Digital Commons Network^™

Some Multidisciplinary Practices, Kathleen Black

Honors in Practice Online Archive

From the beginning of the Northwestern College Honors Program in 2002, we have operated with several underlying principles, three of which relate to our goal of being multidisciplinary. Based upon our recognition of multiple intelligences and our acknowledgment of scholarship in all academic disciplines, we have made it our goal that a single definition of either intelligence or giftedness should not suffice as a strategic design concept for the program or as a selection criterion for the students who participate in it.

In creating our program, the Faculty Honors Program Committee decided that our honors program would not include only …

Editing Harriet Beecher Stowe’S Uncle Tom’S Cabin And The Fluid Text Of Race, Wesley Raabe

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

I suspect that many scholars begin to edit a work by accident: I begin with the anecdote of how I became an accidental editor of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in academic year 2002. I had read not a single work by Harriet Beecher Stowe when I was admitted to the Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia. During my first semester, I was often at Alderman Library’s Special Collections floor to subject a copy of Delariviér Manley’s Memoirs of Europe (1710) to bibliographical analysis. I was reading Stowe’s work in another course, was already in Alderman for the Manley work, and …

Rethinking Digital Editing Practices To Better Address Non-Canonical Texts, Amanda A Gailey

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

This article stems from my recent work on Race and Children’s Literature of the Gilded Age (RCLGA),1 a digital archive that aims to provide a heavily annotated resource for scholars and students of literature, history, African American studies, visual communication, and education to examine how adults wanted children to think about race during the era of Jim Crow. I edit the archive with Gerald Early, Professor of Modern letters, English, African studies, and African American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and D. B. Dowd, Professor of Communication Design and American Culture Studies, also at Washington University. When complete, …

Realizing Early English Drama, Molly Maclagan

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

In May of 2010 a group of students from the Kent State University Honors College participated in a rare undertaking: presenting a medieval play as part of an international production of the whole play-cycle from which it originates. The students were five hundred years removed from the original context of that play and cycle. The earliest mention of The Chester Cycle comes from a 1422 legal dispute regarding the responsibilities of the guilds that were producing one of the plays in it, the language of which makes clear that the play-cycle was already well-established by that time. This historical remove …

Faculty-Led International Honors Programs, Rosalie C. Otero

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

We know that one of the major reasons for encouraging our students to study outside of the United States is to broaden their knowledge and understanding of the world. The insights and personal experiences that students gain from living, speaking, and taking part in the culture they are studying are immeasurable. Students also improve their professional potential. An international study program can provide students with cognitive and affective competencies necessary for them to thrive in a global economy, and it can provide the nation with citizens who are economically and politically savvy. Substantive research demonstrates some of the core values …

The Honors Differential: At Home And Abroad, Neil H. Donahue

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Study abroad constitutes already the kind of enrichment that defines honors education at home. The honors component of instruction at home in the U.S. emerges from the differential between the regular course of instruction and the extension, or rather qualitative enrichment, of the same through various types of added conceptual complexity, scope of detail, depth of inquiry, or level of skill. That honors differential can be tracked visibly and explicitly onto a syllabus in a regular course through highlighted assignments for eligible students; or can be embedded invisibly and implicitly in a designated honors course the syllabus for which makes …

Comprehending Comics And Graphic Novels: Watchmen As A Case For Cognition, Travis White-Schwoch, David. N. Rapp Ph.D.

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Research on the cognitive activities that underlie text processing has revealed a variety of influences on and consequences of our reading experiences. To date, though, cognitive psychologists who study reading processes have mainly focused on how people perceive and comprehend written text. We discuss herein some of the ways in which comic book comprehension might align with, and differ from, text-only comprehension. We use Watchmen (Moore & Gibbons, 1986-1987) as a case example to highlight how cues in the graphic novel, readers’ background knowledge, and inferences derived from the interactions of those cues and knowledge serve to support and enhance …

About The Authors, Volume 29 (2011)

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

About the editors and authors of volume 29 (2011) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.

Reflections On International Engagement As Educational Developers In The United States, Virginia S. Lee

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

An important aspect of the increasing complexity of the higher education landscape is its gradual internationalization. However, neither our colleges and universities nor we as educational developers have unequivocally embraced internationalization. In this chapter, I offer examples of international engagement and a framework for thinking about them. I argue that international engagement in the form of an evolving global scholarship and practice of educational development represents the ultimate extension of our thought and practice as educational developers.

