Digital Commons Network^™

Western News, May 8, 2014, Western Michigan University

Western News (1972-2018)

Story highlights: WMU-Air Zoo relationship being enhanced; Advisory group to guide teacher preparation programs; Researchers get major grant to improve canes used by blind; On Campus with Doreen Brinson.

Prism #80, May 2014, Office Of The Provost

Prism: Western Michigan University's Newsletter for Academic Affairs

No abstract provided.

College Of Arts And Sciences E-News Issue 13: May 2014, College Of Arts And Sciences

College of Arts and Sciences news

• CAS News
• lnterdisciplinary freshwater science and sustain ability degree offered
• Dean and department chair named outstanding administrators
• Department of Gender and Women's Studies receives Bronco Pride Advocacy Award
• CAS employees Make a Difference
• Faculty Feature
• Dr. Wafa Hassan earns STARTALK grant
• Alumni Profiles
• After 14 years in foster care, Amanda Shelton '14 graduates with highest undergraduate honor
• Bradford Shovlin '03, new executive chef at Iron Horse Hotel
• Student Story
• WMU students lobby in Lansing

Individualized Education Program Complexities For Students With Autism, Jordan Rohraff

Honors Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) belongs to a group of closely-related neurobiological disorders (Phetrasuwan, Miles & Mesibov, 2009). Incidence of this disorder is on the rise and is also seen as a topic of increasing concern, especially among educators and parents. Students with ASD need assistance from a variety of professionals in order to achieve academic success. To maintain effective communications between all involved parties, a collaborative plan must be put into place. An Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is an educational roadmap for students with disabilities. Although these important plans have many benefits such as providing students with their much needed …

Updates In Academic Affairs - 04/21/14, Office Of The Provost And Vice President For Academic Affairs

Updates in Academic Affairs

1. Academic affairs year in review: new colleagues, notable grants, high honors
2. Announcements

Leni Sinclair & Lessons From The 60s/70s Era, Chelsie Noble

Honors Theses

Leni Sinclair is a photographer who came to the United States in 1959 from communist East Germany. Sinclair is recognized for being a prominent photographer of artists ranging from Sun Ra to the MC5. Though most that study the era and the revolutionary groups surrounding Detroit and Ann Arbor focus on her [then] husband’s work (John Sinclair,) Leni has provided an equally important documentation of the ‘60s and ‘70s. As the Minister of Education in the White Panthers Party, Sinclair’s job was to educate anyone who wished to know about their values, goals, and ways of life. This paper relays …

The Consequence Of Freedom: A Sociological Analysis Of The Suicide Epidemic In Luthuania, Kyle Kaminski

Honors Theses

Lithuania has the highest global suicide rate at 40.2/100,000, according to the international suicide statistics provided by WHO (2004). Lithuania's suicide rate is over 2.5 times more than the global average. The top five countries in terms of suicide rate are Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Hungary (Ibid). All of these countries were previously under the Soviet Union's control from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War in 1989. Lithuania has not always been at the top of the rankings for global suicide rates. Lithuania's suicide rate spiked almost 20 percent during the years …

Make-A-Difference Awards, John M. Dunn

WMU President John Dunn

No abstract provided.

Labor And Vulnerability Among Pastoralists In Northern Kenya, Bilinda Straight

Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award (FRACAA)

The research preliminarily examines the embodied implications of a vulnerable relationship –Samburu grandparents and their young caregivers in the context of contemporary intercommunity violence, globalization, and resource scarcity. While children are recognized caregivers of adults in numerous contexts cross-culturally, including in developed nations like the U.S. and Britain, research on this issue is scant within anthropology and recent in other fields such as geography, medicine, and public health, where it has developed primarily since the 1990s.

Michigan Geographic Bee, John M. Dunn

WMU President John Dunn

No abstract provided.

Prism #79, April 2014, Office Of The Provost

Prism: Western Michigan University's Newsletter for Academic Affairs

No abstract provided.

