Digital Commons Network^™

Relationships Between Dual Enrollment Parameters, College Completion, And Time To Completion At Tennessee Community Colleges, Victoria N. Mellons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to evaluate the relationships between completion of high school dual enrollment courses and subsequent success of first-time, full-time community college students as measured by completion of an associate degree and the time it took to complete the degree. In addition to comparing dual and non-dual enrollment student performance, the effects of the number of dual enrollment courses completed and the subject areas of those courses was evaluated. Student subgroups reviewed included gender, race, socioeconomic status, and prior academic preparation (ACT score). The focus of this study was all first-time, full-time students at …

Academic Performance Among First-Year College Freshmen Following Participation In A Summer Bridge Program, Gregory Anderson Cross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the differences in the academic outcomes of first-year academically underprepared TN Promise-eligible college freshmen who participated in a college bridge program. A comparative research design was applied to existing data, including first-semester GPA, first-semester credit completion rate, first college-level mathematics course GPA, first college-level English course GPA, and fall-to-fall persistence rates. A random sample of 412 first-time freshman college students from five cohorts was analyzed using descriptive statistics for eight research questions. These findings indicated that there were no significant differences among college bridge participants and non-bridge participants. Non-bridge program participants …

Accepting Or Opposing The Status Quo: A Look At The Women Characters In Mariama Bâ’S So Long A Letter (1981) And Chimamanda Adichie’S Purple Hibiscus (2003), Omolola Giwa

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What exactly is the status quo of women in Africa? Women’s selfhood has been systematically subordinated or outright denied by law, customary practices, and cultural stereotypes. Scholars like Judith Bennet suggest that religious practices and colonial rule subjugate African women. Patriarchal ideologies guide the society’s discrimination against women and this has influenced the status of women, especially married women and the way they respond in times of affliction.

Authors like Chimamanda Adichie and Mariama Ba in their fictional novels The Purple Hibiscus and So Long a Letter focus on capturing the struggles and conditions of women in the Western African …

The Impact Of An Integrated Stem Collaborative Approach On Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge And Curricular Role Identity For Teaching Science, Qiuju Tian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current study investigated the impact of an integrated STEM collaborative approach embedded in a science methods course on early childhood and elementary preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and curricular role identity for teaching science, as well as the potential relationship between these two constructs. Participants were recruited from a group of preservice early childhood and elementary teacher candidates (N = 65) completing an undergraduate teacher education program at a university in the southeastern United States.

Using a mixed-methods design, the preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and curricular role identity were assessed using concept maps and a curricular …

“It Is Not Enough To Be In One Cage With One Self”: The Poetic Subject, Incarceration, And Envisioning Abolition, Emily Price

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Beat poet Bob Kaufman was in many ways nearly destroyed by the state. Forcible electroshock therapy, repeated targeting by police, repeated brutalization by police, and frequent homelessness all threatened to snuff him out, but Kaufman refused to give in. He remained a political beacon of hope for his community throughout his life, asking those around him to envision a world where he could be free. Through his poems, through the poems of Etheridge Knight and Jimmy Santiago Baca, and through contemporary visions of abolition from Angela Davis and community organizers that become ever more relevant as the prison system …

Properties Of 25cr7ni Stainless Steel Fabricated Through Laser-Powder Bed Fusion., Arulselvan Arumugham Akilan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stainless steel is a low carbon high alloyed system with higher concentrations of Cr& Ni, which impart high corrosion resistance to them. Alloys with approximately 25% Cr & 7% Ni in their chemical composition are commercially referred to as ‘Super Duplex Stainless Steel’. They have a unique phase composition of approximately 50% ferrite & 50% austenite, yielding a robust combination of high mechanical strength & corrosion resistance. They find extensive interest & application in the fields which demand a longer service life under intense mechanical / corrosive environment such as offshore oil rigs & pipelines in nuclear power plants. Traditional …

Examining Adolescent Voices In Urban Montessorianism Within The Third Plane Of Development., Raymond Edward Green

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although there is a significant body of research surrounding Montessori education, little research has sought to capture the voices of adolescents, specifically high school students in urban settings (Dr. Montessori’s third plane of development) learning through the Montessori Method. Problem: Legislators, policy writers, district and school-level leaders mandate and implement reforms with minimal to no adolescent input. Further, adolescents are not part of the reform implementation process or identifying desired outcomes of said reform initiatives. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine adolescent’s perspective of their urban high school Montessori education, and their role in helping to develop …

