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Phylogenetics And Diversification Of Escallonia (Escalloniaceae), Felipe Zapata

Dissertations

Despite a large accumulation of evidence on the high richness of plant species in the mountains of South America, little is known about the historical underpinnings of this diversity. To contribute to our understanding of the origin and diversification of plant species in these mountains, I analyzed geographic patterns of variation in molecular and phenotypic characters for the genus Escallonia L.f. (Escalloniaceae), a group of shrubs widespread in montane habitats in South America. Molecular phylogenetic analyses using chloroplast and nuclear loci revealed i) that Escallonia is monophyletic, ii) a remarkable level of geographical phylogenetic structure, and iii) a widespread absence …

Frameworks For Estimating Virtual Water Flows Among U.S. States, Stanley T. Mubako

Dissertations

The United States is the world's top virtual water exporting nation, but not much is known about the country's internal virtual water flow patterns and the volumes involved. Previous studies have suggested that the import of virtual water, defined as the volume of water required to produce a commodity or service, can relieve pressure on a region's water resources. This study seeks to quantify virtual water flows among U.S. states using the water footprint and input-output analytical methods, and to compare the quantitative results to actual water use volumes in agriculture. The results showed an overall pattern where virtual water …

The Establishment Of Western Music In Thailand, Jittapim Yamprai

Dissertations

Western music as introduced to Thailand in the sixteenth century with the use of Western trumpet in the royal court, sacred music in the Thai Catholic Church, Western songs and instrumental practices inside Western communities. Siamese songs of the seventeenth century were preserved in the French records and French Baroque musical compositions to reveal the political relationship between Siam and France. In the early nineteenth century, American civil war songs, marching songs, and Protestant hymns entered Siam. The official establishment of Western music in Thailand began in the middle of nineteenth century when King Rama IV hired two English military …

The Self, The Church, And Medieval Identities: The Evolution Of The Individual In Medieval Literature, Christopher Michael Flavin

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the construction of literary identities by medieval women, recognizable as an authorial voice that is distinct from those of her contemporaries yet congruent with the gender norms and expectations of her contemporary culture, in both religious and secular literatures from late antiquity through the waning of the Middle Ages. The argument posited here is that texts authored by women, as informed by concurrent male texts and the literary traditions in which individual authors seek to participate, can be read as a taxonomy of responses to the traditions individual authors appropriate and to their contemporaries, directly responding to …

Content Area Literacy In The Primary Grades: Teachers' Sense Of Efficacy In Teaching Narrative And Informational Text, Christine Cherry Selman

Dissertations

Research has documented the scarcity of informational text and the overabundance of narrative text in the primary grades (Duke, 2000; Yopp & Yopp, 2006). The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine primary teachers’ beliefs, or efficacy, in teaching narrative and informational text as well as assess their use of both text types in the classroom. Efficacy data were collected with a previously established questionnaire that had been slightly altered to assess efficacy in narrative and informational text. Two sub-categories made-up the efficacy measure for each type of text: teacher sense of efficacy in instructional strategies and teacher sense …

Recovering From Hurricane Katrina: Small Business Owners Conquer Katrina: A Mixed Methodology Study, Penny Madonna Adams

Dissertations

On August 29, 2005, residents of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi's Gulf Coast Regions faced death and destruction as Hurricane Katrina made landfall. The hurricane presented numerous challenges to the Gulf Coast Region; hence, many residents continue to rebuild more than five years later. Small business owners, in particular, comprise one of the populations hardest hit.

Prior research identified barriers to recovery hindering small business owners post-Hurricane Katrina. The purpose of the current research is to determine how "recovered" small businesses overcame financial barriers post-Hurricane Katrina. This study examines the recovery process from the small business owners' perspective and evaluates the …

Teacher Preparedness For Teaching And Assessing Depth Of Knowledge, Shelly Rankin Holmes

Dissertations

In the state of Mississippi, students in grades 3 through 8 are required to take an annual assessment, called MCT II, in Language Arts, Mathematics, and, more recently, Science. The results of this assessment may cause punitive consequences for each school and school district. State leaders have become increasingly concerned with student performance and accountability. Therefore, they have redesigned this assessment to accommodate a more challenging curriculum and to ensure alignment with national standards. The unanswered question is whether or not we have adequately prepared teachers for the increase in rigor and depth of knowledge for this assessment. A questionnaire …

