Digital Commons Network^™

“We Are Girls. We Are Warriors. We Are Writers”: Middle School Girls And Gender Identity Construction In An After-School Writing Workshop, Mary-Celeste Schreuder

All Dissertations

Research continues to reveal that school, as a patriarchal institution, is not often a safe space for girls to enact their gender identities (Liu, 2006; Sadker, Sadker, & Zittleman, 2009). The gender bias and inequality girls experience in classrooms contributes to harmful behaviors, such as self-silencing and adhering to stereotypical gender norms (Bender-Slack, 2009; Gilligan, 1993), which creates challenges for girls’ construction of positive gender identities. In the wake of new feminist movements, such as #MeToo and Time’s Up, research focused on the perpetuation (and disruption) of patriarchal norms and their effect on girls’ gender identity is all the more …

Determinants Of Consumer Decisions In An Online Marketplace: The Decision-Making Process In The Home Improvement Service Domain, Amal Pradeep Ponathil

All Dissertations

Home improvement services industry are a multi-billion dollar industry with an ever increasing online presence as a result of advancements in technology. Such websites as Angie’s List, Thumbtack, and Home Advisor allow for information exchange between online consumers. Also known as Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM), this information offers several advantages, for example quick dissemination and convenience; however, trust in such information is a key factor in consumer’s decision-making. With the increased use of eWOM in making decisions, it is important to investigate how consumers use the cues found on these websites, the research gap this dissertation addresses.Given the lack …

Spatial Distributions Of Arthropods In Soybean And Implications For Pest Management, Anthony Daniel Greene

All Dissertations

Site-specific management of insect pests of field crops has the potential to decrease control costs and environmental impacts associated with traditional pest management tactics, but the success of these programs relies on the accurate characterization of arthropod distributions within a crop. Although the expense of the fine-scale spatial sampling required for management zone identification in fields may offset the overall reduction in costs achieved with site-specific pest management, the correlation of arthropod counts with ground-based and remotely sensed field attribute data could help to make site-specific pest management programs more profitable. In this study, we chose to determine how insect …

Flexible Molecular Dynamics For Simulating Ion-Surface Scattering Trajectories, Patrick Roy Johnson

All Dissertations

Molecular dynamics simulations are a powerful tool for modelling and predicting various material and surface properties. The main drawback, however, is time-scaling as systems under consideration get larger, either requiring significant computational resources or reducing the statistical significance of produced results. Here I present a molecular dynamics package, SAFARI, which is specifically optimised for low and hyperthermal energies and produces a statistically significant number of trajectories to assist in the analysis of ion-surface scattering spectra.

SAFARI is optimised for low and hyperthermal energies, where the sequential binary collision approximation (SBCA) does not produce precise results. The original version of SAFARI …

Personalized Professional Development Using Improvement Science: Induction Teachers’ Sense Of Teacher Self-Efficacy, Natasha Yvette Harvin-Wright

All Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of personalized professional development (PPD) on induction teachers’ sense of teacher self-efficacy when employed to address a teacher-identified, student-centered problem of practice using improvement science. Induction teachers’ problem of practice focused on at least one of three areas: instructional strategies, student engagement, and classroom management. The following research questions were examined in this study:

1. What problems (e.g., instructional strategies, student engagement, classroom management) are induction teachers encountering?

2. How does PPD affect teacher self-efficacy?

This study focused on PPD accomplished by means of a job-embedded approach tied to a …

The Use Of Improvement Science By A Principal To Increase Teacher Satisfaction And Teacher Retention Rates In An Elementary School Setting, Melissa Lynn Laberge

All Dissertations

Teacher attrition rates are on the rise during a time that fewer individuals are entering the teaching profession. In an effort to increase the rate of teacher retention, I conducted an improvement science study aimed at identifying the factors that impact teacher satisfaction in order to positively impact teacher retention rates. The purpose of this study was to identify ways in which a school level administrator can positively impact the rate of teacher retention through school-based interventions. As a school principal, I identified two major findings. First, there are specific aspects of teaching that make it difficult and that elevate …

Editor's Note, Virginia Smith

The Robert Frost Review

No abstract provided.

About The Contributors

The Robert Frost Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

The Robert Frost Review

No abstract provided.

Clemson Trustees Minutes, 2021 July 15, Clemson University Board Of Trustees

Minutes

No abstract provided.

Exploring Kindergarten Teachers’ Classroom Practices And Beliefs In Writing, Ying Guo, Cynthia Puranik, Megan Schneider Dinnesen, Anna H. Hall

Publications

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine how kindergarten teachers teach writing and their beliefs about writing instruction using survey methodology. Participants in this study included 78 kindergarten teachers in the United States. Results revealed that most kindergarten teachers used a balanced approach to writing instruction, combining instructional procedures from two common methods for teaching writing: skills instruction and process writing. The majority of kindergarten teachers devoted considerable time to writing instruction (36 min a day) and student writing (24 min a day) and used most of the instructional practices included in the survey to teach writing. These …

Examining Teacher Reflection In A Multimodal Composition About Identity, Hazel Vega, Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens

Publications

This study aimed to examine the reflection and development of a multimodal composition exploring the topic of professional identity formation in a teacher education program of teaching English as a Foreign language (EFL). Using a social design experiment, this study examined the process of a key participant. Three themes were identified: (1) iterations through her composition, (2) critical examination of readings, and (3) giving and receiving feedback. This study contributes to a nuanced conceptualization of reflection through multimodal composition when mediating reflection in identity work in EFL teacher learning.

