Digital Commons Network^™

Bear Smart Um: Creating A University Campus Safe For Bears And Students, Kailie Blanco, Eliana Lowe, Nieset Lefevre, Kailie Todd, Ridley Hudson, Joshua Moyar, Emily Cook

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Universities nestled in the mountains across the globe like the University of Montana may find themselves dealing with human-bear conflict while lacking the proper resources to approach management. At UM, there has been an increase in bear activity over the past five years and it is expected to increase. Developing a plan to prevent bear activity on campus can be costly, time-consuming, and tedious. Our student group’s solution includes two intertwining parts: A bear management plan and educational outreach surrounding bear safety. The recommendations in the bear management plan were created by consulting bear-conflict specialists from Missoula County, craftspeople who …

The Beauty And The Beast: Beauty And Misfortune In Maria De Zayas’S Novellas, Clarise Ann Sviatko

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The age-old question of what beauty is has been a common discussion among artists and philosophers for centuries. Maria de Zayas, a 17th century Spanish novelist mostly known for her novella collections Amorous and Exemplary Novels (1637) and The Disenchantments of Love (1647), describes violence and deception of beautiful women at the hands of men. In this paper, I will explore Zayas’s motives for all the female heroines being beautiful and how this all relates to the connection between beauty and misfortune that is seen throughout her works as well as many other pieces of literature. By comparing Zayas’s novellas …

Welcome To The Farm, Elani Ben-Gabriel Borhegyi

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

The purpose of this creative scholarship is to examine human relationships to Earth and the implications for a thriving future. This thesis studies the current environmental state of our planet, then looks at sustainability as a model for improving human and planetary health, and ends by visualizing a thriving future beyond sustainability in which we adopt a “caretaker” culture. The key to this trajectory is to untangle and dismantle colonial relationships with the planet and replace them with “caretaker” relationships - relationships rooted in love, honor, and reciprocity with environmental connection, while taking into account past, present, and future generations …

Regaining Ground: Montana Tribes Exercise Sovereignty For More Than Land, 2023, University Of Montana--Missoula. School Of Journalism. Native News Honors Project

Native News Honors Project, 1992-2026

An annual publication that is reported, photographed, edited, and designed by students in the University of Montana’s School of Journalism.

Principals’ Perception Of Teacher Performance Given Selected Barriers To Accurate Evaluations, Thomas J. Korst

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This quantitative, non-experimental study explored the differences between principals’ perceived level of influence evaluation barriers have on the accuracy of teacher evaluations. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from Montana principals regarding their perceptions of: (a) teacher performance combinations (b) the strength of influence selected barriers have on the accuracy of teacher evaluations principals provide teachers, and (c) demographic information. Participating Montana principals were asked to categorize the teachers they supervise into four performance combinations: (1) Good Teacher/Good Employee or (GT/GE), (2) Good Teacher/Marginal Employee or (GT/ME), (3) Marginal Teacher/Good Employee or (MT/GE), and (4) Marginal Teacher/Marginal Employee …

To The Land Of Opportunity: Leadership Journeys Of Persian Immigrant Women In The United States, Shaima Khinjani

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

How have barriers shaped the experience of Persian women holding leadership positions in the United States? Using a qualitative approach, this research studied the lived experience of immigrant women from Persian-speaking countries and the challenges of their leadership journey in the United States. The data from the lived experiences of twelve women in leadership positions with one-to-one Zoom meetings were collected using interactive interviews. Raw transcriptions of their experiences were analyzed using the descriptive phenomenological approach outlined by Giorgi (2009). This approach allowed for the data to be reduced into a single narrative description shared by all participants indicating the …

Modifying Lysosomal Cholesterol Or Potassium Channel Activity Prevents Silica-Induced Inflammation, Rebekah Louise Kendall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Chronic inflammation contributes to a number of diseases, driven by NLRP3 inflammasome activity and the lack of resolution. Silicosis is one such disease, brought on by the unresolved inflammation caused by inhaled crystalline silica particles of sufficiently small size. These particles are taken up by alveolar macrophages to protect the fragile alveolar spaces. Silica particles interact with phagolysosomal membranes through nearly free silanol moieties and disrupt the lipid order of the lysosomal membrane thereby causing permeabilization. This permeabilization (LMP) leads to the release of proteases including Cathepsin B that promote the assembly and activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome. The inflammasome …