Academic Dishonesty Among International Students In Higher Education, Krishna K. Bista

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

University instructors address and want to eschew student academic misconduct. These educators presume that students understand fully what cheating and plagiarism are. However, the issue of academic dis-honesty among international students is complex and difficult. This study investigated the perceptions of international undergraduate and graduate students in a southern U.S. university about possible causes for academic misbehavior. Results reveal several causal variables: previous learning style, English language proficiency, unfamiliarity with American academic cultures, relationship between student and teacher, and availability of technical and educational resources associated with academic dishonesty.

Adapting A Laboratory Research Group Model To Foster The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning, Beth A. Fisher, Regina F. Frey

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

A multidisciplinary group of faculty and staff formed an education research group modeled on a laboratory research group to focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This group has bridged the communication and knowledge gaps between STEM and social science faculty and science education specialists, fostered the development of collaborative SoTL projects, and laid the groundwork for broader institutional support of SoTL.

Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation Changes Velopharyngeal Control In Parkinson’S Disease, Michael J. Hammer, Steven M. Barlow, Kelly E. Lyons, Rajesh Pahwa

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose

Adequate velopharyngeal control is essential for speech, but may be impaired in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Bilateral subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) improves limb function in PD, but the effects on velopharyngeal control remain unknown. We tested whether STN DBS would change aerodynamic measures of velopharyngeal control, and whether these changes were correlated with limb function and stimulation settings.

Methods

Seventeen PD participants with bilateral STN DBS were tested within a morning session after a minimum of 12 h since their most recent dose of anti-PD medication. Testing occurred when STN DBS was on, and again 1 h …

Communication Support For People With Als, David R. Beukelman, Susan Fager, Amy Nordness

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Almost all people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) experience a motor speech disorder, such as dysarthria, as the disease progresses. At some point, 80 to 95% of people with ALS are unable tomeet their daily communication needs using natural speech. Unfortunately, once intelligibility begins to decrease, speech performance often deteriorates so rapidly that there is little time to implement an appropriate augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention; therefore, appropriate timing of referral for AAC assessment and intervention continues to be a most important clinical decision-making issue. AAC acceptance and use have increased considerably during the past decade. Many people use …

The Influence Of Neighborhood Density And Word Frequency On Phoneme Awareness In 2nd And 4th Grades, Tiffany Hogan, Ryan P. Bowles, Hugh W. Catts, Holly L. Storkel

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that two lexical characteristics – neighborhood density and word frequency – interact to influence performance on phoneme awareness tasks. Phoneme awareness was examined in a large, longitudinal dataset of 2nd and 4th grade children. Using linear logistic test model, the relation between words’ neighborhood density, word frequency, and phoneme awareness performance was examined across grades while co-varying type and place of deletion. A predicted interaction was revealed: words from dense neighborhoods or those with high frequency were more likely to yield correct phoneme awareness responses across grades. Findings support an …

Beginning With El Barrio: Learning From Exemplary Teachers Of Latino Students, Jason G. Irizarry, John Raible

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

This study draws from data collected through phenomenological interviews with a group of urban teachers identified as “exemplary” by Latino students, parents, and community members. The authors critically examine the participants’ biographies and document factors they cited as most germane and influential to informing their practice with Latino students. The article concludes with a discussion of barrio-based epistemologies and ontologies, or ways of being and knowing that are informed by extended immersion in and connection to Latino cultural and linguistic communities, particularly as they are developed explicitly and leveraged to improve educational experiences and outcomes for Latino youth.

Navigating The Waves Of Social And Political Capriciousness: Inspiring Perspectives From Dream-Eligible Immigrant Students, Amanda Morales, Socorro Herrera, Kevin Murry

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

This article examines the psychological and sociological impacts of the proposed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act and instate tuition legislation on DREAM-eligible students in the Midwestern United States. The researchers sought to capture the lived experiences of undocumented immigrant students through their rich interpretations of current immigration policy and how participants described their situation, their identity, and their dreams in relation to the volatility of their external environment.

Resumen: Este manuscrito examina el impacto psicológico y sociológico del propuesto Acto de Desarrollo, Asistencia, y Educación para Menores Extranjeros (DREAM) y la ley de educación para …

Prototyping An Online Wetland Ecosystem Services Model Using Open Model Sharing Standards, Min Feng, Shuguang Liu, Ned H. Euliss Jr., Claudia Young, David M. Mushet

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

Great interest currently exists for developing ecosystem models to forecast how ecosystem services may change under alternative land use and climate futures. Ecosystem services are diverse and include supporting services or functions (e.g., primary production, nutrient cycling), provisioning services (e.g., wildlife, groundwater), regulating services (e.g., water purification, floodwater retention), and even cultural services (e.g., ecotourism, cultural heritage). Hence, the knowledge base necessary to quantify ecosystem services is broad and derived from many diverse scientific disciplines. Building the required interdisciplinary models is especially challenging as modelers from different locations and times may develop the disciplinary models needed for ecosystem simulations, and …

