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By Proxy: A Radiocarbon Perspective On Prehistoric Mobility Using Summed Probability Distributions And Paleoenvironmental Reconstructions In Wyoming And Montana, Anastasia M. Lugo Mendez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Stone circles are among the most common and understudied archaeological features in the Rocky Mountains and High Plains. Their widespread availability coupled with increased archaeological research accompanying oil and natural gas exploration in the region has expanded the availability and size of the region’s radiocarbon database. The dates as data approach uses radiocarbon ages as variables from a larger sample. This thesis compiles radiocarbon ages associated with tipi ring sites in Wyoming and Montana and creates a summed probability distribution from these ages to serve as a proxy for prehistoric mobility. The distribution is corrected for taphonomic bias, or data …

Optimal Foraging And Population Dynamics: An Archaeological Investigation At The Birch Creek Rockshelters, Idaho, Samuel H. M. Yeates

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis aims to integrate the study of population change with the expectations of foraging models, and to test whether expectations resulting from integrating these two bodies of theory have greater predictive power than foraging models alone. To compare these models, I monitored prey age, butchery practice, and prey desirability in five prehistoric occupations of the Birch Creek rockshelters of Idaho. I modeled hunting pressure with a human population density estimate based on radiocarbon dates from Idaho archaeological sites, and modeled prey abundance with a model of historic effective moisture. Both models predicted younger prey, lower average prey desirability, and …

Assessing Paleoenvironmental And Geomorphic Variability In Relationship To Paleoindian Site Burial; Centennial Valley, Montana, Hillary A. Jones

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wave action along the shores of Lima Reservoir in Centennial Valley, Montana is actively eroding the southern margins of three neighboring Paleoindian sites. Despite ostensible similarity among the sites, major site formation differences are apparent in exposed sediments. Shoreline cutbank exposures one-to-five meters high connect the sites and reveal a complicated geomorphic history. Although each site contains artifact evidence of terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene occupations, Paleoindian components at these three localities occur in very different contexts: one is buried, while the other two are apparent surface scatters. This raise the question of why sites of the same age are in both …

Utah State University Commencement, 2019 - Eastern Campus, Utah State University

Commencement Programs

2019 Commencement Ceremony for the Eastern Campus of Utah State University.

Hydraulic Fracturing, Mandilyn Hatch, Shannon Burnham

Student Research Symposium

Hydraulic fracturing or also know as fracking, the removal of natural gas and oil from shale rock, took off in the 1990s, but the anti-fracking movement didn't start taking notice until 2005. Fracking began to take place in the the south and the middle of the United States, because those areas are not known for have environmental activists. Anti-fracking groups main goal was to convince the public that fracking, caused health problems, contaminated drinking water, and increased seismic activity. Where as pro-fracking groups claim that it creates jobs, and boosts the economy for the locals in the area. Our main …

I Can't Breathe; The Effects Of Hydraulic Fracturing On Public Health, Lily Fullmer, Sophie Hancey

Student Research Symposium

This research analyzes public health risks associated with hydraulic fracturing and the public perception of these risks specifically in Denton, Texas. Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is an expensive and environmentally harmful project that might not be worth it with the potential of air or water pollution at every site. The United States Energy Information Agency released an assessment in 2012 that the Marcellus Shale contains 141 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it one of the largest reserves in the world (Brasier et al., 2017). More specifically, Denton County in Texas is one of the core counties …

Get The Frack Outta Here, Jordan Love, Jordan Nathan

Student Research Symposium

The term hydraulic fracturing, is a method utilized for the extraction of oil or gas from 'eccentric' supplies, for example, shale (Williams, 2017). This topic of fracking has come with two sides and has created some public misunderstanding on hydraulic fracking, with those who agree with fracking and feel it is an important environmental tool that helps the world, and helps the community bring in more revenue, and then the side that does not agree with fracking and feels the risks outweigh the rewards: contaminate ground water supplies, its hazardous conditions, and the industrialization impacts on communities (Ladd, 2014). There …

Parenting Classes For Aces Prevention, Melissa Wells

Student Research Symposium

This presentation will be an in progress report of my Spring 2019 URCO grant project Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can impact a person's life dramatically. However, the number one protective factor for preventing negative outcomes of trauma is by having a stable trustworthy adult in a child's life. The purpose of this study is to help local parents in Richmond, UT learn additional effective parenting strategies that support bonding ties and parent success in interacting with their children as well as prevent unnecessary stress in the family. In addition, we are looking for recurring patterns that indicate which parenting strategies …

Emotional Labor, Gender, And Social Interaction In Animal Care, Michael Briscoe

Student Research Symposium

Animal caretakers fill an important role in society - performing both hard and dirty work as they look after animals, and the overwhelming majority of nonfarm animal caretakers are women. This ethnographic study was conducted over the course of 11 weeks at an animal boarding facility. It finds that caring for animals is emotionally taxing labor, and that employees feel this type of work is particularly suited for women - though the exact reasons why vary. The animals themselves often serve as social facilitators between both staff and customers as employees navigate the stressful environment.