Clemson Trustees Minutes, 2021 May 4, Clemson University Board Of Trustees

Minutes

No abstract provided.

Clemson Commencement Program, May 2021, Clemson University

Clemson Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Historical Nets, Jenny E. Washburne

All Theses

This creative thesis consists of two historical fiction short stories and a critical essay discussing the merits and challenges of writing historical fiction. The essay ties together the main themes of the short stories, both set in the early 1900s American west, and discusses how an author’s choice in character, plot, and setting may interact with a historical perspective to capture something that transcends time. As the critical component of the thesis, the essay also explores the techniques of well-known fiction writers who use history in their storytelling, drawing together time and place in ways unique to the genre. The …

Augmented Solvability Of Nth Degree Polynomials, Joseph Swanson

All Theses

A group is called solvable if its derived series descends to the identity element. Galois discovered that a polynomial is solvable by radicals if and only if its Galois group is solvable. In 1824, Niels Abel published a paper proving the insolvability of a general quintic polynomial. In this paper, we provide two augmented strategies to solve all quintics, and discuss methods for how to make all nth degree polynomials solvable.

Covid-19 And The Emergence Of A New Illness Narrative, Thomas M. Allison

All Theses

Arranging the experiences of our lives in some kind of order gives us a way to make sense of ourselves, others, and the things that happen to us. The singular chaos of being in a body, being of a body, becomes a little easier to articulate when channeled through a narrative form. Perhaps this is why scholars of literature and medicine have become increasingly interested in diaristic, autobiographical accounts of illness, or illness narratives. Texts of this variety, emerging in print around the mid-twentieth century and proliferating online through the present, contain the experience of illness in a manageable framework. …

“The Profoundest Arcana Of Our Dual Existence, And Its Intermediates”: The Technology Of Monstrously Gendered Bodies In “Carmilla” And Havelock Ellis, Evelyn Grey

All Theses

Queer readings of the Gothic traditionally privilege and prioritize a lens of stabilized sexuality at the forefront of their framework for tackling the genre and its works, often dismissing the destabilizing effects of gender queerness in their theoretical pre-occupations. This thesis takes up Susan Stryker’s political project of de-centering and de-privileging queer-sexuality as the primary lens of queer critique and does so through a reading of Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” to read Carmilla as a prototypically trans character, a topos that is woven in and inseparable from her status as a paradigmatic Gothic monster. The Gothic is read as trans and …

Revolutions Of Virtues: Revisiting The Underpinnings Of Rhetorical Education, Eric Reid Hamilton

All Dissertations

This dissertation concerns the prevalent disconnect between writing instruction and moral education in modern university settings. The project calls for integrating the progymnasmata as informed through Aristotelian virtue ethics to enable rhetorical flourishing. I examine the need for explicit ethical frameworks in writing instruction, evaluating multiple approaches and advocating virtue ethics. All fourteen exercises of the progymnasmata, according to the system popularized by Aphthonius of Antioch, will be detailed and updated for the contemporary classroom. Quintilian’s pedagogical scholarship and practice will serve as a model for application. The specific virtues of adaptability, experimentation, and mindfulness will be promoted as central …

Science Portfolios Embedding The Nature Of Science, Lauren Simpson, Brooke A. Whitworth

Publications

No abstract provided.

Off To A Poor Start: The Role Of Childhood Adversity In Employee Burnout, Turnover, Commitment, And Counterproductive Behavior, Baylor Graham

All Theses

Despite the abundance of interdisciplinary research on childhood adversity, the topic has been largely neglected as it relates to occupational health. However, this understudied area has important implications for both research and practice. Using the Matthew Effect and Conservation of Resources Theory as a foundation, the present study investigated the relationship between childhood adversity and adult work-related outcomes. The literature on childhood adversity suggests that adverse experiences as a child such as abuse, or poverty accumulate and result in adults who are at a disadvantage in many ways such as in their interpersonal relationships, occupational and educational success, and mental …

On Moving Beyond And Looking Behind: An Analysis Of Contemporary Queer Of Color Digital Art And Performance, Caroline Kinderthain

All Theses

Queer theory has long limited its revolutionary potential by prioritizing white gay cis men in the fight for political and social change. Theorists like Roderick Ferguson, José Esteban Muñoz, Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, and Jasbir Puar, to name a few, have expanded the foundations of queer theory to account for queer people of color and the potential for queer futurity. The innovative work on queer utopia that is set up in Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia is the foundation for the performance and art analyses that shape this project. To contextualize the queer utopian looking that I find crucial to these objects, …

