Digital Commons Network^™

Affinity Based Writing Groups: Building Communities Across 9–12 Grade Levels, Melissa Pilakowski

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Writing instruction in secondary classrooms has generally focused on cognitive approaches with feedback and assessment from a limited audience, often only the teacher. However, the burgeoning digital world has made writing an increasingly social activity where individuals can influence a wider audience and engage in dialogue with their readers faster and more efficiently than ever before. This action research aims to study the impacts of online affinity based writing groups that span the 9–12 grade levels, especially in the areas of effort, self-efficacy, and feedback. Data was collected through interviews with participating students and teachers, samples of writing and feedback, …

A Memoir Of The Neutzner Family, Hannelore Neutzner Rogers

Archives & Special Collections

A memoir describing the forced expulsion and resettlement the Neutzner family and their relatives from Czechoslovakia to the German Sudetenland during World War II and their later emigration to the United States.

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy Dewayne Duck

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they share many similarities, …

Ecuadorian English Teachers’ Perspectives On Their Professional Development, Consuelo Marisol Gallardo

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Professional development (PD) plays an important role in one’s ability to perform at a high level in a job (Mizell, 2010). As such, an increased emphasis on ongoing and varied PD opportunities to support educator’s professional growth has been described as an effective approach since it pays direct dividends for teachers’ self-efficacy and prepares them to help students surpass basic academic standards (Anderson, 2018; Borg, 2018; Tanveer et al., 2021).

However, PD opportunities for English teachers, who work at Ecuadorian public high schools (grades 8-13), have not been fully explored, so it has been difficult to seek and achieve this …

Collaborative Practices Between General Education Teachers And Teachers Of The Deaf/Hard Of Hearing: A Narrative Inquiry, Kayla Power

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The US Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) states that students with disabilities should receive instruction in the general education classroom as much as possible. This move has resulted in Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) students spending more of their time in the general education classroom which has increased the need for collaboration between Teachers of the Deaf (TODs) and general education teachers. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine what collaboration between TODs and general education teachers looks like in an elementary school setting. Data consisted of individual interviews and observations. Using a narrative inquiry approach, I restory …

An Illuminative Evaluation Of Two Models Of Reading Intervention Used In Middle Schools, Tachier M. Rezac

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Intervention research often investigates the curriculum or methods used to support learners, while less attention is given to the model of those interventions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of two models of reading intervention, and to better understand how they are serving middle school students. Working from a critical pragmatic lens, I employed illuminative evaluation methods to investigate three research questions: (a) What are the demographic profiles of students enrolled in reading intervention in grades seven and eight; (b) What are the differences in gains for students enrolled in the traditional intervention and reading lab …

Nebraska Elementary School Teachers’ Desired Principal Leadership Qualities And Teachers’ Interest Of Becoming A Principal, Gene James Russel

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

The purpose of this study is to examine Nebraska elementary teachers’ desired leadership qualities and teachers’ interest of becoming a principal. Part of this study is a replication of William A. Schernikau’s dissertation completed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1991. Part of William A. Schernikau’s study was designed to replicate a study that was conducted in 1964 by Ward Campbell at the University of Southern California.

In Schernikau’s (1991) study, there are seven categories of principal leadership qualities that was examined based on elementary teachers’ perceptions: (a) management skills, (b) staff relations, (c) community relations, (d) personal characteristics, (e) …

Housing Discrimination And Negative Attitudes Towards Ex-Offender Parents, Julie Wertheimer-Meier

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While the Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination because of race, gender, religion, sex, disability, family status, and national origin, it allows housing providers to discriminate on the basis of criminal history. Prior research shows that housing providers disproportionately deny housing to ex-offender applicants and single parent applicants with young children. An ex-offender parent’s inability to acquire safe and affordable housing decreases the potential for reunification with their children and increases the risk of lost custody or parental rights termination. This dissertation consisted of two experiments that examined the effects of negative attitudes towards ex-offender parents on those parents’ ability …

Off The Rails: Cinematic Trains As Technological Controls Of The Natural World, Trinity Thompson

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Short train rail lines across the United States are seeing increased national funding to reduce toxic chemical spills caused by train derailments, the most notable of which happened in February 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. A year prior, the film White Noise (2022) featured a similar toxic train derailment incident, taking place, too, in Eastern Ohio, and featuring actors from the town of East Palestine. In considering other films featuring trains, I identified a pattern of environmental conflict, leading me to question the relationship between trains and the natural environment as portrayed in popular cinema. To conduct my research, I …

Housing Discrimination And Negative Attitudes Towards Ex-Offender Parents, Julie C. Wertheimer-Meier

