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Renewal, Clara Sharon Mclane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper documents the process of completing a Creative Project in Integrated Arts and Education. The project has two distinct arms: one, to develop a teaching unit on illustration, and two, to renew my artistic identity by producing and exhibiting artworks after a twenty-seven year hiatus. The third part of the paper lays a philosophical foundation for the rest. The Illustration Unit was successfully researched, developed, taught and revised, and is available as a PowerPoint presentation. Thirteen artworks were successfully completed and exhibited—the paper details my process and techniques. I realized my goal by taking my place as a professional …

The Effective Viscosity Of Ash-Laden Flows, Kirstin Anne Burns

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Debris flows can drastically alter ecosystems and damage infrastructure, and there is an increased risk of debris flows following a wildfire. In general, runoff and erosion drastically increase following a wildfire as a result of many processes, one of them being debris flows. Large debris flows are common in the months and years after wildfire in mountainous areas throughout the western U.S.A. The progressive bulking of surface runoff may be the dominant triggering mechanism of these debris flows. Vegetative ash on the hillslope becomes entrained in the flow, along with other fine-grained sediment and increases the effective viscosity of the …

Developing And Communicating Better Sexual Harassment Policies Through Ethics And Human Rights, Thain Yates Hagan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

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Legitimacy And The Use Of Natural Resources In Kruger National Park, South Africa, Randy Tanner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Around the globe, protected area managers confront an increasingly complex web of interests and demands, expressed by a variety parties, that often compete or conflict. When an action concerning the governance and management of a protected area is infused with such complexity, decision-making requires an evaluation of that action's legitimacy. Most often, this evaluation is implicitly made rather than expressly articulated. The purpose of this dissertation was both to illustrate the importance and utility of explicitly evaluating legitimacy and to provide a conceptual framework for understanding how the legitimacy of protected area governance and management may be understood. To better …

Organizing Rural Communities For Effective Citizen Science Programs, Anna Dean Holden

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Citizen science, or the use of volunteers for scientific projects, is becoming a popular way for agencies and organizations to collect data. The benefits of citizen science include saving the agency or organization resources, educating the community about conservation issues, and promoting land stewardship. Currently, many citizen monitoring organizations are based in urban areas, whereas their projects are located near more rural towns. Research shows that demographics such as area of residence can be a factor in the public’s attitude toward any scientific or land management project (Williams et al, 2002; Kellert, 1978, 1985; Vaske et al, 2001). This fact …

Predicting Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea Maculosa) Range Expansion Near Missoula Montana Using Localized Climate And Elevation Data, William Frank Preston Cumming

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Since the 1920s spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) has adapted to a variety of habitats, including pastureland, rangeland, hay land, open forests, road sides, and ditches. In 2003 this plant species dominated more than five million acres in Montana, half of the total infestation of noxious weeds in the state. This project demonstrates the utility of using downscaled Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model (PRISM) data for predicting vegetation movement within a 2°×2° geographical area surrounding Missoula County, Montana. This localized climate change data was correlated against current knapweed range using validation data from the Volunteer for Wilderness Program at the …

Building A Better Local Food System: A Case Study Of The Western Montana Growers Cooperative, Beth Anne Neely

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Local food systems aiming to re-create direct links between producers and consumers are emerging in the United States and elsewhere in response to the social, economic, and environmental consequences of the globalizing food market. Despite growing consumer demand for locally produced food, small-scale producers may not have the capacity to meet the needs of wholesale food purchasers, such as restaurants, grocery stores, schools, or hospitals, thus limiting their markets to direct sales to consumers. Wholesale customers, in turn, face a number of barriers to purchasing local food. Producer cooperatives may alleviate some of the challenges faced by wholesale buyers while …

The History Of Chief Rocky Boy And His Band And The Founding Of Rocky Boy Reservation, John Phillip Well-Off-Man

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Well-Off-Man, John, M.A., November 2007 Fine Arts, Integrated Arts and Education The History of Chief Rocky Boy and His Band And The Founding of Rocky Boy Reservation Chairperson: Dr. Randy Bolton The history of Chief Rocky Boy including his birth place is still a mystery for historians and the United States government. However, the one known fact about Ojibwes, also known as Chippewas, is their belief in prophecies. A prophecy that began at the East Coast urged the Ojibwes’ westward migration. Chief Rocky Boy and his band continued west from Wisconsin into what is now Montana. They arrived in Montana …

