Digital Commons Network^™

Venturing Into The Virtual: An Analysis Of Virtual Museums And Creation Of Umacf Southwestern Basketry Virtual Exhibit, Monica D. Lusnia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The prevalence of virtual museums has grown in recent years and this relatively new exhibition format has presented the museum field with opportunities for growth. In an effort to explore the virtual sphere as an effective avenue for museum growth and change, I conduct an analysis of what virtual museums are, the challenges they pose, and the benefits they can provide to museum education. Case studies of University of California Chico, University of New Mexico, University of Arizona, and University of Nevada Reno’s virtual exhibition of materials from each university’s anthropology collections serves to further the exploration of the efficacy …

The Birds And The Trees: Quantifying The Drivers Of Whitebark Pine Decline And Clark's Nutcracker Habitat Use In Glacier National Park, Vladimir Kovalenko

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), recently listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, is in steep decline in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA due to the non-native pathogen Cronartium ribicola, causal agent of the fatal disease white pine blister rust. A sample of the park’s population suggests that approximately 70 percent of whitebark pines have died, while 65 percent of the remaining trees are infected. Using landscape and climate variables, we show how geographic location, elevation, aspect, solar radiation, relative humidity, and snowpack interact with tree diameter to affect mortality, disease incidence, cone production, and regeneration. We also examine how …

The Influences Of Bias-Based Bullying And Teacher-Student Relationships On School Belonging, Charlotte J. Moss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

School belonging is an important factor to examine when considering the well-being of school-aged children. Factors that may influence a student’s sense of school belonging include bias-based victimization and the quality of teacher-student relationships. Many studies have examined these three variables independently or have analyzed the interaction of two of these variables. However, there are very few studies that have specifically looked at the effects of bias-based victimization and the quality of teacher-student relationships on school belonging. In order to fill these gaps in the research, this study sampled participants using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online crowdsourcing platform that …

Ancient Migrations In West Mexico: Mtdna Analyses, Patricio Gutiérrez Ruano

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite the mounting evidence that suggests The Aztatlán tradition in West Mexico was a major cosmopolitan region during the Postclassic period (AD 900-1521) with connections to the rest of what is now Mexico, archaeologists have characterized items in West Mexico as culturally distinct from the rest of Mesoamerica. Recently, endogenous, and exogenous material culture has been interpreted as movement and exchange of goods and ideas between subregions and surrounding areas, all of which mention physical contact and trade were involved between Aztatlán and elsewhere. This has included interacting with areas as far as the U.S. Southwest, as well as in …

Re-Curation And Recognition: Addressing The Curation Crisis Through The Garnet Ghost Town, Jocelyn A. Palombo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As universities, federal curation facilities, public museums, and private collections struggle to create space on their shelves curators and archaeologists continuously evaluate what must continue to be stored and what needs to be deaccessioned. Utilizing a collection housed at the University of Montana I explore strategies for combating this issue. The collection originates from the Garnet Ghost Town and has been in the university’s care since its excavation. The objectives of this project are to obtain new information and incorporate innovative techniques to learn more about the collection itself and provide an updated analysis to one of Montana’s most complete …

A Dual-Function Filamentous Pf Bacteriophage Protein Modulates Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Virulence Potential, Caleb Michael Schwartzkopf

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that often plagues hospitals. More than half of P. aeruginosa isolates are infected by temperate Pf bacteriophage. Pf virions protect bacteria from antibiotics, promote biofilm formation, and modulate animal immune responses in ways that promote chronic infection. These virions can be produced without lysing P. aeruginosa, but lysis may occur during superinfection. Superinfection is the process whereby virions of the same or similar phage infect an already infected host. Temperate phages typically encode superinfection exclusion mechanisms. Here we elucidate one such mechanism in Pf phage. We observed that superinfection-surviving P. aeruginosa were transiently resistant …

How Aquatic Insects Mitigate Temperature-Oxygen Challenges Via Behavioral, Morphological, And Physiological Plasticity, Jackson H. Birrell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

How do organisms respond to environmental challenges and to environmental change? These questions occupy a central place in ecology and answering them will help us to understand why species live where they do, how organisms are affected by human activities, and, ultimately, how to choose among alternative conservation strategies. These questions are difficult, however, for two reasons. First, environmental challenges often involve multiple, interacting stressors. Second, individual responses can be modified by behavioral, morphological, and physiological plasticity. My dissertation investigates how interactions between temperature and oxygen influence the performance and survival of aquatic insects and how plasticity allows individuals to …

Stories From Superfund, Rachel M. Neal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Superfund sites are the most contaminated places in the nation, but they do not exist in isolation. Stories from Superfund examines Superfund sites in three different communities, sharing the stories of people with varying relationships to these sites.

