Digital Commons Network^™

Temporal Avoidance By Gray Foxes Reflects Growing Pressure From Expanding Coyotes In The Neotropics, Madison Odenbach

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Coyotes (Canis latrans) are rapidly expanding their range towards South America, potentially threatening the world’s highest canid diversity residing on that continent. A better understanding of their interactions with native species is needed to anticipate potential competitive impacts. In Costa Rica, native gray foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) likely occupy a similar niche to the coyote newcomer, yet little data exists on their interactions in tropical ecosystems. We hypothesized the two species separate temporally to minimize the potential for competition in our study area, given preliminary data suggesting high spatial overlap (57.1% of coyote-detected sites overlap with fox-detected …

Meet Your Neighbor: A Houseless Services Program Proposal In Missoula, Montana, Victoria K. Hausman

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Within the last three years, Missoula, Montana, has developed a culture of pervasive, systemic, and negative actions against people experiencing houselessness. The transition from funding multi-tiered approaches, including encampments, shelters, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing, has been replaced by decreased resource availability and the over-funded Ordinance 12.60, which enforces fines and misdemeanors on anyone unsheltered and experiencing houselessness. At the root of this public sentiment is stigma, which manifests itself at all levels of the socio-ecological system and negatively impacts the health, housing, employment, social, mental, and physical outcomes of people experiencing houselessness. To combat stigma, Meet Your Neighbor …

Toxic Torts Are In Your Blood: An Examination Of Pfas And Tort Liability, Aiden M. Holden

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Abstract

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are a group of chemicals widely manufactured for industrial and commercial applications in the past decade due to their remarkable stability. Despite the “useful” nature of PFAS in various applications, they represent one of the most profound environmental and public health crises of the modern era. The chemical stability of PFAS has made them almost completely resistant to natural degradation, earning them the moniker “forever chemicals.” PFAS forever haunt our plant, contaminating the soil, water, and the blood of approximately 95% of the United States population. As the scale of corporate malfeasance by chemical …

Empowering Rural Lgbtq2s+ Parents: An Exploration Of Perinatal Social Support And Perinatal Mental Health, Tess Alexandra Carlson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), which include depression and anxiety symptoms occurring during pregnancy and up to one year postpartum, are highly prevalent and frequently untreated, severely impacting family health. The immediacy of this issue is backed by CDC data showing mental health issues as the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths. Improved methods for identifying PMADs, connecting parents to care, and understanding the broader social factors that shape perinatal mental health are critical. Guided by ecological systems theory, this dissertation research explores informal and formal social support and perinatal mental health among LGBTQ2S+ parents in Montana, contributing knowledge of …

Eat With Understanding: A Um Student Guide To Food Systems, James Deacon, Cora Johnson, Lucas Dymit, Kaeli Rackham, Elsie Danyo

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The industrialized food system creates environmental harm, reduces food sovereignty, and contributes to growing food insecurity. These problems oftentimes are overlooked in higher education. To address this gap, our project examines how access to sustainable food education and campus-community partnerships can improve well-being and informed decision-making amongst University of Montana students. This collaborative project connects partners within UM Wellness, PEAS Farm, the Missoula Food Bank and Community Center, and the Big Sky Culinary Institute. Our research includes applied learning with these organizations by hosting a variety of speaker series presentations and coordinating a cooking workshop. We collected quantitative and qualitative …

The Legal Philosophy Behind Zoos Confinement Of Animals, Jamie Lynn Tucker Crockett

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

In my essay, I will be diving into the controversial issue of Animal containment, focusing on zoos in the United States. I will be taking this opportunity to establish a new way of thinking about the argument which states the pros of zoos outweigh the negative effects they have on the animals who live there. Neither side of the argument has a malicious intention towards harming animals. Instead, each side shows a different approach of what it is to properly care, and respect for animal rights. Those arguing in support of zoos commonly reference arguments dating back to Aristotle. However, …

Citators In The Ai Age: Preserving The Human Component Through Court-Created Citators, Cody B. James

Faculty Law Review Articles

Citators have long worked behind the scenes, shaping case law and influencing how judges and lawyers view precedent. Yet their creation has been the sole realm of private publishers. As artificial intelligence (AI) is further integrated into citators’ creation, the human role is at risk of being automated. This article examines citators’ influence over substantive law, the human-in-the-loop justifications for preserving human involvement in citators’ creation, and the argument for courts to produce their own citators. By reclaiming this function, the courts can help enhance their legitimacy and preserve the human role in creating structures of legal information in the …

