Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Two New Species Of False Click Beetles (Coleoptera: Eucnemidae) From The Americas, Robert L. Otto

Insecta Mundi

Abstract

Identifications of recently collected Eucnemidae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea) borrowed from two collections have resulted in the discovery of two new species: Entomophthalmus abbreviatus Otto (Cuba) and Trigonopleurus cordobaalfaroi Otto (Guatemala and Louisiana, United States). Images of the two newly described species along with two New World Entomophthalmus Bonvouloir species for comparative purposes are included.

Resumen

Las identificaciones de Eucnemidae (Coleoptera: Elateroidea) recolectados recientemente tomados de dos colecciones han resultado en el descubrimiento de dos nuevas especies: Entomophthalmus abbreviatus Otto (Cuba) y Trigonopleurus cordobaalfaroi Otto (Guatemala y Louisiana, United States). Se incluyen imágenes de las dos especies recientemente descritas junto con …

Legislating Criminal Justice Reform In Louisiana, Jason Callegari

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

While best practices in criminal justice reform have been studied and identified, the point at which reform legislation is decided upon and factors related to its passage is a traditionally understudied. My research will explore the factors that influence the political will of legislators who pass criminal justice reforms. Using a constructivist view of grounded theory, my research uses qualitative data to determine patterns of words and generalities implicit in decision-making for legislators in the state of Louisiana by way of semi-structured interviews with current and former state legislators. Coded results will show patterns associated with participants' willingness to support …

Work Hard For The Money: Performance-Based Funding In The State Of Louisiana, Victoria C. Lloyd

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine in what ways, if any, the introduction of the equity incentive portion of Louisiana’s performance-based funding model impacted the underserved student groups it was designed to support. I employed a quantitative quasi-experimental design for this study by running three outcome variables (Adult Learner Enrollment, First-Time Enrollment for Racially Minoritized Students, and Low-Income Student Enrollment) by sector (two- and four-year public institutions) and employing a differences-in-differences regression with panel data. In my analysis I uncovered two main findings: 1) Louisiana’s equity incentive is showing early signs of success for all three underserved groups …

Sara (Wheeler) Mcdaniel '98 (Renovation Takes Root), Jon Merryman

Press Releases

If you’ve ever wondered why Minden, La., is called “the friendliest city in the South,” one visit with Sara McDaniel ’98 explains it all. She is genuine, friendly, humble and kind – much like others you’ll meet in this sweet, Southern town.

After teaching elementary students in Texas for 10 years, McDaniel shifted to a career that supported teachers through educational sales and consulting. During this time, she went through a difficult divorce, struggling with what was next.

After feeling the Lord leading her to return home to Louisiana in 2014, McDaniel set her sights on restoring a cottage built …

Katrina Vs. Ida: A Comparative Analysis Of Fema Housing Recovery Efforts With Regard To Vulnerable Populations, Alyssa Harrynanan

Honors Theses

When Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005, it revealed disparities in the way that recovery efforts are handled after storms. For example, it demonstrated flaws in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s attempt to provide housing for disaster survivors. The agency failed to adequately accommodate vulnerable populations, including communities of color, low-income individuals, the elderly, and people with disabilities, in its housing recovery process. Since then, efforts have been made to reform the agency and ensure that all individuals, regardless of race, income, education or disability level, are accommodated by FEMA. However, when Hurricane Ida struck Louisiana exactly 16 years later …

Ms 170 Guide To The William J. Schull, Phd Photograph Collection (1943-2014), William J. Schull (1922-2017)

Manuscript Finding Aids

The William J. Schull Photograph Collection, contains photographic prints, positive and negative transparencies, and text ephemera from Dr. Schull's career and many international travels as a global scientific research consultant in the effects of radiation and human genetics and connoisseur of the world's cultures. Dr. Schull collected and preserved all of the material in this collection in the course of his professional career and private life from 1945 to 2014. See more at MS 170.

