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A Silent Struggle: Eating Disorders In College, Grace P. Olechowski

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Relationship Between Nature Connectedness And Belonging With Pro-Environmental Behavior In Brazilian National Parks, Sonia Maria Sfair Kinker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Park managers in Brazil have recently understood the power of recreational experiences to stimulate a relationship with nature and commitment to its conservation. In their discourse, the central supposition is that those connected to nature and feeling a sense of belonging to nature tend to be more mindful of the environment and more supportive of nature conservation. However, providing visitation opportunities that effectively facilitate visitor experiences in nature has been a managers' lonely endeavor dependent on their skills and beliefs about visitation and no clear visitation policy. Therefore, this study aimed at providing a theoretical base and empirically tested frameworks …

The Intersection Of Race And Criminal History In Perceptions Of Native Americans And Hiring, Sierra B. Streuli

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies show that race-based discrimination exists in the hiring process. Many minority job candidates experience this phenomenon, especially when a criminal record is present. The intersection of possessing a Native American identity and having a criminal history has yet to be examined. This research compares the experience of Native American job candidates (some with a criminal history and some without) to white job candidates (some with a criminal history and some without) to see how these varying points of identity influence hiring process decisions in a fictitious hiring scenario. Using an online questionnaire based on Foschi and Valenzuela’s (2015) study …

Impediments To Mathematical Creativity: Fixation And Flexibility In Proof Validation, Per Øystein Haavold

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Mathematical techniques in proof writing can be narrowed down to specific proof styles. Simply put, proofs can be direct or indirect- the latter using the Law of the Excluded Middle from logic as well as the axiom of Choice, to prove existence of mathematical objects. However, the thinking skills involved in writing indirect proofs are prone to errors, especially from novice proof writers such as prospective teachers. Creativity in mathematics entails the use of both direct and indirect approaches to determine the validity of a statement. In this article, I shed some light on this relationship, by reporting on some …

The Academic Community’S Perceptions Of The Two-Column Proof, Jeffrey Pair, Susanne Strachota, Rashmi Singh

The Mathematics Enthusiast

Our research team surveyed members of the mathematics education scholarly community to gain insight into the community’s perceptions of the two-column proof and its role in high school geometry. We created an email survey, which we sent to email addresses gathered from public lists of conference participants and speakers from recent mathematics education conferences. We asked study participants to describe the value of the two-column proof and discuss whether they would be in favor of eliminating it from the high school geometry curriculum. There was a wide range of diversity in the responses, and we present several themes that we …

Beauty Is In The Blind Spot Of The Beholder, Ron Aharoni

The Mathematics Enthusiast

The paper addresses the time-old question of what is beauty. A rather ambitious, if not to say presumptuous, endeavour. But I do not aim high – I do not claim to get anywhere near unearthing the secret. Rather, I will use examples from mathematics, poetry, music and chess to substantiate one thesis: that the elusory character of beauty is not incidental. Its defiance of definition is part of its essence. The aesthetic sensation requires unawareness of its precise origin. Beauty is felt when some order is perceived, that is not fully comprehended. The order is too complex, or well hidden, …

Antiracism, Reflection, And Professional Identity, Andrew King-Ries, Monte Mills, Eduardo R.C. Capulong

Faculty Law Review Articles

Intent on more systematically developing the emerging professional identities of law students, the professional identity formation movement is recasting how we think about legal education. Notably, however, the movement overlooks the structural racism imbedded in American law and legal education. While current models of professional development value diversity and cross-cultural competence, they do not adequately prepare the next generation of legal professionals to engage in the sustained work of interrupting and overthrowing race and racism in the legal profession and system. This article argues that antiracism is essential to the profession’s responsibility to serve justice and therefore key to legal …

Social Influences And Social Desirability On Recollections Of Childhood Bullying, Jaynee L. Bohart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Parents and peers play important roles in shaping attitudes toward a variety of matters during adolescence. However, little research has investigated parental and peer influence on developing attitudes toward bullying. Further, few studies have looked at whether socially desirable responding (SDR) impacts self-reports in bullying research. To address these gaps in literature, the current study recruited college students from a mid-sized public university in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States to complete a survey. The survey assessed the participants’ past attitudes toward bullying, perceptions of their parents’ and peers’ influence on their attitudes, and bullying participant roles during …

School Leadership Under Apartheid South Africa As Portrayed In The Apartheid Archive Projectand Interpreted Through Freirean Education, Kevin Bruce Deitle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This qualitative study employed a phenomenological approach to examine how teachers, school leaders, and students rationalize their roles in the educational process when their institution is bounded by an educational system that openly strives against them. For a context, this study examined apartheid-era South Africa, from 1948 to 1994, which established social and administrative policies that deliberately curtailed the education of Indigenous and other South Africans, as a means of oppressing non-European ethnic groups.

