Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Zonta International: Unveiling 100 Years Of History & Membership, Jessica E. Nantka

Museum Studies Projects

The purpose of this master’s thesis project is to examine the formidable globalized service organization, Zonta International (ZI), which has impacted women around the world for 100 years. I utilized essential practices in the Museum Studies Master of Arts program at SUNY Buffalo State to create this project in association with an exhibit, Zonta International: Unveiling 100 Years of History & Membership, presented at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum from November 5 – November 23, 2019. The use of digitized images, documents, and artifacts within the Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection owned by The Buffalo History Museum, have been …

The Museum Of Experiential Living Art: Strategic Plan, Danielle D. Delia

Museum Studies Projects

How can a museum support the new work of artists? Can a Tri-fold business plan offer a sustainable way to support an artists in residency program? Will the local community welcome a new museum into their town? What will be the benefit to the local economy? This capstone project presenting a strategic plan proposes the development of a new art museum located in Buffalo New York called, the Museum of Experiential Living Art (MoELA). The purpose of MoELA is to support practicing artists through an artist in residency program; by providing dedicated time, space, tools, materials, housing and nourishment while …

Proposing A Center For Leadership And Creativity, Jessica S. Murfin

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Leadership and creativity are vital skills for everyone to have in what is now a very competitive and dynamic world. Whether in business or in personal life, these skills can help individuals reach their highest potential. Employers, especially, are finding it increasingly difficult to find employees with these important skills. Academic institutions are simply not preparing students (i.e., future employees) well enough. This is an issue that needs to be remedied as soon as possible. In this project, I am proposing a Center for Leadership and Creativity to be housed on the Western Oregon University campus in Monmouth, Oregon, under …

Public Utilities' Disaster Response And Management Plans: An Evaluation Of National Grid And New York State Electric & Gas, Taylor N. Vishion

Public Administration Master’s Projects

Societal dependence on electricity has rapidly increased as technological advancement has occurred, thus requiring electric utilities to advance their emergency response and repair procedures. Disaster management and response is a relatively new field for electric utilities, and despite the adoption of the Incident Command System created by FEMA, there are still opportunities for all utilities to improve. This project aims to assess the disaster response and management procedures of National Grid U.S. and NYSEG and identify opportunities for improvement. This study interviewed emergency management professionals experienced with electric utilities and found both National Grid U.S. and NYSEG can improve in …

Planning For Routine Emergencies: Establishing Collaboration To Increase The Iso Rating Of The City Of Niagara Falls, Ny, Gordon G. Stewart Iii

Public Administration Master’s Projects

The City of Niagara Falls, New York has maintained an Insurance Services Office (ISO) PPC grade of 3 out of 10 over the two most recent ISO evaluations, one in 2010 and another in 2016. A significant portion of the ISO rating derives from water supply as it contributes to fire suppression. In Niagara Falls, control of the water infrastructure is controlled by a public benefit corporation, the Niagara Falls Water Board, separate from city government. Through the evaluation of the most current Public Protection Classification (PPC) Reports from the ISO for the City of Niagara Falls, this study aims …

The Creative Path To Peace: An Exploration Of Creative Arts-Based Peacebuilding Projects, Mary L. Clark

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

ABSTRACT OF PROJECT

The Creative Path to Peace:

An Exploration of Creative Arts-based Peacebuilding Projects

There is a strong connection between creative arts and building capacity for peaceful transformation of entrenched conflict. While governments, warlords, militias and bureaucrats may control or dominate the overt peacebuilding process, artists of all disciplines work behind the scenes, in communities, cultural centers, refugee camps and war zones, building resiliency and peace from the personal level. This project explores how the creative arts stimulate and support peacebuilding: the nature and definition of peace itself, and the aspects of creative arts that render them powerful in …

Developing A Creative Learning Format For Street Children, Shazina Masud

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Developing a Creative Learning Format for Street Children

As the number of street children grow globally, governments and UN agencies are looking at solutions to cater to their needs of shelter, health and safety. Efforts to provide formal education to street children are not always successful. This project hypothesizes that equipping these children with essential knowledge in an informal but creative learning environment will allow them to live safe and productive lives. The prototype of the creative learning format is based on approaches and tools that have worked with children in other settings and has been modified for street children. …

Something’S In The Water: A Look At How Creativity And Innovation Can Prevent Future Water Crises, Tristan Holiday-Nowden

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is to raise awareness and create a level of consciousness about water, unlike anything we have seen in the past. This project presents a synthesis of current writings and ideologies from the fields of Environmental Science and Water Research. As well as think pieces and informative news articles from various publications.