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

While the Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination because of race, gender, religion, sex, disability, family status, and national origin, it allows housing providers to discriminate on the basis of criminal history. Prior research shows that housing providers disproportionately deny housing to ex-offender applicants and single parent applicants with young children. An ex-offender parent’s inability to acquire safe and affordable housing decreases the potential for reunification with their children and increases the risk of lost custody or parental rights termination. This dissertation consisted of two experiments that examined the effects of negative attitudes towards ex-offender parents on those parents’ ability …

Report To The U. S. Congress On Financing Mechanisms For Open Access Publishing Of Federally Funded Research, White House Office Of Science And Technology Policy

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Executive Summary The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) submits this report to the Appropriations Committees of the Senate and the House in fulfillment of the requirement in the Committee Report accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 (P.L. 117-328) for financing mechanisms for open access publishing of federally funded research.1 According to that Report, “The Committee recognizes the considerable progress made by OSTP” and “encourages OSTP to continue its efforts to coordinate the implementation of public access policies across Federal departments and agencies and to identify additional opportunities to enhance access to the results of Federally funded …

Osc-Co2: Coattention And Cosegmentation Framework For Plant State Change With Multiple Features, Rubi Quiñones, Ashok Samal, Sruti Das Choudhury, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Cosegmentation and coattention are extensions of traditional segmentation methods aimed at detecting a common object (or objects) in a group of images. Current cosegmentation and coattention methods are ineffective for objects, such as plants, that change their morphological state while being captured in different modalities and views. The Object State Change using Coattention-Cosegmentation (OSC-CO²) is an end-to-end unsupervised deep-learning framework that enhances traditional segmentation techniques, processing, analyzing, selecting, and combining suitable segmentation results that may contain most of our target object’s pixels, and then displaying a final segmented image. The framework leverages coattention-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and …

Short History Of The Unl Digital Commons, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

From 2005 through 2023, the UNL Digital Commons grew to be a leading example of an institutional repository. This presentation reports on personnel, history, strategy, and outstanding examples of series or contributors.

Announcement about the session:

UNL Digital Commons began in 2005 and grew into America’s 3rd-largest and most-trafficked institutional repository. Approaching 100 million downloads and spreading UNL scholarship and branding across the globe, the UNL Digital Commons boasts works from a wide variety of affiliated faculty, researchers, and students. Their participation is opening the dissemination of scholarship in radical and fundamental ways. In this session, Paul Royster traces this …

An Exploration Of Complementary And Alternative Medicine Usage Within The Vietnamese Community In Lincoln, Nebraska, Helen Duong

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Lincoln, Nebraska is home to over 5,000 Vietnamese refugees and immigrants, many of whom practice complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a result of healing traditions passed down through family members. This thesis explores the use of CAM among the Vietnamese population of Lincoln. The study employs an analysis of the literature on CAM among Vietnamese populations and thematic analysis of interviews conducted with members of the Vietnamese community of Lincoln, NE. Interviews explore perceptions of healthcare quality and access within this community as well as investigate the link between CAM and allopathic (Western) medicine. Findings suggest that certain CAM …

Rural District Leaders And Place In The Shadow Of The Pandemic: Refining The Conceptualization Of Leadership Of Place As Caring, Jeff Walls, Sarah Zuckerman

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the tensions between rural community needs and politicized state-level school closure mandates. District leaders faced competing demands of meeting the basic needs of vulnerable families, supporting the mental health of students and teachers, protecting the health of all community members, and creating new opportunities for learning. This study examines how rural district leaders responded to these challenges through the lens of caring. This lens highlights how district leaders responded to their contexts, as well as their perceptions of student, family, and staff needs in ethically grounded and politically savvy ways. We draw on semi-structured interviews with …

Religious Reformation And The Law Of Unnatural Death In England, Trayce Hockstad

Nebraska Law Bulletin (Selected Issues)

This comment was written as a supplement to a previous article, The Wrong, the Wronged, and the Wrongfully Dead: Deodand Law as a Practice of Absolution, 101 Neb. L. Rev. 731, (2023).

The men and women of Tudor England were, by and large, pragmatists. Grumbling, they sold off as much of their Catholic past as they could not hide or keep, and called in the carpenters to set boards on trestles and fix the forms round the communion tables.