In lieu of face-to-face interviews, stories and interviews submitted to The Apartheid Archive Project, curated by the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, portrayed …

Integrated Primary Care Is Associated With Greater Job Satisfaction And Less Burnout Among Montana’S Medical And Behavioral Health Care Providers, C. Ivie English

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Most research to date on integrated behavioral health (IBH) or integrated primary care (IPC) practices has examined primary care settings nested within academic medical centers or clinics within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. This leaves clinics in rural and/or underserved communities without much representation in the literature. Likewise, provider job satisfaction and burnout have rarely been linked to the IPC model. Through an online cross-sectional survey of medical and behavioral health care providers in various primary care-based health care settings throughout Montana, this cross-sectional study demonstrates that degree of behavioral health integration significantly predicts greater job satisfaction and lower …

"Its Own Little City": Service Work In Truck Stops, Michelle Elizabeth Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana truck stops act as a meeting place for long-haul truckers, vacationers, local commuters, and the workers simply trying to earn a living. The employees at such truck stops must navigate working-class customer service norms while interacting with a unique and diverse set of customers. The ethnographic and interview data that I collected during the 2020 offers a unique view of how customer service employees fared during political unrest, global health concerns, and financial struggle. Additionally, this study highlights the power dynamics that exist in the service industry by examining how such dynamics manifest in the interactions surrounding face masks, …

Leadership: Supporting Students With Asd And The School Wide Community, Chelsae Joy Larson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Leaders work collaboratively with all stakeholders to help understand what systems and supports need to be put into place to meet individual needs. School leaders must create continuous learning opportunities and reinforcement systems for educators in the areas of evidence-based practices, individualized teaching strategies, and student transition plans. Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) require consistent and structured programming starting in preschool and carrying through to post-secondary education. It is imperative that school leaders provide the appropriate training and supports to educators and specialists in relation to executive functioning skills and evidence-based practices to best support students with ASD. This …

Summit Learning And Rural Montana Teacher Efficacy, A Phenomenology, C. Roch Turner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Following the global COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the United States experimented with online learning platforms. Prior to that, hundreds of schools adopted the Summit Learning platform, meant to supplement face-to-face learning with digital instruction and curricula. This study is a qualitative phenomenology exploring the lived experiences of teachers in two rural Montana schools that have adopted the Summit Learning platform and maintained its use into the pandemic. Participants of this study taught core courses, such as math, science, and history. Results of this study indicate a high level of curriculum modification and support from leadership. Participants reported modified changes to …

Activating Hope: How Functional Support Can Improve Hope In Unemployed Individuals, Rylee P. Walter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hope is an adaptive mindset that enables one to work toward their goals and thwart obstacles they encounter in doing so. However, the stress associated with some situations, such as unemployment, can block hopeful thinking, causing one to become stuck in unmotivated and inflexible thinking patterns and therefore potentially trapped in the distressing situation. Through an online survey, this study explored whether functional support would predict reportedly low hope states in unemployed individuals (N = 235). More specifically, we predicted that functional support would encourage reappraisal of (and thus buffer against) distressing unemployment-related emotions, with that reappraisal altering the …

A Moral Influenza: An Historical Archaeological Investigation Of The Prohibition Era In The United States 1920-1933, Kelli Michele Casias

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following exploration of National Alcohol Prohibition in the United States employs an interdisciplinary approach to understand the impetus of the large-scale defiance of liquor laws and to identify the physical manifestations of the social process of mass resistance in the archaeological record. Historical documentation, newspaper publications, oral histories, landscape analysis of road development in Montana, and an archaeological survey of a mountain homestead site where manufacturer of illicit alcohol took place are used to contextualize the Prohibition Era from the perspective of the offender. The research goals of this work are varied and include documentation of the archaeological footprint …

Biobehavioral Predictors Of Executive Function Decline In Mid- And Late Life Adults, Cali Anne Caughie

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Longitudinal Study of Health and Well-Being, this study examined high frequency heart rate variability as a longitudinal predictor of cognitive change in key executive function domains: inhibition, shifting, and updating. This study further explored the interactions between HF HRV and important health factors (inflammation, stress, sleep, and mood and anxiety) in predicting executive function decline.

