Digital Commons Network^™

Increasing Vocalization And Echoic Stimulus Control, Logan Wurster

Honors Theses

Deficits in verbal behavior can be harmful to children’s growth and development of other crucial skills and can also increase problem behavior (Eldevik, Eikeseth, Jahr, & Smith, 2006; Charman, Magiati, & Howlin, 2007; Cividini-Motta, 2014). Results from previous research show that vocal imitation training, stimulus-stimulus pairing, rapid motor imitation, and mand-model approaches have been successful in teaching echoic behavior. However, there is little evidence to show that these methods are successful for children who are making little to no verbal responses. (Carroll & Klatts, 2008; Bennett & Yoon, 2000; Greer & Ross, 2003; & Hawkins & Schuster, 2007). The purpose …

Precarious Positions Of Femininity In Contemporary Literature: A College Course Creation, Ireland Atkinson

Honors Theses

In an effort to understand college instruction, I created a collegiate literature course and its logistical materials. This process manifested in the creation of a syllabus, schedules, assignments, and a teaching philosophy statement. With the title “Precarious Positions of Femininity in Contemporary Literature,” the course is in an interdisciplinary format that explores gender and women’s studies with literary scholarship as its medium. All of the texts are not only written by female authors, but also address women’s issues and the precarious positions their femininity puts them in. With a focus on the intersectionality and the diversity of the female experience, …

Enzyme Characterization Of Sabath Family Members, Troy Burtchett

Honors Theses

Enzymes can have many different functions within an organism. One such common function is methylation. The SABATH family of enzymes perform methylation of various organic acids. Many of the members of this family of enzymes have become specialized in the acid they methylate. For example: salicylic acid methyl transferase (SAMT) will primarily methylate salicylic acid, and benzoic acid methyl transferase (BAMT) will primarily methylate benzoic acid. By comparing the sequence of these enzymes, it has been found that a conserved region consisting of the sequence SSYSLMWLS appears in some form across all the members of the SABATH family. The 6 …

Teaching A Scanning Response To A Child With Autism, Katherine Burnham

Honors Theses

Children with autism have been known to exhibit abnormal scanning responses, or lack them entirely, as shown by the results of various studies (Sasson et al., 2008; Landry & Bryson, 2004). Studies have indicated that scanning may be a behavioral cusp and the lack of a normal scanning response in children with autism may be inhibiting the acquisition of many other subsequent skills (Bosch & Fuqua, 2001). By implementing an intervention to teach the scanning response, it was hypothesized that our participants would develop the prerequisite scanning skill, and therefore performance on a matching-to-sample procedure would improve. Through a basic …

Permissions Between Creators And Users: An Investigation Of Particulars In Privacy Policies For Mobile Apps, Abbigail Griffith

Honors Theses

Mobile apps create a space for users to share information with other users and, in doing so, the creators of the applications. Generally, the greater amount of sharing information that occurs between users and creators enhances the experience of the apps for both parties. However, the extent to which mobile apps use this information can cause concerns with users about privacy due to the unknown practices of mobile apps relevant to data collection, data sharing, and data storage.

Documents, such as privacy policies, exist in attempts to moderate these concerns. Additionally, mobile apps offer in-app features for the same reasons. …

How To Plan, Budget, Write, And Implement A Student Sustainability Grant, Annalisa Wilder

Honors Theses

The Student Sustainability Grant program was created to give students valuable grant writing experience and to promote a culture of sustainability on Western Michigan University’s campus. Despite the enormous opportunity that this program provides, few students apply for the grants with their sustainable ideas. Even fewer students are able to fully complete the projects, research, and initiatives that receive funding. In order to help increase the number of grants that are fully implemented and to provide students interested in writing a grant with a useful resource, this guide was created. This ‘how-to manual’ provides an undergraduate student’s perspective on the …

The Laureate; 16th Edition, Nicholas Alti

Honors Theses

No abstract available.

Excellence In Education Remarks, John M. Dunn

WMU President John Dunn

No abstract provided.

