Digital Commons Network^™

Blame Within Reason, Adam R. Thompson

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

My dissertation develops a novel response to global skepticism about responsibility—the view that no one is fit to be held responsible for anything. Though P.F. Strawson offered a highly influential account of holding and being responsible, his argument is widely considered to fail as a response to global skepticism. The primary worry is that he only describes our practice of holding responsible but does not justify it. I propose an unorthodox Strawson-style account of holding and being responsible and employ that account to offer an argument against global skepticism which not only describes but also justifies our practice of holding …

Developing An Understanding Of How College Students Experience Interactive Instructional Technology: A Ux Perspective, Adam Wagler

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

Technology is increasingly mobile and social, resulting in dynamic digital and interactive environments. The ubiquitous nature of interactive instructional technology presents new paradigms for higher education, creating challenges for instructors to compete for time and attention as students are bombarded by information in a digital, media rich world. The problem being studied, with all of these technological advancements, is how instructors can approach these challenges from a user experience (UX) perspective. A macro level view sees college students taking multiple courses at a time, over many semesters, and using different interactive instructional technology that mix with other forms of online …

Getting To The Heart Of Our Students: First-Year Students And Their Wellness, Shannon Ford

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

Wellness is a topic everyone is talking about these days. While a keyword among conversations, wellness within literature is not broken down but simply a theme. Therefore, I wanted to gain a better understanding of how students across college campuses view and perceive their personal wellness. To do this, I conducted a phenomenological mixed methods study, which explored how first-year students perceive wellness.

Through administering the 36-question Perceived Wellness Inventory survey (Adams, Bezner & Steinhardt, 1997) and conducting a focus group, three themes emerged: behaviors versus knowledge, feelings, and support. These three themes supported existent wellness literature and added areas …

A/R/Tography As A Guide For Curriculum Design, Michelle M. Hrbek

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

A/r/tography is not a method for curriculum development. Rather curriculum designers who see themselves as artist, researcher, and teacher best serve their students by creating lessons and units that encourage the learners to discover the a/r/tographer in themselves. Students who research themes presented in the visual arts classroom, create images that build on their personal experiences and communicate their individual perspective, and then teach others about their process are more likely to have relevant visual arts experiences. This paper explains the idea of a/r/tography and shows how a/r/tography as an overarching guide can inform curriculum whereby student artists construct meaningful …

Women's And Gender Studies Spring 2015

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Information and Materials

On Friday, March 13, many UNL students and faculty members attended the No Limits 2015 conference hosted by the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The conference’s theme was “Talking Leadership” and it featured keynote speaker Dr. Mary S. Hartman, the Founding Director & Senior Scholar at the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University. Dr. Hartman discussed several issues that women who take on leadership roles currently face but ended by highlighting the silver linings that can solve these problems. One key element of her talk was inclusion and how the increasing involvement of diverse populations and men help create a culture …

Textile Society Of America Newsletter 27:1 — Spring 2015, Textile Society Of America

Textile Society of America: Newsletters

Letter from the Editor
Letter from the President
2016 Symposium: Call for Submissions [Crosscurrents: Land, Labor, and the Port, Savannah, Georgia, October 19–23, 2016]
R. L. Shep Ethnic Textile Book Award: 2014 Nominees
TSA Establishes a New Award: Fellows of the Textile Society of America
In Memoriam: Dika Eckersley
Textiles Close Up in Santa Fe / Last Chance to Register for Santa Fe TCU
Book Reviews: Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design and Maya Threads: A Woven History of Chiapas
Exhibitions: Sahib, Bibi, Nawab: Baluchar Silks of Bengal, 1750–1900 and Italian Textile Materials: Past, Present, and …

The Network Motif Architecture Of Dominance Hierarchies, Daizaburo Shizuka, David B. Mcdonald

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The widespread existence of dominance hierarchies has been a central puzzle in social evolution, yet we lack a framework for synthesizing the vast empirical data on hierarchy structure in animal groups. We applied network motif analysis to compare the structures of dominance networks from data published over the past 80 years. Overall patterns of dominance relations, including some aspects of non-interactions, were strikingly similar across disparate group types. For example, nearly all groups exhibited high frequencies of transitive triads, whereas cycles were very rare. Moreover, pass-along triads were rare, and double-dominant triads were common in most groups. These patterns did …