The results of this investigation demonstrated that while high frequency heart rate variability and inhibition decline were correlated, HF HRV was not a significant predictor of decline in any executive function. However, results did show …

Theories On The Pedagogy Of Asla (Accelerated Second Language Acquisition): A Piikuni Student Approach, Robert Patrick Hall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis is an exploration in the pedagogy of ASLA to understand how and why it is successful at being a methodology that enables an instructor to teach endangered languages effectively. The paper explores the current deficits within language revitalization programs and argues that ASLA can improve endangered language programs

Toward A Child-Friendly Worldview Measure, Shailee Rose Woodard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Worldview is an individual difference construct that is linked to various social, behavioral, and mental health outcomes, such as prejudice (Greenberg & Arndt, 2011), adaptive versus maladaptive behaviors following a natural disaster (Call, 2012), and PTSD symptoms (Jinkerson, 2016). However, very little is known about how worldviews develop. Research on child and adolescent worldviews is greatly impeded by the lack of a child-friendly worldview measure. This dissertation project aims to fill this gap by developing and validating such a measure. This 20-item measure, the Unified Worldview Measure – Child Form (UWM-CF), was adapted from a previously-validated adult measure of worldviews, …

Beside| |Between, Brooke J. Armstrong

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beauty and the grotesque both induce physical sensations in the body. Pleasure and displeasure are two points on the same line. They are not mutually exclusive. Like the body and the vessel, like the self and the other all things exist in reciprocity. The capability of holding brings agency, breaking down perceptions of of subject-object relationships. The works presented in this paper represent a merging and a transformation of perceived separate entities. Craft history and processes inform the work present in the thesis exhibition, Beside| |Between.

Teacher’S Use Of Reflective Thinking, Kathleen M. Hill

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This qualitative case study examined how teachers use reflective thinking. Teachers participating in a professional development course designed to increase knowledge and understanding of reflective thinking were investigated. Two of those teachers were looked at in depth. Data was collected and organized on four teacher practices: planning, implementation, questioning, and professional reflection. Based on the findings, teachers use reflective thinking for lesson planning, interacting with students, and for personal and professional growth. Lasting impacts on professional reflection were evident for one participant after ten months. This study tells the story of two teacher’s understanding and use of reflective thinking.

Developing The Label Avoidance Measure Of Stigma: A Preliminary Psychometric Review, Julia J. Cameron

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Stigma acts as a barrier to treatment for mental health concerns. Label avoidance, one of several different aspects that compose the overarching concept of stigma, captures the stigma involved when individuals avoid social institutions that might confer a psychiatric diagnostic label and would mark them as an individual with a mental health problem. Label avoidance has been described as a key stigma construct in the literature but has been sparsely studied. Answering a call in the field for new, psychometrically sound stigma measures, we created a new measure of label avoidance and acquired initial validity and reliability evidence supporting its …

Head Heart Hand Human, Michelle Kathryn Postma

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My art is emblematic of the practice of accepting reality. The vehicles I use to do this are a cast of characters, materials and compositional strategies that in totality, remind the viewer and myself to be in the moment.

The thesis exhibition, Heart Vomit and the Dream Army, featured mural-esque ink paintings on panels and approximately 36 - 48 inch high abstract ceramic figures covered with images. Both the 2D and 3D works feature a cast of characters. These characters originate from “Michelle Land”, an imaginary world created to house an evolving symbolic visual language. The graphic black and white …

Handicraft Art Leisure Activities And Cognitive Reserve, Genna Mashinchi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With increasing age, older individuals face a higher likelihood of developing dementia. The rate of cognitive decline resulting from dementia is not equivalent for all, as some patients with dementia are able to function independently longer than others, despite having similar disease burden. The cognitive reserve (CR) theory provides one explanation for the differing rate of decline. CR suggests that there are factors — most notably, educational and occupational attainment — that can protect against the cognitive decline that is a hallmark of dementia. Although the beneficial effects of these notable CR factors are clear, they may not be modifiable. …