To illustrate the damaging effects of water contamination, water pollution, and water scarcity; Flint, Michigan will serve as a case study. After diagnosing and defining the problem using the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) framework. This project will explore the challenge and look at the …

Declutter, Organize, Optimize: A Thingless Path To Creativity, Caitlin J. Wingrove

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores the connection between material possessions, physical clutter and the optimization of one’s personal creativity in their creative environment. It first includes a review of the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering, by Marie Kondo by looking at her methods through the lens of the creative process. The project then documents my personal process of decluttering and optimizing my living space. The project includes some ideas from prior research in the field combined with personal reflections on how the optimization of a physical space can improve one’s creative productivity, creative thinking, …

Informal Rulemaking And Democratic Participation Fda – Food Labeling, Fcc – Net Neutrality, A Text Mining Study, Casey Shannon

Public Administration Master’s Projects

The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) is supposed to make the rulemaking process at the administrative level democratic. This study will look at two examples of federal regulatory agencies – Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The topics are food labeling, and net neutrality respectively. The APA highlights the process of notice and comment rulemaking. The APA is evaluated in the literature review for effectiveness and shortcomings. Interest groups play a key role in the policy making process; interest groups inform and mobilize citizens, and then coordinate commenting on agency rule propositions. This can sometimes lead …

Creativity And Budgeting: Improving The Budget Process With Creativity, Janet K. Stormes

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

In this master’s project I explore ways to improve a budget process by integrating the principles and tools of creativity and Creative Problem Solving. I do this by prototyping, testing, and revising a creativity-budget model. The creativity-budget prototype model was based on my professional experience in federal budgeting and a literature review on topics including governance, the budget process, stakeholders, collaboration, the impact of the budget process on the creativity of an organization, and the principles of creativity and creative problem solving. In July 2018, I tested the prototype model by conducting creativity-budget workshops in Myanmar. Based on my experience …

President Trump’S Executive Order No. 13780: Impact On Refugee Resettlement Organizations In Buffalo, Sarah R. Klotzbach, Jessica Depasquale

Public Administration Master’s Projects

On March 6^th, 2017 President Trump signed Executive Order 13780: Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into The United States. This effectively lowered the refugee admissions cap by more than half and thus had an impact on the work of local refugee resettlement organizations. This change is especially relevant to Buffalo, as the city has a significant refugee population which relies on these organizations for various services. There are many components which must be taken into consideration in order to understand how this public policy has tangible impacts on local resettlement organizations. International refugee law and domestic …

Facilitating Creative Problem Solving When Big News Interrupts, Philip E. Marks

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The objective of this Project was to design and deliver a 2.5 day workshop for Human Resources leaders in a large corporation. The workshop objective was to give these leaders tools and a creative experience as they develop an action plan to “Ignite Innovation” in their organization, thereby fulfilling the Human Resource team’s vision. Unfortunately, during the workshop, the organization announced that it was being sold by the present ownership and purchased by a larger organization. This big news disrupted the workshop and its participants, and the objective became, how to facilitate change when the future had just become uncertain …

Exploring Creative Problem Solving In Public Policy, Jade A. Costello

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores the connection between creativity and public policy-making through guided facilitation. In this exploration, there are several products that have been developed. The first is an index that provides definitions, charts, and process explanations for creativity, facilitation and public policy. The second is a completed facilitation plan that incorporates both the FourSight model for group facilitation (Miller, Vehar, Firestein, Thurber & Nielsen, 2011a) and Marvin Weisbord’s (1992) exploration of creative strategies for discovering common ground through policy conferences. The third product is an evaluation matrix, which would be used post-facilitation to understand the strengths and weaknesses from the …

Picturing Buffalo: The Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection, A Master’S Project To Prepare And Exhibit Images And Artifacts From The Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection, Kimberly A. Bruckman

Museum Studies Projects

The purpose of this Master’s Thesis Project is to implement essential practices in the museum profession in relation to the stabilization, digitization, and exhibition of the Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection. Through skills learned in the Museum Studies MA program, negatives from the Beach Collection were systematically chosen, digitized, and researched. This process resulted in an exhibition titled Picturing Buffalo: The Howard D. Beach Photography Studio Collection, which was on display from February 4-27, 2018 at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, in Buffalo, New York.

