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Faculty Senate Executive Committee Minutes, December 13, 2021, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

No abstract provided.

Faculty Senate Executive Committee Agenda, December 13, 2021, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• Approval of Minutes – November 15, 2021
• University Business
• Education Policies Committee
• Change Aspire Efforts
• Council on Teacher Education Annual Report | One Pager
• Scholarship Advisory Board Annual Report

Mapping The New Latinx Identity: How Native Beliefs And Magic Realism In Latinx Literature And Culture Extrapolate The Need To Develop One's Identity Through The Retention Of Native Origins, Megan Hansen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

The disparity between the yearning to belong to a society and the inability to find acceptance within it plagues Latinx immigrants as they struggle to establish a balance between their culture of origin and the need for assimilation in the United States. A partial formation of identity in both spaces leaves Latinx immigrants torn between assimilation or isolation, creating internal conflict as they strive to locate a space to belong. Using the theme of folk religion under the scope of magic realism as the canvas, Latinx authors, such as Ernesto Quiñónez in Changó´s Fire and Taína, Érika Sánchez in …

The Effects Of Various Carbon Sources And The Presence Of Vitamin B-12 On The Production Of 1,3-Propanediol By L. Reuteri., Kayden Stevenson

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Dairy product preservation has evolved over thousands of years and has been a major benefit to humanity by creating stable, nutrient-dense food sources. Today the lactic acid bacteria Lactobacillus reuteri is important in preserving fermented dairy products through the production of the compound reuterin. Reuterin (1,3-propanediol) demonstrates antibiotic properties that prevent the fermentation of dairy products by undesirable bacteria. The purpose of this study is to determine if L. reuteri can produce 1,3-propanediol from a variety of carbon sources. Bacterial strains were incubated in the presence of a carbon source with vitamin B-12 or without B-12 for seven days with …

Art As An Educator, Kylie Hansen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

When looking at art, eyes are often drawn to the foreground of the canvas, which can leave out many details and not tell the whole story a painting has to offer. The process of analyzing and looking deeper into works of art would be common in a perfect world; its lessons can be universal. Everyone should study art because it increases skills that can be used for many things. Art can reframe views of the world as well as condition the mind to look past quick judgments. Art teaches one to slow down and analyze situations before acting and may …

The Language Of Classroom Design: How Aesthetic Impacts Learning, Josie Rivera

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Secondary classrooms are the settings where crucial learning experiences occur, yet much of the existing research on classroom design pertains to elementary schools. The general lack of importance placed on the physical layout of secondary classrooms insinuates that while younger students benefit from an attractive, visually pleasing classroom, teenage students do not. Despite this, educators seek to make their classrooms places of refuge and learning. For example, Utah’s 2020 Teacher of the Year, Lauren Merkley, decorates her room with thrifted lamps which emit a warm glow in her classroom. Martin Reeder of Sky View High School curated a ‘book nook’ …

Survey Of Utah Onions For Bulb Rot Pathogens, Elizabeth Hansen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Bacterial pathogens cause an estimated $60 million in damages every year in the USA. Little information is currently known about the bacterial bulb rot pathogens found in Utah that impact the onions. Surveys of onion fields and packing sheds have been conducted over the past two years to find symptomatic leaves and bulbs. Symptomatic onions were collected and cultured to grow bacterial strains and identified using PCR and DNA sequencing of the partial 16S gene. Individual isolates went through pathogenicity testing using onion scale as well as leaf assay tests. There was a total of 191 isolates from 2019 and …

Insights On The Effectiveness Of The Hamburger Method, K. Kerrin Mountcastle

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

This empirical research study examined the use and effectiveness of the Hamburger Method, a writing strategy to teach organization and development similar to the famous, or perhaps infamous, Five-Paragraph Theme. This method of writing teaches students to write an introduction that includes their thesis (the top bun); three body paragraphs containing evidence (the meat and condiments); and then a conclusion that reverses the introduction and ends the essay (the bottom bun). Notably, the approach is generally introduced during elementary school as it has obvious appeal to children. The research reveals, though, in more advanced settings, secondary school English classrooms and …

Students Perception Of Racial Inequality On Utah State Campus, Abigail Pilling, Elmer Reyes