The Influence Of Neighborhood, Family, School, And Student Dimensions Of Social Capital On Academic Achievement: An Integrated Theoretical Framework, Floy O. Scott

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Current federal education law places the responsibility of the academic achievement of students with schools while ignoring other social factors that might influence the educational outcomes of students. Students are part of a complex social system that both enable and constrain their development and behavior. If we are to look at ways to improve academic programs, it is imperative we examine the different social systems to which students are exposed, including neighborhood, family, peer groups, and educational systems, in order to understand their role in assessing school accountability efforts. This study uses an integrated framework of social disorganization theory and …

The Leadership Triad: Identity-Integrity-Authenticity: A Case Study Of The Inner Life And Leadership Of Educational Leaders, David Ingram Henderson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Henderson, David I., Ed.D., May, 2007 Educational Leadership The Leadership Triad: Identity-Integrity-Authenticity A Case Study of the Inner Life and Leadership of Educational Leaders Chairperson: William P. McCaw, Ed.D. The purpose of this qualitative intrinsic case study was to analyze how the inner lives of fifteen educational leaders impacted their leadership practice. The common experience of the Courage To Lead (CTL) program defined the case. This case study was bound by place as the cohort of educational leaders involved in this study were all from the Seattle area in Washington State and experienced the CTL program in 2002-2004 at the …

Jeg Gikk Meg Over Sjo Og Land: A Journey For The Future Into The Past, Stephanie Jeane White

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using Scandinavian immigrant culture as a backdrop, this project presents an integrated multiple intelligences approach to teaching Kindergarten and elementary school students about their music, history, and cultural inheritance. The paper describes eight themes that formed the framework of the eight-week music curriculum used in the project. Examples of the children’s artwork and creative writing are included in the work. The author concludes that raising children’s awareness of a single specific culture through their music, dance, art, and food preferences stimulates the children’s curiosity about their own heritage resulting in increased communication with their family members and greater self-knowledge. The …

First-Year Growth And Survival Of Habitat Revegetation Trials On The Lower Colorado River, Mexico, Stephen Dwight Handler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sweeping changes across the Colorado River watershed in the 20th century resulted in near-complete collapse of the natural communities in the Colorado River Delta (CRD) in Mexico. A brief return of freshwater flows in the 1980s and 1990s showed the riparian corridor remains resilient to past damage, and the CRD remains a vital area for habitat conservation and restoration. This project aimed to test conclusions drawn from similar projects in the United States and show that revegetation projects are possible along the lower Colorado River in Mexico. From November 2006 to October 2007, we tested the effects of various treatments …

Lithologic And Hydrogeologic Controls On The Occurrence, Transport, And Fate Of Mtbe In Fine Grained Glacial-Lacustrine Sediments, Mary Kathryn Sutherland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In April of 1994, a leaking 60,480L gasoline underground storage tank was removed from George’s Conoco in Ronan, Montana. Investigations discovered a free product plume extending under Highway 93, with dissolved phase contamination (including MTBE) extending 460 m west to Spring Creek. Though geochemical sampling has established the general plume extent, the influence of aquifer heterogeneities on plume position and transport behavior is poorly described. The purpose of this work is to characterize the physical controls on plume migration. In addition to standard well installation and geochemical sampling, geotechnical tools including cone penetration testing (CPT) and Membrane Interface Probe (MIP), …

Small Robe Band Of Blackfeet: Ethnogenesis By Social And Religious Transformation, Linda Matt Juneau

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

One of the most significant challenges facing Native Americans and their indigenous identity is a greater understanding of the historical complexity of relationships that interconnected ethnically diverse populations across geographic landscapes. This thesis examines the range of Blackfoot political, social, economic structures, spiritual beliefs, and practices that were in place at the time of Euro-American contact. I use historically documented evidence of transformations that took place from the beginning of the fur trade era through the reservation era. Through the theoretical lens of ethnogenesis I use a case study of the Small Robe (Inuck’siks) band of the South Piegan of …

