Digital Commons Network^™

The Transition Experiences Of Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Students Into Postsecondary Education, Christy S. Adkins

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine what the transition experiences of deaf and hard of hearing students into postsecondary education were and what barriers, exist within the transition process. It is evident that deaf and hard of hearing students, face a number of challenges throughout their academic career. Aspects of deaf culture, language acquisition, and communication method, along with lack of support services further exacerbate, an already difficult transition from secondary school to college. This study sought to shed light on the additional obstacles faced by deaf and hard of hearing students, as they transition into their first …

Help-Seeking Behaviors And Coping Styles Related To Sexual Assault Labelling, Shahzor Hashim

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Sexual Assault is defined as non-consensual sexual activity that includes groping and rape. Based on previous research, a large number of people experience sexual assault, which results in trauma and post-traumatic stress. In order to mediate the stress, people try to cope and seek help to manage the distress and trauma stress. Following the assault, people adopt the identity of or are viewed as victim/survivor. This study investigated the difference between sexual assault label, victim or survivor, in terms of coping strategies, approach or avoidant, and help-seeking behaviors. The study was conducted by administering a survey via Amazon’s Mturk. A …

Paleofloods And Landform Development Influence Carbon Storage In A Humid-Subtropical River Valley, Christopher Lance Stewart

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Floodplains can store large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) despite covering a small fraction of the global land area. Since these valley-bottom landforms build through the action of flooding, the century to millennial-scale record of overbank deposition could be important in understanding controls on deep (>30 cm) SOC storage. Yet, the influence of flood history and landform development on carbon content is surprisingly not well known. I use a combined geological and pedological approach to characterize the sedimentation, soil development, and SOC of fluvial terraces along an impounded reach of the humid-subtropical Tennessee River valley, U.S.A. The standardized …

The Legacy Of Lynching: On Representation, Remembrance, And Reconciliation, Jackie Chesser

Liberal Arts Capstones

The Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial of Peace and Justice is a memorial rooted in recognizing and naming the victims of lynching and racial terror. This memorial is a safe space for people to connect with history and learn about the injustices faced by their ancestors, and, conversely, the injustices wrought upon others by their ancestors. This memorial doesn’t stop at recognizing the victims, it also explains the effects of racial terror beyond lynching, including the Jim Crow Era and mass incarceration.

The National Memorial of Peace and Justice is also focused on extending its impact though its Memorial Monument …

Knowledge Level And Attitudes Of University Faculty Regarding Assistance Animals Compared To The General Population, Anna R. Ledonne

Honors College Theses

Assistance animals are becoming a greater presence on college campuses. The purpose of the following study was to explore university faculty’s confidence in defining different types of assistance animals, their knowledge of legal mandates, and their attitudes regarding assistance animals. A survey was issued to university faculty utilizing an online program and included measures from a previous study done by Schoenfeld-Tacher, Hellyer, Cheung, and Kogan (2017), as well as added questions to more specifically address the research questions and sample. This study was used to compare faculty knowledge and the knowledge of the general population. 91 participant responses were analyzed. …

Finally., Tiffany Day

B.A./B.S. Practicum Group Exhibit (ART 499)

Tiffany Day

Trash has become part of our everyday scenery. Check the Highways. Litter Breeds Litter. The physical effects on nature made through human intervention, drives me to document the aftereffects of what those interactions cause. Whether it be forgotten buildings in the middle of the woods, or plastic bags caught on broken tree branches, I capture images of the environment in disrepair. Through exploring ideas such as human interaction with nature, I hope that my work heightens my viewers’ awareness of the global climate crisis as they move through nature every day. I pay attention to everyday evidence of …

How News Media Coverage Of Crises Promotes Conspiracy Beliefs, Richard Kornrumpf, Adam Enders Phd

Posters-at-the-Capitol

While scholars of conspiracy theories have recently made great strides in understanding the basic nature and correlates of conspiratorial thinking, we still know little about how conspiracy beliefs are disseminated and communicated, especially when it comes to traditional media. In this instance, we use a unique experiment to investigate whether media coverage of mass shootings – complete with the uncertainty, conflicting reports, and dubious official narratives that characterize such coverage – provides the raw material for conspiracy theories and promotes conspiracy beliefs among viewers. We find that implicit conspiratorial information – that which causes confusion and foments uncertainty – does …

Mental Health On Campus: What Barriers Are There To Seeking Help?, Lindsay Thomas, Michael Bordieri

