Digital Commons Network^™

Models Of Spiritual Leadership: Strategies For Bridging The Gap Between Policy And Ethics, Rebecca J. O'Brien

Dissertations

Public institutions are finding that strict policies premised on value-free research are incapable of dealing with the social and ethical issues facing schools. Increasingly, research is identifying how spiritual practices can be a source of insight and guidance on ethical issues and other soft leadership skills. Spiritual and servant leadership is a burgeoning area of study in the business world and health care field, but it just beginning to be examined as a guiding tool in the education field. In the current study, I interview educational leaders who self-identify as having a spiritual practice and who are responsible for oversight …

Student Withdrawals In A Job Training Program, Amy Lawrence

Master's Projects

Within the context of a competitive market, shifting funding sources, and a new regulatory environment, the purpose of this paper is not to examine educational attainment, but rather to research student drop out, or withdrawal, at the post-secondary job training institution of Center for Employment Training (CET). The foremost research questions to be answered are what are the characteristics of students who withdraw from job training programs provided by Center for Employment Training, and what factors may influence withdrawal.

The South Bay Water Recycling Program: An Evaluation Of Water Recycling Outcomes In Comparison To Selected Cities And Countries, Shannon Nguyen

Master's Projects

Is the South Bay Water Recycling (SBWR) program achieving its planned recycled water outcomes? This research will compare the SBWR program's 2018 recycled water data with other water reuse programs in Las Vegas, Orange County, Singapore, and Australia. The purpose of the research is to determine whether the SBWR program is achieving its goals for conserving fresh water for beneficial reuse, and how the outcomes compare with selected cities and countries.

A Process Evaluation Of The Campbell Union High School District Bond Measure Aa, Gabriel Altamirano

Master's Projects

The Board of Trustees at the Campbell Union High School District (CUHSD) completed a district wide facility assessment and created updated facilities master plans (CUHSD, 2015). Consultants were contracted to coordinate focus groups consisting of district students and staff to develop a list of facility needs across the district (CUHSD, 2015). The facilities at all five high schools were in need of major capital projects, from replacement of aging mechanical systems to new classroom spaces for student growth (CUHSD, 2015).

The school district decided to request a general obligation bond measure for the community to approve for the facility improvements …

Superintendent Beliefs About The Assessment And Use Of School Climate Data For Continuous Improvement, Anji Buckner-Capone

Dissertations

Academic outcomes and health outcomes are interconnected and reciprocal and school climate has emerged as a way to capture some of this relationship. An increasing trend in education policy is using multiple measures of school success, including school climate, such as California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). As school climate evolves as a critical component in state accountability there is a need to better understand the role of leaders in facilitating the implementation processes for school climate assessment accountabilities, including their beliefs and their practices. This mixed methods study explored the practices and beliefs of California Superintendents in their efforts …

Surgical First Assist: An Educational Program For Advanced Practice Providers, Sandra Walton Mobley

Doctoral Projects

As the number of surgical procedures increase, many Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) are being required to scrub in as a First Assist (FA). Unfortunately, many APPs lack any formal surgical training. The Association of perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) now requires that all advanced practice providers in the perioperative environment to complete a course that complies with Registered Nurse First Assist (RNFA) standards. The purpose of this project was to evaluate knowledge acquisition of APPs participating in a surgical FA educational program. A surgical FA course was comprised of five days of didactic learning, which included lecture, small groups, skills lab, …

Comparison Of A Numeric And A Descriptive Pain Scale In The Occupational Medicine Setting, George Francis Mcmahon Iii

Doctoral Projects

Pain is a universal phenomenon. The assessment of a patient’s pain is difficult to objectively obtain because the perception of the pain by the patient is influenced by many subjective perception variables. These variables can inflate or deflate the patient’s self-reported pain level which can adversely affect the medical provider’s ability to accurately create a treatment plan for the patient. This study compared the patient’s response to a self-rating of their pain on a numeric pain scale with the response given by the patient on the Mankoski pain scale. Comparison of the numeric pain scale to the Mankoski pain scale …

Barriers In Hypertension Management Among Culturally Diverse Patients In An Urban Urgent Care Setting, Navpreet Kaur

Doctoral Projects

Hypertension is the leading cause of deaths related to cardiovascular disease conditions. A vast number of patients are not taking their medications as prescribed by the physicians. This non-adherence to hypertensive treatment plans results in increased numbers of cases of unstable blood pressure. Medication adherence will help to manage the controllable cardiovascular diseases and will automatically decrease the incidences of emergent cases in hospitals and urgent care clinics. It will further decrease the costs of diagnostic evaluations used during the emergent visits. This decreased patient load in the emergency rooms will improve quality patient care. The study timeframe of data …

Understanding The Skills Necessary For Advanced Practice Nurses In Oncology To Deliver Bad News To Patients With Cancer: The Results Of A Delphi Analysis, Matthew Michael Burke

Doctoral Projects

Overcoming the dichotomy of providing bad news in a compassionate, empathetic manner that strengthens dialogue and enhances a caring environment is the ultimate challenge advanced practice nurses (APN) face in oncology. This study aims to understand the skills necessary for APNs in oncology to deliver bad news to patients with cancer.

