Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Finding Money For Municipal Water, Wastewater And Solid Waste Projects In Tennessee (2011), Sharon Rollins

MTAS Publications: Full Publications

This guide provides an overview of various financing programs available to Tennessee's local governments for water, wastewater, solid waste, and other project needs.

Ask, Tell, Vickie R. Phipps

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

When I was designing these marks a year ago, I wanted to acknowledge GLBTQI military persons serving under the unjust policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. To accomplish this, one of the counterforms in each of the military branch logos is flipped upside down creating the GLBTQI symbol of an inverted triangle.

On September 20th, 2011, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was repealed.

Before the repeal, the simple act of wearing a t-shirt with one of these logos on it would have been an act of defiance and resistance. Today that same mark serves as a celebration of …

The Garden Is Always Greener..., Billy Hall

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

This essay builds upon a case study of community gardening in Miami to explore the extent to which these gardens are contributing to, and possibly triggering, processes of gentrification within low to lower-middle income neighborhoods. Through a literature review of recent urban planning policy and development in Miami and relevant discourse on the neoliberalization of food, food politics, food justice activism, and gentrification, I situate Miami’s gardens within a complex, multi-scalar web of ideas and processes. I show how the interaction of these forces, varying dramatically with respect to place, is implicit in the motivations for each garden’s development and …

Educating For Peace And Justice In America's Nuclear Age, Ian Harris, Charles F. Howlett

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

The emergence of peace education as embodied in the context of peace studies, which emerged during the post-World War II ideological struggle between capitalism and Communism, the nuclear arms race pitting the United States against the former Soviet Union, the Vietnam War, and the civil rights movement in America, met with considerable criticism. There were many within and outside the academic community who argued that peace studies had very little to offer in terms of “real scholarship” and were primarily politically motivated. Some went so far as to insist that this new area of study lacked focus and discipline given …

Pushing Me Through: A Poetic Representation, Jessica Nina Lester, Rachael Gabriel

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

For many children and adults labeled learning disabled (LD), the very process of being identified and eventually labeled is oriented to as difficult to understand, disorienting, and just a taken-for-granted part of a system that names some ‘normal’, even gifted, while others are named abnormal. Minimal research exists that attends to the ways in which the official ways of talking about LDs are worked up in the everyday language of those most involved in the special education process, particularly the students themselves. Thus, in this article, we present, in an alternative form of writing (Richardson, 1997), a poetic representation of …

Editors' Introduction, Shane Willson, Rachael E. Gabriel

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, …

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum, Volume One, Issue One, Shane Willson, Landon S. Bevier, Rachael E. Gabriel, Taylor Krcek, Alaina Elizabeth Smith

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

It is with great pride that we present to you the inaugural issue of Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum. Here we have attempted to create an innovative, peer-reviewed space in which people from numerous disciplines, or even those claiming no discipline, can present research, multimedia, and art aimed at furthering the ideals of social justice, broadly defined. Social justice is not a concept owned by the academy, for attempts to create a more just world can come from many professions, or even from no profession at all. By applying the traditionally academic peer-review process to work done by activists, artists, …

Rethinking A Carbon Tax In An Era Of Budget Deficits, Chad Covert

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Communication Breakdown: The Introduction Of Several Communication Technology Innovations, The Societal Effects, And The Disconnect In The Way That We Connect., Christopher Vincent Tramontana

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Relation Between Globalization And Personal Values Across 53 Countries And 28 Years, Irina Florentina Cozma

Doctoral Dissertations

The aim of this research is to examine the relation between the change in globalization and change in personal values (work and general life values). An analysis across 28 years and 53 countries suggests that changes in different personal values have different relations with the change in globalization. Moreover, this relation is influenced by the demographic characteristics of the sample. The present research contributes to the literature in the following ways: 1) linking globalization (an economic concept) and personal values (a psychological concept), 2) providing an analysis of the relation between the change in personal values and the change in …

