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Newscass: Newsletter Of The Center For Appalachian Studies And Services (Fall, 2001), Center Of Excellence For Appalachian Studies And Services, East Tennessee State University

NewsCASS: Newsletter of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services

NewsCASS (Fall, 2001), a newsletter of the Center of Excellence for Appalachian Studies and Services (formerly Center for Appalachian Studies and Services) at East Tennessee State University.

2001 September 24 - Graduate Council Minutes, College Of Graduate And Continuing Studies, East Tennessee State University

Graduate Council Agendas and Minutes

No abstract provided.

Why Volunteer And Is Volunteering Worth The Effort?, Patricia Avery Bellamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes why people volunteer in two counties of East Tennessee. The study describes the concept of volunteering and its positive impact upon society on a regional and national level. The characteristics of people who volunteer, why people choose to volunteer, and the significance of their volunteering were assessed through a survey questionnaire. The survey questionnaire was administered in Carter County (Elizabethton) and Washington County (Johnson City) Tennessee to 13 charitable and non-charitable agencies that utilize volunteers aged 18 years and over. Out of 243 survey questionnaires distributed in Elizabethton and Johnson City, Tennessee, 124 individuals responded. Data collected …

Using Software Engineering Metrics In Ap Modularization., Kwaku Owusu-Tieku

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Significant amount of work has been done in software engineering in terms of reuse. With the use of object-orientation and design patterns that support the development of reusable modules, it appears that the development and reuse of software modules in creating new systems is becoming more and more common. The software engineering world, however has taken reuse more seriously than database; more research and improvement in reuse has been made in software engineering than in database. This paper investigates how software engineering metrics can be applied in the development of reusable database modules. This research provides a model for predicting …

Socioeconomic, Demographic, Attitudinal And Involvement Factors Associated With Math Achievement In Elementary School., Jennifer N. White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which socioeconomic factors, demographic factors, parent and student attitudes, and parent involvement were associated with math achievement. Students in Grade 5 were selected as the population for this study. Random sampling procedures were used to select the sample. Students in the sample completed a modified version of the Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitudes Scales. Normal Curve Equivalent Scores (NCEs) from the math scales on the TerraNova Standardized Achievement Test were obtained for all students from the individual school records. Parents of the students also participated by answering questions pertaining to …

Fight The Power: Protest, Showdown And Civil Rights Activity In Three Southern Cities, 1960-1965., Kyle Thomas Scanlan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes the significant events of the Civil Rights Movement from 1960 to 1965, examining the campaigns of Albany, Georgia in 1962, Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and Selma, Alabama in 1965. In the wake of the freedom rides of 1960-61, Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference was looking for a way to dramatically reveal the racial injustice of the South. Stumbling into a campaign in Albany, SCLC found thr right method in the use of nonviolent direct action. While Albany was a failure, it was this campaign that led to the campaigns of Birmingham and Selma which led …

Attitudes Toward Suicidal Women Based On Gender Of The Participant And Race Of The Target Figure., Carrie E. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of gender on attitudes toward Black and White suicidal females.

Participants included 37 Caucasian graduate students who completed demographic questionnaires, Suicide Behavior Questionnaires (SBQ) (Ellis & Jones, 1996), and one of two scenarios with a modified version of the Suicide Attitude Vignette Experience Scale (SAVE) (Stillion, White, Edwards, & McDowell, 1989). The research design was a 2 (sex of participant) x 2 (suicide ideation of participant) x 2 (race of target figure) independent groups factorial. Independent ANOVAS were performed to interpret the significance of main and interaction effects.

No main …

Examining At-Risk Students Based On Their Attitudes Toward Educational Factors: Is There A Gender Difference In Identification Of At-Risk Students?, Cynthia Mae Tilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among four specific typologies of environmental factors and at-risk teenagers. The four typologies explored were influences by parents and peers, teachers, educational setting, and factors relating to school behavior.