Discovery, April 2014, Office Of Vice President For Research

Research and Discovery News

• Discovery experts update
• Water quality grant
• Evaluation center accolades
• $500k autism grant for WMU
• Lee honors college issues request for proposals
• Grant awards listed online
• Facilities & administrative cost rates

Credit Card System In Ghana: An Investigation Of Why Credit Cardsare Not Widely Used In Ghana And How Widespread Use May Be Implemented, Emmanuel Andoh

Masters Theses

Credit card systems offer economic advantages to many families and individuals across the globe. In economically developed countries and most emerging ones, the credit card system helps individuals, businesses, and even government agencies, speed up business transactions and access to short term loans. However in developing countries such as Ghana this is not the case. The result is that many people find it very difficult to buy goods and services without having cash at hand. Moreover a vast majority of people have to carry bags of money to travel across cities, towns and villages in the country to trade and …

Managing Dispersed Recreation In The Allegheny National Forest, Anne Santa Maria

Masters Theses

In the Allegheny National Forest, an unregulated dispersed camping policy has led to significant impacts to the natural environment. This study used data gathered from visitor surveys, interviews with managers, and environmental conditions of campsites to recommend management actions for campsites along seven roads in the National Forest. The seven road areas fell into two categories. Primitive recreation was more common in some areas and solitude was more highly valued by campers. Other areas had more frequent visitor use, motorized camping, and solitude was less important to campers. These factors influenced management recommendations, which include designing and constructing campsites to …

Salmonid Habitat Restoration On The Chocolay River, Michigan, Ross J. Crawford

Masters Theses

This project seeks to improve salmonid habitat quality by improving riparian vegetation on the adjacent banks (from toe to terrace) on the Chocolay River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Quantities of large woody debris (LWD) were also analyzed to determine the heterogeneityof stream habitats, or channel roughness. Percentages of rock, gravel, sand, and silt were analyzed to determine spawning habitat quality. As the proportions of fines (

“Gentiles By Nature”: Indian–Dutch Relations In New Netherland/New York, 1524–1750, Stephen Staggs

Dissertations

This work evaluates the evolution of the cross-cultural encounters that took place between the Eastern Woodland Indians and the Europeans living in and around the Dutch colony of New Netherland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It challenges a common view that the Dutch generally lacked curiosity about Indians, made no serious attempt to convert them, maintained a social distance from them, and were only interested in establishing commercial relationships with them. Using the extensive pamphlet and sermon literature and the records of the West India Company, Classis of Amsterdam, and patroonships available in the Netherlands as well as the …

A Climatological Study Of Drought In Southern Michigan, Rudy Bartels

Masters Theses

Drought has become a reoccurring phenomenon throughout many regions around the world. Significant drought conditions have beenobserved overthe pastfive decades in relation to economic, social, and agricultural impacts. In this study, Southern Michigan is investigated over the past 52 years from 1960-2012. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) will be calculated over a 6-month timescale from monthly precipitations. Three variables including 500-mb heights, surface pressure maps, and sea surface temperatures, will be correlated with the SPI using sliding correlations and Pearson's R correlation to determine any relations between these variables and precipitation variations. We will further investigate the five driest, wettest, …

No Fracking Way! A Study On The Spatial Patterns Of And Changes In Perception And Distance From A Michigan Horizontal Hydraulic Fracturing Site, Shannon Mcewen

Masters Theses

The research investigates whether Michigan residents' perception of risk from an oil and natural gas (ONG) well site that employs the use of horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) changes with distance. The research goal is to determine if residents that live farther from a fracking site perceive it to be more dangerous than those who live closer. Secondary research goals include determining if increasing distance from a fracking site cause residents to overestimate their proximity to a fracking site and if gender and education levels have an effect on residents' perception levels. Data were collected from residents in three counties in …

Piles Of Salt: A Narrative Of Civil War, Refugeeism, And Sociopolitical Transnationalism, Patrice M. Niltasuwan

Masters Theses

Employing oral history methodology, this research project was presented in the form of a biography. The focus was a humanistic approach to understanding the effects of civil war tlirough a first-person account of the lived experience. Through examination of the life history narrative of an immigrant refugee who survived the Laotian Civil War, the war itself is explored from a personal perspective as well as other issues relevant to refugeeism and immigration in America including policy, citizenship, identity, family, acculturation, and transnationalism.