An audio story explores how the largest Superfund complex in the U.S., the Clark Fork River, serves as a living laboratory. Researchers and agency staff explain what we can learn from the nation’s most contaminated places.

A graphic, written piece uses data to understand environmental justice in a community in Southeast Georgia. Environmental inequities are visualized through graphs and maps showing demographic …

The Effect Of Place Attachment And Leisure Identity On Stewardship Participation In The Rattlesnake National Recreation Area And Wilderness, Elena Rene Thomas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As outdoor recreation participation increases in the U.S., and many communities in the American West are experiencing rising amenity migration, park and protected area managers face significant challenges to balance both providing for visitors’ desired experiences and protecting the natural resources on which these experiences depend. Confronted with declining management capacity, agencies are increasingly looking to engage both newer and established recreationists in stewardship behaviors to help maintain these areas and improve human-environment relationships. One barrier to community involvement in stewardship efforts is the need to better understand the connection between recreationists’ antecedent conditions and their motivations to steward. Past …

Understanding Trauma Awareness And Communication Competency In Athletic Training: A Mixed Methods Inquiry, Adrienne Anne Tauses

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

There has long been a link between stress and injury in athletes. Even so, athletic injuries are often viewed as primarily performance issues which ignores potential underlying psychological contributors to the injury. Research has shown that while athletic trainers have some training in psychological competencies, they lack awareness of trauma and self-efficacy in engaging in difficult conversations with athletes. Review of the literature will address the gaps in athletic training, and the potential of athletic trainers in supporting physical and mental health outcomes in athletes (Cormier & Zizzi, 2015; Cutler & Dwyer, 2020). Addressing the whole person within a sample …

Municipal Musk Oxen, Gentry Hale

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

You’d be hard-pressed to find a town with more sled dogs and mushers per capita than Nome, the finish line of the 938-mile Iditarod sled dog race.

It is also home to a growing herd of musk oxen, massive ungulates that Congress reintroduced to the Seward Peninsula in 1970. These icons of the far north have changed little over their 1.8 million years of existence and more closely related to sheep and goats than actual oxen.

While musk oxen pose a risk to dogs and people, they are also a major tourist attraction that helps inject much needed outside cash …

Building Bridges: Supervisors’ Management Of Competency Questioning, Arianna Camille Vokos

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Clinical supervision is an opportunity for supervisors to influence and shape the education of counselors-in-training. Exchanging feedback between supervisees and supervisors can be a challenging aspect of supervision and can have profound impact on the efficacy of supervision, the safety of clients, and the supervision relationship. Understanding the experience and process that supervisors go through when their competence is questioned could be critical to understanding the supervision relationship. Successful management of competency questioning contributes to the efficacy of the supervision relationship, better protection of clients, and positive development of supervisees. Using grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2014), this qualitative study addresses …

Evaluation Of Physiological Responses To Woodsmoke Inhalation During Exercise In Blood Pressure Sensitive/Chronotrope Stratified Individuals, Joseph Alan Sol

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate the acute physical reaction to WS exposure and identify potential fingerprints of physiological responses that may better illustrate the process leading to pathology from chronic exposure to particulate matter (PM). Study 1 developed a cost-effective, reproducible methodology for obtaining larger volume and pH-stable exhaled breath condensate (EBC) samples. Notably, the novel EBC device, compared to a commercially-available device, collected a larger sample volume, permitting an expansion in the number of biomarkers that could be examined in future WS exposures. The EBC device was then incorporated in Study 2, along with measuring key …

Competition For Personnel: A Barrier To Prescribed Burning In The San Juan National Forest, Trevor Finney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Using personnel data from the Resource Ordering and Status System (ROSS) this paper analyzes the relationship between personnel and prescribed burn frequency for the San Juan National Forest. Prescribed burning is used as a tool for mitigating wildfire risk by removing hazardous fuels but faces many barriers from policy to systemic disincentives. Personnel unavailability is one of these barriers that consistently challenges managers on National Forests when attempting to conduct prescribed burns. An instrumental variables approach is used to estimate the impact of personnel unavailability on managers decisions to conduct prescribed burns between 2014 and 2022. Estimates do not support …