How The Proposed Esa Habitat Rule Harms Species On Public Lands, Sandi Zellmer

Faculty Journal Articles & Other Writings

At present, there are 1,684 federally listed endangered and threatened species in the United States. Habitat modification is the primary reason for listing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have proposed a rule that would rescind their decades-old definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Currently, “harm” is the only term within ESA Section 9’s prohibition on “take” that encompasses habitat modification. If modifying habitat is no longer a “take,” the ESA itself would be rendered incapable of satisfying Congress’s goal: “to halt and reverse the trend toward species …

A Guide To Growing Broad: : Expanding The Notion Of Social For Mental Health, Natural Resources, And The Infinite Intersections Of How To Care For The World, Leah D. Nuese-Yaker

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This MSW portfolio narrative examines the expanding boundaries of social work practice at the intersection of human and ecological systems. Organized as a series of interconnected personal essays structured around river metaphors, the portfolio argues that social work's anthropocentric foundations limit the profession's capacity to address contemporary crises of environmental justice, climate change, and ecological health. Drawing on fieldwork in natural resources conflict resolution, wilderness therapy, outdoor education, and climate health advocacy in rural Montana, the author demonstrates competency across all ten CSWE social work practice behaviors while advancing a practice framework that centers relational, embodied, and ecologically grounded intervention. …

Master Of Social Work Portfolio, Isabella Faith Decunzo

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This Portfolio has been developed in partial fulfilment of the Master of Social Work (MSW) degree and demonstrates my personal and professional growth over the course of the program. It highlights selected academic and practice-based work completed throughout the past two years, reflecting my developing knowledge and application of the Five Elements of Advanced Integrative Practice and the Ten Competencies of Social Work.

Included is an appendix containing completed assignments from the MSW program in Missoula, Montana, which supports and demonstrates the reflective narrative presented throughout the portfolio. Each artifact directly aligns with and illustrates my progression toward competency in …

Transitivizers In Séliš-Ql̓Ispé, Logan J. Sites

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

The Laymen's Conceptualization Of The “Safe Space”, Tiffany A. Nord

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The term "safe space" appears frequently across academic, organizational, therapeutic, and social contexts, yet lacks conceptual clarity. While originating from LGBTQ+ and women's activist movements, contemporary usage has expanded without theoretical development, making it confusing and challenging to effectively implement for researchers and practitioners alike. This two-phase qualitative study examined how individuals define safe spaces. Phase 1 employed an open-ended questionnaire with 62 general population participants. Phase 2 involved semi-structured interviews with 22 self-identified LGBTQ+ individuals. Data were analyzed using a constructivist grounded theory methodology. Findings revealed five core elements: specified setting, enacting responsiveness, allowing candor, perceiving security, and sensing …

Embodied Women’S Health In The Pacific: Biocultural Pathways Of Hormones, Immunity, And Reproduction, Courtney Callidora Manthey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation examines women’s health through a biocultural framework that integrates biological anthropology, medical anthropology, and public health, with a central focus on the Pacific. It advances embodiment theory as a unifying approach for understanding how lived experience becomes biologically incorporated across the life course, shaping reproductive, endocrine, and immune outcomes. Grounded in research in Sāmoa and situated within broader comparative contexts in the United States and Amazonian populations, this work argues that women’s health cannot be fully understood through biomedical indicators alone, but must instead be interpreted within historically, culturally, and environmentally embedded Pacific contexts and beyond. The dissertation …

Lake As Body: Ecofeminism And Animacy At The Great Salt Lake, Shae Barber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water shapes cultural, social, and ecological systems. Yet, dominant economic, political, and academic frameworks often treat water as a backdrop or passive resource, ignoring it as an active participant in meaning-making and relationship-building. Viewing water as “nonliving” obscures how it participates in and co-creates relationships, limiting understanding about impacts of and responses to climate change and environmental degradation.

This thesis takes a mixed-methods and participatory approach including semi-structured interview, photovoice, and participatory mapping to examine relational practices between environmental advocates and the Great Salt Lake, a desiccating saline lake in Utah, U.S. As the lake continues to decline, dominant Western …

Evolution Of A Nitrogen-Fixing Endosymbiont And Integration With Its Diatom Host, Heidi Elizabeth Abresch

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Endosymbiosis, where one cell lives inside of a different cell, is ubiquitous in nature and has enormous impacts on the ecology and evolution of both the host and the endosymbiont [1, 2]. These relationships exist along a continuum ranging from facultative—where both partners are able to live independently—to completely obligate—where partners can only survive in the presence of the other. The most famous examples being the chloroplast and mitochondrion [3]. After hundreds of millions or even billions of years of coevolution, highly-integrated endosymbionts are coordinated with the host on the genetic, metabolic, and cellular levels, but we do not understand …