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Previous research has found that mental health disorders on college campuses have become increasingly prevalent, and many college students are not seeking help for their psychological health. This study examines college students’ views on seeking help for mental health problems, as well as their knowledge about mental health resources on campus. In addition, the study aims to identify what barriers are preventing students from seeking treatment for their mental health problems and what college students believe are the benefits of seeking mental health treatment. Participants (N = 95) in this study were asked to complete questionnaires that measure both their …

The Importance Of Teacher Behavior In Increasing Student Success: Are Teachers Prepared To Meet The Needs Of Students With Emotional Or Behavioral Disorders?, Justin T. Cooper

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Despite the dissemination of specific instructional practices including High Leverage Practices and other pedagogical strategies that are considered fundamental to the success of students with emotional/behavioral disorders, research suggests that many of these practices are occurring in schools at unacceptably low rates. This research-to-practice gap is not a new phenomenon. This paper provides an overview of some of these specific teacher-driven instructional behaviors and the implications of the paucity of their use in schools. In addition, the importance of the role that teacher preparation programs play, and steps that they can take to alleviate the research-to-practice gap are discussed.

Collaboration With Community Partners To Enhance Clinical Practice, Susan Keesey, Christina Noel, Nancy Hulan, Pete Hoechner

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Teacher preparation programs are shifting focus to models that integrate pedagogy and coursework into an applied clinical teaching model. Research clearly supports this change to help new teachers prepare for the demographics of today’s classrooms. Teacher preparation is improved through the implementation of high-leverage practices, the key skills new teachers are expected to know and apply. This article highlights a collaborative professional development day designed to strengthen the clinical partnership by developing a shared vision and common language by incorporating high-leverage practices.

Choice As An Antecedent Intervention Provided To Children With Emotional Disturbances, Alexandra J. Taylor, Amy Lein

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

Students with ED typically demonstrate social, behavioral, and academic deficiencies within the school setting. This article addresses the antecedent behavior interventions (ABI) of the provision of choice-making opportunities which are an effective practice within the PBIS framework. This study employed a single-subject multiple-baseline across-participants design to examine the effect of choice-making provided in social skills instruction on both academic (i.e., correct responses) and behavioral outcomes (i.e., task engagement, disruptions) for three elementary-aged students with ED.

Results demonstrated improved behaviors of three student participants. All participants showed an increase in task engagement and a decrease in number of disruptions from baseline …

A Cross Sectional Study Evaluating Psychosocial Job Stress And Health Risk In Emergency Department Nurses, Rupkatha Bardhan, Karen Heaton, Melissa Davis, Peter Chen, Dale A. Dickinson, Claudiu T. Lungu

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Nurses experience psychosocial work stress that may negatively affect physical and mental health over time. In this cross-sectional study we investigated prevalence of job stress and oxidative stress in nurses, and determined if significant relationships exist between higher job stress scores and demographic factors and working conditions. Emergency department nurses (n = 42) were recruited from a University Hospital following Institutional Review Board approval. Job stress indicators, effort–reward ratio and overcommitment were evaluated from survey questionnaires using the effort–reward imbalance model, and associations with age, sex, body mass index, and working conditions were measured by logistic regression analysis. Oxidative stress …

Recounting The Conversation: Learning How To Write A Literature Review, Alexandra O. Hendley

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This in-class activity gives students practice summarizing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from numerous sources – skills needed when writing a literature review. As a lowstakes, collaborative, in-class writing task, this activity may also help alleviate some of the fears that students may have about writing. Writing manuals like Writing in Sociology (Edwards 2015) and Writing in Sociology: A Brief Guide (Smith-Lovin and Moskovitz 2017), refer to scholarly literatures as “conversations” occurring within a “party” or “room full of people.” Applying this metaphor, this exercise asks students to imagine themselves at a party, overhearing attendees’ remarks. Students get a list of …

Asap: A Source Code Authorship Program, Matthew F. Tennyson Phd

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Source code authorship attribution is the task of determining who wrote a computer program, based on its source code, usually when the author is either unknown or under dispute. Areas where this can be applied include software forensics, cases of software copyright infringement, and detecting plagiarism. Numerous methods of source code authorship attribution have been proposed and studied. However, there are no known easily accessible and user-friendly programs that perform this task. Instead, researchers typically develop software in an ad hoc manner for use in their studies, and the software is rarely made publicly available. In this paper, we present …

Murray State University Faculty Handbook 2019-20, Murray State University

Reports

The Faculty Handbook is designed to provide members of the faculty access to basic information relating to policies, procedures, and regulations that are important to them as teaching personnel employed at Murray State University. The Faculty Handbook does not refer to all policies and procedures at the university, but references those which are relevant to faculty. While the Faculty Handbook will provide information on many aspects of the university, faculty members are expected to be familiar with the contents of the Faculty Handbook, the Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual, the Staff Handbook, the University Academic Bulletin, and all student life …

Democracy And The Epistemic Limits Of Markets, Kevin J. Elliott

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

A recent line of argument insists that replacing democracy with markets would improve social decision making due to markets’ superior use of knowledge. These arguments are flawed by unrealistic assumptions, unfair comparisons, and a neglect of the epistemic limits of markets. In reality, the epistemic advantages of markets over democracy are circumscribed and often illusory. A recognition of markets’ epistemic limits can, however, provide guidance for designing institutions in ways that capture the advantages of both.