Kalamazoo Wings Student Participation Campaign, Kelly Hughes

Honors Theses

This public relations campaign is to increase participation of Western Michigan University students at Kalamazoo Wings hockey games. The *millennial audience represents 25-30% of many professional sports teams’ overall revenue base (Fisher 2015). Western Michigan University students have low participation at Kalamazoo Wings hockey games since they do not even make up 1% of the fans that attend Kalamazoo Wings games. The campaign goal is to increase participation of Western Michigan University students at Kalamazoo Wings hockey games by 25% by May 2018. *Millennial: A person reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century.

My research has indicated that the …

The Impact Of Higher Education On Linguistic Culture In Senegal And The Midwest United States, Kelsey Gough

Honors Theses

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of globalization on linguistic culture in populations of people from both Senegal and the Midwest United States. This study will also specifically highlight any similarities and differences present between those who have a higher education and those that do not. These similarities and differences were revealed by asking the research question: How has the process of globalization impacted beliefs about language held by people from various educational levels in Senegal and the U.S. Midwest?

Data regarding globalization’s effect on the attitudes people have about language, linguistic culture, were retrieved from …

Improving Access To Communication For Adults With Aphasia Using "Aphasia-Friendly" Accommodations, Chandler Hodgkin

Honors Theses

Accessing written health information is vital to any health visit (Blackstone, Beukelman, & Yorkston, 2015). People who have difficulty comprehending written text have difficulty understanding health-related information because it is usually written at a complex levels (Kanj & Mitic, 2009). If health information contains complicated content and is not easily accessible, people may not receive the health care needed (Blackstone et al., 2015). Many populations are considered communication vulnerable relative to health care which means they may not have access to understanding health information documents (Hallowell, 2016). These populations include people who are blind or visually impaired; people who are …

60th Conference On Senior Engineering Design, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

Senior Engineering Design Conference

The 60th Conference on Senior Engineering Design Projects. The conference was held from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.,Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences on the Parkview Campus of Western Michigan University. The College of Engineering and Applied Sciences sponsored the conference to showcase the work of its graduating seniors, who are required to complete a capstone project that puts into practice what they have learned. Many of the projects are sponsored by business and industry.

Amayra Short; Touch Of Shadow (Creative Writing, Fictional Short Story), Jessica Blandford

Honors Theses

Born in a small village near Del Marah, Teagan, abandoned by her mother, arrives on the steps of the orphanage. Her gifts express themselves in unexpected ways as she is taunted by those around her. Manifestations of her dreams become reality in the stone halls and calls the attention of the Reverend Mother, the woman responsible for purging the land from Darkness. Fearing for her life, Teagan is forced to leave behind the only life she has ever known. All the while the Forbidden God calls to her from the Shadows. Contained is a short story of fictitious work, any …

Bilingual Language Assessment, Carmen Wittkopp

Honors Theses

Purpose: To describe language assessments that benefit bilingual students in the correct diagnosis of a language disorder.

Method: A systematic review of the literature was completed to examine the assessment tools used for bilingual children. The most common peer-reviewed journals in the field of speech-language pathology were examined to find articles that researched and discussed bilingual assessment practices. The information collected in the articles focused on the procedures needed for the correct assessment of a bilingual speaker.

Results: The literature mainly focused on assessment techniques of Conceptual Scoring, Dynamic Assessment, Nonword Repetition Task, and the Bilingual English Spanish Oral Screener. …

Torsion Element Test Bench Design, Trevor Gick

Honors Theses

A test apparatus has been designed to apply a torque to a range of suspension products developed and sold by ROSTA USA Corporation (ROSTA). The products tested here are used in industrial applications, including vibration damping and suspension for industrial machines.