Learning In The Wild: A Discourse Analysis Of Literacy Practices And Educational Outcomes In Montana’S Youth Climate Activism, Tyler Moore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines youth climate activism in Montana as a site of literacy practice, civic learning, and critical climate engagement. Focusing on the University of Montana Climate Response Club, the study asks how youth climate activists use literacy practices to interpret climate issues and participate in civic action, and how those practices reflect elements of critical climate literacy. The study defines critical climate literacy as a set of socially situated practices through which young people read, interpret, question, and respond to climate change as both an environmental issue and a civic problem shaped by power. Rather than treating climate literacy …

High Algal Biomass Is Decoupled From Metabolism In The Gallatin River, Cora Mae Steinbach

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Assessing eutrophication in rivers is difficult compared to lakes and coastal waters, because most algal biomass occurs on the riverbed and flows interact and co-vary with production (Biggs and Close, 1989; Bernhardt et al., 2018). Riverine eutrophication is typically assessed using algal biomass and water column nutrients (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000), but biomass is highly variable and labor-intensive to measure, while nutrient concentrations often underestimate enrichment due to rapid biological uptake (Dodds and Smith, 2016). Reach-scale river metabolism can help evaluate long-term functional change in rivers recovering from nutrient enrichment (Arroita et al., 2019; Jankowski et al., 2021; Diamond …

Race, Sexual Danger, And The Moral Logic Of Punishment In The Registry Era, Edith Meade

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sex offender registries represent one of the most expansive and punitive criminal justice interventions in modern American history, yet public support for these policies remainsunderi nvestigated. Scholarly debate has questioned whether punitive attitudes toward sexual offenders reflect principled moral judgments, racial threat perceptions, or both. This study addresses that question by examining how offender race, offender age, offense severity, victim age, and offender-victim relationship shape public attitudes toward sexual offenders in the contemporary registry era. Drawing on theories of racialized sexual threat, group position, and retributive impulses, the study uses a nationally representative conjoint survey experiment administered through YouGov (N …

The Experience Of A Single Parent Participating In Child-Parent Relationship Therapy: An Instrumental Single-Case Study, Matthew Nicholas Schramm

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Traditional family structures in the United States have shifted significantly, with single-parent households facing systemic barriers that increase parental stress and strain the parent-child relationship. As this bond is critical for healthy child development, accessible mental health support is essential for these families (Parache et al., 2023).

Child Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT), a ten-week evidence-based program, strengthens this bond by training caregivers to use play as a therapeutic tool (Landreth & Bratton, 2020). This instrumental single case study (Stake, 1995) examined one single-parent's experience of CPRT delivered in a condensed four-week telehealth format, addressing the limited representation of single-parent households …

Hope For The Drowned: Baptism, Faith, And The Open Community Of Grace In Marilynne Robinson’S Housekeeping And Lila, Mackenzie M. Miller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores the baptismal imagery across two of Marilynne Robinson’s novels, Housekeeping and Lila. The hermeneutic used to understand baptism is based on some of the works of Rowan Williams, Mircea Eliade, and Northrop Frye. In its death and rebirth function, baptism is understood for its connection to the formation of self and identity. Baptism is also explored as a means of community initiation. Further, connecting these two baptismal functions, this thesis also looks at the role community plays in the formation of that identity. In this process, I compare Housekeeping’s Ruth and Lila’s titular character; …

Hidden Wounds: Exploring Moral Injury In Childhood Exposure To Domestic Violence, Megan Elizabeth Denny

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The profound impacts of Childhood Exposure to Domestic Violence (CEDV) have been documented extensively, revealing long-term psychological effects such as the potential development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and increased likelihood of future victimization or perpetration of violence. Yet, the concept of moral injury (MI) traditionally explored in military and healthcare contexts, remains significantly underexplored in populations exposed to CEDV. This study examines the relevance of MI among individuals who experienced domestic violence (DV) during their youth. The research focused on two primary aims: (1) to describe the level and variability of moral injury-related distress among adults with histories of …

Between Care And Protection: Constraints On Political Authority In Kamala Harris's 2024 Presidential Campaign, Marissa Barbara Pax

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Competing expectations about strength, care, and protection shape how presidential leadership and authority are constructed in contemporary U.S. politics, particularly for members of marginalized communities. This thesis examines Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign as a case study to explore how candidates negotiate competing understandings of political authority through appeals to Lakoff’s (2002, 2008) Strict Father Morality and the Nurturant Parent Morality. An analysis of her campaign reveals that Harris repeatedly appeals to both moral frameworks, constructing authority through empathy, mutual responsibility, and care while also emphasizing threat identification, protection, discipline, and moral strength. Although Harris successfully mobilizes the rhetorical resources …