Using a Delphi analysis, an established method of developing a consensus, a novel, patient-centered survey tool has been developed designed to extract as much information as possible about the present issue from an expert panel. Oncology APNs were recruited via Facebook. The survey tool was administered using a web-based …

Comparing Two Surgical Outcomes: Minithoracotomy Or Full Sternotomy In Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Surgery, Shirin Badrkhani

Doctoral Projects

Cardiovascular diseases and heart-related conditions can be life-threatening; however, some cardiovascular conditions can be managed with open heart surgery. Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is the most common type of heart surgery performed on adults. There are two different surgical procedures to correct cardiac defects: mini-thoracotomy and full sternotomy. Mini thoracotomy approach has been shown to reduce complications, such as pneumonia, excessive blood loss, and infection in mitral valve repair surgeries. However, little research has been done to compare these two surgical approaches performed for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG).

Specifically, there is inadequate data to compare these …

Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Program, Magdalena Ruiz

Doctoral Projects

Pediatric primary care focuses on maintaining patients’ health, preventing diseases, and assessing children’s developmental milestones. Vaccine administration and disease prevention are key components of a well-child exam for pediatric patients; however, vaccine refusal is an important complication of pediatric patient care. Of particular interest to this researcher is the HPV vaccine which was approved by the Federal Drug Administration and is currently recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2016) for both males and females, beginning at 11 or 12 years of age through age 26 years. The HPV vaccine protects against diseases and cancers caused by the …

Exploring Ways To Improve Healthcare Access For The Homeless Population In Merced County, Stella Nwasoka Adesokan

Doctoral Projects

Homelessness is a societal dilemma that affects people in the United States and around the globe. Homelessness relates to poor health conditions that affect the living conditions of individuals (Institute for Urban Initiatives, 2018). Chronic and acute illnesses are rampant in this group, most of these illnesses are treatable but accessing healthcare poses a challenge for this vulnerable population. Homeless persons are often unable to access healthcare due to fear and denial of ill health, difficulty in communicating health needs, and low self-esteem (Lamb & Joels, 2014).

In the study, questionnaires were administered to 25 homeless individuals through random sampling. …

Barriers In Health Care In Hmong Men And Women With Cardiac Diseases, Ying Thao

Doctoral Projects

Lauver’s theory of care seeking behaviors is applied to identify perceived barriers to accessing healthcare in Hmong men and women that may influence care seeking behaviors. The purpose of this study is to identify barriers in accessing health care among Hmong men and women ages 50 to 80 with cardiovascular heart disease (CHD) and risk factors for CHD (e.g., diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypertension). A quantitative descriptive analysis was used to look at demographic characteristics while a multiple regression analysis was used to statistically compare correlations between barriers to care, risk factors for CHD, sex, and access to health care. The …

A Retrospective Chart Review Pilot Study Of Fall Prevention Through A New And Innovative Care Model, Lydia Smith

Doctoral Projects

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), falls are the leading cause of injury-related mortality in the geriatric population, and they are the most common cause of brain injury and hip fracture. The prevalence for falls is 30% in patients over 65 in the United States who experience a fall annually, and the prevalence in dementia patients can be up to 80% annually; the consequences of falls can include injury, reduction in mobility, depression and decreased socialization with peers (CDC, 2015). The purpose of this retrospective chart review pilot study is to examine the number of falls …

Pilot Study: Program Evaluation Of Peanut Oral Immunotherapy In A Private Clinic, Kinga Olson

Doctoral Projects

The privilege of providing a therapy perceived by patients and families as “life changing” has seasoned physicians describing food oral immunotherapy (OIT) as one of “the most impactful and rewarding thing that they have done in medicine” (Wasserman, Jones, & Windom, 2018). OIT is a medical treatment that allows the immune system to become desensitized to a food to which it may otherwise be allergic. This is not a cure for food allergies but a way to decrease the incidence of anaphylaxis due to accidental ingestion. Living with food allergies can be distressing due to the daily fear of exposures. …

Pilot Study Of A Breastfeeding Support Training Program Designed Particularly For Infants With Common Congenital Anomalies And Defects, Gretchen Nelson Ezaki

Doctoral Projects

The American Academy of Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 2018), the World Health Organization (World Health Organization [WHO)], 2018), and The March of Dimes (March of Dimes, 2016) recommend exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. In 2014, 79% of women in the United States began breastfeeding their infants, but only 40.7% and 18.8% continued breastfeeding exclusively at three and six months respectively (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). This doctoral project promotes breastfeeding by creating and testing simple teaching algorithms for training registered nurses to support breastfeeding, including for infants with trisomy 21, congenital heart …

Promoting Self-Efficacy Among Head And Neck Cancer Patients, Lily Lam

Doctoral Projects

Current survivorship visits at the Stanford head and neck oncology program are not standardized to address ongoing post-treatment sequelae. The objectives of this study help to address whether current non-standardized visits actually help to empower patients to self-manage their chronic diagnosis of head and neck cancer by measuring their self-efficacy levels before and after their post-treatment survivorship visit.