Discursive Struggles Of Tradition And Nontradition In The Retrospective Accounts Of Married Couples Who Cohabited Before Engagement, Julia Moore, Jennifer Kienzle, Elizabeth Flood Grady

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Couples who cohabit and then become engaged often participate in nontraditional living arrangements and traditional marriage proposals. Because understandings of tradition and nontradition are constituted in discourse, we employed relational dialectics theory to examine the interplay of competing discourses in the talk of married participants who cohabited before engagement. Through retrospective interviews, we investigated the discursive struggles in participants’ talk across three contexts: pre-engagement cohabitation, the marriage proposal ritual, and the (re)telling of the proposal story to friends and family. Analysis of participant interviews illustrated three discursive struggles: (a) pragmatism and risk in cohabitation, (b) romance and partnership in the …

Effects Of Poverty On Children’S Education, Jasmin Valdez

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Poverty has been affecting children in elementary school for many generations. It affects their lives by decreasing their chances at a better life outside of poverty through their education. Through research, I found that children living in poverty do not do as well in school than those living with a higher income. Poverty affects them through their family, social, psychological, and health aspects

Effects Of Stress On Humans, Kayla Solorzano

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Stress is the result of many factors that occur in life and should be dealt with in a serious manner. Too much stress that is untreated can lead to many health problems. Many people interpret stress differently, and stress affects people differently as well. When we react to stress many changes occur within our body. There are many ways to manage stress, and to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Our Dystopian World, Kellee Nguyen

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

If we do not heed the warnings in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel the Handmaid’s Tale, we, similar to handmaids will lose ourselves to society’s conveyor belt: go to school, graduate, attend college, graduate once more, raise a family, and then work away the rest of our lives. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale acts as an in depth metaphoric replication of modern society. The society in which Offred resides in, through historical events, reasoning, and the decrease in birth rates, the government's action is justified as the people's moral values are suppressed and their rights taken away from them. Likewise, in …

The Negative Effects Of Technology On Youth Today, Marlena Ramirez

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Although technology has made a huge advancement in today's society, it is not always what it seems. You may see the good it is doing in today's youth, but do people today see the negativity too? It is all around. Todays society needs to see that technology is affecting us in such negative ways: emotionally, in our relationships, in education, in health and bullying. I have found that many people today do not realize just how much technology affects a person.

Limiting Beauty Pageants, Aaliyah Griego-Turner

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Beauty pageants give young women a false idea of true beauty; the girls who don't win oIen suffer from low self-­‐esteem. The media has glorified beauty pageants on television with shows like Toddlers and Tiaras. “ Glitz” pageants should be banned and the age limit should be raised. “Natural” pageants are beSer; they allow the girls to show their true beauty. Instead of wearing fake teeth, breast implants, hair extensions, or fake nails. Beauty pageants do have the potenWal to create positve role models out of young woman. “Glitz” pageants should have an age limit not only because they are …

Success Of Students From Non-Traditional Families, Yakira Mckay

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

A traditional family structure in the U.S is defined as a family support system involving two married heterosexual individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. Examples of nontraditional families include but are not limited to being raised by homosexual parents, single parents and/or raised in a low-income family. Studies found that students that are raised in nontraditional families are at no disadvantage when it comes to the social and academic success of the student.

Social Media And The Effect On Youth, Keli Wheeler

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Social Media and the way it effects adolescents is an important topic to have a better understanding of. In a fast growing frame of life where everything is a click or swipe away, we need to know what exactly we are dealing with in the virtual world, especially the worlds of social media sites. There have already been reforms in the typical dynamic of the average teen in the span of 10-15 years. Smart phones have also sped things up and attributed to how dependant teens are on being connected to the net and checking their profiles.