Southeastern Librarian 69(4) Winter 2022 (Full Issue)

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian Volume 69 Number 4

Deep Roots In Eroding Soil: Building Decolonial Resilience Amidst Climate Violence And Displacement In A Louisiana Bayou Indigenous Community, Lia Mcgrath Kahan

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Pointe-au-Chien Indigenous community of coastal Louisiana is fighting for survival as climate change and socio-political factors threaten to displace them from their ancestral home. This project takes an ethnographic and historical approach to exploring how colonization and climate change have influenced Pointe-au-Chien tribal members’ ability to stay on their ancestral land. Climate projections estimate that the bayou this community has lived alongside of for generations will soon be unrecognizable, leading to potential displacement and devastating cultural loss. Due to the increasing severity of climate change, it is crucial to look to the experiences of frontline Indigenous communities to support …

Analysis Of Regulatory Options To Reduce Ethylene Oxide Emissions In Southern Louisiana, Claire Oyler

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Toxic chemicals are dangerous when exposed directly to humans but are often vital for the production of goods and services. Ethylene Oxide is a carcinogenic gas used as a commercial sterilizer and emitted during the manufacturing process of common household goods. The term fence-line communities describes the residents living adjacent to facilities emitting toxic chemicals into the air. Several predominately minority, low-income fence-line communities in Southern Louisiana are exposed to higher than average levels of Ethylene Oxide from nearby manufacturing facilities. This raises environmental justice and overall public health concerns in the area. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged …

Southeastern Librarian 69(3) Fall 2021 (Full Issue)

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian Volume 69 Number 3

A Geospatial And Statistical Analysis Of Dropout In Louisiana Public High Schools, Michael D. Stein

LSU Master's Theses

Students dropping out of high school is a nationwide problem, plaguing communities and often greatly reducing the prospects of a quality life for those students who do not complete their high school educations. Louisiana consistently has among the highest public high school dropout rates in the United States, and often the highest. This geospatial and statistical study aims to identify the factors that correlate with high school dropout in Louisiana public high schools, specifically, and to produce detailed maps of the dropout rates across the state to identify the schools most afflicted.

Extensive school-level data from five academic years (2014-15 …

Backlogged Or Logjammed? An Analysis Of The Patterns That Surround The Rape Kit Backlog Across Jurisdictions, Elizabeth Dowd

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Untested rape kits sit in crime labs, hospitals, evidence lockers, or storage facilities untouched. In the worst-case scenarios, rape kits have been thrown out of police storage before the statute of limitations had expired. A major public policy problem is developing as these kits stack up and create a backlog. The primary problem with the rape kit backlog is that all victims are not receiving justice. To solve the problem, the backlog of rape kits needs further exploration and analysis. If a pattern can be established about why the problem is occurring, then policies can be constructed and implemented to …

Changing Geographies Of Flood Mitigation Policies: A Case Study Of Central, Louisiana, Ria Mukerji

LSU Master's Theses

In 2016, the Baton Rouge region experienced what would come to be record-setting precipitation levels. The 1,000 year rainfall event dumped almost triple the amount of water on Louisiana than was seen during Hurricane Katrina (some areas received over 10 inches of rain in a matter of hours), with rain persisting from August 12^th until the 17^th. Previously a part of Baton Rouge, Central is a relatively new development that expanded into the 100 year floodplain in 2005. This thesis will present the changing geographies of flood mitigation policies since a major flood in 1983 to the …

The Louisiana Community Oil Spill Survey (Coss) Dataset, Michael R. Cope, Tim Slack, Troy C. Blanchard, Matthew R. Lee, Jorden E. Jackson

Faculty Publications

This article presents an overview of the Louisiana Community Oil Spill Survey (COSS), the dataset used in “Community Sentiment following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster: A Test of Time, Systemic Community, and Corrosive Community Models” [1] as well as elsewhere [2–6]. The COSS, administered by the Louisiana State University's Public Policy Research Laboratory, consists of five waves of cross-sectional trend data attuned to the characteristics and effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon (BP-DH) oil spill on those coastal Louisiana residents most affected by the disaster. Respondents were randomly drawn from a list of nearly 6,000 households in the …

Carceral Extractivism, Livelihood Strategies, And “Acting Right” In The U.S. South, Edward L. Bullock

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Mass incarceration and its effects are well documented and carceral privatization is hotly contested on moral and economic grounds. This dissertation examines the local effects of carceral privatization in the U.S. south in historical context. Tallulah is a small, rural predominately African American town in northeastern Louisiana that endures high rates of poverty, unemployment, and low educational attainment. It also hosts four private prisons operated by LaSalle Corrections, LLC. Two primary and overlapping questions guide the research. 1) How has an history of carceral entrepreneurship and mass incarceration impacted the way persons and communities create livelihoods and imagine futures, and …

The Effects Of Forced Migration On The Houma Of Louisiana, Jessica R. Parfait

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the effects of multiple forced migrations on the Indigenous Houma of southern Louisiana. The causes of these migrations have taken many forms such as the dispossession of land and relocating for access to resources. Through ethnographic interviews and historic research, I seek to critically engage the past to understand how it has molded the present and the lives of tribal citizens. I evaluate the power dynamics enacted upon the Houma who have recorded contact with Europeans dating to 1686 but have never been recognized as a sovereign entity by the United States.