Berman wrote that an essential element of each of the great revolutions that shaped the Western legal tradition was an apocalyptic …

Scaling Isolated-Attosecond-Pulse Duration By Controlling A Trajectory Parameter, Dian Peng, Jean Marcel Ngoko Djiokap

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

Reaching an ever shorter duration of isolated attosecond pulses (IAPs) is an ongoing mission in attosecond science. Wide usage of long-wavelength driving lasers has greatly broadened bandwidths for generating IAPs. We propose a strategy to further exploit the ability of a long-wavelength laser in producing short IAPs. We introduce a scaling relationship between IAP duration and a trajectory parameter that is associated with the classical cutoff trajectory of high-order harmonic generation (HHG) in gases. This trajectory parameter can facilitate in shortening IAP duration by shaping laser waveform. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods with calculations of HHG from Ne …

Nebline, October 2023

NEBLINE Newsletter Archive from Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County

Super Fair Showcases 4-H’ers Learning Experiences

4-H Youth Use Videovoice to Address Health Equity

Recipe of the Month: Jajic Middle-Eastern Cucumber Salad by Emily Gratopp

American Bittersweet Brightens Up Fall by Sarah Browning

Garden Guide: Things to Do This Month

Helping Children Calm Down by Hayley Jackson

Adding Wheat to Your Corn-Soybean Rotation Has Many Benefifits by John Nelson

Heart of 4-H Volunteer Award: Kari Schepers

Be Part of Something Big! Join 4-H!

State 4-H Horse Expo Top Results

13-Year-Old Tenley Bauman Embraces 4-H Learning Experience at Fairs

4-H Announcements for 4-H'ers and Volunteers

Super Fair 4-H/FFA Top Results

State …

Phys 441/841

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Syllabi

No abstract provided.

The Bilingual Literacy Development Model: A Holistic Way To Support Spanish-Speaking Children, Stephanie Wessels

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In the Bilingual Literacy Development Model: A holistic way to support Spanish-speaking children research study, I studied bilingual families over a 5-month period in their home environments through home visits. Drawing from data obtained through home visits, including interviews with mothers and observations of family literacy practices in the home environment, this study examines children’s bilingual literacy development. The findings are presented in an adapted Bilingual Literacy Development Model I created. The model was adapted from the work of researchers Leseman and de Jong (1998) and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system (1977, 1995), from which four facets were developed: literacy and …

Evidencing The Value Of Educational Development: Charting A Course On The Waves And Winds Of Change, Jovan Groen, Carolyn Hoessler, Carolyn Ives, Veronica Bamber, Corinne Laverty, Klodiana Kolomitro

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Across higher education, educational developers and their supporting campus communities are being called upon to scale up evidence-informed practices, to enhance student experiences, and to document the changes. This article builds on the work of scholars who have taken up this evaluative challenge, by examining varied aspects of the evidencing process using an adaptation of Saunders’s (2000) RUFDATA framework for evidencing value. Reflections on emerging patterns and tensions in the evidencing of educational development are subsequently discussed. We argue for making evidencing value a purposeful and intentional process, and we chart a path forward for creating and implementing a vision …

A Collaborative Model For Faculty Development: Helping Faculty Develop Inclusive Teaching Practices, Christina Bifulco, Christopher Drue

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Inclusive pedagogy, an intentional approach to creating learning environments that meet the instructional needs of diverse student populations, is critically important and a moral imperative in contemporary higher education. Among the biggest challenges for creating faculty development programming to address the development and use of inclusive pedagogy are the lack of financial resources to support the effort and a lack of centralized institutional staff expertise and resources to inform and support such efforts. This case study gives a model for an institutional collaboration that incorporates experts from a variety of offices to deliver a series of inclusive teaching workshops and …

Developing Critical Literacy: An Urgent Goal, Victoria Appatova, Alice Horning

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Due to the recent changes in higher education, including a major shift to online learning and the reform of education, critical literacy skills of today’s generation of college students face the peril of an increasing decline. All students, developmental and non-developmental in online and face-to-face environments, need the well-organized, systemic effort of college educators to enhance students’ critical literacy, including critical thinking, reading, writing, and research skills taught in an integrated manner. To promote postsecondary critical literacy, the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network and centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) can expand collaborations with existing “writing across the curriculum …

Exploring The Impact Of Student-Faculty Partnership Program At A Hispanic Serving Institution, Alyssa Guadalupe Cavazos, Lesley Chapa, Javier Cavazos-Vela

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Guided by a strength-based framework and counter-storying lens, we use a qualitative case study approach (Cook-Sather, 2020; Cook-Sather and Motz-Storey, 2016; Lechuga-Peña and Lechuga, 2018) to explore students’ and instructors’ experiences with a students as learners and teachers (SaLT) partnership program at a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). This study includes five students and five faculty members who participated in the student-faculty partnership program. Data collection involved student partners’ self-assessment reflections and faculty members’ pre- and post-program reflections on their experiences. Several themes were identified following a phenomenological analysis of students’ and faculty partners’ self-reflections. Themes emerging from student participants included …