#Therapy: Social Media Video Interventions And Help Seeking Intentions Among College Students, Jennifer Leigh Lippold

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite evidence of rising mental health concerns among college students, treatment utilization among this population remains low (ACHA, 2020). While there are many barriers that impact help seeking among students, some of the most commonly cited include stigma, treatment fearfulness, and low mental health literacy (e.g., Czyz et al., 2013; Ebert et al., 2019b; Eisenberg et al., 2007, Vogel et al., 2013). In order to promote help seeking among students, many colleges have made efforts to address these barriers through outreach interventions, such as educational presentations, on-campus advertisements, and campus fairs (Betton et al., 2015; Gruttadaro, & Crudo, 2012; Pescosolido …

Steady-State Regulation Of Secretory Cargo Export And Er Homeostasis By Inositol Trisphosphate Receptors And Penta-Ef-Hand Proteins, Aaron J. Held

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Constant protein degradation and turnover necessitates constitutive secretion that delivers the correct mix of nascent proteins to their appropriate subcellular destinations. Cells thus exhibit steady-state secretion and the additional ability to adjust secretory flux, though we lack a clear understanding of this critical process. During secretion, the COPII coat is responsible for providing a balance of actively and passively selected ER cargos to enter the secretory pathway. Furthermore, Ca²⁺ -binding proteins have been implicated in regulating this process in response to Ca²⁺ signals. In Chapter 1, we review the secretory pathway and vesicular trafficking, with a focus on …

Molecular Studies Of Human Fibronectin, Precious Ann Lleva Nepomuceno

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fibronectin is an extracellular matrix glycoprotein that plays a major role in cell adhesion, cell growth and tissue organization. FN is comprised of three types of modular repeats – type I (FN1), type II (FN2), type III (FN3) – and a non-homologous variable region (V region) that can contain 0 to 120 amino acid residues depending on alternative splicing. Fibronectin contains several fibronectin type 3 (FN3) domains, which all have a β-sandwich structure composed of three-stranded (β-strands A, B and E) and fourstranded (β-strands C, D, F and G) β-sheets. FN3 domains are susceptible to mechanical unfolding, and it has …

Witness This Thing So Tender, Erin Marie White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

At once fantastical and down-to-earth, the poems of Witness This Thing So Tender are concerned with the convergence of the speaker’s many selves and influences. Gritty and mysterious happenings shape the speaker’s physical, emotional, and psychological circumstances in the world. Whether the triggering topic is ecological, parental, or sepulchral, the work of the poems is to examine and integrate the changeable natures of memory and reality.

Each poem in the second movement of the collection, entitled “Lunar Cycle,” employs the idiom Once upon a time as its entry point. This small, well-worn turn of phrase operates as a springboard into …

Teachers’ Perceptions Of The Behavioral Symptoms Associated With Trauma, Hannah Hall

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Insights From The Environment: Unveiling Methodological Biases And The Impacts Of Beavermediated Environmental Variation On Amphibian-Parasite Dynamics, Leah Marie Fischer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Environmental variation plays an important role in shaping patterns of parasite and pathogen infections within ecosystems and populations. Effective management of wildlife diseases hinges on the detection of parasites and pathogens, followed by the identification of trends in infections that can be used for predicting their spread and implementing control measures. Beavers are ecosystem engineers and keystone species that serve as important sources of environmental variation. In North America, beavers are promoted for the conservation of imperiled taxa like amphibians which are facing declines driven by habitat loss, parasites, and pathogens. Beavers create diverse habitats that attract amphibians, but these …

Reinforcement Learning For Optimal Control In Simulated Greenhouses, Daithi Kahele Leilehua Martin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Demands on agricultural systems will increase as the world population continues to grow. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is an old idea gaining more recent momentum due to advances in automation, lighting, and climate control. One of the fundamental challenges of CEA is optimal control of the growing environment. We present a method for optimal control in CEA utilizing Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). DRL comprises a set of machine learning algorithms that optimize a user-defined reward function. We define this function such that the reward is high when the growing environment is ideal for crop production, and the reward is low …

Interactions Among Climate, Fire, And Ecosystem Processes Across Multiple Spatial And Temporal Scales In Rocky Mountain Forests, Kyra Diane Clark-Wolf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Warmer and drier climate conditions over recent decades are contributing to widespread increases in fire activity across western North America. The combined impacts of changing climate and fire activity threaten to undermine the longstanding resilience of forest ecosystems to wildfires, potentially leading to ecological transformations. This context creates a pressing need to understand the direct effects of climate and wildfire on ecosystem processes, and how longer-term changes in climate, fire activity, and ecosystem processes interact to determine ecological trajectories.