The 4th International Comparison On Epr Dosimetry With Tooth Enamel Part 1: Report On The Results, P. Fattibene, A. Wieser, E. Adolfsson, L. A. Benevides, M. Brai, F. Callens, V. Chumak, B. Ciesielski, S. Della Monaca, K. Emerich, H. Gustafsson, Y. Hirai, M. Hoshi, A. Israelsson, A. Ivannikov, D. Ivanov, J. Kaminska, Wu Ke, E. Lund, M. Marrale, L. Martens, C. Miyazawa, N. Nakamura, W. Panzer, S. Pivovarov, R. A. Reyes, M. Rodzi, A. A. Romanyukha, A. Rukhin, S. Sholom, V. Skvortsov, V. Sepanenko, M. A. Tarpan, H. Thierens, S. Toyoda, F. Trompier, E. Verdi, K. Zhumadilov

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

This paper presents the results of the 4th International Comparison of in vitro electron paramagnetic resonance dosimetry with tooth enamel, where the performance parameters of tooth enamel dosimetry methods were compared among sixteen laboratories from all over the world. The participating laboratories were asked to determine a calibration curve with a set of tooth enamel powder samples provided by the organizers. Nine molar teeth extracted following medical indication from German donors and collected between 1997 and 2007 were prepared and irradiated at the Helmholtz Zentrum München. Five out of six samples were irradiated at 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 …

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy For Immigrants Presenting With Social Anxiety Disorder: Two Case Studies, Brandon J. Weiss, J. Suzanne Singh, Debra Anne Hope

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for the treatment of social anxiety disorder (SAD) has demonstrated efficacy in numerous randomized trials. However, few studies specifically examine the applicability of such treatment for ethnic minority clients. Thus, the purpose of this article is to present two case studies examining the utility of individualized CBT for SAD with two clients who immigrated to the United States, one from Central America and one from China, for whom English was not the primary language. Both clients demonstrated improvement on a semistructured interview and self-report measures. Necessary adaptations were modest, suggesting that therapy could be conducted in a …

Schooling And The Everyday Ruptures Transnational Children Encounter In The United States And Mexico, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga

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

Using examples of students in Mexico who used to attend US schools and examples from Georgia of students who used to and might again attend Mexican schools, this chapter considers how an unremarkable, quotidian activity—the act of attending school—can become means for transnationally mobile children to experience shock, disconnection, and a reiterated sense of dislocation if schools are incompletely responsive to learners' biographies.

Promoting Vocabulary Learning For English Learners, Stephanie Wessels

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

Vocabulary knowledge, which is key to the reading comprehension of English learners (ELs), must be a focus for every teacher in today’s increasingly diverse schools, including those in the mainstream classroom. This article strives to increase awareness of the five characteristics of effective vocabulary instruction as well as demonstrate how such characteristics can be variously emphasized in the before-, during-, and after-reading phases of the instructional process. Research-based strategies can provide teachers and ELs with a gateway to increased vocabulary learning. One such strategy, the Vocabulary Quilt, is explored in depth to illustrate how teachers can use a single strategy …

Audibility As A Predictor Of Speech Recognition And Listening Effort, Ryan W. Mccreery

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Two studies were conducted to evaluate how audibility influences speech recognition and measures of working memory in children with normal hearing. Specifically, audibility limitations related to background noise and limited bandwidth were analyzed, as these factors are characteristic of the listening conditions encountered by children with hearing loss who wear hearing aids.

In the first study, speech recognition was measured for 117 children and 18 adults with normal hearing. Stimulus bandwidth and the level of background noise were varied systematically in order to evaluate predictions of audibility based on the Speech Intelligibility Index. Results suggested that children with normal hearing …

Genocide Of Native Americans: Historical Facts And Historiographic Debates, Brenden Rensink

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

One of the most sobering themes that underlie North American history is the demographic collapse that Euro-American contact initiated among many of the continent's indigenous peoples. As twentieth-century scholars consider the post-contact unfolding of Euro-American and Native American histories and the ways in which they have become inextricably intertwined, their oft-divergent trajectories raise immediate questions of causality. There is no doubt that contact with Euro-Americans served as the catalyst for sea changes in Native America, but the demographic decline apparent in historical retrospect was not an inevitable outcome to be imposed upon historical actors or events. To presume that the …

Adolescents Are Young Adults, Not Immature Brains, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

When G. Stanley Hall (1904) wrote the first book on adolescence at the turn of the 20th century, he was describing a new cultural phenomenon that had emerged in the United States and other industrializing societies during the late 19th century. There had always been children, whether or not we theorized about them, but there had not always been adolescents.