Change In Charleston’S Built Environment: A Study Of Building Footprints Comparing Primary Dwellings To Secondary Buildings In Harleston Village, Gabriel Michael Cristofari

All Theses

This thesis investigates the rates of change for main dwellings and secondary buildings in Harleston Village, one of Charleston, South Carolina's, early suburban neighborhoods. The goal of this thesis is to study how the frequency of change for secondary buildings compares with that of primary dwellings and to see if secondary buildings encounter a greater rate of change compared with primary dwellings. The research will quantify an anecdotal phenomenon, of outbuildings being demolished or altered more than primary buildings. The study area for this thesis is Harleston Village, and the sample data was gathered from nine city blocks. The two …

Professional Development Needs Assessment For Environmental Educators, Laura Banister Woods

All Theses

To assess the training needs of environmental educators, a survey was designed and distributed to members of environmental education organizations. This survey included a list of 28 professional competencies representing five overarching areas that was compiled with a team of professionals and practitioners and informed by the North American Association for Environmental Education’s (NAAEE) Guidelines for Excellence (2019). Respondents to the survey were asked to rate each professional competency in terms of 1.) how important they think it is, and 2.) how well prepared they feel to perform it in their current position as an environmental educator. These two scores …

Defending A Nation: Synthesizing Geographic Information System Analysis And Ground Penetrating Radar To Locate Battlefield Features Associated With The 1780 Siege Of Charleston, Lisa Gardiner

All Theses

Common methods used to locate battlefield features have not been utilized extensively on the Charleston peninsula. This thesis explores methods used to locate battlefield features and their effectiveness on the Charleston peninsula. The methods were utilized in areas related to the Siege of Charleston in 1780 during the American Revolution. These methods include research into historic accounts of battlefield features, geographic information systems (GIS) to georeference historic maps of the Charleston peninsula, LiDAR to detect the topography of the land and locate any changes to the land over time, and finally ground penetrating radar (GPR) to locate any battlefield features. …

Contemporary Women's Poetry And Leaning Into The Senses, Samantha Keebler

All Theses

This project reveals the ways in which contemporary women poets return to and embrace the senses. Sensory expression has long been a source of shame, especially for women. Our fear of embracing our bodies and their situation in the world is symptomatic of misogynistic tropes and the phallocentric order. By prioritizing the body, poets like Jorie Graham, Carolyn Forché, and Morgan Parker subvert the patriarchal order and make space for women in the literary canon. They also challenge us to recognize sensuality as a valuable facet of poetic expression, a locus of untapped information, and a great source of power. …

Weaponizing Faith: ‘Spectral Evidence’ In Longfellow, Miller And Trump, Paul Hyde

All Theses

This thesis explores a particular type of irrational pattern-seeking — specifically, “spectral evidence” — in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Giles Corey of the Salem Farms (1872) and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953). It concludes with observations of this concept’s continued and concerning presence by other names in Trump-era politics. The two works by Longfellow and Miller make a natural pairing because both are plays inspired by the Salem witchcraft trials (1692-93), a notorious historical miscarriage of justice. Robert Warshow calls the Salem witchcraft trials, aside from slavery, “the most disconcerting single episode in our history: the occurrence of the unthinkable on …

Parenting, Vaccines, And Covid-19: A Machine-Learning Approach, Kathleen Thurson

All Theses

COVID-19 is currently at the forefront of both out-of-school time program providers’ and parents’ minds, with additional policies and procedures added existing operating standards to protect the health of participants, staff, and parents (Environmental Health & Engineering, 2020). A failure to adequately prepare and react to different parenting styles may have both operational and financial implications for out-of-school time programs. These implications are only further exacerbated in the additional context of a global pandemic. While the COVID-19 vaccine is a hope to many that the end of the pandemic is near, parental vaccine hesitancy or refusal may pose a significant …

Stalking The Wild X Patent, Barbara J. Hampton

Journal of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association

For most of the history of the patent office, recorded patents were used primarily to enforce the patent holder’s rights during the life of the patent and to evaluate prior art, in determining patentability. The limits of manual indexes and hand counts of entries made more sophisticated analyses impractical. Recently, a number of researchers have begun to apply scientometric methods to assess trends and causation in patterns of innovation in the United States by organizing data elements from patent documents. Although most patents are now searchable, fully digital records, the records of the earliest patents (1790–1836) were incinerated in a …

"Enthusiastic Jew And Lover Of Humanity": August Bondi And The Roots Of Transnational Freedom During The Long Nineteenth Century, Matthew Christopher Long

All Theses

Migration is a decidedly human condition that has influenced the development of all nations. Yet the cultural and demographic impacts upon the United States during the long nineteenth century brought about by the mass movements of peoples from Africa, Europe, and beyond were especially pronounced. Immigrants to North America brought with them more than linguistic and cultural artifacts, however; propelled by intellectual currents in their countries of origin, they often carried with them a sensibility of revolution, radical republican politics, and a moral suasion that they employed as they navigated the political and social realities in their new countries. Many …