Digital Commons Network^™

Lost In Translation, Amanda Barr

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lost in Translation addresses the issues that trauma can create in communication; whether that be a physical trauma that damages ability to speak, think, or understand language, or mental and emotional trauma that significantly effects abilities to process, connect, and manage interpersonal relationships. My work is my voice, and a way to help others connect, to feel heard, and to even help them begin to communicate.

Tennessee Williams: The Characters Are The Playwright, Peter A. Philips

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Tennessee Williams was first and foremost a personage of the South, having been born, raised, and nurtured in the Mississippi Delta country. His early influences formed the concept of his “American Theatre.” He was a keen observer of people and places and wrote about the individuals he studied. He espoused the idea that as a homosexual he had the innate capability to write and appreciate various genders and sexualities, expressing himself as the character being developed in the moment of creation. Williams’s works, though containing moments of great humor, often trend toward darkness, becoming ever more pessimistic of human survival …

School-Based Racial Microaggressions And Symptoms Of Depression Among Native American Young Adults, Olivia Grace Bridges Holter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Native Americans continue to experience higher than average prevalence rates of mental health disorders, including depression. Current research on the risk factors for the development of mental health disorders among Native Americans suggests that the experience of prejudice is strongly correlated with the diagnosis of mental health disorders. Despite this knowledge, there is a current gap in the literature examining relationship between the experience of prejudice in schools and the development of mental health disorders for Native Americans. Given this dearth of research as well the importance of understanding the mental health needs of Native Americans, this research study examined …

Complicity And Climate Change, Shalomita Kristanugraha

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As individuals, how should we understand our personal complicity in climate change related harms? In this thesis, I argue that the predominant way we think of complicity within the Western moral paradigm—that is, as a distribution problem—is inadequate in helping us understand the nature of our complicity in climate change related harms. This inadequacy, in turn, psychologically hampers individual citizens residing in high-emitting nations of the Global North from effective and sustainable social and political engagement with climate change. To address the inadequacy and obstructions that result from it, I follow the discussion between Christopher Kutz and Iris Marion Young …

Education Is Your Most Powerful Weapon: Gaining Understanding From Apsáalooke Knowledge, Salena Ann Beaumont Hill

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

American Indian college students have many motivating factors for pursuing a higher education. One common theme among American Indian college students is the motivation to give back to their tribal nation. This study explores the expectations of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation for college students returning home. An Indigenous Research Methodology with Apsáalooke epistemology is used. Along with tribal practices and protocols, situational analysis was adapted to align with the methodology. The findings include four major elements informing Apsáalooke expectations of returning students: culture and identity, the college student experience, the realities of returning home, and expectations of Apsáalooke students who …

Teacher Support: A Study About Teacher Emotional Support And Engagement Among Middle School Boys, Melissa Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Engagement in school has been recognized as important for achievement in multiple ways, and yet adolescent boys have been observed to be less engaged in school than their female peers. Boys are less motivated than girls, spend less time on homework, and have lower expectations of themselves (Barber, 1996). Boys experience the following school and personal events at rates higher than girls: discipline referrals, suspensions, failing and near-failing grades, and also suicide. This study examined the differential responses between boys and girls in terms of perceived teacher support and student engagement.

The study began with an initial survey distributed to …

Change Is The Only Constant: A Snowpack Retention Analysis And Climate Vulnerability Road Map For The Skalkaho Creek Sub-Basin, Zachary Freeman Goodwin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate change is impacting the whole of North America, although the impacts differ depending on regional geography. In the Intermountain West, climate change is contributing to lower overall snowpack totals and diminished late season streamflows. These changes will likely contribute to vulnerabilities in how much water is available to irrigators, municipalities, and fisheries dependent upon a consistent yearly flow of meltwater. This paper explores how snowpack retention has changed via the NASA dataset Daymet, which provides gridded estimates of weather parameters including Snow Water Equivalent in the Bitterroot River Basin of western Montana. This analysis showed that snowpack retention from …

Crisis As A Constant: Understanding The Communicative Enactment Of Communities Of Practice Within The Extension Disaster Education Network (Eden), Danielle Maria Farley

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Crisis is a constant of our reality. We are caught in the continual and inevitable cycle of crisis development. Whether it is a natural disaster, international conflict, or disease outbreak; knowledge is central to our ability to prepare for, respond, and recover from crisis. Knowledge is a social process that requires active participation (Wenger, 1998). CoP theory explains how knowledge is accomplished through the communicative practice of mutual engagement, negotiation of a joint enterprise, and shared repertoires (Iverson & McPhee, 2008). The Extension Disaster Education Network is a CoP that is longstanding, enacts knowledge, and is focused on preparing for, …

Family Environment And Attachment In Relation To Complex Trauma And C-Ptsd, Susan Elizabeth Ocean