Xp Project Management, Craig William Macholz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Extreme programming project management examines software development theory, the extreme programming process, and the essentials of standard project management as applied to software projects. The goal of this thesis is to integrate standard software project management practices, where possible, into the extreme programming process. Thus creating a management framework for extreme programming project management that gives the extreme programming managers the management activities and tools to utilize the extreme programming process within a wider range of commercial computing organizations, relationships, and development projects. The author speculates that the lack of organizational adoption and mainstream integration of the extreme programming process …

Fall And Redemption: The Essence Of Country Music, Patrick Jude Campbell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My initial focus as a final project in the Creative Pulse was to begin to sing again. Singing fulfilled the three requirements of choice in a project: risk, rigor, and the requirement of ‘having to do it’. I had sung as a young man, and stopped as the result of listening to an adult tell me that I could not sing. During the following 23 years, I used percussion and became a dancer in order to express myself. The art forms of percussion and dance I was drawn to like a man is drawn to a woman that he must …

The Effects Of Fiscal Decentralization On Health And Education Spending And Outcomes: Evidence From Ethiopia, Brian Philip Vander Naald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis explores the impacts of fiscal decentralization on woreda level spending and local health and education outcomes in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Using fiscal decentralization theory, we predict that local conditions will affect future local spending patterns because local governments possess superior information and respond to heterogeneous preferences. In similar fashion, we also predict that local spending patterns will impact future outcomes. Government collected household survey data and local government expenditure data are used to investigate this theory. While results indicate that some woreda conditions have an effect on future local spending behavior, the effect of local spending …

Comparison Of Strategies For The Constraint Determination Of Simulink Models, Charles Joseph Alex

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The Simulink environment allows rapid prototyping of complex software systems. Because many of these systems are mission-critical, it is of utmost importance to determine their input and output constraints. Determining input constraints is a trivial matter, but the constraint determination of a system's output values is a serious and challenging problem that historically has entailed an exhaustive exploration of the system's input states. The work presented in this thesis recounts and extends a research project supported by NASA whose focus was to develop a strategy to constrain the outputs of a Simulink model. Simulink models are quite similar to mathematical …

A Grounded Theory Of Teacher Sensemaking Processes In A Climate Of Change, Dorothea Reynolds Wood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Teacher commitment and capacity are critical factors in school reform. However, school change models underestimate the complexity of teaching, which undermines teachers' ability to implement and sustain changes. This grounded theory of teacher sensemaking explored teachers' perceptions as they participated in school reforms targeting pedagogy.

A multi-site sample was purposefully selected and included 12 elementary school teachers from eight schools. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with each teacher and analyzed using inductive analysis. The three analytical coding procedures were (a) open coding, (b) axial coding, and (c) selective coding. Open coding analyzed the concepts emerging from the data and pursued …

Dam Regulations Effects On Sand Bar Migration On The Missouri River: Southeastern South Dakota, John Perkins Sanford

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

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Decomposition And The Freeze-Thaw Process In Northwestern Montana: A Preliminary Study, Laura Beth Wagster

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The goal of this project is to observe decomposition rates of four wolf carcasses over the duration of winter in northwestern Montana and to consider these rates as they apply to humans. Four wolf carcasses were studied in order to assess decomposition rates, particularly winter intervals of the freeze-thaw process and the possibility of the reemergence of insects during ideal conditions. It is hypothesized that the majority of insect activity on the carcasses will be limited to only internal activity during harsh weather conditions. Both carcasses placed in June decayed at predictable rates of decompositional stages and wolves 1 and …

Democratic Administration In The United States Forest Service, Nancy Leigh Leifer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Pluralism, the dominant theory in citizen involvement in the United States Forest Service since the 1950s, has prolonged the process of determining the public interest by promoting the use of appeals and lawsuits. The advent of more collaborative public involvement strategies in the past fifteen years offers the opportunity to assess whether participatory democracy offers a better paradigm for determining the public interest. This research focused on four cases of reported successful collaboration in Region One of the Forest Service and involved in-person interviews with 17 Forest Service officials and 24 citizen and interest group leaders. The researcher translated pluralist …

Developing Electronic Portfolio Software For Program Assessment, Melissa Elizabeth Holmes

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper describes how user-centered design methodologies were employed to create a software prototype used for outcomes assessment of e-portfolios. Designed to be used by faculty, university administrators and accreditation users, the prototype standardizes, aggregates and displays e-portfolio data in novel ways. Results of evaluating the prototype indicate that e-portfolios can be an effective means of outcomes assessment at the program level.