The designed device takes several specifications into account. To withstand the forces applied to it, the structure of this device is created from steel with bracings to support heavily loaded areas. The device is designed with a “sled” type design so that a forklift will be able to move the sled if needed. To apply torque to the elements, …

Reprinter, Christian Brower

Honors Theses

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) is a rapidly growing technology, though, expensive printing filament and wasted material make it less affordable and an unsustainable process. The RePrinter combats these issues by recycling scrap 3D printed plastic parts and household plastics, such as pop bottles, and creates filament for fused deposition modeling (FDM). This product is a fully automated system which grinds, extrudes, and spools the filament for immediate use in FDM. The RePrinter works to control the extrusion speeds and tensions to optimize precise filament dimensions for quality 3D printing, while delivering the product in a timely cost effective manner.

Low Acuity Pediatric Patients Presenting Uncomplicated Colds And Nonspecific Upper Respiratory Symptoms In U.S. Emergency Departments, Margaret Berry

Honors Theses

Emergency departments serve as the nation’s hub for patients faced with life-threatening injuries and illnesses. Although the role of emergency departments (EDs) may seem clear by its title, U.S EDs are overcrowded with patients presenting nonurgent symptoms. A significant population of nonurgent ED users are pediatric patients presenting nonspecific upper respiratory symptoms and uncomplicated colds. Findings have uncovered that although pediatric upper respiratory infections (URIs) are one of the most uncommon reasons for hospital admittance from an ED, it is one of the most common reasons pediatric patients are brought into emergency departments. It appears that inappropriate facility usage is …

Biogas Separator And Storage Tank, Brandon Nimtz

Honors Theses

The general concept of this project is to design, simulate, and build a biogas separator system that will also store the separated methane and carbon dioxide within pressure vessels. This system is constructed of many subcomponents that will combine to separate the biogas and store the methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2). The components included in the project consist of a liquid-gas separator vessel, two heat exchangers, one methane gas compressor, and one pressure vessel each to hold methane and carbon dioxide each. While the base goal in this project was to design and simulate the necessary parts to theoretically …

An Appromximation Algorithm For Motif Finding In Dna Sequences, Hasnaa Imad Al-Shaikhli

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

• Motif finding is a significant problem in biology and computer science fields.

• Search for similar (not exact) motifs in multiple DNA sequences is non -trivial, and is a time trivial, and is a time -consuming problem.

• IDEA: design an algorithm that reduces the search space to decrease the run -time based on a d-neighbors set analysis.

• The d -neighbors set is a list of all instances for subsequence x of length I with maximum allowed mutations ≤ d.

• Analyzing these sets to make use of the distance frequencies between neighbors without generating them would help …

Authorship Revealed: Findings From A Systematic Review Of Key Public Administration Membership Associations' Journals, Ruth M. Bates-Hill, Daniela C. Schroeter, Adel Hasan Ahmed Aladlani, Hussein Chalabi, Gregory D. Greenman Ii, Mike Mendenhall, Diane Thompson

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

This poster illustrates findings from a systematic review of articles published in 2015 and 2016 in four key public administration journals. Findings highlight patterns of authorship, research funding, and citations.

The Quantum Dancing Of Hot Atomic Nuclei: A New Theoretical Approach, Herlik Wibowo

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

We study the nuclear excitation spectra in the two energy domains: the low energy region (below 10 MeV) and giant resonance (GR) region (10-30 MeV). In the low energy region, the experimentally discovered upbend of the radiative dipole strength function is very important as it has an impact on the rapid neutron capture cross sections, which are used, in particular, for the r-process nucleosynthesis studies.

Thermal continuum quasiparticle random-phase approximation (TCQRPA) is one of the models which attempts to explain this phenomenon. The deficiency of TCQRPA is the absence of quasiparticle vibration coupling (QVC) mechanism, which is already included in …

Findings From A Systematic Review Of Key Public Administration Membership Associations’ Journals, Ruth M. Bates-Hill

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

This poster illustrates findings from a systematic review of articles published in 2015 and 2016 in four key public administration journals. Findings highlight patterns of authorship, research funding, and citations.