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

This paper will discuss racial inequality studies at Utah State University Campuses and include multiple studies of racial inequality on campuses around the United States. Each of these additional studies is focused on different aspects of how a campus can be neglecting or hurtful to their students or patrons, in ways such as academics, financial aid, athletics, rigorous schedules, student and classroom atmosphere, and lack of student resources and encouragement. This paper and study will focus on different racial minorities and what racial oppression and social class inequality they have experienced on campus, and how it creates barriers for them …

Mental Health Literacy And The Impact Of Gender, Nathan Clay

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Purpose of the study We examined associations between gender and components of Mental Health Literacy (MHL). The baseline assumption, based on prior literature, is that women will have a higher knowledge related to mental health compared to men.

Hating Pink: The Development Of Internalized Misogyny, Jacey Wilson

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

For women, expectations of gender roles as placed on them as children can mean growing up with a self-perception of inferiority and a prediction for themselves of incapability. Misogyny’s place in society is a concept which is fairly widely-recognized. Women face misogyny in day-to-day interactions and in larger-scale issues like the gender wage gap. More recognizable are more violent acts of sexism such as sexual violence against women and the structural wage gap. However, less commonly recognized and discussed are the acts which perpetuate sexism quietly, such as benevolent sexism. Many women experience negative psychological effects due to the patriarchal …

Patients' Perceptions Of Stigma During Emergency Department Visits: Measuring Impacts On Healthcare Satisfaction, Treatment Adherence, And Mental Health, David Suisse

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Emergency departments (ED) in the United States receive many patients who have mental health or substance use issues. This population often reports experiences of stigma when seeking emergency healthcare. Stigma is a negative biased perception based on a socially undesirable characteristic. Stigmatization in healthcare can lead to apoor quality of life and psychological distress for stigmatized groups along with reduced rates of treatment completion and treatment seeking in the future. The goal of the current study is to examine the relationship between mental illness and substance abuse patients’ experiences of stigmatization in the ED and their patient satisfaction, treatment adherence, …

Antisocial Personality Disorder/ Psychopathy With An Increase Of Violent Crime, Meagan Lym

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

The work below is other research conducted in the same area, does having antisocial personality disorders or psychopathy make a person more violent. The study will include those who have committed a violent crime; to narrow the pool more, these individuals will be serving life sentences or be on death row. The individuals will have a rigorous interview to go through that will establish what traits they carry and if they have any specific disorders. The individuals’ files will then be analyzed. We are looking for what kind of crime, the nature of the crime, the violence used during the …

Explicit Synchronized Solitary Waves For Some Models For The Interaction Of Long And Short Waves In Dispersive Media., Bruce Brewer

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Four systems have recently been proposed for the study of the interaction of long and short waves in dispersive media. This poster establishes the synchronized solitary wave solutions for one of these systems.

The Impact Of Covid-19 On The Latinx Community In Cache Valley, Utah., Jasmine Morales, Virginia Hernandez

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

The purpose of this investigation is to learn about the Latinx experience with Covid-19 in Cache Valley, Utah. For this research, we interviewed twelve Latinx families who explained in detail their perceived and conceived notions of Covid-19, and how they survived compounded social disadvantages such as fear of unemployment, inability to pay rent/mortgage, eviction, lack of safeguards in their jobs, worry about medical costs, isolation, and fear of deportation. After the interviews, we identified five interconnected aspects that all families shared: 1) Fears and stigma about Covid-19; 2) Economic distress and how they received support from the community and government …

The Knights Templar: Blood And Banking, Morgan Thatcher

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

The Knights Templar were a martial religious order founded in the 12th century AD. Though they were known for their prowess on the battlefield, more importantly, they became an important and integral part of the Medieval financial and economic world. This was only possible due their unique position as a sanctioned part of the Catholic Church, their reputation, political connections, and a changing idea of what money was. The Templar utilized every facet of their position in order to gain wealth and power, but were ultimately brought low at the hands of Philip IV of France.