Humanitarian Workers' Perspectives On Mental Health And Resilience Of Refugee Youth: Implications For School Psychology, Diana Maria Diaków

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Almost half of the 79.5 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide are youth under the age of 18, including refugees. Refugee youth face deliberate threats across all migration stages including violence, abuse, exploitation, poor living conditions, limited or no access to healthcare and education, interrupted family structure, and discrimination. Noteworthy, school psychologists who practice in host countries face new challenges as these diverse youth enroll in public schools. During the migration stage, humanitarian workers are a primary source of psychosocial and educational support for refugee youth and their families. Therefore, the aim of this research study was to inform school psychology …

Looking To The Future Of Wildlife Conservation: Durable Wildlife Policy For The 21st Century, Charlie R. Booher

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildlife conservation in the United States was built by the dollars of consumptive users. Monies from the sale of hunting licenses, as well as excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery tackle through the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (PR), currently fuel a complex system of wildlife conservation via multiple levels of government. However, the number of hunters in this country is rapidly declining, the sale of firearms and ammunition is increasingly unrelated to hunting, and contemporary consumers tend to express different values than traditional hunters. These changes pose significant challenges of relevancy and funding to state and …

Call Your Elected Officials: Identifying Predictors And Audiences For Collective Climate Action, Nathan Scott Bender

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Influential climate action in the United States is beyond the scope of individual actions, and instead requires collective action. This challenges governmental agencies and NGOs to promote enough collective action to inspire systemic change. Though decades of social research have identified broad trends in the drivers of this collective climate action, predictors of specific actions vary across individuals and contexts, and existing theory does not fully account for these shifting relative contributions. Additionally, the scale and urgency at which we must address climate change requires understanding and motivating climate action at all scales, from broad trends to predictors of specific …

The Existential Challenges Of Cyberspace, Sean Cleary

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cyberspace is an emergent environment that has come to facilitate a growing range of human activity. Here, information is tightly woven, freed of unnecessary context and always within reach. This thesis explores the existential challenges that arise from increased engagement in this space and offers solutions informed by Henry Thoreau and Søren Kierkegaard. Section One offers an ontological account of cyberspace and describes its relationship to what I call the lifeworld. Section Two further examines the relationship drawn out in Section One, introduces the challenge of foreground saturation and appeals to Thoreau for solutions. Section Three introduces the concept of …

For The Love Of Language: Microrituel In The Socialization Of Language Teachers, Rebekah Morgan Skoog

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Language and social interaction have been determined to be intricately linked. Over the past century, studies surrounding how to learn languages have shifted the conversation on how to teach them. With the introduction of Hymes’ (1971) Communicative Competence into pedagogical literature, learning language within social context replaced the formally grammar based, traditional methods. During the early 1960’s the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Language led the charge on providing standards and learning objectives to shift language learning towards a more integrated and communicative approach. However, based on the research of Celce-Murcia (2007), Aguilar (2007), and Ishihara & Cohen …

Psychological Safety At Amazon: A Cco Approach, Kathryn K. Zyskowski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Equitable Pharmacogenetic Testing Implementation For Rural And Underserved Populations, Shayna Killam

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Pharmacogenetic testing has potential to transform healthcare, yet implementation strategies have been limited to major academic medical centers serving metropolitan communities and large health systems. In contrast, rural, community-based health systems are slow to implement these advances, threatening to exacerbate existing healthcare disparities for rural populations. A majority of Montanans live in rural areas, with unique challenges in providing access to pharmacogenetics.

We have established partnerships with three clinical sites who serve rural, underserved populations including American Indian, pediatric, and low socioeconomic status patients. We conducted a needs assessment for pharmacogenetic testing implementation by interviewing 48 key stakeholders. Interview questions …

Training And Utility Of Mindfulness Among School Psyschologists, Emily Ann Hattouni

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The role of school psychologists (SPs) includes consulting with parents, teachers, and working directly with students. Researchers have demonstrated a high rate of burnout among professionals in this field (e.g., Huebner, 1992; Schilling et al., 2018). Mindfulness-based interventions have been found to be useful to address symptoms of burnout among other professionals (e.g., physicians: Luken & Sammons, 2016). Mindfulness has also been theorized as particularly useful for the myriad roles that school psychologists work within (Alahari, 2017). Although research into the utility of mindfulness have found positive effects for students within the schools (e.g., Felver et al., 2016), no research …