Enhance A Deep Neural Network Model For Twitter Sentiment Analysis By Incorporating A User-Level Information, Ahmed Sulaiman M Alharbi

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

Most existing sentiment classification methods for social media focus on document-level classification. They utilize local text information and ignore the crucial characteristic information of users. These methods usually suffer from high model complexity and only exhibit word-level preference.

Therefore, motivated by the successful utilization of deep neural networks in computer vision, speech recognition and natural language processing and their ability of learning in multi-prospective ways, a neural network based sentiment analysis model is proposed to incorporate user-level information into sentiment classification.

By user-level information we mean information extracted or inferred from the user that helps the proposed model to engage …

Research Methods In Public Administration: A Systematic Review, Adel Hasan Ahmed Aladlani

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

This poster includes findings from a systematic review conducted during a doctoral methods course at Western Michigan University. The systematic mixed methods review covered key public administration membership association journals. The review indicated differences in the research methods and types used with a strong preference for using quantitative research.

Data Driven Decision Making: Utilizing Alumni Perspectives In Strategic Management, Robert Welton

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

The most basic premise of macro-economic states that as prices for a good or service increase, demand decreases. As shown below, the cost of higher education in Michigan compares unfavorable to the rest of the nation. In order to remain viable in an age of worldwide competition for students, WMU (and more specifically SPAA) will need to identify marketable areas of competitive advantage as well as opportunities for programmatic improvement.

Effects Of A Historical Story On Student Understanding Of Nos And Mendelian Genetics, Cody T. Williams, David W. Rudge

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA)

Introduction:

• The nature of science (NOS) is an important part of scientific literacy (AAAS, 2009; Matthews, 1994; Lederman et al., 2014).
• History provides contextualized approach that allows for intertwining NOS and traditional science content (Clough, 2006).
• Stories represent a potential avenue for progress in using history in NOS research.
• Recent framework developed for historical stories in science education (Klassen, 2009).

Conclusions:

• Preliminary results from this study indicate that student participants from the experimental group made significant gains in their understanding of the role of imagination and creativity in science.
• Participants from the experimental group also outperformed the non-intervention group on …

Bba Quantitative Skills: Assessing The Prerequisites, Matthew Ross, A. Michelle Wright

Assessment Grants

We examine determinants of prerequisite quantitative skill among Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) students. Preliminary results suggest that undergraduate students are deficient in quantitative skills, even among a sample of finance students whom show greater quantitative ability than the mean BBA student. Mean math quiz performance among 164 student participants substantially lags faculty established expectations. We extend beyond traditional BBA pedagogy research by incorporating the Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) and language analysis in a business finance context. We find strong evidence for learning theory explanations involving quantitative prerequisite ability and non-cognitive measures. However, theories involving knowledge decay and demographic …

The Socializer-Spring 2017, Department Of Sociology

The Socializer

Spring 2017 Sociology departmental newsletter.

The Unifying Power Of Education, Keagan Potts, Jenji Learn

Center for the Study of Ethics in Society Papers

• Without Expertise or Experience: Philosophizing When Your Students Know You Know Nothing
• Segregated Students — Segregated Society: The Primacy of Education in Ending Hate
• Combatting Emerging Resegregation: Teaching Those in Power to Empower

Are The Leadership Behaviors Of K–12 Leaders In Mid-Western Urban School Districts Influenced By Their Beliefs And Attitudes Regarding Spirituality?, Ericka M. Taylor

Dissertations

Working in a stressful and chaotic environment can be difficult for building principals in urban school districts (DeNisco, 2013; Stokley, 2002; Thompson, 2004). Presumably, the job is only expected to get more arduous with the increasing demands to improve student achievement (Allison, 2012; Kimball & Sirotnik, 2000; Queen & Schumacher, 2006). What is quite apparent today is that the role and responsibilities of the principal have changed dramatically over the past twenty years (Carlson, 2012; Hill-Yeverton, 2003) shifting from a factory model of management of learning to one in which teachers and principals have to create more student-centered and project-based …