Embodied, Relational, And Rooted: A Social Work Portfolio, Deneen Pancari

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

This portfolio reflects my professional and personal growth over the past three years of the University of Montana!s (UM!s) Online Master of Social Work (MSW) Program and showcases my understanding of advanced social work competencies (University of Montana School of Social Work, n.d.). My background includes yoga facilitation and preschool education, where I developed a strong appreciation for early childhood development and mindfulness. I never imagined how this path would lead me into clinical work in eating disorder recovery, adolescent therapy, and somatic-based interventions, which focus on the connection between the mind and body. My MSW coursework and practicum experiences …

Legal Semiotics, Political Ontology, & Merging Chronotopes Of Identity Through The Federation Of Aboriginal Nations Of The Americas, Kevin T. Inglesby

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This dissertation studies the concept of self-determination related to a confederation known as the Federation of Aboriginal Nations of the Americas. It addresses three main questions: How does FANA represent an institution of legal cooperation? In what ways does cultural capital become reproduced? And what are key principles for the Federations’ code of unity? Self-determination is a core principle of international law and may be identified through treaties and social conventions like Wunnandry. The study explores an interdisciplinary approach to American Indian selfdetermination through a focus on applied anthropology, cultural heritage, and Peircean legal semiotics to problematize some historical approaches …

Patterns Of Decision-Making And Stakeholder Prioritization In International Education Leaders At American Higher Education Institutions, Daniel C. Evans

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This quantitative study was conducted using a stakeholder theory analysis method to determine what patterns of decision-making exist in international educational leadership. The existing demands on international education leaders and recent geopolitical events have placed existing funding and ideological pressure on these individuals. This research was significant by reducing feelings of leadership isolation and providing data-driven analysis on how practitioners are responding to these pressures.

Participants were recruited from the membership of the Association of International Education Administrators, with the delimitation criteria that they have working experience in a managerial role in international education programming in the United States. In …

Continental Violence And The "Oregon Question": George Frederick Ruxton And The Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest, Rory Orion Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper builds on recent efforts to depict Indigenous polities across North America in their international relations with European and Euro-American colonists and their centralized governments. It examines George Frederick Ruxton, a private English citizen and former army lieutenant, as he developed his response to the U.S.-British Oregon dispute while living in London in early 1846. He concluded that continental warfare was imminent and took overt steps to influence British policy, which he believed could halt U.S. expansion and definitively resolve the “Oregon Question.”

Superintendent Accountability In High Achieving School Districts: A Qualitative Multiple Case Study In The State Of Washington, Kristin Lind Jacobs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The primary goal of a school district is to promote and support student academic achievement. Superintendents of public school districts across the United States should therefore be held accountable for student performance within their districts. Establishing a successful public school district requires interconnected relationships among the superintendent, the school board, accountability structures, and evaluation processes.

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to understand how superintendent accountability, in regard to student achievement, was conducted and accomplished by school boards who believe they hold the superintendent accountable for student learning. This study focused on school boards governing high-achieving school …

Instructor Created Video: Differences In Perception Of Administrative Support In Respiratory Care, Brian Daniel Cayko

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: The recent proliferation of online education has highlighted the need to reduce transactional distance and increase the community of inquiry presence between the instructor and students and between students. This quantitative non-experimental study examined the differences in perception of administrative support for instructor-created video (ICV) between faculty and administrators within Commission on Accreditation of Respiratory Care (CoARC) higher education programs of Respiratory Care. Methodology: The Difference in Perception of Administrative Support (DPAS) survey was utilized to collect data from 93 valid participants through a snowball sampling method. Analysis was performed using an independent samples t test and Cohen's d …

Tourism And Local Access On The Public Beaches Of Paros, Greece, Maria Kouidi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines how tourism development affects public beach access on the island of Paros, Greece. In recent years, Paros has experienced significant tourism growth, which has contributed to economic development while also placing pressure on natural resources, infrastructure, and coastal spaces. Beaches are protected as public goods under the Greek constitution; however, there are concerns regarding commercialization, overcrowding, and the illegal privatization of these public spaces. This thesis uses a qualitative research approach to explore how these changes are experienced and understood by different stakeholder groups. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted in Paros in July 2025. Participants …

Searching For Nooks And Crannies: Geometric And Mechanistic Perspectives On Transformer Language Model Interpretability, Anna Marbut

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable linguistic capabilities, but the internal mechanisms driving their performance and behavior remain poorly understood. This dissertation investigates the interpretability of transformer-based language models from two complementary perspectives: the geometric organization of model internals in encoder-only models, and the mechanisms underlying safety behavior in decoder-only generative models.

In Part I, we address the challenge of measuring geometric properties in high-dimensional latent spaces, proposing and evaluating alternative measures of data spread that improve upon commonly used metrics. We then apply these measures alongside quantization-based metrics to examine the relationship between latent space geometry and downstream …