Searching For Galveztown: Employing Multiple Methodologies To Identify Features Of The Galveztown Settlement, Ashlee Taylor

LSU Master's Theses

Galveztown (1778-1806) was a Spanish fort and settlement located in southeastern Louisiana. This site was historically important as it provided protection for the city of New Orleans during a time of constantly shifting geopolitical environment. Today, this site is among the most important historical archaeological sites in Louisiana. Culturally, this site is significant as the descendants of the settlers still live within the Baton Rouge metropolitan area. Archaeologically, the site is significant due to the limited disturbance and lack of urban development at the location which has protected the archaeological record.

Galveztown is also one of the best documented Canary …

Hand-Built Ceramics At 810 Royal And Intercultural Trade In French Colonial New Orleans, Travis M. Trahan

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

While trade relations between French colonists and indigenous peoples in New Orleans are well documented, there have been few in depth studies utilizing archaeological sites in the city to illuminate the ways in which such relations shaped the day to day lives of the peoples involved. This work has attempted to elucidate trade practices between these groups by utilizing archaeological data uncovered at 810 Royal Street during excavations from 2015 through 2018. A collection of hand-built ceramics typically associated with indigenous peoples found in French colonial contexts on the site may help explicate the nature of trade occurring within the …

The Structure And Dynamics Of A River Delta Are Related Through Its Nourishment Area, Suggesting Optimality, Christopher A. Cathcart

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Scaling relations in tributary network geomorphology are well understood with respect to optimality. However, the scaling relations between structure and dynamics in distributary network geomorphology are less well understood. This is primarily due to the fact that nourishment area boundaries are difficult to map compared to tributary network catchment area boundaries. Furthermore, most previous work has focused either on the distributary channel networks or the delta’s partitioning of discharge. Here we show that, on the Wax Lake Delta (WLD) in Louisiana, the asymmetry in nourishment areas and downstream nourishment boundary width (∏) at a channel bifurcation, acts as a control …

Coastal Fortresses: A Cross-Case Analysis Of Water, Policy, And Tourism Development In Three Gulf Coast Communities, Kimberly A. Krupa

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As a result of development pressures and water resource struggles, once rural, spatially segregated coastal commercial fishing villages along the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico are increasingly tourist frontiers for elites and the emergent businesses that cater to them. Over the course of the twentieth century, water events, from coastal land loss to hurricane destruction to natural disaster, have fast-tracked development projects that have allowed for the expansion of the tourism sector, and relaxed policies to encourage bold new economic development initiatives that often put poor coastal communities and their environment in jeopardy. This outcome is not universal …

Falling On Deaf Ears: Social Workers’ Attitudes About Deafness, Hearing Loss, And Deaf Cultural Competence, Esperanza J. Garibay

LSU Master's Theses

D/deaf and hard of hearing people have lower health literacy and higher rates of misdiagnosis of serious illnesses than their hearing counterparts (Sheier, 2009). This is, in part, a result of the inaccessible and culturally incompetent care provided to d/Deaf and hard of hearing individuals (Kuenburg, Fellinger & Fellinger, 2016; Hoang, LaHousse, Nakaji & Sadler, 2010 Sheier, 2009). Inaccessible and culturally incompetent care may be byproducts of human service providers’ attitudes towards d/Deaf and hard of hearing people (Ulloa, 2014; Cooper, Mason & Rose, 2005), and providers’ level of competence with properly caring for d/Deaf and hard of hearing clients …

Vulnerability Of Industrial Facilities In The Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor To Relative Sea Level Rise And Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge, Joseph Blake Harris

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Relative sea level rise (RSLR) and tropical cyclone-induced storm surge are major threats to the Lower Mississippi River Industrial Corridor (LMRIC) which has approximately 120 industrial complexes located within the corridor. Spatial interpolation methods were applied to the 2004 National Oceanic and Atmospheric published Technical Report #50 subsidence dataset and cross-validation techniques were used to determine the accuracy of each method. Digital elevation models (DEMs) were created for the years 2025, 2050, and 2075, based on these predictive surface of subsidence rates. Future DEMs were utilized to model RSLR and determine the extent of storm surge on the LMRIC by …

Three Essays On Irrigation Water Management In Louisiana Crop Production, Tej Kumar Gautam

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Competition for water resources among agricultural, municipal, and industrial sectors is increasing even in a traditionally water rich state like Louisiana. Irrigation water management is likely to be a critical issue in Louisiana in the near future. We conducted state-wide farm surveys to collect information regarding irrigation practices and concerns from Louisiana farmers during the crop years 2015 and 2016.