Functional Role Of Ppal And Potential For Moss In Industrial Applications., Susana Perez Martinez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an examination and characterization of the functional roles of PPAL. PROTEIN PRENYLTRANSFERASE ALPHA SUBUNIT-LIKE (PPAL) is a recently discovered gene. PPAL homologs are present in all plants and many animals, where its function is largely unknown. It is possible that PPAL could participate in prenylation processes since it shares similarity to the α subunits of known prenylation enzymes. Prenylation is a post-translational modification of proteins that involves the addition of a lipid moiety to proteins to facilitate membrane targeting and association and promote protein-protein interactions. Prenylation has important roles in plant growth and development, including …

Lysosomal Evasion Of Legionella Pneumophilia The Effector., Bethany Vaughn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Legionella pneumophila is a Gram-negative facultative intracellular bacterium found in freshwater environments that has co-evolved to survive and proliferate in various amoeba and protozoan species, which serve as the natural host for the bacterium. Humans are an accidental host of L. pneumophila, where infection occurs upon inhalation of aerosolized water droplets that contain the bacteria. Intracellular proliferation of L. pneumophila in alveolar macrophages is essential for manifestation of pneumonia, designated as Legionnaires’ Disease. Biogenesis of the legionella containing vacuole (LCV) occurs via interception of ER-Golgi vesicle trafficking and avoids the default endosomal/lysosomal degradation pathway. Intracellular proliferation of L. pneumophila …

The Roles Of Pon2 In Mitochondrial Physiology, Lung Tumor Cell Proliferation, And Lung Tumorigenesis., Aaron Whitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Paraoxonase 2 (PON2) is an intracellular, multifunctional enzyme with near-ubiquitous tissue distribution. Within cells, PON2 is localized to mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where it mitigates the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). PON2’s chief enzymatic function is its lactonase activity, through which it catalyzes the hydrolysis of a bacterial quorum-sensing molecule, N-(3-oxododecanoyl)-l-homoserine lactone (C12), effectively disrupting bacterial intercellular communication and protecting against infection. C12 is produced by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and has been shown to disrupt various aspects of eukaryotic host cell physiology and evoke apoptotic cell death through the activity of PON2. Additionally, PON2 has garnered …

Findings And Understandings Of 'Home': An Ethnographic Study Of How Homeless People And Displaced Persons Negotiate The Word 'Home'., Abby F Perez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of various meanings of the word ‘home’ and how the word ‘home’ is used by homeless, evicted, and displaced persons, and by the researcher of the study, to negotiate boundaries and relations of power to achieve goals, both moral and material.Scholarly research on home in urban studies and sociology has produced many definitions and meanings of the word ‘home’ and concepts of home, but often neglects to consider the way the word itself is experienced, personally, by individuals and how to make sense of the way these personal experiences relate to official meanings of …

New Accurate, Explainable, And Unbiased Machine Learning Models For Recommendation With Implicit Feedback., Khalil Damak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recommender systems have become ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that play an important role in filtering online information in our daily lives. Whether we are shopping, browsing movies, or listening to music online, AI recommender systems are working behind the scene to provide us with curated and personalized content, that has been predicted to be relevant to our interest. The increasing prevalence of recommender systems has challenged researchers to develop powerful algorithms that can deliver recommendations with increasing accuracy. In addition to the predictive accuracy of recommender systems, recent research has also started paying attention to their fairness, in particular …

War And Reconstruction From An East Texas Perspective: Nacogdoches County From 1861-1876, William Wade Carter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Initially founded in 1826 as a municipality of Mexico and organized as a county in 1837—and sharing its name with the oldest town in Texas—Nacogdoches County flourishes with a rich history and has been a factor in nearly every major event in early Texas history. The Civil War is no exception. Men from the county contributed to the war effort but also felt the war’s sting at home. Citizens did what they could to survive. The county continued under the yoke of Reconstruction after the war before booming again in the 1880s thanks largely to the town the county shares …

The Happiest Place On Earth: A Grounded Theory Of Fulfillment In Mixed-Orientation Marriages, Isadora Ferreira De Melo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mixed-orientation marriages (MOMs) are often misunderstood. There is a general cynicism in research literature and in the broader culture regarding the relational viability of same-sex attracted (SSA) individuals who marry someone of the opposite sex. However, there exist couples in MOMs that are resilient and attain satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to better understand how MOMs might become successful. By interviewing maritally satisfied mixed-orientation couples, the Model of Relational Self- Determination in Mixed-Orientation Marriages was developed. This model is separated into five stages that are organized around the experience of disclosure of the SSA spouse’s sexuality. Depending on …