Of course, there have always been teenagers in the mathematical sense of persons who have reached the age of 13 years but not yet 20 years (and in the linguistic sense that these are the ‘‘teen’’ years in our counting …

The Gendering Of Organizational Research Methods: Evidence Of Gender Patterns In Qualitative Research [With Commentaries And Response], Donde Ashmos Plowman, Anne D. Smith

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Purpose — The purpose of this paper is to explore the role that gender plays in choice of research methods.

Design/methodology/approach — The publication patterns of men and women in four prominent management journals over two decades were analyzed in three North American journals—Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Organization Science—and one European journal—Journal of Management Studies. The authors coded the research methodology—qualitative or non-qualitative—and author gender for each article from 1986 through 2008, other than Organization Science which began in 1990. The authors also coded the stage of career for the journals …

Barack Obama: A Semiotic Analysis Of His Philadelphia Speech, Theresa Catalano

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In this paper, Barack Obama's March 18, 2008 Philadelphia speech is examined from the perspectives of Semiotics and Critical Discourse Analysis incorporating a theoretical framework from Social Identity Theory including models of metaphorical analysis from Semina and Masci (1996), Santa Ana (1999), and semiotic analysis of political discourse from Umberto Eco's "linguaggio politico" (1973). Jakobson's functions of signs (context, contact, code, addresser, addressee, and message) provide a basis for the analysis, which examines each function in detail. Emphasis is placed on the message of the speech by analyzing metaphors and metonyms ranging from "unity is nourishment" to "anger is a …

Lutheran Christian Hebraism In The Time Of Solomon Glassius (1593-1656), Stephen G. Burnett

Department of Classics and Religious Studies: Faculty Publications

Lutheran Hebrew scholarship in the era of Orthodoxy has suffered the same kind of scholarly neglect as theology from this period. A few Hebraists such as Wilhelm Schickard or Wolfgang Ratke have been the subjects of monographs or collections of articles, while others receive mention in university histories or books related to Jewish-Christian relations in early modern Germany. Only within the past decade have scholars addressed this facet of Reformation-era Christian Hebraism. Johann Anselm Steiger examined the use that Johann Gerhard and Solomon Glassius made of post-biblical Jewish literature, while Kenneth G. Appold has stressed the pivotal role that Hebrew …

A Randomized Trial Examining The Effects Of Parent Engagement On Early Language And Literacy: The Getting Ready Intervention, Susan M. Sheridan, Lisa Knoche, Kevin A. Kupzyk, Carolyn P. Edwards, Christine A. Marvin

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Language and literacy skills established during early childhood are critical for later school success. Parental engagement with children has been linked to a number of adaptive characteristics in preschoolers including language and literacy development, and family-school collaboration is an important contributor to school readiness. This study reports the results of a randomized trial of a parent engagement intervention designed to facilitate school readiness among disadvantaged preschool children, with a particular focus on language and literacy development. Participants included 217 children, 211 parents, and 29 Head Start teachers in 21 schools. Statistically significant differences in favor of the treatment group were …

Current And Future Aac Research Considerations For Adults With Acquired Cognitive And Communication Impairments, Melanie Fried-Oken, David R. Beukelman, Karen Hux

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Adults with acquired language impairments secondary to stroke, traumatic brain injury, and neurodegenerative diseases are candidates for communication supports outside of the traditional restoration-based approaches to intervention. Recent research proves repeatedly that augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) provides a means for participation, engagement, conversation, and message transfer when individuals can no longer expect full return of premorbid communication skills and that inclusion of communication supports should begin early. We discuss current research and future directions for integrated systems of technical supports that include low-technology, high tech, and partner-dependent strategies for adults with severe and chronic aphasia, cognitive-communication problems resulting from …

A Mixed Methods Study Of How The Transition Process Impacts The Autonomy Of Pre-Service Secondary Mathematics Teachers, Linda Kasal Fusco

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This mixed methods study sought to identify the impact that transition into the practice of teaching had on the autonomy of pre-service secondary teachers of Mathematics.  It was based on the belief that a Mathematics teacher’s autonomy depended on: beliefs about Mathematics and how it was learned, reflections on the teaching practice, and social constraints of a secondary school culture. Data was collected between January 2009 and March 2010.  In Phase I (Quantitative) the participants (N = 30), selected from ten State University of New York teacher preparation colleges and universities, completed five instruments to quantify the three factors of …