The Effects Humidity & Temperature Has On Dna Contamination During Storage, Samantha Leigh Allison Ramey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies have been conducted on DNA cross-contamination throughout the criminal investigation process in order to evaluation the possibility that DNA from one sample could potentially influence the outcome of another. However, no published studies have examined the potential for contamination during the storage of genetic evidence after samples have been taken from crime scenes or suspects. This study is a continuation of a preliminary project, which examined storage drying time in relation to cross-contamination. The current study tested temperature and humidity for the potential of cross-contamination during storage prior to extraction. Prior to storage, 50 μl of male saliva was …

Accumulation By Dispossession In Protected Areas, A Literatrue Review And Case Study To Create A More Unified Understanding, Leon Russell Miller

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Juvenile Temperature Regulation In Apis Mellifera (Honey Bee) And The Impacts Of Brood Temperature Requirements On The Colony, Scott Debnam

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Little is known about the energetic costs to insects of raising young. Honey bees collectively raise young, or brood, through a series of complex behaviors that appear to accelerate and synchronize the timing of brood maturation. These include maintaining the brood nest at warmer and consistent temperatures and the exceptional activity of "heater bees." The temperature at which juvenile insects are raised can profoundly affect their development. Apis mellifera (Honey bees) cope with temperature-dependent development via social behavior that maintains the relatively high and constant temperatures within the nest where the brood are raised. Yet juvenile honey bee development is …

Saving A Species: A Look Into Novel Techniques Being Used To Conserve Wildlife, Sierra R. Cistone

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildlife is held in public trust, and the public plays an important role in management and conservation as voters, advocates and beneficiaries of the many services and enjoyment that wildlife provides. But understanding wildlife issues, conservation and management decisions can be challenging given the often complex science around wildlife ecology and diverse public perspectives. That is why careful and accurate reporting around wildlife and environmental topics is imperative and a requirement of a well-informed electorate. This master’s portfolio is a collection of extensively reported stories around wildlife issues that are designed to be accessible to general readers to fulfill that …

Randomly Perturbed Graphs And Rainbow Connectivity, John Arthur Finlay

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this work we explore randomly perturbed graphs; that is, for an arbitrarily dense graph H we add a set R consisting of m edges randomly to create a graph G. We then randomly color the edges of G with r colors. We prove, for r ≥ 5 and m a large enough constant, that between any two vertices in G there exists a rainbow path and thus G is rainbow connected. This result confirms a conjecture of Anastos and Frieze [How many randomly colored edges make a randomly colored dense graph rainbow Hamiltonian or rainbow connected?, J. Graph Theory …

Conservation In Ecuador's Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor: A Study Of Coproductive Capacities, Gabriel Isaac Oppler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Connectivity conservation, a growing topic across science, policy, and management, is considered an important supplement to protected areas. A diversity of ecological corridors is emerging to restore fragmented landscapes, preserve intact habitats, protect biodiversity, and improve resilience to climate change. Despite increasing expertise and resources for planning corridors, many initiatives face challenges mobilizing science and governance to implement corridors on the ground. In many cases, biophysical science is supplemented with social science to better understand the human elements of connectivity. Similarly, collaboration and partnership are heralded as essential for effective governance of corridors. However, less is known about how these …

Adaptation In Rangeland Social-Ecological Systems: A Mixed-Methods, Cross-Scale Examination Of Factors Influencing Ranchers’ Adaptation To Drought And Climate Change, Ada Parkhurst Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Rangeland social-ecological systems (SESs), which make up vast tracts of land on Earth, are critical for safeguarding ecosystem services, producing food and fiber, protecting open space, contributing to local and regional economies, and maintaining cultures and knowledges. Sustaining rangelands, the ranching livelihoods that depend on them, and the suite of ecosystem goods and services they provide hinges on a greater understanding of the social processes that influence ranchers' ability to adapt within these changing systems. In this study, I used a mixed-methods approach to examine factors influencing ranchers’ adaptation to drought and climate change across scales.

In Chapter 3, I …

Demonstratives In Nsélišcn ‘Montana Salish’, Aspen A. Decker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis presents a detailed analysis of the Nsélišcn ‘Montana Salish’ demonstrative system. I propose that there are three features encoded in the demonstratives that I examined in this thesis: (i) proximity of the speaker in relation to the referent, (ii) common ground between the speaker and addressee, and (iii) visibility of the referent. I further propose that the Nsélišcn demonstrative system distinguishes three degrees of proximity: proximal, medial, and distal. Nsélišcn is a member of the Southern Interior branch of the Salishan language family. The data analyzed in this thesis was collected from native Nsélišcn speakers.