The Merit Of Merit Pay, Melissa May Pemberton Albright

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of Missouri educators and state education leaders toward merit pay. In addition, a secondary purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of educators on the impact of merit pay on recruiting and retaining highly-qualified teachers. Due to the current economic situation, districts are looking at ways to compensate teachers while recruiting and retaining highly-qualified teachers. Districts must continue to meet federal and state mandates to increase student achievement, and researchers have identified teacher quality as one such influence. Therefore, many believe the traditional salary schedule, which has been …

Undoing Plessy: Charles Hamilton Houston, Race, Labor, And The Law, Gordon Andrews

Dissertations

Undoing Plessy: Charles Hamilton Houston, Race, Labor, and the Law, 1895--1950, explores the manner in which African Americans countered racialized impediments during the first half of the twentieth century by attacking their legal underpinnings. Specifically, this work explores the professional life of Charles Hamilton Houston, and the degree to which it informs our understanding of change in the pre-Brown era. There were a wide range of forces at work, from individuals, organizations, and institutions, to government in its various forms (local, state, and federal), complicating any strategy to reformulate the parameters of equality. Using both labor and education law as …

Missouri Charter Schools And Educational Reform, Phillip James Guy

Dissertations

In 1998, Missouri‟s two largest school districts, St. Louis and Kansas City, had become, in the eyes of many, completely dysfunctional. In court-ordered attempts to end desegregation and improve academically, each district built costly and extravagant magnet schools; however, low test scores and high dropout rates continued. These problems, and others, would cause both districts to lose their state accreditations in the next ten years. In an effort to put the focus back on student learning and force these districts to improve, Missouri lawmakers passed Senate Bill 781. This bill allowed charter schools to open and operate within the Kansas …

A Retrospective Study Of Substance Use And Mental Health Disorders In A Sample Of Urban American Indian And Alaska Natives, Kathryn Aimee Fuller Phd

Dissertations

This retrospective study examined the prevalence of mental health disorders, co-occurring disorders (COD), and alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) among a sample of urban-dwelling adult American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) seeking behavioral health services from one metropolitan Indian clinic in Southwestern United States. A descriptive quantitative design employed retrospective data from AI/AN subjects (N = 123) verified as tribally enrolled and receiving outpatient behavioral health services. Chart abstraction included patient demographics, substance use and mental health diagnoses, and ATOD scores from the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and the Addiction Severity Index-NAV (ASI-NAV). The t-test compared gender differences …

The Impact Of Family, Community, And Resilience On African-American Young Adults Who Had Parents Incarcerated During Childhood, Marilyn Diana Ming

Dissertations

Problem. Parental incarceration affects millions of children, and their numbers continue to rise. By losing their parents, children can be exposed to unique risks, relative to the separation. Many children face family structure disintegration, and this can be so disruptive that their normal development is impaired. Evidence suggests that children are impacted psychologically, socially, and financially. The result is the display of problematic behavior, being aggressive or withdrawn at home and in their communities. The concentration of the incarceration trends seems to be in poor African-American communities. Incarceration has left higher numbers of children without parents, making the collateral damage …

The Bandi Of Northwestern Liberia: A Study Of Change And Continuityin Bandi Society To 1964, Samuel Benedict Ngovo

Dissertations

Relying on oral accounts and archival and published sources, this dissertation employed interdisciplinary methodology to examine change and continuity in traditional Bandi systems to 1964. It focuses on traditional Bandi social, religious, economic and political systems that changed and those that persisted as a result of contacts with neighboring ethnic groups, Islam, Christianity, and the Liberian state.

The Bandi of northwestern Liberia are divided into six subgroups. Nevertheless, the six subgroups of Bandi share common traditional values. The Bandi people belong to the Mande-linguistic group and share common traditional values with neighboring Mande speakers such as the Loma and Mende. …

Using Formative Assessment Despite The Constraints Of High Stakes Testing And Limited Resources: A Case Study Of Chemistry Teachers In Anglophone Cameroon, George Viche Akom

Dissertations

Formative assessment, as a strategy used to improve student learning, encounters several obstacles in its implementation. This study explores changes in teachers' views and practices as they are introduced to formative assessment in a high stakes testing and limited resource environment. The study examines the extent to which teachers use the technique of formative assessment to engage students in authentic learning even while not sacrificing high test scores on summative assessments. A case study methodology was employed to address the research topic. Science teachers in the West African country of Cameroon were engaged in a process of lesson planning and …

Memory And Language: Evidence Of Relationships From Three Studies Of School-Age Children, Michele A. Anderson

Dissertations

The purpose of this three-paper dissertation was to explore the relationship between performance on verbal memory and language assessment tasks in school-age children. Study one used data from whole-class administration of three language assessment tasks to 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 9th graders (N= 187). Studies two and three used data from individualized administration of language assessment and verbal memory tasks to comparable samples of children between the ages of 6 and 18 years with typical language (TL) and language impairment (LI) (n = 37 per group).