Autonomous Object Collecting And Depositing Robot, Erik Anderson

Honors College Theses

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) hosted SoutheastCon 2019, with one of the conference’s focuses being a robotics competition. The robotics competition simulates the task of removing space debris near a space station and depositing it in predetermined areas. This task must be completed by an autonomous robot that meets a variety of physical design criteria. The performance of robots is measured by means of points, wherein accomplishing positive tasks earns points and vice versa, and the robot that most consistently scores points wins.

In response to the competition, the four engineering physics majors created a robot that …

Raped-Related Beliefs And Social Reactions, Tara Pursley

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Many agree that sexual violence is a pervasive problem, but there is less agreement regarding how to classify and define various experiences of rape. Research has demonstrated that the beliefs one holds about rape are the strongest indicator for how both victims and non-victims of sexual assault perceive and classify unwanted sexual experiences. What is less understood is the way that this perception influences how non-victims respond to a victim’s disclosure of sexual assault. The current study sought to fill this gap. Participants included 119 female college students (M_age = 19.23, SD = 1.98; 81% White). Results revealed that …

Comparison Of Peat-Based Planting Media To Sustainably Produced Planting Medias: Watering And Other Considerations, Mary Grace Jackson

Scholars Week

Researchers are actively addressing the questions that haunts all agriculturalists: Will we be able to feed the projected population of 9.8 billion people in 2050? Newly developed soil mixes might be the key to solving this daunting question. Research is proving that this sustainable media is a way to add nutrients back into our existing soil.

Advance Directives In Primary Care, Andrew T. Vincent

Scholars Week

Advanced Directives are one of the most important documents in the health care system. An advanced directive is a “living will” that describes medical ambitions for the patient’s end-of-life care. The idea of end of life can be stressful for patients, families and health care professionals, and advance directives guide these participants into making end-of-life decisions organized. A dilemma occurring in health care includes patients arriving to emergency departments and critical care areas without an advance directives. A policy was introduced to initiate AD conversation prophylactic to extreme injury or impending death.

The Efficacy Of Mechanical Compression Devices In Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Emma A. French

Scholars Week

This project examines the ability of mechanical compression devices, such as the popular LUCAS device, to produce the desired outcomes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when compared to manual chest compression performed by a CPR certified individual. For the purpose of this project, desired outcomes include correct compression rate and depth according to American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines, return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) in the patient, long term survival of patients who achieve ROSC, and prevention of serious physical damage related to chest compressions. Data from multiple research studies comparing outcomes of mechanical compression devices and manual chest compression was reviewed …

Chlorophyll A And Primary Production Dynamics In Kentucky Lake: 2009-2018, Morgan Franklin

Scholars Week

Chlorophyll α (chl α) can be used as a proxy for phytoplankton biomass, while primary productivity (PP), the rate at which carbon is fixed into phytoplankton cells, is an indicator of how quickly carbon is turned over within the phytoplankton community. The purpose of this research was to examine the spatial distribution of chl α seasonally in Kentucky Lake and to examine the relationship between chl α and PP in two embayments of contrasting land use. The two sites analyzed are Ledbetter and Panther embayments. Data analysis showed that the chl α and PP were highly correlated; r=0.45 in Ledbetter …

“What’S On The Test?”: The Impact Of Giving Students A Concept-List Study Guide, Patrick Cushen, Jana Michelle Hackathorn, Maria D. Vázquez Brown, Sean Rife, Amanda Watson Joyce, Eric D. Smith, Dr. Michael Bordieri, Phd, Paul W. Anderson, Marie E. Kalsson, Jordan Daniels

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Students frequently request concept-list study guides prior to exams, but the benefits of instructors providing such resources are unclear. Research on memory and comprehension has suggested that some challenges in learning are associated with benefits to performance. In the context of an introductory psychology course, a study was conducted to investigate the impact of providing a concept-list study guide on exam performance, as opposed to having students create a study guide. Additionally, student preferences for various types of study guides were examined. Results indicated that although students greatly prefer that the instructors provide a study guide (as opposed to making …

The Effects Of Guilt And Sadness On Sugar Consumption, Sarah Lefebvre, Jonathan Hasford, Ze Wang

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This research examines how the discrete negative emotions of guilt and sadness impact individual preference for carbohydrates, specifically in the form of sugar. Using Cognitive Appraisal Theory and research in biological psychology, we identify how these two discrete emotions influence the release of cortisol, which impacts sugar preferences. The results of four studies indicate that consumers select and prepare foods with higher amounts of sugar when experiencing sadness relative to when they feel guilt. Implications for public policy as well as marketing practitioners are discussed.