Analysis Of Asla Awards: Building A Stronger Landscape Architecture Program, Corinne Bahr

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Every year the American Society of Landscape Architects, otherwise known as ASLA, issues awards for exceptional designs and research in the field of Landscape Architecture. These awards include both Professional and Student awards. Our study analyzes 13,000 award-winning project images over the last 15 years to discover the common trends that create award winning projects. Recognizing these trends enables the USU Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program, or LAEP, to set the bar high and help our students enter the field equipped to change the world. Our analysis of the creative flow, graphics, and styles in award winning projects can …

Disambiguation Of Large-Scale Educational Network Data For Social Network Analysis, Adam Weaver

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a research method which quantitatively maps qualitative social interactions between individuals who comprise a ‘network’. Delineating these social networks yields highly valuable data, including SNA measures like centrality, which can be used to measure social influence, connectivity, and more. Further, these networks can also be visualized by graphing individuals as ‘nodes’, and then by drawing ‘edges’ (the lines that connect them) to produce sociograms. With these sociograms, researchers can concurrently conduct visual and statistical analysis of relations between node and network traits of interest. As a result of these capabilities and the growth of social …

The Impact Of Covid-19 On Students At Usu Eastern, Marcos Suarez, Brielle Mccourt, Aurelio Rodriguez, Jessica Hansen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of people throughout the world in numerous ways. The ramifications of the pandemic will be studied for years to come. We are interested in the effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on college students, specifically those at Utah State University Eastern (USUE). We will be conducting an exploratory quantitative survey, in conjunction with the Student Counseling Center, for current students enrolled at USUE, ages 18 and above and will be asking questions about their mental, educational, financial, and social wellbeing. The survey will be distributed by email and will be available through the …

Book Worms? A Profile Of The Reading Lives Of English Majors, Ryan Collins, Claire Atwood, Virginia Beikmann, Josephine Rivera, Mya Bethers, Kerrin Mountcastle, Sam Richens, Cayla Cappel

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

What are the reading lives of a group of upper-division English majors in terms of their autobiographies, their processes of reading, and their preferred texts? How do they manage required reading and reading for pleasure? Although university students who major in English Studies read consistently, often reading behaviors are taken for granted, particularly the long-term reading lives of these students. How did they develop as readers? What strategies have they developed to be successful? What are preferred tools and technology? How has their various cultures influenced their reading? By using an autoethnographic approach that describes and interrogates their processes and …

Discovering Virally Encoded Proteins That Block Type Iv Crispr Immune Systems, Andrew Williams

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Bacteria and the viruses that infect them have been at war from the beginnings of life until today. Due to selective pressure from viral infection, bacteria have evolved various biological defense systems, including CRISPR-Cas systems that use a genetic memory of previous viral encounters to protect against future invasions. However, recently it has been shown that viruses have evolved counter-strategies to evade CRISPR systems. Virally encoded proteins called anti-CRISPRs use a variety of mechanisms to block the activity of CRISPR immune systems in order to infect bacterial cells. The Jackson lab at USU recently showed that a Type IV-A CRISPR-Cas …

Pan Variant Sars-Cov-2 Common Interactions And Drug Candidates, Kolton Hauck

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

As the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread, multiple strains have appeared. Research has investigated potential drug candidates for COVID-19, but without consideration for the multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2. A domain-based and interolog-based method were implemented to predict protein-protein interactions (PPIs) between the SARS-CoV-2 variants and human proteins. A common set (conserved among all strains) and a unique set (distinct for each strain) of interactions were made. These sets of interactions were characterized via subcellular localization, tissue expression, pathway enrichment and gene ontology. Lastly, drug candidates were identified for the common set. The combined domain and interolog methods resulted in 8963 predicted …

Characterization Of The Atpase Activity Of Casding, Christian Cahoon

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

The battle between bacteria and phage has been ongoing for eons. This battle has generated the evolutionary pressure necessary for the development of microbial immune systems. Characterization of these systems has led to the discovery of molecular tools such CRISPR-Cas systems. This system uses a genetic memory of past viral infections coupled with associated proteins to form ribonucleoprotein complexes which seek out and destroy foreign genetic elements. These systems have been repurposed by scientists to create powerful gene editing tools such as Cas9. With such powerful molecular tools being discovered, we have pursued the characterization of a relatively unknown system, …

Perceived & Personal Mental Health Stigma, Katie White, River Jarman, Brenden Jones, Gabrielle Archambault

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

An exploration of stigmatizing beliefs held by college students, as well as the students' experiences with stigma and discrimination in relation to their own reported mental health problems. The Day's Mental Illness Stigma Scale and the Mental Health Stigma Scale were used to measure varying aspects of stigmatizing beliefs including treatability, relationship disruption, hygiene, anxiety, visibility, recovery, professional efficacy, discrimination, disclosure, and positive outcomes.