This dissertation advances our understanding of the causes and ecosystem consequences of wildfire and changing fire regimes in northern Rocky Mountain …

Seeking A Common Theme: A Study Of Ceramic Effigy Artifacts In The Pre-Hispanic American Southwest And Northern Mexico Using Computer Image Pattern Recognition And Phylogenetic Analysis, Lee Roger Tallier Jr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Effigy artifacts are found throughout the Pre-Hispanic American Southwest and Northern Mexico (PHASNM), as well as in other cultures around the world, with many sharing the same forms and design features. The earliest figurines within the PHASNM were partial anthropomorphic figurines made from fired clay, dating to between A.D. 287 and A.D. 312 (Morss 1954:27). They were found in a pit house village of Bluff Ruin in the Forestdale Valley of eastern Arizona, and they appeared to be associated with the Mogollon culture. The temporal range of the samples examined in this study is from approximately 200 A.D. to 1650 …

Individual And Population Responses To Hydrologic Variability In A Headwater Stream Salamander, Madaline Cochrane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding how organisms respond to environmental variability is a central goal in ecology – a goal made even more pressing by the herculean challenge global climate change presents to all organisms. Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of floods and droughts, which will likely have disproportionate effects on freshwater organisms. Many stream-associated species have multi-stage life histories. However, we lack an empirical understanding of life history and movement responses of these organisms to hydrologic disturbances, and how these responses may influence demographic rates. In my dissertation, I used a combination of growth, developmental, movement, and demographic data to …

A Comparison Of Barriers To Traditional And Home-Based Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Participation: Potential Implications For The Maintenance Phase, Erin Rose Madison

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cardiac rehabilitation provides medically supervised therapeutic exercise and multifaceted risk factor modification as a form of secondary prevention for cardiovascular disease, a persistent leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and internationally. Despite robust evidence of compelling patient outcomes, decreased disease recurrence, and the indications from the ACC/AHA endorsing phase II cardiac rehabilitation (CR) as a crucial aspect of recovery from cardiac events and qualifying conditions, CR is widely underutilized. A variety of patient barriers can serve as mitigating factors to CR referral, enrollment, participation, and completion contributing to, in part, the underutilization of CR. Barriers to …

Does Behavioral Synchrony Extend To Robots? Children’S Sharing, Mentalizing, And Social Attributions To Synchronous Others, Sarah E. Sweezy

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Behavioral synchrony, or the act of keeping rhythm with others, has many implications on children’s interactions with others, from prosocial behaviors to feelings of affiliation with synchronous people. However, little is known about how behavioral synchrony applies to non-human entities. From robots leading movement-based learning in classrooms or being engaged in cultural settings, a new series of questions arise for how children view synchronizing with non-human others. The current study aimed to investigate how broadly synchronization effects would extend in a child sample: Are behavioral synchrony effects limited to synchronizing with humans or do they extend to social agents (e.g., …

Persistent Structure Of Higher-Rank Graphs And Their C∗-Algebras: A Path Towards Geometric Classification, Samuel Joseph Lippert

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Black Deathways: An African Methodist History, 1829-1916, Christina M. Varney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study will focus on the transformations of death practices and the shifting roles of death workers from 1829-1916. The Postbellum portion of this study will focus on African Methodist communities in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee as practices and people moved West to the states of Montana, Colorado, and California. These practices experienced changes as a result of rising literacy rates, the establishment of Black churches, and from the movement of Black people within the South. More changes occurred with the creation of mutual aid societies and Black-owned funeral homes. Black funeral directors …

Navigating Extreme Climate Events: Uncovering The Challenges Of Social-Ecological System Governance In The Anthropocene, Amber Waialea Datta

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

A warming climate brings fundamental transitions to social-ecological systems (SES), threatening to degrade already strained relationships between people and nature. Extreme climate events can create crises that provide an opportunity for examining how resource managers, scientists, policy-makers, and others who make or influence decisions about SES (i.e. “governance actors”) understand and respond to climate change. Previous research indicates that extreme climate events may present opportunities for governance actors to evolve new priorities and approaches that improve governing SES as climate change bears down. However, there has been little empirical research to understand how governance actors respond to extreme climate events …

