by asking what climate justice concerns have been identified within three related realms: (i) the characterization of climate change itself and the assignment of responsibility for that change; (ii) the differential or uneven impacts of climate change; and (iii) the actions taken to address the problems associated with climate change, including both mitigation and …

Problem Solving In Latino Families, Eliza Torres

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this dissertation is to learn if the quality of problem solving, parent engagement, and child engagement improve as a result of participating in a parenting intervention. The quality of problem solving was coded by independent observers watching a 5-minute videotaped task. Parent and child engagement were also coded by an observer and were evident in behaviors such as making eye contact, using good social skills, using humor, minimizing problems, and showing empathy were also rated by individual coders who were blinded to treatment/control groups. Each parent-child pair had a total of three scores, one for each variable …

Is Us Military Intervention Effective In Promoting Democratic Practices In Latin American Governments?, Mindi Jones

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The United States is an influential superpower with military, political and economic prominence throughout the world. Since the Spanish American War of 1898, the US has been the hegemonic power in the western hemisphere. Because of its strong influence, US military involvement in other countries is highly scrutinized both internationally and domestically.

Mormon History Materials: Utah State University Special Collections & Archives, Cheryl D. Walters

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

The slideshow was created for the Mormon History Conference held in St. George, Utah May 26-29, 2011 at the request of Bradford Cole, Associate Director for Special Collections and Archives. I created the slideshow; he hosted it and answered questions on site.

Fostering Effective French Communication In The Classroom, Lindi Brown

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This portfolio is a compilation of work the author completed while in the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University. It is focused on her beliefs of how French should be taught in a university classroom. It also includes three artifacts addressing how a challenging aspect of the language should be taught, how authentic literature can be utilized in the classroom, and why the French culture should be incorporated into the curriculum. Finally, there is an annotated bibliography of books and articles which have shaped the author’s beliefs and opinions about teaching French as a foreign …

The Shape Of Grief: A Generational Legacy Of The Vietnam War, Benjamin A. Quick

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A well-known memoirist once said that a true war story never seems to end, that it just keeps going and going. The question begs: If the war story never ends, then how does it manifest in future generations? In my case, as the first-born son of a Vietnam veteran, the war story has played out physically, within my body, in the form of an Agent Orange-related disability and a resulting set of limitations and adaptations. Fortunately, for me the limitations have been few and the adaptations many. But despite this, I’ve known, since a relatively young age, that I am …

Examining Child Sexual Abuse And Future Parenting: An Application Of Latent Class Modeling, Kimberly W. D'Zatko

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This study was designed to empirically derive latent classes of mothers who were sexually abused during childhood and to assess the association between depression, alcohol/drug use, supportive intimate partner, and specific classes.

One hundred six women between the ages of 20 and 44 years (M = 27) who reported having been sexually abused during childhood (CSA) and 158 non-CSA mothers between the ages of 20 and 43 years (M = 23) were interviewed and assessed along six parenting dimensions. Logistic regression models evaluated the association between psychoemotional variables and specific classes.

The final model consisted of three classes—53.2%, …

Black-White Differences In Wealth Accumulation Among Americans Nearing Retirement, Eun Hyei Shin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Using data from the 2006 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), this study examines what types of assets and levels of savings are held by Black near-retirees, while comparing how types of assets and levels of savings of Black near-retirees differ from those of White near-retirees. Through the use of multivariate analyses, this study further investigates the effects of being Black on the levels of savings, the likelihood of holding IRAs, and the likelihood of being financially prepared for retirement. The study sample includes 4,077 individuals between the ages of 51 and 64, and the subsamples consist of 680 Black and …