Characterizing The Mechanisms Of C. Elegans Prmt1 Temperature Dependence, Arianna Towne

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Over time, cellular enzymes evolve through amino acid mutations which allow them to remain functional at temperatures specific to the host organism. This activity may be partially or completely lost when enzymes are removed from their optimal temperature range, as is observed for the C. elegans protein arginine methyltransferase 1 (cPRMT1). This construct demonstrates maximum enzymatic activity at the C. elegans optimum of 20°C, but no activity at 37°C where activity for mammalian PRMT1 variants is observed. Given dysregulation of PRMT1 has been linked to various disease states, we are interested in exploiting the biophysical mechanisms of cPRMT1 temperature dependence …

Determining The Nucleic Acid Binding Affinities Of Crispr-Associated Ding (Casding), Matt Armbrust

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

CRISPR-Cas systems are adaptive prokaryotic immune systems that enable host cells to defend against attack from foreign nucleic acids such as phage infections or plasmids. CRISPR-Cas systems are diverse and encompass 2 classes, 6 types, and 33 subtypes. The Type IV-A CRISPR-Cas system from Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain 83 is composed of five different genes (csf1, csf2, csf3, cas6, and dinG). Type IV-A systems are poorly understood, and currently there is little research detailing their biological and biochemical mechanism of immunity. CasDinG, an ancillary protein within the Type IV-A system, is required for an immune response in vivo. However, the role …

Racial Disparity On Holding Penalties In The Nfl, Alex Dayley, Katelyn Williams, Terrance Bankhead, Cameron Wood

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Numerous studies have identified and analyzed the existence and impact of racial discrimination on different aspects of United States culture, including the criminal justice system and professional sporting associations. For example, in the criminal justice system, research has found that minorities are more likely to experience a search of their vehicle during a traffic stop especially if the police officer is of a different race than the motorist. This analysis of racial bias can be applied to professional sporting associations, where split-second decisions are made which allows for the possibility of racial discrimination. In the NBA, research has found that …

Establishing A Framework Of Nitrogen Acquisition For Martian Agriculture, Tyler Wallentine

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Nitrogen (N) forms a crucial part of DNA, proteins, and other biomolecules and is an essential element to life. Luckily, N is abundant in Earth’s and Mars’ atmospheres in its atmospheric form (N₂); however, plants and humans are unable to metabolize it in this state. N₂ gas is only able to be consumed by undergoing nitrogen fixation, an intensive process that breaks the extremely-stable N ≡ N bond in order to form bioavailable ammonia (NH₃). Many prokaryotes are capable of nitrogen fixation. Plants may uptake fixed N from these, which are then consumed by other …

Determining The Biochemical Mechanisms And Binding Activities Of A Type Iv-A Crispr-Cas Ding Helicase, Matt Armbrust

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

CRISPR-Cas systems are adaptive prokaryotic immune systems that enable host cells to defend against attack from foreign nucleic acids such as phage infections or plasmids. CRISPR-Cas systems are diverse and encompass 2 classes, 6 types, and 33 subtypes. The Type IV-A CRISPR-Cas system from Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain 83 is composed of five different genes (csf1, csf2, csf3, cas6, and dinG). Type IV-A systems are poorly understood, and currently there is little research detailing their biological and biochemical mechanism of immunity. CasDinG, an ancillary protein within the Type IV-A system, is required for an immune response in vivo. However, the role …

True Grit (1969) And Feminism: How It Succeeds And Why We Should Expect Better, Courtney Isom

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

Hollywood Westerns are certainly not renowned for their contribution to feminist plots or characters, but True Grit (1969) is one of the more forward thinking movies with respect to women’s roles. However, the movie still portrays traditional power structures of patriarchy that undermine the female character’s autonomy. Looking at this film through the lens of both Critical Rhetoric and a Gender Diversity Perspective allows us to see the nuances of Mattie Ross' stand against oppressive traditional roles, while also examining the ways in which she is still dominated by discursive patriarchal practices. Celeste Condit’s gender diversity perspective encourages ditching traditional …