Industrial Facilities, Public Parks And Community Composition: Examining Environmental Justice In Lincoln, Nebraska, Brynn Stewart

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Environmental injustice involves the discrimination of low-income or minority populations in regards to environmental conditions in comparison to society at large. This study uses the net-environmental equity concept to analyze the state of environmental justice in the city of Lincoln, Nebraska. To what extent are Lincoln’s environmental burdens located around low-income/minority residents? To what extent are Lincoln’s environmental benefits located away from low-income/minority residents? To what extent do Lincoln’s policies promote environmental justice? A distributional analysis of Lincoln’s public park system and toxic releasing industries is completed along with a policy review. Lincoln’s policies and environmental conditions of minority residents …

Civic Capacity And Integrative Public Leadership: A Case Study Of The Nebraska Water Leaders Academy, Joleisa S. Cramer

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study explored the impact of the Nebraska Water Leaders Academy (NWLA) on natural resource management by investigating a link between civic capacity and integrative public leadership in the context of adaptive governance. This mixed mode case study utilized a comprehensive, quantitative on-line questionnaire on civic capacity and integrative public leadership as well as qualitative interviews completed by NWLA alumni. The study included 31 questionnaire responses from NWLA alumni, 53 alumni-chosen rater responses, and 21 interviews.

NWLA alumni were found to frequently employ their civic capacity and integrative public leadership skills to promote and improve collaborative natural resource management. There …

From Burlesque To Grand Theft Auto: An Historical Analysis Of The Treatment Of The Media-Crime Relationship In Criminology Texts, Lisa Kort-Butler, Michael Killingsworth

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

The degree to which criminological scholarship on the mediacrime relationship has been subject to the tides of moral panics is not well-understood, although there are theoretical reasons to hypothesize about the role of scientists in moral panics. Textbooks are one location in which a discipline chronicles its scholarly history and speaks to the public, making texts an important site for understanding how scholars interpret the media-crime relationship. A content analysis of over 200 criminology texts, ranging in publication dates from 1880 to 2012, was conducted. Almost half the texts covered the media-crime relationship. These texts often appeared to be responding …

Perceived Workplace Racial Discrimination And Its Correlates: A Meta-Analysis, María Del Carmen Triana, Mevan Jayasinghe, Jenna R. Pieper

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

We combine the interactional model of cultural diversity (IMCD) and relative deprivation theory to examine employee outcomes of perceived workplace racial discrimination. Using 79 effect sizes from published and unpublished studies, we meta-analyze the relationships between perceived racial discrimination and several important employee outcomes that have potential implications for organizational performance. In response to calls to examine the context surrounding discrimination, we test whether the severity of these outcomes depends on changes to employment law that reflect increasing societal concern for equality and on the characteristics of those sampled. Perceived racial discrimination was negatively related to job attitudes, physical health, …

Global Network Inference From Ego Network Samples: Testing A Simulation Approach, Jeffrey A. Smith

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Network sampling poses a radical idea: that it is possible to measure global network structure without the full population coverage assumed in most network studies. Network sampling is only useful, however, if a researcher can produce accurate global network estimates. This article explores the practicality of making network inference, focusing on the approach introduced in Smith (2012). The method uses sampled ego network data and simulation techniques to make inference about the global features of the true, unknown network. The validity check here includes more difficult scenarios than previous tests, including those that go beyond the initial scope conditions of …

Tiers 1, 2 & 3 Intervention: Student Engagement, Amber Olson, Reece L. Peterson

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Conclusion

Although it is a broad term which includes many potential components, student engagement is a critical component to both academic and behavioral success. Various research studies have linked positive student engagement to an increase in school success, a decrease in adolescent troubles, and a decrease in dropout risk (Skinner et al., 2008; Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; O’Farrell & Morrison, 2003; Stout & Christenson, 2009). Increasing teacher engagement and support has been identified as a key way to increase student engagement (Bryson & Hand, 2007). Various instruments can be used to assess the levels of student engagement within schools, …

Shaping The Repository, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Presentations

Repositories play 2 critical roles: collection and dissemination. How Nebraska's repository has progressed despite not taking common expert advice. Remarks on the current state of publishing. Opportunities for library publishing and disruptive innovation. A call for scholarship to "come out of Babylon"--the commercial marketplace that inhibits the free creation and sharing of knowledge. A call for librarians to take leadership in the evolution of new roles and relationships with our faculty colleagues. Sturm und Drang, hyperbole, irony, and passion.