Using A Token Economy Combined With A Mystery Motivator For A Student With Autism Exhibiting Challenging Behavior, Todd Whitney, Justin T. Cooper, Amy S. Lingo

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

A common characteristic of students with autism spectrum disorder is difficulty attending to and staying on task in classrooms, which can lead to inappropriate and/or disruptive behavior.

Benefits of a token economy have been examined with various individuals but few have examined its effects with children with autism spectrum disorder. This study examined the effectiveness of a token economy combined with a mystery motivator in decreasing inappropriate behaviors displayed by a student with an autism spectrum disorder in a small group setting. Results indicated that the token reinforcement program was effective in decreasing the inappropriate behaviors displayed by the student.

Transformative Apprenticeship: Enacting Teacher Identity In A Clinical Model, Melissa Wrenn, Peggy Otto, Rachel Leer

Kentucky Teacher Education Journal: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Kentucky Council for Exceptional Children

This content analysis investigates how teacher candidates (TCs) in a clinical model enact professional identity through their reflections. The researchers assume that learning is situated within specific contexts, and discursive interactions reveal much about individual beliefs. TCs in this study are part of an elementary and special education dual degree program situated within a clinical teacher preparatory academy at a large, public university. Findings indicate that TCs transition to teaching, construct practice, and internalize teaching experiences. Results contribute an understanding of how TCs develop new schema for teaching experiences and transition from novices to experts within their classroom communities.

Consumer Perceptions Of Genetically Modified Foods: A Mixed-Method Approach, Sarah Lefebvre, Laurel A. Cook, Merlyn Griffiths

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Purpose – This paper aims to examine consumers’ opinions and behavioral intentions toward foods labeled as containing genetically modified (GM) (transgenic) ingredients across plant and animal-based categories. In light of marketplace changes (i.e. labeling requirements), we explore behavioral measures based on labeling options.

Design/methodology/approach – Three studies, one online projective survey using a convenience sample of consumers and two experiments conducted with Amazon mTurk adult US participants, are included.

Findings – Consumers have negative associations with GM products vs non-GM and are more likely to purchase unlabeled GM products. GM products may offer positive economic, societal and environmental benefits. However, …

I Landed A U.F.O. On Main Street: An Autoethnography Of The Founding Of An Arts Education Organization In Appalachian Kentucky, Elise L. Kieffer Phd

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Abstract: The Appalachian region in the southern mid-west has long been the source of stereotyping for dramatic and political affect. Through the course of nine years as a resident in an Appalachian community in south-central Kentucky, the author experienced life as it is lived by the local people. Through the establishment of an art education organization, the author became entwined with local families and became familiar with the origins of many of those stereotypes. Using autoethnography to interpret her experiences, through the lens of academic research, the author will confront the primary issues that surfaced: the acute designation of outsider …

The Influence Of Ambient Scent Temperature On Food Consumption Behavior, Sarah Lefebvre, Dipayan Biswas

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

This research examines the impact of ambient odor on food consumption. The results of a field experiment and five lab experiments show that the presence of a warm ambient odor (e.g., cedarwood) versus a cool ambient odor (e.g., eucalyptus) reduces the amount of calories consumed and also leads to increased choice of lower-calorie food options. This is due to established implicit associations formed from the human body’s innate physiological response to changes in ambient temperature. Specifically, exposure to a warm (vs. cool) ambient odor, influences perceived ambient temperature, which in turn alters food consumption behaviors. The results of this research …

Chemical Regulations And The Effect On Manufacturers, Dustin Smith

Integrated Studies

This paper examines two major regulatory systems chemists and chemical manufacturers must deal with on a day-to-day basis. There are dozens of different sets of regulations that affect the chemical industry throughout the world. Many countries have their own specific rules that govern the chemicals manufactured or imported inside their borders. Specifically, this paper will examine the rise of the European Union’s REACH system, the failure and reform of the United States’ TSCA and finally, the effects these two systems have upon each other.