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Childhood traumatic experiences occurring during critical developmental stages are strongly linked to poor mental health outcomes during adulthood, including PTSD. Yet, individuals who have experienced multiple traumas (and across developmental stages) report a profile of symptoms that is not well-represented by traditional PTSD diagnostic criteria. Recent research suggests that resulting post-traumatic stress after the experience of complex trauma should be considered a separate, yet related, disorder from the well-established PTSD. Since traumatic experiences are commonplace and often detrimental, establishing which factors contribute to risk and resilience is of great importance. Having secure attachment to a primary caregiver and family cohesion …

An Exploration Of The Adaptive Capacity Of Community-Based Organizations In Northern Botswana In Response To A Hunting Ban, Katherine Kellam Coe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Trophy hunting serves as a large economic sector in several African countries and has been considered important for wildlife conservation and local rural development. In many parts of Africa, local communities’ attitudes and decisions can affect the fate of conservation efforts outside of protected areas and it is thought that benefits from trophy hunting tourism can influence pro-conservation behavior at local scales. In Botswana, recent mandates, such as a 2014 nation-wide hunting ban and a 2019 lifting of the ban, have disrupted the relationships between wildlife conservation and rural livelihoods, resulting in adverse economic, social, and ecological impacts at various …

The Effects Of Resiliency Training On Self-Reported Compassion Fatigue And Compassion Satisfaction In Mental Health Professionals And Counselors-In-Training, Julie Kay Ballew

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Compassion fatigue (CF) is a pervasive problem in all caring professions, including counseling. The combination of secondary traumatic stress (STS) and burnout (BO) can lead to an overabundance of negative symptoms decreasing both professional and personal quality of life, perhaps resulting in career attrition. However, this does not have to be the case. CF experiences have been shown to be malleable to interventions like those offered through the Accelerated Recovery Program (ARP) and subsequent resiliency workshops. While yielding non-statistically significant results, this quasi-experimental control time series design found support for the reduction of self-reported CF in the short term and …

Effects Of A Suicide Assessment And Intervention Training On Participant Preparedness, Comfort, And Competence, Kelley Margaret Donisthorpe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study evaluated the effects of a six-hour strength-based suicide assessment and treatment workshop on participants knowledge, feelings of comfort and preparedness, skills and confidence, and self-reported suicide competence. Participants included school and mental health counselors, as well as other professions in related fields who completed one of the three workshops in Billings, Bozeman, or Victor, Montana. Participants completed a pretest before engaging in the six-hour workshop, and then completed a posttest packet immediately following the workshop. Participants were assessed using the SCAF (Cramer et al., 2013), and three unpublished measures: Suicide Knowledge Quiz (SKQ), Suicide Skills Survey (SF-SSS), and …

Binegative Minority Stress, Psychological Processes, And Disordered Alcohol Use: Disparities Among Sexual Minority Womxn, Kinsie Jean Dunham

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Sexual minority womxn (i.e., woman-identified persons) tend to report more harmful alcohol use and more negative alcohol use outcomes than heterosexual women—a pattern not consistently observed in man-identified populations. Further, bisexually-oriented, hereafter called nonexclusively-oriented, womxn (NOW) report more negative alcohol use outcomes and meet criteria for alcohol use disorder at higher rates than both lesbians and heterosexual women (or exclusively-oriented womxn; EOW). These disparities require further investigation to explicate the antecedents and mechanisms impacting alcohol use for this at-risk population. This project examines the incremental negative effects of binegativity as a specific minority stressor and antecedent of disordered alcohol use. …

A Conservation Marketing Toolkit: Systematic Literature Mapping, Microtargeting Conservation Easements, And Conservation Corridor Prioritization, Hannah Josie Leonard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In a changing world with limited resources for conservation efforts, conservationists, wildlife managers, and land managers must look for creative ways to realize conservation goals. A new wave of conservationists is investigating how other disciplines, namely psychology and marketing, might improve our ability to understand and change conservation-related human behavior. In this thesis, I review existing applications of “conservation marketing” and apply a subset to advance two specific conservation challenges. In Chapter 1, I present a systematic mapping of the conservation marketing literature to understand the lay of the land in how conservationists have already applied marketing techniques to conservation, …

Modeling Twitter Sentiment As A Function Of Particulate Matter 2.5 For Communities Impacted By Wildfire Across Montana And Idaho, Matthew Kelly

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a known pollutant with clinically detrimental physiological and behavioral effects. We consider Twitter sentiment as a potential indicator for well-being in communities impacted by wildfire-associated PM2.5 across Montana and Idaho spanning 5 years (2014-2018). From these geospatial air quality data and geo-tagged tweets, we trained county level models to examine the power of Twitter sentiment as a function of PM2.5. For all 24 counties sampled, we found between 1 and 8 affective dimensions where a positive �� 2 was detected with a significant F-statistic (�� < 0.05). Specifically, we show that sentiment for anticipation in the wildfire-prone county of Missoula, MT yielded respective training/test set �� 2 of 0.0958 and 0.0686 with a p-value for the F-statistic of 3.09E-07. These analyses support social media sentiment as a potential public health metric by showing one of the first observations of a relationship between PM2.5 and Twitter sentiment.

