Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Using Audio/Visual Media To Increase The Sociological Imagination Of An Adolescent Audience, Jon Cariba Phoenix

Masters Theses

Adolescence is a time of drastically increased sociological inequality. This thesis explores the possibility of using an educational sociology television show as a means to increase teen empowerment by developing their sociological imagination. After reviewing the causes of increased inequality during adolescence, I probe the link between sociology and empowerment by critiquing Mills’ conception of the sociological imagination. After finding his formulation incomplete, I use Bandura’s social cognitive theory to fill the gaps in the original framework and derive a new expanded sociological imagination focused on increasing efficacy. Efficacy is the social science construct most closely related to empowerment, and …

Residential Rebuilding In Rural Haiti Natural Disaster Recovery Strategies, Mallory Lyn Barga

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on an appropriate and applicable way to recover from natural disasters in a place where indigenous resources, building and construction technologies, and manpower are unlike those in developed countries. Overtime, Haiti has suffered from a multitude of natural disasters that have had devastating long-term effects on the safety and health of the country. As a result, it has become apparent that Haitians expanded their housing off of existing relief shelters through improper building techniques. These improper techniques lead to insufficient structural stability of their homes and increased vulnerability to future disasters. The proposal for this thesis focuses …

Block 271, Reviving An Industrial Artifact, Jared Thomas Pohl

Masters Theses

Vacant industrial sites are scattered throughout our cities all across the country. These sites, these remnants of industry, are occupied by a very interesting category of buildings. They are artifacts from an industrial era that served very unique and specific functions. These service buildings suffered programmatic failure and have lost their vitality. They have entered a form of hibernation, waiting for the post-industrial epoch to wake them up.

The building stock under investigation makes up a large portion of the city’s structures. Identifiable by their heroic scale, clean articulated lines and tendency to be vacant, these service buildings raise arguments …

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 …

"It Starts With Having A Conversation": Lesbian Student-Athletes' Experience Of U.S. Ncaa Division I Sport, Jamie Fynes

Masters Theses

According to Griffin (1998), the U.S. NCAA Division I sport environment is not very welcoming for lesbian student-athletes because of existing negative myths and stereotypes. In addition, the experiences of both current and former lesbian collegiate athletes is an underrepresented research topic. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of 10 former U.S. NCAA Division I lesbian student-athletes using a semi-structured personal identity interview guide (Fisher, 1997) and Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). Five domains, 19 categories, and related core ideas were found in the transcribed interviews. In Domain I: Stereotypes and …

Exploring Biculturality And Beauty Standards Through Breast Discourse And Breasted Experience Of Sexual Minority Women, Christine Laura Beck

Masters Theses

Body satisfaction and embodied experience are fundamental components of women’s mental health. This is especially true for sexual minority women (SMW) who experience the complex demands of biculturality, as they must attend to the appearance ideals of both mainstream and SMW subculture. The current study aimed to investigate SMW’s bicultural experiences of body satisfaction and beauty pressures through a focused exploration of SMW’s breast discourse and breasted experience. Specifically, we hoped to discern more conclusive findings on whether the SMW subculture acts to protect SMW from the negative effects of mainstream, heteronormative beauty standards as proposed by previous research findings. …

An Analysis Of The Patterns Of Crime And Socioeconomic Status Visualized Through Self-Organized Maps, Jason Carlin Kaufman

Masters Theses

This work is research to explore the association of spatial patterns between crime and socioeconomic status (SES) through the use of self-organized maps (SOM). It had been found that the spatial patterns of crime could be associated with those of socioeconomic, and this work sought to further these analyses in order to better understand how crime patterns and SES were related. To explore this association, patterns of crime and SES were examined in three cities: Nashville, TN; Portland, OR; and Tucson, AZ. Three SOMs were used in each city: one to analyze the patterns of crime, a second to analyze …

Do Plants Play A Part In Student Satisfaction?, Amanda Diane Plante

Masters Theses

Environmental psychologists have found relationships between plants, nature and satisfaction. Student satisfaction is important across grade levels. Two studies were conducted to determine the effect of spending time with live plants on student satisfaction and academic performance. In the first study, a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design was used to determine how participation in garden labs would affect high school student satisfaction with school and academic performance. Ecology students in the variable group participated in ten gardening labs during the semester. During labs, students did hands-on gardening activities in the school greenhouse and garden. Students in the variable and control …