Influence Of Embryonic Metabolic Rate And Incubation Temperature On Incubation Length Variation In Neotropical Passerines, Alina Maria Niklison

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Variation in embryonic developmental periods influences fitness, but causes of interspecific variation are poorly understood. Allometry, for example, does not explain variation in incubation periods among neotropical passerines. Incubation temperature can explain some variation in developmental periods, but substantial variation remains unexplained. Here we examine two previously untested alternatives. Adult metabolic rates differ among species and similar differences among embryos may explain some variation in embryonic development rates; higher metabolism may allow faster cellular proliferation. Alternatively, metabolic rates are temperature dependent, and metabolic rates might respond differentially to temperature among species and compensate for differing incubation temperatures. These alternatives are …

Living To Ride: A Sociological Study Of Freeriders In Missoula, Montana, Marlana Michelle Kosky

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Kosky, Marlana M., M.A., Fall 2007 Sociology Living to Ride: A Sociological Study of Freeriders in Missoula Montana Chairperson: Robert W. Balch This paper is an ethnographic description of The Safety Team, a group of freeriders frequenting the Bike Doctor in Missoula Montana. Information about this faction of freeriding’s social world is revealed using the members’ own words and experiences as data. This study is meant to explore the significance of bike riding to the members of Missoula’s freeride “scene,” including its effect on their beliefs, values, and ethics. Qualitative methods are used including participant-observation structured within the theoretical framework …

Managing Multiple Identities: A Qualitative Study Of Nurses And Implications For Work-Family Balance, Claire Marie Spanier

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The ways in which people manage organizational, professional, and familial identities can have significant implications for work-family balance. This is particularly true for nurses, who have a strong sense of professional identity and may be likely to experience work-family tensions. By framing work-family tensions as related to identity, we can see the ways in which being a “good” employee, a “good” nurse, and a “good” family member are both complementary and contradictory. This study highlights ways in which being “good” employee facilitates and hinders an individual’s ability to be a “good” nurse. Furthermore, it demonstrates how being a “good” nurse …

Calling All Clowns - A Creative Project And A Personal Journey, Linda Ann Elizabeth Cripps

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

(not required for professional paper)

Predicting Northern Goshawk Dynamics Using An Individual-Based Spatial Model, Melanie A. Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) is a US Forest Service Region 2 Sensitive Species, requiring the Black Hills National Forest to manage for its viability. Previous studies have suggested that a model integrating goshawk population demographics, habitat availability, and territoriality would have the ability to predict population dynamics including goshawk locations, population size, and population viability. An individual-based spatial model was created for the Black Hills goshawk population. This project focused on evaluating our current understanding of goshawk dynamics, and making individual- and population-level predictions as appropriate following model validation. The model simulated demographics and behavior of individuals and usage …

How The Environmental Movement Has Failed The American Public. Reviving Environmental Action As Part Of The Public Consciusness: Advertising Is The Missing Tool, Ross Rademacher

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The organizations that make up the environmental movement have a great opportunity and challenge before them. These organizations could lead our nation in a time of great change. They could challenge the public to align personal consumer habits with positive environmental beliefs. However, the environmental movement has failed to market and communicate effectively. Due to this failure, companies such as Chevron and Wal-Mart have taken the moral high ground away from environmental organizations. The movement as a whole, with a few exceptions, has not successfully promoted key themes that could motivate change. There are rare examples of successful marketing and …

A Reanalysis Of Boas’S Hebrew Immigrant Data: Comparisons Of Foreign-Born And Us-Born Children Living In Early 20th Century America, Margaret Rose Kress

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This research paper uses data observed on Hebrew immigrant populations collected by the anthropologist Franz Boas and coworkers between 1909 and 1910. Boas was asked by the United States Immigration Commission to write a report that examined how the influx of European immigrants into the United States might affect the morphology of the American population. Seeing this as a chance to undermine racial typologies, Boas took many measurements of immigrants and their children and concluded that observed changes between foreign-born and US-born children were a result of the move into a new environment. Recent research has demonstrated that the Hebrew …