Predictors Of Financial Responsibility Composite Scores At Catholic Colleges And Universities, Sarah Nicole Agostinelli

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this quantitative study was to understand the relationships of the demographic variables of religious order, program length, and geographic region interact with the score a Catholic institution receives on the U.S. Education Department test for financial responsibility using descriptive statistics. The research study showed a statistically significant negative correlation between the institution’s composite score on the financial responsibility test and student loan default rates using the Pearson correlation coefficient, with a small effect size. The research study also showed a statistically significant positive correlation between the institution’s composite score on the financial responsibility test and enrollment using …

A Snapshot Of Care: Creating Models Of Care For Individuals Included In The Terry Collection, Felicia Robyn Sparozic

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Utilizing the bioarchaeology of care model, this research formulates a model of care based on ethnohistorical and skeletal markers of pathologic conditions. The index of care is the method used to create models of care, and this requires social, cultural, economic, environmental, and mortuary contexts to determine the resources required to aid a person through injury or disability. This paper investigates the impact of known medical, occupational, and morgue records that accompanied each selected individual in the skeletal collection. This additional information, beyond what is gained from skeletal analysis, generates a complex model of care. A more complex model of …

"Black Colorism And White Racism: Discourse On The Politics Of White Supremacy, Black Equality, And Racial Identity, 1915-1930", Hannah Paige Mcdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following study unravels how Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists understood the race problem and its solution between 1915 and 1930. The racial identity and experiences of these three distinct groups, each informed how they understood the race problem and its solution. The divergent notions about the source of and solution to the race problem coalesced with colorism, sowing seeds of intraracial and interracial conflict and cooperation between the Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists as they navigated how to redress white supremacy and black equality. According to black integrationists and Garveyite black …

Preliminary Investigation Of An Aphasia-Friendly Version Of The Patient Health Questionnaire – 8 (Phq-8) Compared To Other Patient And Proxy Reported Outcome Measures Of Depression, Kaylee Marie Walter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Persons with aphasia (PWA) experience post-stroke depression more frequently than stroke survivors who do not have aphasia. Currently, no patient reported outcome measures that screen for depression have been created specifically for PWA or modified to be aphasia friendly for PWA. The purpose of this preliminary study is to modify the Patient Health Questionnaire- 8 (PHQ-8) to an aphasia friendly format and to assess the feasibility of administering the modified assessment compared to other patient-reported and proxy-reported outcome measures used to screen depression. This retrospective analysis examined pre- and post-treatment outcome measures of depression for seven stroke-survivors with aphasia. The …

A Search For Community, Alexander Moore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I attempt to understand what is meant by community by grounding the analysis in Raymond Williams’ historical definition. From this, I work the criteria of community as described by Williams so to determine their precise meaning and primacy. I attempt to show why community must be small in size while arguing that humans are in a community with nonhumans. Building upon this move, I take up an argument for the role of place in community formation. This preceding inquiry is meant to prime an analysis of both virtue ethics and literature, specifically an application of Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities to …

Fabrications, Molly V. Rivera

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The objects that surround us tell a story of our past, and act as physical stand ins for a person, place, or experience no longer present. My work explores the significance of objects and how we use them to preserve our memories and make them tangible. Memory is ephemeral and changes over time, simultaneously growing weaker and stronger. I use clay to accentuate this relationship, visually depicting both preservation and decay.

Inspired by my personal narrative, I recreate specific objects of significance by hand. This results in subtle variations of the original, much like the changes in our memory over …

Linking Health Behavior Theory And Interventions To Increase Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Uptake, Gretchen Elizabeth Neal

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted disease in adults in the United States (US). Persistent HPV infection can cause several cancers, including cervical, oropharyngeal, and anal cancer. To prevent these cancers, the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends that all adolescents start the HPV vaccine series at ages 11-12 years. Despite the safety and efficacy of available HPV vaccines, vaccine uptake rates remain lower than public health goals. In the US, only 51.1% of eligible adolescents have completed the vaccine series, a rate lower than the Healthy People 2020 goal of 80% coverage for series completion. …

The Space Between Points And Their Navigational Reference, Darla Pienciak

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“The path of self-fulfillment means “pushing oneself beyond oneself”, in a relationship with the community where generosity, giving and the search for the common good are included and cultivated in everyday life.” (Menditto, 2014)

The Space Between Points and Their Navigational Reference represents specific points in time as well as all the moments that take place between those points. Each point is a person or a specific moment in time; they are individual people or noteworthy memories which, for one reason or another, have left a significant imprint in the memory of the individual or of society. The space between …

Metabolic And Cardiovascular Marker Alterations During Critical Training In Wildland Firefighters, Shae Gurney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Introduction: Wildland firefighters (WLFFs) are confronted with numerous physical and mental stressors. Pre-fire season includes an intense 2-week critical training (CT) period; a preparatory phase of multiple activities that can result in injury, illness, and rhabdomyolysis. The purpose of this study was to identify physiologic changes in metabolic, inflammatory, and oxidative stress biomarkers during 2 weeks of CT in WLFFs.