Note: Download button links to pdf version. PowerPoint slides (~30mb) attached below as related file.

Streaming video is available at http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/lawrepositories/2015/lr2015/1/

Youth Protection Volunteer Screening Form, Debora Heidzig

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Kimmel Volunteer Enrollment Form, Debora Heidzig

Kimmel Education and Research Center: Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Saying No To College: First-Generation, Low-Income Students And The Decision To Not Attend College, Deena M. Curtis

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

The transition of first generation, low-income students from high school to college has been studied in depth but not necessarily from the viewpoint of the students who chose not to attend college or those who fail to complete the processes necessary to attend college. This study focuses on the students attending an alternative/charter school in a large, Midwest metropolitan area and the decision process they have used in making their higher education plans. This qualitative case study follows a unique methodology designed to identify the bounds of the case rather than having predetermined boundaries for the case.

The findings of …

An Analytic Study Of The Professional Development Research In Early Childhood Education, Rachel E. Schachter

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

The goal of this study was to examine empirical research on the design, delivery, and measurement of the effects of professional development (PD) for early childhood educators in order to provide insight into what the field has accomplished as well as suggest directions for future PD programs and research. Through the use of rigorous inclusion criteria outlined by S. M. Wilson, R. E. Floden, and J. Ferrini-Mundy (2001), 73 studies were included and analyzed. On average, 25% (M = 12.68, SD = 9.99) of references in each study were specifically about PD. The majority of studies (n = …

Getting "Bi" In The Family: Bisexual People's Disclosure Experiences, Kristin S. Scherrer, Emily Kazyak, Rachel M. Schmitz

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

There are many similarities in gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals’ coming out experiences, but bisexual people face unique challenges. Despite this, an explicit focus on bisexual people is missing from family research. Using family systems and cultural sociological perspectives, the authors analyzed how social and cultural factors shape disclosure processes for bisexuals as they come out to multiple family members. After analyzing qualitative data from a diverse group of 45 individuals, they found that bisexual people navigate monosexist and heterosexist expectations in their family relationships. Cultural constructions of bisexuality shape the ways that bisexual people disclose their identities, including how …

Moisés Sáenz: Vigencia De Su Legado (English Translation), Edmund T. Hamann

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

This book mainly offers the biography of Moisés Sáenz (1888-1941), founding architect of Mexico's system of public schooling and former student of John Dewey, describing in particular his roles in creating rural schools, initiating bilingual education (for Mexico's indigenous populations), and experimenting with linkages between schooling and community development. The volume also includes the author's reflection on the relevance of learning about Profr. Sáenz for his own intellectual trajectory (which includes studying the movement of students between Mexico and the US) and reflections by Mexican educators Humberto Leal Martinez and Juan Sánchez García.

Tiers 2 & 3 Intervention: In-School Suspension, Jenna Strawhun, Reece L. Peterson, Scott Fluke, Ana Cathcart

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Conclusion

According to Dickinson and Miller (2006), “no in-school suspension (ISS) program, or any other discipline program, will be longitudinally effective until educators help students get to the basis of their behavior problems” (page 80). This notion is reflected in the delivery of ISS in a manner that emphasizes therapeutic and academic goals that relate to the function of students’ behavior problems. The research outlined in this brief has suggested that depending on the mode of delivery, there is great variability in the practices and outcomes associated with ISS. In order to diminish the need for assignments to ISS (or …

Tiers 1, 2 & 3 Intervention: Motivation, Scott Fluke, Reece L. Peterson, Amber Olson, Ana Cathcart

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Conclusion

Motivation is central to education. One of the goals of a successful classroom is to motivate students to complete academic work and engage in activities that will lead to learning. Research on motivation has demonstrated, as might be expected, that students who are highly motivated perform better in school, are less likely to dropout, and overall have a more satisfying and engaging school experience. To assist educators with motivating their students, researchers have also identified a number of different strategies to encourage motivation, whether it is extrinsic motivation or intrinsic motivation. Many of these strategies, such as building a …