To Frack Or Not To Frack: Hearing The Voice Of The People, Megan Aagard, Mo Uasike

Student Research Symposium

Over the course of the the last decade Hydraulic Fracturing or Fracking has become an increasingly popular practice throughout the United States, specifically in rural areas. This industry has been the cause of expanded debates in communities that are nearby fracking site locations. The citizens opinions on fracking can be affected by factors such as environmental consequences, personal and public health concerns, employment opportunities, tax increase and decrease, state and county income and population fluctuation. The focus of our study is to incorporate qualitative analysis data by collecting information found by using interviews conducted with employees of fracking sites and …

Health Care Provider Recruitment And Retention In Millard County, Utah, Ron Draper

Student Research Symposium

Millard County, Utah with its remote rural location and low population density has experienced recurring problems with recruiting and retaining primary care health care providers. By conducting a series of in-depth interviews with current and past health care providers as well as administrators involved in the recruitment efforts, this research aims to improve the understanding of the root causes of provider recruitment and retention failures in Millard County. Findings of this study will help us design more effective methods of recruiting and retaining health care providers in the county. Lessons learned from Millard County may also provide valuable insights for …

Countermovement To Marketization Of Water (A Comparative Study Between Iran And Us), Elham Hoominfar

Student Research Symposium

Environmental movements are one of the important sources of resistance against degradations which are results of economic or development projects in natural resources and the marketization of the environment (Wolford &Keene, 2015; Robbins, 2012; and 2004; McAfee & Shapiro, 2010; Spronk, 2007; Escobar, 2004). Since the 1970s, environmental protests have become more and more influential with regard to neoliberal environmental policy. Environmental movements, as examined within the context of political ecology, reveal the unequal distribution of power in terms of control of the environment and access to natural resources (Robbins 2012). The study focuses on two water transfer projects to …

Curriculum Subcommittee Minutes, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Program Proposals

• Offering a Bachelor of Science in Human Experience Design and Interaction
• Discontinuing all K-6 degree programs leading to licensure
• Changing the specialization name in Literature and Writing to Creative Writing
• Restructuring Climate Adaptation Science
• Changing the department name from Geology to Geosciences

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Other

• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Program Proposals

• Offering a Bachelor of Science in Human Experience Design and Interaction
• Discontinuing all K-6 degree programs leading to licensure
• Changing the specialization name in Literature and Writing to Creative Writing
• Restructuring Climate Adaptation Science
• Changing the department name from Geology to Geosciences

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Other

• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards committee
• General Education Subcommittee
• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year.

Educational Policies Committee Minutes, April 4, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee report
• Academic Standards Subcommittee report
• General Education Subcommittee report
• Appoint committee chair for 2019-2020 academic year

Breathe: Helping Students With Mental Disabilities- And Helping Yourself, Miranda Cundick

Tutor's Column

1 in 5 people in the United States suffer from some sort of mental illness; it follows that at least 1 in 5 students that we tutor would as well. College can be stressful, and as tutors we can help alleviate some of this stress by being mindful of and informed about the many mental health problems USU students can face- and by learning how to help.

The Utah Statesman, March 19, 2019, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda, March 7, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Program Proposals

• Establishing a Division of Career and Technical Education
• Offering a BA/BS in Finance with emphases
• Offering an online BS degree in Technology
• Changing the name from Parks and Recreation to Recreation Administration
• Offering an undergraduate Anticipatory Intelligence Minor
• Changing the name from English: Professional and Technical Writing Emphasis to English: Technical Communication and Rhetoric Emphasis

Semester Course Approval Reviews

Other

• EPC/Curriculum Handbook

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, March 7, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Educational Policies Committee Minutes, March 7, 2019, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee report
• Academic Standards Subcommittee report
• General Education Subcommittee report
• Request from the Department of Geology in the College of Science to change the department name from Geology to Earth Sciences
• EPC/Curriculum Handbook

Kids Killing Kids: Mental Illness, Adolescence, And Mass Murder, Levi Cragun

Research on Capitol Hill

Are rates of mental illness higher in adolescents who commit mass violence compared to other adolescents? Are rates of mental illness higher among adolescents who commit mass murder compared to adults who commit mass murder?

Motivations For Women’S Activism In Hydraulic Fracking, Taya Godfrey

Research on Capitol Hill

Research Question: What motivates females to become anti-fracking activists?

Hydraulic fracturing is a way of obtaining natural gas and oil from deep within the earth by injecting high powered water and chemicals into shale rock to fracture it, and therefore release natural resources (Manfreda, 2015).