Methods: Eighteen male (29.4 ± 1.1 yr, 182.1 ± 1.6 cm) and three female (26.7  2.6 yr, 169.5  4.2 cm) participants were recruited from a Type I interagency hotshot crew and monitored over their 2-week CT. Fitness was …

Shuttles In Wonderland: Assessing The Perceived Impact To Residents’ Quality Of Life Based On The Proposed Implementation Of A Voluntary Shuttle System In West Yellowstone, Mt, Carter Wyatt Bermingham

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

As visitation to the national parks across the United States continues to increase, more and more park service units are exploring the possibility of implementing alternative forms of transportation to help mitigate some of the negative side effects associated with vehicle-related congestion issues. Although research efforts have examined the role of alternative transportation systems (ATS) in helping to improve the visitor experience in the national parks, fewer research efforts have focused on the impacts of these transportation systems on the affiliated gateway community, particularly with respect to the perceived impacts an ATS may have on quality of life in gateway …

The Tongass Futures Roundtable: Distrust, Inequity, And Collaboration In Southeast Alaska, Hannah M. Wilson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Collaborative processes are increasingly being used to address complex natural resource management challenges, and trust between participants has been highlighted as a key component of successful collaboration. However, little research has focused on why collaboratives fail and the role of distrust in collaboration. This study examined trust and distrust in the Tongass Futures Roundtable, a collaborative group in Southeast Alaska that attempted to address timber, conservation, and Alaska Native land management issues, but was widely perceived to have failed. The history of conflict between timber and conservation interests as well as between Alaska Natives and other stakeholder groups meant that …

The Role Of Experiential Learning In Developing Multicultural Competence, Kaoru Allison Powell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although much importance has been placed on training programs to develop multiculturally competent service providers, the question remains as to when and where clinicians acquire their multicultural competence (MCC). Currently, most training programs appear to focus on the development of multicultural awareness and knowledge, without adequate focus on skills. However, experientially based learning exercises are associated with skills development in many areas, including general clinical skills development. Thus, students who engage in higher levels of experiential learning in their multicultural training may rate themselves as more competent with multicultural skills than students with less frequent experiential learning. I hypothesize that …

Who Did You Tell? College Women’S Perceived Helpfulness Of Formal And Informal Support Sources After Victimization: Sexual Assault, Intimate Partner Violence, And Stalking, Nora G. Uhrich

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Violence against women is recognized as a serious public health concern in the United States. The prevalence and rates of victimization occurring on college campuses is problematic and has captured the attention of researchers and campus officials nation-wide. Research has shown that women ages 18 to 24 years old are at a particularly high risk of experiencing sexual assault, intimate partner violence (IPV), and stalking (Breiding et al., 2011). Despite the negative outcomes associated with victimization, many victims, particularly college students, do not seek help for these crimes. There is already a considerable body of literature that explores the reasons …

The Home As A Site Of Family Communicated Narrative Sense-Making: Grief, Meaning, And Identity Through “Cleaning Out The Closet”, Kendyl A. Barney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study utilized communicated narrative sense-making theory to explore the process of sorting through a deceased loved one’s belongings and changing the home after loss (referred to as “cleaning out the closet”), as the site of family communication and storytelling. Through storytelling, families make order of the disordered experience that is bereavement by negotiating meaning, identity, and family. The stories told about and within the process of “cleaning out the closet” elicit rich insight on each family’s experience with bereavement, loss, and life with each other. “Cleaning out the closet” narratives shed light on the interactions that occur between family …

Rhetoric And Perception: A Case Study Of The Proposed Northmet Mine On Minnesota’S Iron Range, Sophia J. Frank

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Northern Minnesota is rich in natural resources, perhaps most uniquely the expansive mineral deposits of the Mesabi and Vermilion Ranges. The steel and taconite mining opportunities along these veins helped facilitate the rapid growth and infrastructure development of the area and is an important part of the identity of the region northwest of Duluth, aptly known as Iron Range. In addition to iron deposits, The Iron Range contains large deposits of copper and nickel. Recently proposed copper-nickel mining projects by PolyMet and Twin Metals have garnered a great deal of public controversy, especially around issues of economic revitalization of the …