Six research questions guided the study and six null hypotheses were formulated and tested at the .05 level of significance. The degree of relationship between the independent variables and the environmental factors was analyzed by using the Independent samples t-test and One Way ANOVA. The study sample consisted of 195 middle school students in three counties in Northwestern North Carolina and …

How Is A Child's Perception Of Self Affected By Retention?, Brenda S. Tweed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to inform educators of the impact of grade retention on a child's perception of self, and to provide recommendations and practical applications for educators in the future.

Although the long-term effects of grade retention are still unclear, the number of students being retained annually is steadily on the rise. Conflicting beliefs about the advantages and disadvantages of the retention experience make it difficult to clearly predict which students will benefit from being retained.

A large body of research reports the impact of grade retention on scholastic achievement. As retention has usually been considered to …

God In The Darkness: Mysticism And Paradox In The Poetry Of George Herbert And Henry Vaughan., Elizabeth Anne Acker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While aspects of mysticism appear in the poetry of both George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, the general consensus among critics has acknowledged the mysticism of Vaughan while ignoring its roots in Herbert's writings. Among the leading authorities on the poetry of Herbert, there has been a general tendency to dismiss, ignore, or explain away mystical elements. A study of representative works by prominent critics to ascertain their positions on this issue reveals not only what can be known for certain about Herbert's theology, but also the interpretations that have been offered for his most famous poems. While these interpretations are …

Investigation Of Perceptions Of Environmental Management Systems And Its Perceived Importance In A Corporation Undergoing Iso 14001 Certification., Charlette Michelle Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has created a series of voluntary standards (ISO 14000) which promote waste reduction and improve businesses’ environmental management. ISO 14001 is the Environmental Management System portion of ISO 14000 requiring employee awareness and involvement. The Robert Bosch Corporation is undergoing ISO 14001 certification.

In this study, a 23-question survey was used to evaluate Bosch employees’ awareness of ISO 14000 and their support of a waste reduction program at four plants (Johnson City, TN; Sumter, South Carolina; Ashland, Ohio; and South Bend, Indiana). Employees surveyed were not yet familiar with ISO 14000 and that their …

Strategies To Ease The Negative Effects Of Mobility On Academic Achievement., D.Kaye Reed Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mobility, the movement of students from school to school, affects students, classrooms, schools, and systems. Extensive research has been conducted on the relationship between mobility and student academics. Although the research has not determined mobility is the cause of lower academic scores, it is certainly a contributing factor. Most students with high mobility rates also have difficulty in math, reading, or language. Teachers of classrooms with these students tend to "flatten" the curriculum by reviewing more than usual. Long-range planning for these students can be difficult. Schools and systems may plan programs for students who have moved on by the …

Coal Mechanization And Migration From Mcdowell County, West Virginia, 1932-1970., Mark Myers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The economy and population of McDowell County, West Virginia, drastically decreased between 1950 and 1970. The increased reliance of the coal industry, McDowell County's primary industry, on labor saving machinery resulted in a loss of employment opportunities. This study seeks to investigate the reasons for the reliance on coal and the results of the mechanization movement in the coal industry on McDowell County. Using production and employment data of two representative McDowell County coal companies, it is clear that the introduction of continuous mining machines, which combined the cutting and loading of coal into one step, allowed companies to mine …

2000-2001 - Graduate Council Annual Report, College Of Graduate And Continuing Studies, East Tennessee State University

Graduate Council Agendas and Minutes

No abstract provided.

2001 May 21 - Graduate Council Minutes, College Of Graduate And Continuing Studies, East Tennessee State University

Graduate Council Agendas and Minutes

No abstract provided.

A Data Layout Descriptor Language (Ladel)., Ashfaq Ahmed Jeelani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To transfer data between devices and main memory, standard C block I/O interfaces use block buffers of type char. C++ programs that perform block I/O commonly use typecasting to move data between structures and block buffers. The subject of this thesis, the layout description language (LADEL), represents a high-level solution to the problem of block buffer management. LADEL provides operators that hide the casting ordinarily required to pack and to unpack buffers and guard against overflow of the virtual fields. LADEL also allows a programmer to dynamically define a structured view of a block buffer's contents. This view includes the …

Integration Of Student Academic Record And Major Requirements Through Xml., Zhujun Hou

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a software application based on previous studies by 1997 Oak Ridge Design Studio Team that matches students' progress with major requirements in their college career. This study addresses the problems of previous studies and suggests a solution. A powerful new technique, XML, is used to model, store and process the data of major requirements and student records. This application produces an HTML file that provides detailed information of a student's academic progress towards graduation.