Given the convenience sampling method, 17 patients were enrolled in this quasi-experimental pilot study. Demographic information was collected for each patient: gender, ethnicity, smoker status, and age. Head and neck cancer patients would first be surveyed before and after their follow up …

San Jose’S Removing And Preventing Illegal Dumping Program (Rapid): An Evaluation Of Illegal Dumping In San Jose, Rina Laxamana

Master's Projects

Illegal dumping is a major environmental concern throughout the United States and most countries (Ichinose & Yamamoto, 2011). Abandoned items such as household material, dumped garbage or construction debris leave odors and contaminants that can threaten community health, impact the environment, and degrade the city's visual appearance (Dabholkar, Muthiyan, Srinivasan, Ravi, Jeon, & Gao, 2017). To reduce illegal dumping, many cities establish education programs, social-media-based community applications, surveillance camera monitoring, and execute policies with associated penalties and fines (Dabholkar et al., 2017). The City of San Jose is battling an illegal dumping problem and has created the Removing and Preventing …

Experiences Of Adolescent Refugee Students Who Attend Afterschool Programs For Literacy Support, Analiza Filion

Dissertations

Studies on the academic achievement of refugee students cite continuous underachievement in literacy skills. Due to trauma from fleeing their countries of origin, limited school experiences, and language barriers, refugee students struggle with demonstrating progress in academic achievement. Learning challenges continue to take place when classroom teachers are not equipped with the knowledge, skills, and resources to support students with their unique learning needs. Through the use of a documentary research method, this dissertation investigated the experiences of five adolescent refugee students who attended afterschool programs as an additional resource for developing literacy skills.This study also explored how students perceived …

Leadership Style As A Moderator Of The Relationships Between Role Stressors And Organizational Commitment, Tanya Chellani

Master's Theses

The purpose of the present study was to examine the moderating effect of leadership style on the relationships between role stressors and organizational commitment. The study hypothesized that negative relationships between role conflict and role ambiguity and both affective and normative commitment would be weaker for employees who perceived their supervisors as relationship-oriented rather than task-oriented. Furthermore, the study explored the direct relationship between role stressors and continuance commitment, along with the moderating effect of leadership style on this relationship. Responses to an online survey from 126 employees were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression. Results showed that leadership style did …

Green Stormwater Infrastructure Assessments In Santa Clara County, Ca: An In-Situ Analysis Of Select Bioretention Projects, Laura Bates

Master's Theses

Stormwater runoff, defined as rainwater that flows over impervious surfaces, is both an under-harnessed groundwater resource and the leading contributor to water body impairments due to the number of pollutants it can transport. One widely successful strategy to capture and treat stormwater runoff is to implement Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI): engineered green spaces to enhance the overall environmental quality of an urban landscape. GSI projects, particularly bioretention systems, capture and treat stormwater runoff through infiltration and plant absorption before it reaches receiving bodies of water. In order to operate efficiently, GSI systems require specific maintenance procedures. The purpose of this …

Avocado Root Rot: Steep, Rocky Terrain And Biodiversity Help Protect Small Farmers In Post-Conflict Colombia, Morgan Frankel

Master's Theses

In recent years, small avocado producers in coastal Colombia returned to their farms after decades of war to discover they must battle the pathogen Phytophthora cinnamomi devastating their trees. While this disease is well-described in the U.S., Australia, and Europe, no previous research has examined environmental correlates of P. cinnamomi in avocado in the diverse tropical agroecosystem of the Colombian Montes de Maria. I used agroecosystem inventory, in-field diagnostics, and disease observations to describe avocado agroecosystem diversity and identify relationships among P. cinnamomi presence, root rot disease, slope, pH, soil compaction, elevation, and distance to the household in remote smallholder …

Photovoltaic Waste Management And Implementing Extended Producer Responsibility In The Solar Industry In California, Lee-Tan Lu

Master's Theses

Electronic waste issues impact humans and the environment, primarily because most industrial designs have not considered the impact of products when they reach their end-of-life (EOL) stage. This study focuses on photovoltaic (PV) modules that are widely installed in California residential properties. While PV modules do not generate waste while operating, they will become waste at the end of their expected lifespan of 25 to 40 years. Thus, it is important to identify PV waste management strategies before the materials in the modules become a discard problem. In California, despite hazardous materials that are used in the production of PV …