Impacts Of Campus Disruption On Educational Developers’ Role-Identity And Teamwork, William V. Pilny, Benjamin Brock, Stephanie Laggini Fiore

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In times of crises, educational developers (EDs) work to ameliorate the teaching- and learning-related impacts caused by campus-wide disruptions such as health-related emergencies, mass shootings, and environmental disasters. These incidents may impact the personal-psychological factors and processes of EDs that, in turn, influence their engagement with team members and faculty. Given the vital role EDs play in improving faculty teaching and student learning across higher education (Dawson et al., 2010; Grupp, 2014; Schroeder et al., 2010), understanding the impacts of campus-wide disruptions on their functioning is critical. The present, novel study uses a psychological-phenomenological methodology and the Dynamic Systems Model …

How Teachers Use Data: Description And Differences Across Prek Through Third Grade, Amanda Witte, Lisa Knoche, Susan Sheridan, Natalie A. Koziol

Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools: Faculty Publications

The use of data to inform instruction has been linked to improved student outcomes, early identification of intervention needs, and teacher decision-making and efficacy. Additionally, data are used as a means of accountability within educational settings. However, little is known about data use practices among early grades teachers. The purpose of the current study is to describe the data use of PreK to third grade teachers and to investigate differences in data use and support across grade levels. Participants were 307 early childhood teachers in PreK and early elementary school. Analysis of survey data revealed, overall, most teachers across grade …

Chinese Species Of The Genus Tricondyla Latreille, 1822 (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae) And A New Record For The Country, Xinxin Xiong, Jürgen Wiesner

Insecta Mundi

Tricondyla wiesneri Naviaux, 2002 (Coleoptera: Cicindelidae) is reported from China for the first time. Photographs, short descriptions, and an identification key for all six taxa of the genus Tricondyla La­treille, 1822 known from China are given.

The first author recently received several specimens of Tricondyla wiesneri Naviaux, 2002 that had been collected in Yingjiang County, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. The second author compared them with the type specimens and confirmed the identification. The species was originally described from Laos, Louang Namtha province (Naviaux 2002: 48), later reported from Vietnam, Dien Bien province (Wiesner 2022: 191), …

Perceptual Cue-Guided Adaptive Image Downscaling For Enhanced Semantic Segmentation On Large Document Images, Chulwoo Pack, Leen-Kiat Soh, Elizabeth Lorang

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Image downscaling is an essential operation to reduce spatial complexity for various applications and is becoming increasingly important due to the growing number of solutions that rely on memory-intensive approaches, such as applying deep convolutional neural networks to semantic segmentation tasks on large images. Although conventional content-independent image downscaling can efficiently reduce complexity, it is vulnerable to losing perceptual details, which are important to preserve. Alternatively, existing content-aware downscaling severely distorts spatial structure and is not effectively applicable for segmentation tasks involving document images. In this paper, we propose a novel image downscaling approach that combines the strengths of both …

Undernutrition In Older Children And Adolescents In Peri-Urban Zambia, Shela Sridhar, Janella S. Kang, Isabel Madzorera, Ethan Zulu, Joyce Makasa, Sally Bell Cross, Davidson H. Hamer

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Background: Adolescents make up roughly a quarter of the population in Zambia; however, most nutrition-related programming is targeted at the underfive population. Understanding the scale of undernutrition in older children and adolescents is fundamental to alleviating food insecurity and addressing undernutrition across all age groups.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was performed in four low-income, peri-urban compounds in Chilanga District which included anthropometric measurements of children between ages 6 months-19 years and a household-level diet diversity and food security questionnaire. Wasting was used for children under 5 and thinness for children 5–19 years. Descriptive analysis and multivariate logistic regression …

Broken Tails In Holstein Dairy Cattle: A Cross-Sectional Study, Hannah E. Olsen, Karly N. Anderson, Katherine C. Creutzinger, Kurt D. Vogel

Department of Animal Science: Faculty Publications

Dairy cows are regularly handled when moved to the milking parlor and during other routine procedures. Low-stress handling methods are important in avoiding negative welfare states for dairy cattle. Tail twisting is used by some handlers to prompt cattle movement. However, when used inappropriately with excessive force, tail twisting can lead to a broken tail. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine cow-level factors that may be associated with the prevalence of broken tails in dairy cattle. A subset of 229 Holstein dairy cows (68 primiparous and 161 multiparous) at a single dairy were assessed for broken tails …