"'Tis Hard To Dance With One Shoe": The Failure Of The Fathers In Walker's The Color Purple And Mccourt's Angela's Ashes., Gwendolyn Nicole Hale

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In his story, “The Commitments,” Roddy Doyle identifies the Irish as "the blacks of Europe" (148). This sentiment typifies the oppression of the two cultures. The overwhelmingly oppressive society of the two aforementioned groups creates an atmosphere of failure, particularly for the fathers, who, for the most part, are supposed to be the heads of their families. Through Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the reader discovers the effects of these failures of the fathers due to tyrannical societies that impose dominance over such groups as the African-Americans and the Irish. The main characters, Celie and …

Attitudes Toward Violence And Reasons For Living In Adolescents With High, Moderate, And Low Self-Esteem., Rhonda Marie Blevins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes toward violence and reasons for living in adolescents with high, moderate, and low self-esteem. An attitudes toward violence scale was devised for the purposes of this study. Self-Esteem was assessed using the shortened version of Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (SES). The Brief Reasons for Living in Adolescents (BRFL-A) was utilized to assess adaptive characteristics. The independent variables were gender and self-esteem. The dependent variables were total reasons for living score and attitudes toward violence score.

Participants included 138 males and 95 females, ages 11 to 15 years old (M = 13.3) from …

Explorations In The Classification Of Vertices As Good Or Bad., Eugenie Marie Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For a graph G, a set S is a dominating set if every vertex in V-S has a neighbor in S. A vertex contained in some minimum dominating set is called good; otherwise it is bad. A graph G has g(G) good vertices and b(G) bad vertices. The relationship between the order of G and g(G) assigns the graph to one of four classes.

Our results include a method of classifying caterpillars. Further, we develop realizability conditions for a graph G given a triple of nonnegative integers …

Gender Differences In Coping With Chronic Illness., Madhu Karnad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death in the United States. Therefore, it is important to discover adaptive life-maintaining characteristics in high risk populations. Many patients with life-threatning illnesses have frequent suicidal thoughts. The difference in reasons for living between men and women with and without chronic illness was investigated. The suicide ideation was determined by ratings on a 48 item Reasons for Living questionnaire. Degree of chronocity of illness and illnes related issues were determined by a demographic questionnaire. Results showed that men commit suicide at a higher rate than women. Results of ANOVA'S indicated that individuals with …

Socioeconomic Status And Media Exposure As Factors In Empathic Development., David E. Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study examined the empathic attainment of young children (mean age 7 years) as a function of the child's socioeconomic status. Further, the potential intervening variable of violent media representations within product advertisements is assessed within and between the observed socioeconomic status groups. Three critical dimensions of empathy were assessed: cognitive, affective and behavioral. Participants were 200 volunteers recruited from public and private schools in a small region in southern Appalachia. Respondents were rated on their response to animated video clips depicting an individual in emotional distress. Results suggest that media exposure has significant effect on measures of affective …

Quantitative Analysis Of Domain Testing Effectiveness., Narendra Koneru

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The criticality of the applications modeled by the real-time software places stringent requirements on software quality before deploying into real use. Though automated test tools can be used to run a large number of tests efficiently, the functionality of any test tool is not complege without providing a means for analyzing the test results to determine potential problem sub-domains and sub-domains that need to be covered, and estimating the reliability of the modeled system.