The Moderating Effect Of Self-Esteem On The Relationship Between Servant Leadership And Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, Whitney Kanavel

Master's Theses

Previous research has shown that servant leadership is related to organizational citizenship behaviors. However, little attention has been paid to the possible moderators of this relationship. Therefore, the present study proposed that a personality characteristic (self-esteem) will moderate the relationship between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behaviors. It was hypothesized that the relationship between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behaviors would be stronger for employees with low self-esteem than for those with high self-esteem. Results of a self report survey from 204 employed individuals in various industries found that self-esteem moderated the relationship between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behaviors. …

Moderating Effect Of Trait Mindfulness On The Relationship Between Job Demands And Burnout Using The Job Demands-Resources Model, Anne O'Brien

Master's Theses

The Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model was constructed to explain the antecedents, consequences, and relationships of burnout, and has provided evidence that personal resources moderate and weaken the relationship between job demands and burnout. Although much of the personal resource literature focuses on personality traits like optimism and self-esteem, the moderating effect of trait mindfulness on the relationship between job demands and job burnout has yet to be examined. The study hypothesized that mindfulness moderates the relationship between four job demands (role ambiguity, interpersonal conflict, work-life conflict, and cognitive demands) and three dimensions of burnout, such that those with higher levels …

Mobility Through Droughts: Cross-Sectional Analysis Of Femora In A San Francisco Bay Area Prehistoric Native Population, Sarah M. Luce

Master's Theses

This thesis aims to infer mobility patterns in the California prehistoric burial population of CA-ALA-329 (Ryan Mound) by conducting cross-sectional analysis on femoral bones. CA-ALA-329 is considered to be a burial ground used by precontact Ohlone natives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Glacial changes, pollen studies, and

tree-ring data show shifts in climate change occurred during the Late Phase 1 Period, causing warmer and drier temperatures throughout California. Seventy-seven femora were analyzed in this study including 26 femora representing the Middle Period and 51 representing the Late Phase 1 Period. Cross-sectional geometric formulae were applied to measurements collected at …

The Effect Of Porosity On Mechanical Properties Of Fused Deposition Manufactured Polymers And Composites, Eric Heartly Anderson

Master's Theses

Additive manufacturing has seen sustained growth in both consumer and industrial areas. fused deposition manufacturing (FDM), a specific additive manufacturing technology, has seen increased sales in consumer markets. In order to maintain growth, FDM will be increasingly used for load-bearing applications. However, the mechanical reliability of FDM polymers and composites is not well understood. This can be dangerous to property and safety. Presented in this paper are more than 16 distinct populations comprised of at least 23 unique tensile tests, a total of 506 tensile tests. Weibull statistics were used to quantify variance in physical properties of FDMed materials. It …

Older Adults’ Perceptions Regarding Transportation Services In San Jose, Ca: Access, Barriers, And Innovations, Deborah Bolding

Mineta Transportation Institute

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of older adults concerning barriers to the use of public transportation, to identify programs and services that best meet transportation needs, and to obtain suggestions for improvements or innovations in order to enable them to engage more fully in their community. Four focus groups, with a total of 25 participants, were held in three locations in San Jose, CA. While the participants were able to use public transportation to access shopping, medical services and other destinations, they expressed concerns related to physical barriers, frequency of services, the behavior of some …

Review Of E-Learning Environment At The Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science And Technology, Ghana, Richard Tawiah, Richard Bruce Lamptey, Gabriel Asare Okyere, William Oduro, Michael Oko Thompson

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This study explores the policies for e-learning and examines the awareness of teaching practices that incorporates e-learning among educational managers, librarians, teachers, IT experts and students of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana. The study is based on a survey data extracted from the KNUST-based BSU Project. The results revealed that 84.1% of the educational managers and 87.1% of the teaching participants claimed the university has no policy for introducing e-learning, while 63.6% of the IT experts reported otherwise. The participants outlined a few teaching practices that involves e-learning, some of which are frequently and …

Institutional Repository In Open Doar: Status Quo India, Dattatraya Trayambak Kalbande

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract

Purpose

Up to the 2005 theses, dissertations, research papers and rare collection in most of the Indian libraries, are kept in closed access and it is very difficult to the researchers to access them as a reference source for the further study as well as to avoid duplication, to avoid plagiarism to maintain research ethics in the research, but after that in India UGC and Many higher/research education institutions taking lead to develop Institutional repositories (IR) for Collect, Manage, Disseminate, and Preserve scholarly work created by the Teachers and researchers.

Design/methodology/approach

Total 84 Institutional Repositories (IR) was selected and …