We have seen much activism surrounding the issue of fracking because of the environmental and health controversies associated with it. We have also noted an increasing number of female activists and hope to determine the cause. By understanding what motivates women to become anti-fracking activist we can further encourage female activism in many other spheres. …

The Influence Of Neighborhood Cohesion On Homelessness In Cache Valley, Utah, Madison Elliott

Research on Capitol Hill

• The 2017 Utah Point in Time Count reported that 2,852 Utah residents were identified as being homeless (Utah Housing and Community Development Division, 2017).
• There is a large gap in research that explores one’s likelihood of becoming homeless and its relation to community integration and neighborhood cohesion. Community integration can be defined through the feelings of acceptance within one’s social network(s), sharing common norms and values with those around you. (Sayer, et al., 2011) Neighborhood cohesion is the sense of shared morals and trust within a neighborhood community.
• Current bodies of knowledge in social science literature discuss other causes of …

Utah State University’S Cache Valley Latinx Voices Project: Social Justice In The Archives, Randy Williams, Eduardo Ortiz, Maria Luisa Spicer-Escalante

Journal of Western Archives

Northern Utah Speaks is an in-depth ethnographic effort by Utah State University Libraries’ Special Collections and Archives (SCA) to bring diverse voices of Northern Utah communities into the Archives. Since 2006, the focus is with social justice in mind as SCA endeavors to bring the voices of underrepresented and historically excluded people into the Archives. Calls to make archival records more inclusive stretch back fifty years, however for many archival institutions this work has moved forward in fits and starts, if at all, and most often without the input and assistance from the community to be studied, collected, and included. …

Seeking Grace: Reconstructing The History Of African American Alumnae At The University Of Denver, Katherine Crowe

Journal of Western Archives

The University of Denver (DU), a private college founded in 1864–12 years before Colorado became a state–has recently begun to grapple with its complex and sometimes fraught histories with alumni of color. The DU Archives has partnered over the past five years with the Sistah Network, a student group formed by Black women faculty to support Black women graduate students, as its founder, Dr. Nicole Joseph, wished to focus specifically on the history of the University's Black alumnae. Since 2013, the Archives has completed several oral histories with alumnae from the 1960s, and have recovered the names, graduation dates, and …

The Importance Of Cognitive Diversity For Sustaining The Commons, Jacopo A. Baggio, Jacob Freeman, Thomas R. Coyle, Tam Nguyen, Dale Hancock, Karrie E. Elpers, Samantha Nabity, H.J. Francois Dengah Ii, David Pillow

Ecology Center Publications

Cognitive abilities underpin the capacity of individuals to build models of their environment and make decisions about how to govern resources. Here, we test the functional intelligences proposition that functionally diverse cognitive abilities within a group are critical to govern common pool resources. We assess the effect of two cognitive abilities, social and general intelligence, on group performance on a resource harvesting and management game involving either a negative or a positive disturbance to the resource base. Our results indicate that under improving conditions (positive disturbance) groups with higher general intelligence perform better. However, when conditions deteriorate (negative disturbance) groups …

“We Weren’T Raised That Way”: Using Stigma Management Communication Theory To Understand How Families Manage The Stigma Of Substance Abuse, Sydney O'Shay-Wallace

Publications

While people who abuse substances experience widespread health and social consequences stemming from their substance use, these consequences also extend to their family through stigmatization. Such stigma has implications for families’ mental and physical health, as well as their overall quality of life. This study seeks to fill a gap in research surrounding the stigma experienced by families with a history of substance abuse by investigating how affected family members experience and communicatively manage stigma messages relating to their family member’s substance abuse. Fifteen people whose families include a person who uses substances (PWUS) participated in semi-structured interviews where they …

The Birch Creek Canids And Dogs As Transport Labor In The Intermountain West, Martin H. Welker, David A. Byers

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Historically, domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) have been documented as central features of Intermountain West and Great Plains Native American camps. Some of these dogs were bred specifically for largeness and stamina to haul travois and to carry pannier-style packs. Ethnographic accounts frequently highlight the importance of dogs in moving through the Intermountain West and the plains, reporting loads as heavy as 45 kg (100 lbs). We calculated body mass from skeletal morphometric data and used these to estimate prehistoric and historic dog load capacities for travois and pannier-style packs in the Intermountain West, Great Plains, and Great Basin. Specimens of …

Factors That Influence Mathematical Creativity, Joseph S. Kozlowski, Scott A. Chamberlin, Eric Mann

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Creativity is a psychological construct that has gained research popularity (Akgul & Kaveci, 2016), however it remains a challenging one to define. The variety of definitions promulgated to understand creativity hints at the complexity of the mental process. Furthermore, as a subset of creativity, domain-specific mathematical creativity has also garnered a variety of definitions. The transdisciplinary research on creativity (Sriraman & Haavold, 2017) is seminal in this world of fast-paced innovation, invention, solution, and synthesis. Considering every human being with at least average cognitive abilities possesses the ability to think creatively (Baran, 2011), developing students’ creative talents and abilities must …