Theoretical And Empirical Essays On The Effects Of Proposed And Existing Environmental Policies, Luke Robert Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters that explore environmental policy. Chapter 1 empirically investigates the potential for incentives to encourage the adoption of low-emission alternatives to gasoline motorcycles. Hanoi, Vietnam, like many Asian cities, is experiencing rapid growth in the ownership of personal gasoline-powered motorcycles and scooters, and along with this heightened air quality issues. Electric scooters have the potential to reduce air pollution as an alternative to gasoline-powered motorcycles; however, electric scooters have yet to penetrate the Vietnamese and other large Asian markets. This study uses a choice experiment survey to elicit the demand for electric scooters, with focus …

Biofuel And Water Resources, Xia Zhou

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the economic and environmental benefits of planting switchgrass as a bioenergy feedstock. The first chapter presents a dynamic optimization model of fertilizer and land allocation between switchgrass and corn to estimate economic benefits. Subsequent chapters utilize Geographic Information System (GIS)-based Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to be calibrated to evaluate the environmental (nutrient and sediment loading) effects of land use conversion to switchgrass production on water quality and analyze the Water Quality Trading (WQT) program with cost-effectiveness ratios ordered for abatements of nutrient loadings in an East Tennessee watershed.

Relationships Between Externalization Behaviors And Team Cognition Variables In Distributed Teams, Lisa Ann Delise

Doctoral Dissertations

Members of distributed teams often have difficulty sharing unique information with their teammates during decision making tasks. These communication problems may hinder the development of cognitions that allow team members to reach a similar understanding of the content and structure of task information. The C-MAP intervention (Rentsch, Delise, & Hutchison, 2008) was designed to assist team members in sharing their information through behaviors that convey the content and structure of information by using specific communication behaviors and developing a knowledge object. In the present study, the knowledge object took the form of a white board where information was posted and …

Optimal Draw Area And Feedstock Delivery Schedule Of Biorefineries In The Southeast U.S. Based On Least Cost And Producers’ Willingness To Plant A Dedicated Energy Crop, Wen Tu

Doctoral Dissertations

To overcome the limitations of starch-based and sugar-based ethanol, scientists propose to expand the use of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses, or the non-edible parts of plants. As the U.S. has a large cellulosic biomass production base (Perlack et al., 2006), production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock and use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline could help promote rural development, reduce green house gases emissions, and increase energy independence. This study focuses on the cost of producing cellulosic ethanol along with the amount of carbon sequestered and emitted using switchgrass as a feedstock. …

Essays On State Lottery Demand And Revenue Earmarks, Kara Diane Smith Mitchell

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the first modern state-sponsored lottery was instituted in New Hampshire in 1964, lotteries have proliferated to 42 states and the District of Colombia. With little exception, research has shown that these lotteries are a highly regressive form of taxation. However, this body of research does not take into account a theoretical finding that the manner in which collected funds are earmarked impacts participation patterns. The goal of this dissertation is to test this finding empirically.

In the first analysis, I use sales data from the Tennessee Education Lottery and scholarship data from the TEL Scholarship program to test this …

A Comparative Analysis Of School Counselors' And School Principals' Perceptions Of School Counselors' Activities, Deborah K Buchanan

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative, cross-sectional survey study was to compare school counselors’ and principals’ perceptions of the frequency with which school counselors perform activities that align with the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005) and those activities that do not, as measured by the School Counselor Activity Rating Scale (SCARS) (Scarborough, 2005). Results indicate that the school counselors and principals that participated in the study agreed that school counselors are spending most of their time engaged in activities that align with the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2005). Significant differences (p < .05) appeared on 10 items in which five were related to counseling activities, primarily as they relate to small group counseling. Principals indicated their school counselors were conducting small group activities related to academic and substance abuse issues more frequently than the school counselors indicated. Other areas that showed significant differences (p < .05) between school counselors’ and principals’ responses included …

Positive Functioning Among Chinese Adolescents: Conceptualizing A Framework And Testing Effects Of Parenting, Mingzhu Xia

Doctoral Dissertations

Chinese adolescents’ development has received increasing attention over recent decades. However, following a traditional deficit model, most of the attention has been on problematic functioning of adolescents (e.g. depression). This emphasis is not consistent with evidence that the large majority of Chinese adolescents do not manifest such problem behaviors. Little is known about positive functioning among Chinese adolescents and how it is related to key socialization practices such as parenting. The purpose of the present study was to begin to fill these gaps.