By personalizing war through the voice of one who experienced it, a new perspective arises; not only are …

Western News, March 27, 2014, Western Michigan University

Western News (1972-2018)

Story highlights: Five engineering dean candidates to visit; Final design plans for new alumni center revealed; University garners two new grants related to water quality; Dunn elected to national higher ed board; On Campus with Marilyn Johnson.

Prism #78, March 2014, Office Of The Provost

Prism: Western Michigan University's Newsletter for Academic Affairs

No abstract provided.

“This Erstwhile Unreadable Text”: Deep Time, Multidisciplinarity And First-Year Writing Faculty Mentoring And Support, Denise K. Comer

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Despite the otherwise rich multidisciplinary terrain of writing studies, the strategies most often used with first-year writing teacher teaching mentoring and support tend to remain discordantly anchored to a comparatively narrow version of writing pedagogy. I argue in this article that the geologic concept of deep time offers a way of infusing a multidisciplinary dimension into first-year writing faculty teaching mentoring and support that will enrich the ways faculty and students think, write, and talk about first-year writing. This article discusses deep-time pedagogy, providing specific strategies for infusing multidisciplinary dimensions into first-year writing faculty teaching mentoring and support. Such a …

Western News, Feb. 6, 2014, Western Michigan University

Western News (1972-2018)

Story highlights: Sangren continues earning design praise; WMU literary press recognized with award, grant; News-oriented quiz show episode to be taped on campus; On Campus with Cat Fuller.

College Of Arts And Sciences E-News Issue 10: February 2014, College Of Arts And Sciences

College of Arts and Sciences news

No abstract provided.

Discovery, February 2014, Office Of Vice President For Research

Research and Discovery News

• Discovery Experts Database Launches Mid-February

• Sampi Lands Two National Science Foundation Grants Totaling $529,000

• 2014 Tech Development Fund Winners Announced; Interim Director Named: Dr. Clark Bennett

• NEA Awards $10,000 to University Press

• Research And Creative Poster Day April 11

• Discover Discovery Workshops

• Research Universities Partner to Increase Faculty Diversity

• Facilities & Administrative Costrates (F&A) Important to the University

Prism #77, February 2014, Office Of The Provost

Prism: Western Michigan University's Newsletter for Academic Affairs

No abstract provided.

Western News, Jan. 10, 2014, Western Michigan University

Western News (1972-2018)

Story highlights: Annual MLK celebration starts next week; Alumni center to incorporate core of East Hall only; Building setbacks net about $200,000 in energy-cost savings; On Campus with Tom Comer.

Doing Sensitive Research Cross-Cultural Contexts: Reflections From Fieldwork, Federica De Sisto

Distinguished Lectures on Africa

Dr. De Sisto holds a Ph.D. in peace studies from Trinity University. She is a former visiting fellow at the Arthur Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice at the University of Manitoba, Canada and at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. Dr. De Sisto is currently involved in a European Union reconciliation project between Muslim and Christian communities in Northern Nigeria. Her research and teaching interests include conflict transformation and peace building, governance, minorities' rights, gender and development, migration and refugee studies.

2013-14 Annual Report, University Center For The Humanities

University Center for the Humanities Events

The mission of the Center is to recognize and support the humanities at Western Michigan University. As a gathering place for dialogue, the Center acts an incubator for the exchange of ideas among faculty, emeriti, alumni, undergraduate and graduate students, and people in the wider community. Through the understanding of diverse cultural, professional, political, and intellectual landscapes, we nurture engaged and vital academic life.

Discovery: Research Annual Report 2014, Office Of Vice President For Research

Research Annual Reports

• WMU boosts its autism research and professional training initiatives
• W.E. Upjohn Center internationally known for its topographical innovation
• From invention to commercialization
• Faculty receive awards
• Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education