The first study addressed practical and theoretical questions regarding memory and language demands of …

Citizen-Informed Performance Measurement And Reporting In Local Government: Key Factors For Effective Democratic Governance, Eileen L. Pierce

Dissertations

Citizen engagement and performance measurement are concepts inherently in conflict with each other. Local government values citizen input and good governance. Simultaneously, the pressure of local government to be efficient and effective utilizing managerial techniques common in the private sector is intense. Due to challenges associated with the integration of performance measurement and active citizen involvement, initiatives in this area are sparse.

This study, using a mixed methods analysis, explored the research questions through examination of thirty-six units of local government that participated in the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation‘s Government Trailblazer Program. This program provided a unique opportunity for exploratory …

Contemporary Arab-American And Middle Eastern Women's Voices: New Visions Of "Home", Abdullah Kheiro A. Shehabat

Dissertations

esponding to an increase in the literary output of Arab-American and Middle Eastern women in the post September 1 ll Attacks, I examined three exemplary memoirs: Leila Ahmad's A Border Passage, Zainab Salbi's Between Two Worlds, and Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis. This study examines these memoirists' journeys back and forth from their homes of origin to their host homes in the West. In addition to charting how these memoirists break their silence and liberate themselves from authoritarian patriarchal culture and institutionalized religion, I discussed how they construct new feminist identities expressed through the creation of what …

An Investigation Of How Elementary School Teachers Make Data-Driven Instructional Decisions In Literacy, Cheryl Carangian Pham Edd

Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods phenomenological study was to explore the data-driven instructional decisions that elementary teachers make in literacy. Educators have moved towards a culture of being data-driven, and have declared data use in schools to be significant to school improvement and accountability. Yet, as school districts make great strides in creating a culture of data-driven decision making – collecting, analyzing and interpreting data – little is known about how individual teachers make sense of data and how they use the data to inform instruction. To explore the data-driven instructional decisions made by classroom teachers using literacy assessment …

Multi-Objective Optimization Using Evolutionary Algorithms For Geographical Zone Partitioning, Nitin S. Sharma

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Children‘S Protagonism At The Centro Cultural Da Criança: A Case Study, Claudia Protasio Ceccon

Dissertations

This dissertation provides a thick description and discussion of how child protagonism, participation and autonomy were implemented in an out of school center – The Children‘s Cultural Center – in a favela, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The researcher visited the center for more than two years, twice a week from February 2008 to June 2009, and once a week from June 2009 to July 2010. She conducted in-depth interviews with educators and children, recorded observation sessions in the activity rooms, and observed actualization sessions for educators and family days. This study describes the perspectives and expectations of the Center‘s …

Bab Edh-Dhra', Numeira, And The Biblical Patriarchs: A Chronological Study, Kris J. Udd

Dissertations

Problem. Bab edh-Dhra' and Numeira have been identified by archaeologists as possible candidates for two of the biblical cities of the plain, but their existence in the Early Bronze Age III is too early to match the biblical narrative (Gen 19) by many chronologies of ancient Canaan. This study sought to determine if there is sufficient flexibility in the archaeological and biblical chronologies to make the identification of Bab edh-Dhra' and Numeira with the cities of the plain a viable interpretation.

Method. The range of dates possible for both the archaeological data and the biblical narratives was analyzed. …

From Classroom To Workplace: Becoming A Social Worker, Sarah Louise Hessenauer

Dissertations

This exploratory qualitative study examines the key educational experiences that graduated bachelor level social workers identified as being most helpful to them in their current social work careers. Twenty traditional aged social workers who graduated from CSWE accredited, bachelor level, social work programs in the last 4 to 24 months and who had been working in a social work agency for a minimum of three months were asked to voluntarily participate in the study. The social workers participated in one-on-one interviews in which they were asked to describe their educational experiences and their beliefs about how those experiences supported them …

Doing History In The Adirondacks: Interpreting The Park, The People, And The Landscape, Maria F. Reynolds

Dissertations

Occupying a large portion of Northern New York State, the Adirondack Park includes six million acres of public and private land that compromise over 85 % of all wilderness lands east of the Mississippi. Unique in many ways, the Adirondack Park remains a model for sustainable living and wilderness land management. This dissertation explores the way history is used to both complicate and enrich the relationship between humans and nature in the Adirondack Park. By analyzing historic preservation, cultural landscape management, material culture, and museums this project examines the way that Park history has been told through exhibits, public programs, …