Using theory, past empirical practice, and characteristics of Chinese culture, the study posited a second-order structure for …

Temporal Patterns Of Functional And Dysfunctional Employee Turnover, Matthew Scott Fleisher

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined temporal patterns in collective employee turnover over a 75 month interval. Time series models were fit to subgroups of functional and dysfunctional turnover. Dysfunctional turnover was defined as voluntary separation among high and average performers and functional turnover was defined as voluntary separation of low performers. Results provided support for the hypothesis that temporal patterns of functional and dysfunctional turnover differ. Patterns among high and average performers were similar, such that employee turnover across several global regions increased during or near July. In contrast, employee turnover among low performers tended to spike during or soon after October. …

If And How Many 'Races'? The Application Of Mixture Modeling To World-Wide Human Craniometric Variation, Bridget Frances Beatrice Algee-Hewitt

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies in human cranial variation are extensive and widely discussed. While skeletal biologists continue to focus on questions of biological distance and population history, group-specific knowledge is being increasingly used for human identification in medico-legal contexts. The importance of this research has been often overshadowed by both philosophic and methodological concerns. Many analyses have been constrained in their scope by the limited availability of representative samples and readily criticized for adopting statistical techniques that require user-guidance and a priori information. A multi-part project is presented here that implements model-based clustering as an alternative approach for population studies using craniometric traits. …

Avoidance And Depression: Evidence For Reinforcement As A Mediating Factor, John Paul Carvalho

Doctoral Dissertations

Behavioral Activation theory (Martell, Addis, & Jacobson, 2001) posits that a pattern of excessive use of avoidant coping strategies removes an individual from environmental sources of reward and reinforcement and subsequently leads to the development (or maintenance) of depressive symptoms. This investigation examined this theory by establishing measures of environmental reward as mediators between avoidance and depression, while further demonstrating that there is a strong connection between avoidance and depression independent of anxiety. Reward was measured by both self-report questionnaire (Reward Probability Inventory; Carvalho et al., under review) and daily activity diary ratings (Hopko, Bell, Armento, Hunt, & Lejuez, 2003), …

Risk Factors For Intimate Partner Violence During Pregnancy, Julianne Christina Hellmuth

Doctoral Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has been shown to be highly prevalent during pregnancy, particularly for couples of low socioeconomic status. IPV poses an especially serious problem for pregnant women as it puts both mother and unborn child at risk for severe physical harm, including death. This investigation of potential risk factors for IPV during pregnancy examines alcohol use, stress, suspicion of infidelity, jealousy, and relationship discord from both a cross-sectional and longitudinal perspective. The overarching theoretical frameork for this study is based on Leonard's conceptual model of substance use and intimate partner violence in combination with evolutionary theory as discussed …

Bringing The Outside In: An Examination Of Non-Governmental Aid Organizations In Buenos Aires, Elisabeth B. Tilstra

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Fair Labor Standards Act: Revised And Updated (2011), Richard Stokes

MTAS Publications: Full Publications

This document details the specifics of the FLSA: what the act requires, who is covered and who is not covered, hours worked and compensation, overtime pay, record keeping, and penalties.

Building Effective Ontology For Semantic Web: A Discussion Based On Practical Examples, Tianmu Zhang

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

The study aims to investigate semantic web and create useful ontology as a teaching and educational tool for others interested in learning more about Semantic web. This paper discussed several emerging issues about the semantic web and ontology building. This paper combines ontology implementation examples with research topics to identify current issues and potential solution in both application and theoretical level. It concludes that although semantic web and ontology technology are not mature enough currently, there is a clear tendency for them to be integrated into various applications to exert synergies.