Disorienting Object Oriented Ontology: Queer Landscapes And Ecological Bodies In Richard Siken And Harryette Mullen., Andrew N. Hutto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on a recent development within the study of metaphysics, known as object oriented ontology (OOO), and works out questions of being alongside contemporary poetry. Recognizing the post anthropocentric purchase afforded by OOO’s claim that everything is an object and that these objects are impossible to correlate with, this thesis will look at the use of objects in Richard Siken’s War of the Foxes and Harryette Mullen’s Recyclopedia. Drawing heavily from Sara Ahmed’s queer theory of disoriented objects and Timothy Morton’s ecological insights, this thesis will argue that despite OOO’s advancement, there are critical gaps to fill in …

Constructing An Interpretive Master Plan For The Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site, Alysha M. Richardson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site is owned and operated by the Texas Historical Commission. Interpretation of the site spans the 1864-1940 period and includes stories of groups that once met there for social events, including the United Confederate Veterans. In recent years, the Confederate Reunion Grounds has seen a decline in visitation as well as a reduction in staff. This capstone project focuses on creating an interpretive master plan to accommodate the change. This interpretive master plan aims to address the changes that have occurred over the past seven years and set staff goals and objectives.

Telling Stories: An Analysis Of Speech-Melody Compositions And An Original Speech-Melody Composition For Wind Ensemble, Kevin Cheek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the compositional technique of speech melody and provides a brief historical overview of speech in music. This thesis also examines recent works (2005-2014) that have sourced their melodies from the spoken word and in turn creates an original composition for wind ensemble consisting of melodies sourced from recordings of members of United States military forces speaking about their lived experiences. In conjunction with the analytical and compositional aspects of this thesis, I also conducted an interview with Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis (Jacob TV). i

A Policy Analysis Of The Endangered Species Act, Kendall Beggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis was to identify and analyze common characteristics that are shared by recovering species listed in the Endangered Species Act (ESA). NatureServe population data was used to determine which listed species were recovering, and a logistic regression analysis was performed to identify which aspects of the ESA most contribute to recovery. Of the 747 species tested, only 24% had a population that was stable or improving. Time listed and classification group were found to significantly influence recovery, and recovery plan presence and critical habitat designation also increase the odds of recovery. The analysis found no relationship …

Communication Accommodation Of Surgeons With Student-Athletes, Emily Womble

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Health communication is a topic that has been broadly researched for a while. It is an area that holds significance everyday due to the number of people involved and the number of people who rely on healthcare in general. Student-athletes sustain over a million injuries annually, over half of which required surgery (Corlette et al., 2015). However, the specific topic of communication between a surgeon and their studentathlete is one that is not studied much at all. Utilizing Communication Accommodation Theory as the theoretical framework, this study explored how surgeons currently use accommodation in their communication to their student-athletes. It …

Responses To The Incarceration Of Nikkei Among Churches Of Christ In America, Joel Childers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During World War II (WWII), the United States of America relocated and incarcerated thousands of people of Japanese descent, also known as Nikkei, living in the

western United States. Some of these incarcerated Nikkei were Japanese nationals, but the majority were American citizens. Most white Americans said and did very little to oppose the incarceration or to aid incarcerated Nikkei, and American Christians were no exception. This study examines how one Christian group, Churches of Christ, responded to the incarceration in light of this group’s theological character.

While the responses of members of Churches of Christ to the incarceration are …

Caregiver-Child Conversations About Sex In African American Women, Hannah King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using grounded theory methods, this study examines the experience of African American women during their caregiver-child conversations about sex and the impacts of the conversations on their sexual attitudes. The process of these conversations begins with an unplanned topic and progresses further to identify six essential themes of these conversations: gender differences, race and religion, protective/emphasis on protection, lack of knowledge, withholding knowledge, and sex negativity/shame. African American women’s description of the process included feelings of shame and negativity towards their sexuality. Caregivers promoted positive messages about sex by having open conversations that advocated for equality between the genders, empower …

"Is He Not A Maker Of Parables?": Restorative Poetics And Magical Realism In Ezekiel 40–48, Matthew Wells Sapp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thesis demonstrates that Ezek 40–48 functions as a unified narrative of restoration and that it is profitable to understand its fantastic realism and postcolonial rhetoric as early precursors to the modern magical realism genre. The tools of narrative criticism are utilized to exegete the literary features of Ezek 40–48 and uncover its poetic elements and rhetorical thrust. After this analysis, Ezek 40–48 is viewed as a precursor to modern magical realist texts in a comparative study with Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children, paying special attention to the thematic emphases …

Learning The Language Of America: A Descriptive Phenomenolgical Study Of Black American Racial Conscientization., Kyee A Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This transcendental phenomenological dissertation is an examination of the lived experience of Black American Racial Conscientization (RCZ). Worded differently, this descriptive phenomenological study investigated how Black Americans learn to perceive racial oppression and the various means by which they resist it. Fourteen in-depth interviews from within the epoché were conducted. The sample was heterogeneous with respect to age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, career path, martial and parental status, sex, home and current state, and religious affiliation. The sample was homogeneous regarding citizenship status and gender identity. Data explication manifested 97 different codes that were then grouped into five situated …