This thesis outlines a solution strategy and implementation of that strategy for deriving quantitative metrics from domain testing of real-time control software tested via simulation. The …

The Assessment Of Tennessee Community College Roles In Business Incubator Development As Perceived By Administrators And Tenants., Garry Grau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As accountability pressures have increased on community colleges, they have been challenged to demonstrate their value to the communities they serve. One role commonly included in community colleges' mission statements in Tennessee and nationally is support of local economic development. The purpose of the study was to assess the importance and accomplishment of 17 activities and 3 roles of Tennessee community colleges regarding their support of business incubators that provide resource-sharing networks to entrepreneurs in their critical startup phases.

To conduct this study, a questionnaire was developed and provided to administrators associated with incubators and incubator tenants to ascertain their …

An Analysis Of Configurations In A Nongraded Elementary School In Northeast Tennessee., Pamela Ann Evanshen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare reading and math academic achievement scores of a cohort of students who had experienced mixed-age (two-grade span) and multiage (three-grade span) configurations, in a selected nongraded elementary school located in East Tennessee. Student attitude toward school, gender and socioeconomic status were also analyzed.

The causal-comparative quantitative approach, along with convenience sampling, was the foundation for this study. Academic achievement normal curve equivalency (NCE) scores from the TerraNova Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills for the 1997-2000 academic years and survey results from the Attitude Toward School Inventory (Meier, 1973) given in the concluding …

Historical Linguistic Analysis Of Traditional English Christmas Carols., Tami Lynn Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Through the process of historical linguistics it is possible to determine approximate dates of authorship and meaning that establish the conventions of a particular genre. To accomplish such a study, elements of phonology, morphology, and syntax are compared and the results create a field of descriptors representative of a style of writing of a period.

By using the method on eight well-known Christmas carols, four were determined to have been written prior to the dates previously speculated, possibly originating in the Middle Ages. The remaining four were written based on the conventions set by the earlier medieval carols.

A Dendrochemical Analysis Of Lead, Aluminum, And Calcium In Southern Appalachian American Beech., Laura Suzanne Southerland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The health of the northern hardwood forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia has recently gained attention from the media and environmental stakeholders. This project was designed to examine concentrations of metals, including lead, aluminum, and calcium in growth rings of an important northern hardwood species, American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.) at Mount Rogers and Whitetop Mountain, Virginia. Dominant and codominant trees were sampled from sixteen research plots located at two different elevations. Samples were crossdated, divided into sections of ten-year periods, and analyzed using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Concentrations of metals were negatively correlated …

The Company Of Animals: A Nontoxic Approach., Bonnie K. Foss Boochard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This document investigates the concept of why man creates animal images and introduces the influences and focus of the artwork contained in the public exhibition. These original images focus on the similarities between animal and human personalities. Also included is a brief history of each "ink on paper" printmaking process used and a comparison of the results. All of the techniques discussed generally have a photographic process as their basis and use personal photographs and drawings for the foundation of each original print. In conclusion, areas for growth, enhancement, and future work are discussed, including a summary of the personal …

Mystery In A Common Place: A Supporting Paper For A Graduate Exhibition., Jayne Marie Selser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a supporting paper for a Master of Fine Arts graduate thesis exhibition of black and white photographs held in Slocumb Gallery April 2-7, 2001. The exhibit represents my major concentration of study in Art at East Tennessee State University. The photographs depict cultural aspects of the rural Smoky Mountains.

I begin with a description of the means used to suggest the mysterious aspects of human existence in everyday life. The second chapter discusses the influences of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Graciella Iturbide and details aspects of the Surrealist aesthetic suggested in this body of work. Other articulated contemporary influences …

Leveraging Test Measurements Into Proposing Additional Domain Tests., Radhika Turlapati

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accuracy and efficiency are extremely critical factors for large real-time control applications. A small oversight can cause catastrophic failure of a real-time system. Thus, these applications have to be tested meticulously to prevent any catastrophe that might occur. But, testing these applications exhaustively is not tractable, mainly due to the inherent complexity of the applications and also the huge amount of inputs and outputs that these applications involve. In order to save valuable amounts of time and resources, automated testing is imperative. Also, quantitative metrics have to be provided that assess the existing quality of the system and help increase …