The Role Of Computer Mediated Technologies (Cmts) In Scientific Collaboration In Kuwait, Abdalaziz Aldaihani

Doctoral Dissertations

This study focuses on a component of computer-mediated communicated which is labeled computer mediated technologies (CMTs) and is composed of the latest group of internet technology and digital media including social networking, Web2.0, Smartphone and Videoconferencing. The computer mediated technologies (CMTs) have the potential to facilitate scientific collaboration between scientists from north and south.

This dissertation is a quantitative study that investigates the relationship between CMT use and collaboration, CMT use and research productivity, scientific collaboration and research productivity in Kuwait and the digital divide between developing and developed countries. This study answers the following questions: (1) To what degree …

After The Final Bell: The Self-Directed Learning Practices Of Elementary Teachers, Susan Renee Wagner

Doctoral Dissertations

Are elementary teachers self-directed learners? If so, do their learning activities outside their classrooms translate into their classrooms? The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship, if any, between elementary teachers’ self-directed learning and activities in their classrooms. A two phase, mixed methods design first utilized a quantitative study from which the results were used to denote the type of data collected in the second, qualitative phase. The quantitative Phase I of this study involved using a survey instrument in order to identify self-directed learners and identify categories of teacher learners. These quantitative data were gathered through the …

Communicating Via Knoxblab, Roger Kevin Gray

Masters Theses

This study is a Uses and Gratifications based look at motivations surrounding long-term participation in an internet discussion forum and perceived effects of this participation on users’ social lives. Members of the Knoxville, TN based web forum “Knoxblab” were interviewed for the study. Participants indicated that the forum is a tool by which social ties are maintained and developed, and they indicated that membership in the forum community is perceived as having positive effects on social activity. Consistent with traditional Uses and Gratifications Theory, results suggest that participants are motivated by reasons related to information sharing and entertainment, though web …

Comparative Analysis Of The Faunal Remains From British Royal Engineer And Enslaved African Occupations At Brimstone Hill Fortress, St. Kitts, West Indies, Ann Marie Ramsey

Masters Theses

During the 17^th through 19^th centuries, economic interests favoring sugarcane production and export over domestic animal husbandry, necessitated an import-based subsistence strategy in many Caribbean colonies. British military stationed on the island of St. Kitts also adopted this practice of provisioning its soldiers and the enslaved Africans who served at Brimstone Hill Fortress. Comparative analysis of the faunal materials recovered at BSH 3 Terrace 1 (Royal Engineers Officer’s quarters) and Terrace 3 (enslaved Africans’ occupation) show that military personnel and enslaved Africans alike supplemented their rations (i.e. salted fish or barreled pork or beef) with locally obtained foods …

Land Use/Land Cover Change And Its Hydrological Impacts From 1984 To 2010 In The Little River Watershed, Tennessee, Chunhao Zhu

Masters Theses

Land use/land cover (LULC) change, especially the conversion from farmland to residential and commercial land, has led to significant environmental issues in changing fluvial dynamics, accelerating sediment erosion and degrading water quality. The Little River, which provides drinking water for over 100,000 residents in Blount County, Tennessee, and serves as a source of agriculture and recreational activities, was listed as one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Targeted Watersheds because the water quality of its tributaries has become impaired due to several reasons. In this study, a detailed record of LULC change in a roughly 2-year interval was documented …

Mediating Justice: Toward A Critical-Reflexive Sociology, George Christopher Gondo

Masters Theses

Today, an increasing number of sociologists incorporate the theme of social justice within their work and strive to contribute to efforts to improve existing social conditions. In their view, sociological work that actively engages in issues related to social justice exemplifies ‘the promise’ of sociology and represents a means of refocusing and reinvigorating the discipline at a time of perceived crisis. Yet, a growing body of evidence questions whether previous efforts to use sociology as a mechanism of improving social conditions have been successful. In this thesis, I rely on the works of Alvin W. Gouldner to examine the relationship …