Umfc #12: A Comprehensive Forensic Analysis Case Report, Kaylee M. Hinds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The University of Montana Forensic Case 12 (UMFC) is a human skeleton with an MNI of one that was recovered in August 1983 from an old schoolyard in Helena, Montana, by construction workers who were building a highway. The individual was given to the University of Montana Anthropology Department following the authority’s investigation. At the time, the University of Montana aided in the analysis of the skeletal remains and both departments had deemed the case as forensically insignificant and historic. The initial recoverers believed that the individual was a descendant of the Last Chance Gulch era and reflected Chinese ancestry, …

Analysis Of Covid-19 In Rural America, Ian Gabriel Derickson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, China and subsequent global pandemic illustrated the need of accurate forecasting and a greater understanding of the underlying dynamics of infectious diseases.

In this dissertation, we examine the six most populous towns in the State of Montana through the lens of the classic SIR model. With this, we show that the six towns in question exhibit similar disease dynamics and population behavior within each wave. Furthermore, we conduct analysis on the age demographics of COVID-19 cases and deaths. This analysis corroborates the findings of the SIR model fits, in that the …

Variation In Body Composition In Deer Mice: The Biogeography And Ecophysiology Of Energy Allocation, Cole Joseph Wolf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Body composition, the percent of lean and fat mass, is a snapshot of an individual’s energetic state at a moment in time. Wild organisms should allocate energy to optimize fitness, so tracking changes in body composition provides a window into how priorities may shift throughout the year or across environments. While seasonal variation in body composition is wellcharacterized in systems such migrating birds (Scott et al. 1994) and hibernating mammals (Hellgren 1998), much less is known about how this trait varies across species ranges and thus how organisms modify their body composition and to meet local environmental challenges. For my …

Chinese Material Culture Signatures In Native North America: A Preliminary Study Of National Museum Of The American Indian Online Collections And Plains, Erin Drin Rosenkrance, Erin D. Rosenkrance

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rosenkrance, Erin, M.A. Autumn 2023, Department Anthropology

Chinese Material Culture Signatures in Native North America:

A Preliminary Study of National Museum of the American Indian Online Collections and Plains cultural heritage

Chairperson: Dr. Kelly Dixon, Anthropology. University of Montana

This research explores and identifies Chinese Material Culture (CMC) incorporated into Plains Tribal Culture Artifacts Collections (PTACs) within the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) online collection. The study seeks to establish the historical context and rationale for this investigation and aims to provide a visual analysis of the identified CMCs, laying the groundwork for future research. Through an exploratory …

Documents From The December 6, 2024 Meeting Of The Associated Students Of The University Of Montana (Asum), University Of Montana--Missoula. Associated Students

Senate Meeting Agendas and Minutes, 2007-Present

Agenda and meeting minutes from the December 6, 2024 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM).

Staying Rogue: Lessons On Loving A Permitted River, Caroline Elizabeth Weiss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Cognitive Function On Patient Language And Quality Of Life Outcomes For Stroke Survivors With Aphasia Who Participate In An Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Program (Icap), Kortney M. Krieger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Background: Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that impairs communication, across all modalities of language (i.e., reading, writing, speaking, and comprehension). Aphasia most commonly results from damage to the left hemisphere of the brain (e.g., stroke, traumatic brain injury). Cognitive function including attention, memory, and executive functioning may negatively impact patient outcomes during post-acute rehabilitation of aphasia. Intensive Comprehensive Aphasia Programs (ICAPs) provide intensive, evidence-based and holistic treatment for a cohort of stroke survivors. The impact of these cognitive functions on language outcomes following participation in an ICAP has not been explored.

Aims: To investigate the impact of extralinguistic cognition …

Beliefs About False Allegations Of Sexual Violence: Intergroup Contact Theory And Rape Myth Acceptance At A Rocky Mountain University, Alexandra Marie Buscaglia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

False allegations of sexual assault represent approximately 2% to 10% of all sexual assault allegations reported to law enforcement (Lisak et al., 2010). Despite this low prevalence rate, people tend to overestimate the occurrence of false allegations, and give false allegations excessive weight in arguments about rape myths and policy-making decisions. This excessive weight is given despite a lack of research evidence that false reports of sexual violence occur more frequently than those of any other crime (Ask, 2010; McMillan, 2018; Stabile et al., 2019). This overestimation is likely influenced by the overrepresentation and sensationalization of false allegations in the …