Luminous Threshold, Peggy Wen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Luminous Threshold is an interactive experience exploring the liminal transition between the viewer and ambiguous spaces. My thesis exhibition incorporates two paintings, one continuous pulsing light structure, two sound-activated light structures, and a black cube that is perceived to be inserted through the gallery wall. The paintings and forms explore liminality within a two-dimensional space, while the light pieces create an ephemeral viewer- participation experience. Liminality, defined by Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner, is one of three stages in life an individual will go through. It is considered a Rite of Passage or Threshold and is the ambiguous transitional …

Development Of A Tool To Assess Reasons For Treatment Nonadherence In Primary Care Settings, Jacob Harrison Bloch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Decades of research demonstrate that people’s behavior has a tremendous influence on their overall health (e.g., DSHHS, 2014; Kokkinos, 2012; Segerstrom & Miller, 2004; Willet et al., 2006). Nonadherence to clinical recommendations is a common obstacle in healthcare (DiMatteo, 2004b), which is associated with worse health outcomes (DiMatteo, Giordani, Lepper, & Croghan, 2002). Behavioral health professionals (BHPs) are often involved in assessing and addressing nonadherence; however, there is a lack of standardization in how it is approached. Relatedly, there is no extant tool designed to help primary care BHPs efficiently identify barrier to adherence across diverse treatment targets. Such a …

Out Into The Wilds: A Gay Marine's Journey Towards Self-Acceptance, David Harris Stalling

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

(A segment of a book-length project) Struggling with divorce, the death of his father and coming to terms with his sexuality, a former Force Recon Marine abandons the thought of suicide and decides, instead, to retreat to the wilds in a desperate attempt to make sense of thing. Hiking by himself for more than 1,000 miles, over three months, mostly off-trail through some of the most remote and wild country left in the United States, the author writes of his encounters with wolves, grizzlies, mountain lions and, more importantly, himself. "In the wilds," the author writes, "there are no societal-created …

Repairing Warranted Public Trust In Science Through Political Reconciliation, Anna Cat Jay Reely

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The ability of science-based policy to promote public welfare is contingent upon the presence of warranted public trust. However, as exposed by the case of COVID-19 vaccination efforts, public trust in the scientific community is not so readily attained. Many communities, particularly those who are systematically marginalized, have suffered severe harm in the name of scientific advancement. As a manifestation of tarnished rapport, individuals within these communities arguably engage in warranted distrust. While many scholars have attempted to articulate the conditions for warranted public trust in science, proposals have failed to account for the non-neutral state of the relationship between …

Service Learning, Sustainable Development, And The Tourism Sector In Conflict-Affected Bamyan, Afghanistan, Kelly Elizabeth Franklin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Widespread consensus among the tourism and development studies literature suggests that higher education plays a key role in the achievement of sustainable tourism development. However, discussions on approaches to teaching sustainability in tourism at the higher education level are underdeveloped, especially in conflict-affected contexts. To address this gap, this study combines an examination of tourism stakeholders’ perceptions of inclusive and sustainable tourism development for a small tourism sector in Bamyan, Afghanistan, with an innovative approach to teaching sustainability in a tourism higher education program. Using mixed qualitative methods, this dissertation first examines tourism stakeholders’ perceptions of inclusive and sustainable tourism …

Hiding The Authentic Self: Concealment Of Gender And Sexual Identity And Its Consequences For Authenticity And Psychological Well-Being, James Michael Brennan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Concealment of gender and sexual identity is a reaction to societal stigma against gender and sexual minority (GSM) identities. Despite initially protecting against stigma, concealment has longterm psychological consequences. These consequences are potentially attributable to the psychological damage incurred from a reduced sense of authenticity among those who conceal their gender and sexual identity. Authenticity is compromised by concealment, serving to disrupt a person’s self-concept, as external behavior and an innate sense of self diverge. On top of that, an individual’s mental and emotional states may be impacted by these discrepancies. Additionally, concealment undermines the pursuit of intrinsically-motivated, goal-directed …

The Efficacy Of Art And Movement Treatment Modalities On An Individual With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Tristen Valentino

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Current statistics report 1 in 54 children have been identified with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), many of whom have co-occurring mental health disorders. However, minimal research has been conducted on adults with autism with co-occurring mental health disorders and the efficacy of art and movement therapy techniques. This is the case study by Tristen Valentino, clinical therapist, of a client, David Smith (who was given the pseudonym to maintain confidentiality), a 35-year-old, obese, single, cisgender, heterosexual, Caucasian, male. The implications of this case study are discussed relative to the diagnosis and treatment of adults with ASD who possess comorbid clinical …