The Underbelly Of Residential Segregation, Bussing To Integrate And The Educational Ramifications: A Case Study Of Louisville Kentucky., Camara Douglas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Integration of the American public school system is often examined to figure out if integration worked. This dissertation examined busing to integrate into Louisville, Kentucky. Busing to integrate in Louisville, Kentucky, took place during that 1975-1976 school year. Louisville’s case is somewhat different. Not only did they finally follow federal mandates to integrate, they had to mix two totally separate school systems, one for the county (White) and one from the city (African American). The objectives are: (1) what were the experiences and perceptions of African American students in high school who lived in the West Louisville hyper-segregated neighborhoods and …

Materials And Interfaces For Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Production And Utilization., Alexander Jiya Gupta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mass industrialization over the last few centuries has created a global economy which is dependent upon fossil fuels to satisfy an exponentially increasing demand for energy. Aside from the possible depletion of this finite resource, the combustion of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which cause the global temperature to rise – a phenomenon which has already begun to create geologic and geopolitical instability and shows no signs of abatement. One proposed method to rid humanity of its dependence on fossil fuels is to use green hydrogen as an energy carrier. In this scheme, excess electricity from a …

Re-Localizing Writing Assessment: Sites Of Knowledge Mobilization., Charlotte Asmuth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For decades, writing assessment theorists have subscribed to the principle of localism––the belief that assessments should be designed with local contexts in mind and administered by local actors. Although this belief has ensured the validity of assessments in writing programs, it has also led to a tendency to treat assessment as a stable practice that is bound to a particular location, thus ignoring what happens when assessment knowledge and methods developed in one location travel to another distant location (as they do for campus assessment initiatives). To that end, this project traces how assessment knowledge is transformed as it travels …

Public Health Contagion Of White Supremacy: Examining The Pipeline Of Attitudes About Racism And Racial History Education Among High School Students., Trinidad Jackson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We are living in compounded states of upheaval. Violence and exemption from it across socioecological levels have shaped how humans survive, thrive, and die. While different violence typologies exist, the U.S., prioritizes interpersonal violence as its primary target of intervention, often through structural means that foster and reinforce interpersonal violence. The omission of structural and cultural agents and outcomes of violence allows perpetrators to infiltrate and reproduce savage, dehumanizing ideologies in perpetuity. Instead of sustaining societal pillars that oppress and destroy, we must fertilize public health research, practice, and sociopolitical activism with pillars that both inform and activate liberatory consciousness …

Etracellular Vesicles From Lactobacillus Rhamnosus Gg Protect Against Alcohol-Induced Liver Injury Through Suppression Of Intestinal Mir 194 And Subsequent Activation Of Fxr In Mice., Mengwei Jiang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Numerous studies have reported the efficacy of probiotics for alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD). These studies indicate a strong interest among the scientific and medical communities in identifying alternative or adjunctive approaches for ALD, for which there is no effective or widely accepted therapeutic option. However, in-depth molecular knowledge on how probiotics render their effects is lacking. Patients with ALD often have increased hepatic bile acids (BAs), which can be toxic and are an important causative factor in liver injury and hepatocyte death. BAs are released into the intestines and serve not only as a “detergent” to promote fat absorption, but …

Definitions And Depictions Of Rhetorical Practice In Medieval English Fürstenspiegel., Joseph Ethan Blaine Sharp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how medieval authors defined rhetoric and depicted rhetorical practice in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. It begins by analyzing how the field of medieval rhetorical historiography has overlooked the Fürstenspiegel as a rhetorical genre due to its overt reliance on meta-rhetorical handbook genres as the objects of its analysis. This dissertation challenges traditional narratives that positions medieval rhetoric as a primarily academic discipline divorced from political practice by engaging in horizontal reading practices that examine the broader culture of medieval rhetorical practice alongside the definitions of rhetoric found in medieval English Fürstenspiegel. In so doing, this dissertation …

Fluid Structure Interactions Within A Common Rail Diesel Injector., Russell Prater

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The internal flow of a high-pressure diesel injector is simulated numerically to investigate the complex transient flow structures and the unsteady forces imparted to the injector needle that result from the asymmetric flow fields developed during operation. The gas-liquid two phase flow is simulated using a mixture model with the cavitation numerically modeled using the Zwart-Gerber-Belamri model. Both the k-ε model and the detached eddy simulation (DES) model are used, and the numerical results are compared. This dissertation looks at the internal flow of a generic injector at different lifts and characterizes the flow parameters at high lift and low …