E-Government And The City Of Buffalo, Michael J. Ramos

Public Administration Master’s Projects

As the United States continues to progress, the need for technological innovations has become increasingly important in the field of government. Federal, state and local governments are working towards the implementation and development of e-government practices. E-government began with the Clinton Administration in the mid 2000s, where the administration identified e-government as a way to promote a one stop access to government programs, cut costs and promote citizen advocacy in government (Moon, 2002). The purpose of this study was to explore the different departments in the City of Buffalo that are in charge of creating and implementing e-government projects. These …

The Impact Of Lexical Complexity On The Public’S Understanding Of Governmental Communication, Patrick J. Lyons Iii

Public Administration Master’s Projects

Government documents are a necessary part of life for citizens, but the complexity of language and specific jargon can make them substantially challenging to comprehend. Guidelines have been put forth to improve readability of such documents, but the government has lagged in implementing these recommendations. Therefore, the current research aims to determine if modified documents: a) are easier to read; b) are easier to comprehend; and c) require less assistance to understand than the original, unmodified documents. To accomplish this, three focus groups were conducted. Each group read an original government document and one that was modified for readability. Data …

Somali Refugees In Buffalo: The Impact Of Language Barrier On The Health Care Access, Khadar Maow

Public Administration Master’s Projects

Over the course of the last decade, the United States of America has resettled many refugees from different parts of the world as part of its yearly refugee intake; upon settling to United States, refugees face challenges as they adjust to their new communities and new environments. The impacts of language barriers and health disparities among immigrant groups and refugees in the country have become increasingly unquestionable and clear. Due to inability to speak and communicate in English, current refugees in the U.S are facing problems when accessing healthcare facilities. The U.S. government and healthcare providers are trying hard to …

What Does It Mean To Live A Creative Life?, Latise Hairston

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project was to become an explorer in the world of creativity for the purpose of learning and self-improvement. On a weekly basis, as a creativity explorer, I researched a theory related to the expressive arts and personal development or engaged in an experience (i.e. travel) to discover “what it means to live a creative life.” The discoveries are discussed, including key learnings, products of the project, and workshop activities to assist others in exploring their creative lives. A sampling of the journey through photographs, expressive journaling and poetry are represented.

Surprisingly Open Or Openly Surprised? That Is The Question; Using Surprise Experiences To Increase Openness To Experience And Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Anneke Veenendaal-De Kort

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Using Surprise Experiences to Increase Openness to Experience and Tolerance of Ambiguity

In the fast-changing world in which we are currently living, we constantly come across situations and problems that we have not encountered before. An open mind and the ability to tolerate ambiguity are important skills in uncertain times. People who embrace the unpredictable can develop their resilience and flexibility. Surprisologists Luna and Renninger (2015) have discovered that a great way of dipping into unpredictability is through surprise. For my Master’s Project, I designed experiences that transform people’s openness and tolerance for ambiguity through surprise. This paper begins with …

A New Model For Creative Education, Carolina Schnapp R.

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explored the design of a pedagogical model for the development of creativity, targeted for teachers and educational institutions. The development of creativity has become highly relevant over the past few decades, especially with the emphasis given to 21st Century Skills and the responsibility that schools have on fostering these skills. In this project, you will find the ideas based on research and experience, that were the foundation for the model, the creative process behind the design of the model, and the final version. The project was shared with experts who validated parts of the model and opened space …

The Impact Of Casino Revenue-Sharing On Tourism Efforts In Niagara Falls Usa: 2006-2016, Anthony L. Astran

Public Administration Master’s Projects

This qualitative case study examines the intersection of a Native-owned casino, revenue-sharing with its host community, and the impact of tourism marketing efforts vis-à-vis funds provided to the community’s tourism agency. Specifically, this report studies downtown Niagara Falls USA from the time period between 2006 and 2016, and seeks to determine whether and how funds from Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino boosted tourism marketing efforts by Niagara Tourism & Convention Corporation (NTCC). Background research and a series of elite interviews with city officials and tourism agency leaders uncovered overall positivity in terms of growth in Niagara Falls USA’s tourism efforts …

Factors Influencing Recruitment Into The U.S. Armed Services: Could Health Insurance Be A Motivator?, Michael P. Hughes

Public Administration Master’s Projects

Caring for our nation's veterans is a responsibility of the federal promise that began with a promise by Abraham Lincoln on the event of his second inauguration. The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act requires the Army to recruit an additional 16,000 enlisted personnel and retain an additional 9,000 soldiers by the end of September 2017, with the Army offering enlistment bonuses of up to $40,000 and upwards of $10,000 for soldiers willing to extend their contracts for one year (Myers, 2017). A RAND Corporation study identified several risk factors for Army recruitment should the need arise to commit forces including …