We analyzed three different issues associated with irrigation water management in Louisiana crop production. These analyses are presented in the form of three different essays. The first essay identifies the determinants of irrigation technology adoption and crop acreage allocation by …

The Contested Terrain Of The Louisiana Carceral State: Dialectics Of Southern Penal Expansion, 1971–2016, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The Contested Terrain the Louisiana Carceral State” examines the development of the Louisiana carceral state as produced from above and contested from below from 1971 to 2016. Through a combination of archival research, oral history interviews, and in-depth ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that Louisiana has expanded, consolidated, and adapted its carceral infrastructure in response to multiscalar political economic crises tied to global oil booms and busts, federal state interventions, and when oppositional movements gain traction. “Carceral infrastructure” refers to both the literal building of new state prisons and parish jails alongside passage of draconian sentencing laws, and bulking up of …

Burnout Among Child Welfare Social Workers In Louisiana, Kimberly Marie Bainguel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Burnout among child welfare social workers negatively affects social workers and the social welfare system. The purpose of this action research study was to explore what child welfare social workers do to alleviate burnout. The practice-focused research questions for this study center on two elements: (a) the experiences of burnout among child welfare social workers employed by the Department of Family and Children services in the southeastern region of the United States and (b) the social work practices used to alleviate burnout. The conceptual framework for this study was the Maslach theory on burnout. Action research study procedures were used …

"If You Stand On This Corner, People Know What You're About": Powerful Geographies Of Airline & Goodwood In #Justiceforalton, Shannon Kathleen Groll

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the multiple geographies of Airline & Goodwood, a site of protest occupied nightly during a part of summer 2016 in response to the police shooting of Alton Sterling. Through a methodology of observant-participation, interviews, and oral histories, I make the case that the politics of this site differed from other contemporaneous protest sites in the city through specific place-making activity which highlighted the site’s powerful contemporary and historical geographies. I connect protest at this site to the precarity of Black life and death in Baton Rouge through interviews and oral histories which discuss the historical …

Using Digital Mapping Techniques To Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes In Coastal Louisiana: Holt Cemetery Case Study, Alahna Moore

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines a technique for rapid documentation of historic sites in volatile cultural landscapes. Using Holt Cemetery as an exemplary case study, a workflow was developed incorporating RTK terrain survey, UAS aerial imagery, photogrammetry, GIS, and smartphone data collection in order to create a multifaceted database of the material and spatial conditions, as well as the patterns of use, that exist at the cemetery.

The purpose of this research is to create a framework for improving the speed of data creation and increasing the accessibility of information regarding threatened cultural resources. It is intended that these processes can be …

Requiescat In Pace: The Cemetery Dedication And Its Implications For Land Use In Louisiana And Beyond, Ryan M. Seidemann

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

An Impossible Direction: Newspapers, Race, And Politics In Reconstruction New Orleans, Nicholas F. Chrastil

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis examines the racial ideologies of four newspapers in New Orleans at the beginning and end of Radical Reconstruction: the Daily Picayune, the New Orleans Republican, the New Orleans Tribune, and the Weekly Louisianian. It explores how each paper understood the issues of racial equality, integration, suffrage, and black humanity; it examines the specific language and rhetoric each paper used to advocate for their positions; and it asks how those positions changed from the beginning to the end of Reconstruction. The study finds that the two white-owned papers, the Picayune and the Republican, while political opponents, both viewed …

The Louisiana Granting Resources And Autonomies For Diplomas Act: Exploring The Impact Of A Performance-Based Funding Policy On Higher Education Effectiveness, Bridget S. Peters

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In 2010 the Louisiana legislature adopted the Louisiana Granting Resources and Autonomies for Diplomas (GRAD) Act, a statewide performance-based funding policy designed to improve performance among public colleges. This study, utilizing data collected from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) on 15 two-year public colleges over eight years, applied Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression to retention rates, graduation rates, and degree productivity. Results suggest that the introduction of the policy had little immediate effect on overall institutional performance; however, there were some modest increases in long-term certificate productivity. Additionally, there were significant improvements in data quality throughout higher education …