Three Instances Of Western Colonial Governments And Christian Missions In Cameroon Education: 1884-1961, Asenju Callistus Tamanji

Dissertations

This dissertation is a historical comparative education study that revisits colonial education in Cameroon. The purpose of the study is to undertake a broad, documentary, synthetic analysis of the colonial policies of the three formidable Western powers that colonized the country: the Germans (1884-1914), the British (1914-19621), and the French (1914-1960). This study focuses on the interactions that these Western colonial governments had with various Western Christian missionary organizations; these interactions and collaborations led to the establishment of the German, British, and French colonial formal schools in Cameroon up until Independence from colonial rule in 1960 and 1961. The official …

Australia V. Usa: Indian Engineering Students Pursuing Graduate Degrees Abroad, An Analysis Of Factors Influencing The Choice And Location Of Institution, Louis Berends

Dissertations

The global market of higher education is growing at a rapid pace. Prospective graduate students in engineering have more options - domestically and internationally - than ever before. At this moment, the international setting of engineering graduate programs continues to shift and expand. This study analyzes the decision-making processes of students from India who pursue graduate education in Australia and the United States of America. In this setting, decision-making processes of student choice were examined after study participants selected higher education institutions in Australian and U.S. The research question is: why do graduate degree-seeking engineering students from India pursue studies …

“Voluntary Sector-Rich” And “Voluntary Sector-Poor”: What Difference Does The Distinction Really Make?, Lindsey M. Mcdougle Phd

Dissertations

Nonprofit organizations serve a distinctive role within American society. Collectively, nonprofits are viewed as major sources of social capital, contributors to the public good, and the value guardians within communities. Nonprofits also have a sizeable (and quite positive) impact on the nation's economy. Despite the social and economic significance of nonprofits, though, research has shown that nonprofit organizations and resources are not always distributed evenly across communities. Indeed, Wolch (1990) has observed that some communities are voluntary sector-rich, while others are voluntary sector-poor. Therefore, many of the benefits often associated with the presence of nonprofits may not be actualized, or …

Policy Determinants And Medicaid Managed Care, Diane Elizabeth Brandt

Dissertations

The U.S. Medicaid program is increasingly challenged by reductions in federal entitlement spending, a faltering private sector health insurance base, escalating health care expenditures and an aging and increasingly diverse population. Converging pressures on state Medicaid programs have challenged state policy makers to find new approaches to enhance program efficiency. One of these policy tools is the adoption of Medicaid managed care programs for individuals with chronic illness and disability, particularly important as these enrollees incur the highest health care costs. The increasing prevalence of chronic illness combined with the growth of households in poverty creates significant implications for Medicaid …

"Their Past In My Blood": Paule Marshall, Gayl Jones, And Octavia Butler's Response To The Black Aesthetic, Williamenia Miranda Walker Freeman

Dissertations

Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969), Gayl Jones’ Corregidora (1975), and Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) enhance our conceptualization of black aestheticism and black nationalism as cultural and political movements. The writers use the novel as genre to question the ideological paradigm of a black nationalist aesthetic by providing alternative definitions of community, black women’s sexuality, and race relations. Because of the ways in which these writers respond to black aestheticism and black nationalism, they transform our understanding of movements often perceived as sexist, racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic. An examination of their works reveals the need for additional …

Adaptation Of Balanced Scorecard And Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Methodologies To Measure Nation-State Power, Gregg Eric Lassen

Dissertations

The objective of this research was to develop a model for nation-state power. People interested in international relations, including scholars, diplomats, and analysts, need to understand relative power among nation-states, but the unit of comparison, power, remains an elusive concept. This research utilized a Balanced Scorecard approach from business and organizational behavior literature to develop a more comprehensive model of nation-state power based on international relations literature. The model was then further developed into a ranking tool which utilized multiple criteria decision-making theory. The combination of these approaches provided a tool that was used to measure nation-state power based on …

The Experiences Of Mississippi Weekly Newspaper Editors As They Explore And Consider Producing Internet Editions, Cassandra Denise Johnson

Dissertations

This dissertation focused on the challenges Mississippi weekly newspaper editors faced when deciding to have an online edition and the issues these editors encountered when they adopted a Web newspaper. The study expounded on four areas—the operational changes weekly newspapers have had to make to produce Web editions, the different type of newsroom staff that are needed to create both editions, the content that is going in the online edition, and the financial pressures that editors work through to keep the newspapers profitable. The study was modeled after similar studies from three organizations—the Pew Research Center, the Bivings Group, and …