Education For The Changing Public Sector: An Impact Study Of The Suny Buffalo State's Mpa In The Erie County Department Of Social Services' Employee Education Program, Caroline M. Alagna

Public Administration Master’s Projects

In 1982, the Erie County Department of Social Services (ECDSS) developed the Employee Education Program (EEP). The EEP is an educational sponsorship program that provides eligible employees with a tuition-free education at area higher education institutions for a number of various degrees. One such degree is the Public Administration in Public and Nonprofit Management, or MPA at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo State College. This 2017 evaluation concentrates on identifying the skills and knowledge that employees of ECDSS gained from their participation in the MPA component of the EEP and the impact that these new or …

The Ny Safe Act: County Clerks And County-State Relations, Christopher D. Kuwik

Public Administration Master’s Projects

The NY SAFE Act is a controversial gun control law in New York State. Since its passage on January 15, 2013, it has been the source of a continuing controversy. The primary purpose of this study is to explore the reactions of New York State (elected) county clerks tasked with the law’s implementation. In this phenomenological study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 county clerks across New York State. The researcher asked various questions about how the SAFE Act has affected their offices. The researcher used thematic analysis to organize themes, which reveal that a lack of or inadequate intergovernmental …

Preschoolers And Pandas Making Friends: A Journey About Healing From Brain Injury, Barbara Anne Doucette

Museum Studies Projects

Preschoolers that have obtained Non-Accidental Injury (NAI) from familial child abuse are in need of having a unique place for neurorehabilitation in correlation with traditional therapies. My thesis project suggests adding an exhibit annex to an existing giant panda exhibit that will give preschoolers an opportunity to help develop new neuropathways when exposed to mediation and creative activities. Meditation and creative activities are being examined by neuroscientists as an aid in neuroplasticity after brain injury. This thesis reviews the neurotypical preschooler’s milestones and the playful means by which they are achieved. Conjoining the contemporary museums’ and zoological gardens’ outreach to …

Supporting Healthcare Teams With Implementation Projects: Shaping A Toolbox, Carian Van Der Sman

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores a) the challenges healthcare professionals experience when they work in a team to implement new (but elsewhere existing or proven) products or solutions into their practice and b) how a toolbox of creativity and change methods, tools and techniques might look like to support them to overcome these challenges. This project shows that healthcare professionals most likely benefit from 1) tools that provide teambuilding and would support the sense of growing together, 2) tools that would demonstrate an overview of types of resistance they could face and strategies to overcome them and 3) tools that provide an …

Rebranding Visual Feedback As A Product-Making The Unspeakable Visible, Nicolette Wever

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

PROJECT ABSTRACT

Rebranding Visual Feedback as a Product

Why do visuals work and why do they have such impact on the process of change? Because visuals connect directly with feelings, they have the power to improve the life of others. They have the power to improve and enrich communication. They have the power to handle information overload and they have the power to bridge cultural differences. ‘Images speak louder than words’ because images are connected with emotions in our long term memory. When ten different persons look at one single image, they see ten different things. Like a mirror, the …

Exploring Strategies For Teaching Creatively Online, Conny Van Der Wouw

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The way we learn and teach is changing. There is more emphasis on collaboration and personalization of the learning. Teaching online is becoming common. For my Master’s project I have developed a product that will help designing and delivering teaching programs creatively through the use of online learning opportunities. The product discusses the opportunities and challenges of a creative climate when teaching online and provides strategies to develop creativity during the online learning process. It is developed with the use of the Torrance Incubation Model of Teaching and Learning (TIM) and Ekvall’s ten dimensions of a creative climate. This paper …

Addressing Our Implicit Bias Against Embracing Creative Ideas, Michelle K. Neumayer Ms.

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this Master's Project is to highlight the fact that we all carry an implicit bias against embracing creative ideas experienced as psychological reactions such as anxiety related to the uncertainties that surround truly creative ideas. Two main innovation processes, Creative Problem Solving and Design Thinking will be compared against suggestions by social psychologist and creativity researcher Jennifer Mueller for addressing this bias. One of the main areas of discussion will revolve around the need to balance two opposing mind-sets often used by decision-makers, which results in the ability to think more like an inventor. Characteristics of these …