Digital Commons Network^™

Ancestral Pursuits: A Multicultural Celebration Of Identity & Race, Charlotte Cates Castro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using critical historical rhetorical methods along with critical race and decolonial theory, this project situates ancestral pursuits as a communication-centered discursive formation by investigating the rhetorical strategies modern biotech and genealogy companies utilize to influence contemporary discourse around identity and belonging and narrate ethnicity and genealogy as acts of consumption. Through direct-to-consumer DNA testing and complimentary services, modern day biotech and genealogy companies like Ancestry and 23andMe market personalized insights into ancestry, genealogy, inherited traits, and health data that promise to connect users to their past, as well as to situate them in present-day society, through a deeper understanding of …

Economic And Ecosystem Impacts Of Gm Maize In South Africa, Kristiina Ala-Kokko

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

White maize in South Africa is the only staple crop produced on a widespread commercial basis for direct human consumption using genetically modified (GM) cultivars. Using a combined economic and environmental approach, we estimate the total welfare benefits attributable to GM white maize in South Africa for 2001-2018 are $694.7 million. Food security benefits attributable to GM white maize in South Africa also manifest through an average of 4.6 million additional white maize rations annually. To achieve these additional annual rations using conventional hybrid maize, the additional land required would range from 1,088 hectares in 2001 to 217,788 hectares in …

A Tough Nut Never Boils: Thoughts And Ruminations On Language And Playmaking, Lauren Ferebee

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After an unorthodox journey through higher education ending during the coronavirus pandemic, which has made the typical theatrical thesis production and subsequent typical final year impossible, the author reflects on the body of work she has created at the University of Arkansas as an M.F.A. candidate in playwriting at the Department of Theatre, how she has reached both deeper into her own discipline and outside of it to widen her understanding of liveness, performance, and textual creation. She interrogates her own unexpected experiences, from figuring out how to make theatre without theatres, to teaching students who have never seen a …

Telepractice In The Communication Treatment Of Individuals With Post-Stroke Aphasia: Systematic Review, Gayanthi Kodituwakku-Wewalwala

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Telepractice, a branch of telehealth, which is the delivery of services to distant sites employing telecommunication, has been developing rapidly nowadays. Owing to the nature of the condition and treatment foci in aphasia, telepractice has been identified as a potential mode for intervention to persons with aphasia (PWA) in the field of speech-language pathology. Based on the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (2005), telepractice is considered a means to extend services to a wider context overcoming the barriers of transportation, costs, and limited availability of services. Thus, exploration of treatment accessibility to underserved populations in middle/low-income countries or rural areas via …

Laughter As A Priming Agent For Change, Linnea M. Heintz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to analyze the importance of laughter as a factor in influencing employee job satisfaction ratings. The Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1985, 1997) and pulses of laughter were used in this study. To explore the relationship between laughter and job satisfaction, results of the Job Satisfaction Survey (Spector, 1994) were collected quarterly (four times a year) for three consecutive years, beginning six months prior to the start of the two-year study and six months post. The study sample was composed of 545 employees (34% male, 66% female) operating out of 10 employee-owned retail chain locations …

Principal Perceptions Of Effective Performance Coaching: A Case Study, Kimberly A. Starr

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study focused on the effectiveness of leadership coaching and its impact on school principals’ professional growth. Through an in-depth interview process with eight principals, perceptions regarding their leadership or performance coach’s effectiveness were explored using the CLEAR Coaching Model as a conceptual framework. Participants shared experiences through participation in the School Support Program hosted by the Arkansas Leadership Academy. Five significant themes emerged from this study: 1) the coaching relationship impacts effectiveness, 2) a working alliance is needed to ensure desired outcomes, 3) understanding school culture and current reality are necessary before coaching can begin, 4) the …

Optimization Of Broken Rice Consumption Through Understanding The Confluence Of Sensory And Economic Preferences, Matthew Greer Richardson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The authors were perplexed by the seeming dichotomy between the majority 70% of Haitian consumers being chronically food insecure, but still preferring to pay premium international market prices for long-grain rice that constitutes 30% of the calories in this poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The aim of this study was to determine the optimal percent broken rice in regards to price specifically to Haiti. Optimization between quality and price point is seen as the best rice for the price, and can be found through combining individual preferences with willingness to pay. Broken rice (brokens) garner a significantly discounted price …

Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …

Building-Level Administrators And Collaborative Special Education Iep Meetings: Addressing Barriers To Active And Inclusive Participation, Trevor A. Addis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors serving as barriers to effective building-level administrator participation in special education individualized education program (IEP) meetings. For the purposes of this study, research was conducted in the multidisciplinary areas of social cognitive theory and self-efficacy, along with an examination of school-building administrators as instructional leaders, the role(s) of building-level leadership in special education and building administrator knowledge and understanding of special education policies and practices. A qualitative research approach was used to examine local building-level administrator participation in the special education IEP process. Building Level Administrators, in the district were …

Consumer Motivations And Perceived Value In Online Second-Hand Luxury Fashion Shopping, Murphy Brianne Aycock

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The second-hand luxury fashion market is growing four times faster than the primary luxury fashion market and already represents a $24 billion market today (Beauloye, 2019; Siwak, 2020). Younger generations such as millennials and Gen Z are buying and selling preowned luxury products almost three times faster than any other age group (Beauloye, 2019). Digital selling platforms such as The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective are fueling the growth of the second-hand luxury fashion market (Beauloye, 2019). Despite the increased consumer interests and sales growth in the second-hand luxury fashion market, existing research has not concentrated on the underlying motivations of …

Starter Nitrogen Source And Preflood Nitrogen Rate Effects On Rice Grown On Clay Soils, Linda Rachelle Martin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Seedling rice (Oryza sativa L.) grown on clayey-textured soils generally develops slowly as compared to loamy-textured soils. Our research examined the effects of starter-N source and preflood-N rates on canopy closure, total aboveground N uptake, and grain yield of rice grown on clayey-textured soils. Eleven field trials were established in Arkansas and Mississippi including five trials with a hybrid cultivar and six trials using a pure-line cultivar. Starter-N sources included no starter-N (NONE), ammonium sulfate (AMS), diammonium phosphate (DAP), and urea (UREA) applied at 24 kg N ha-1 at the rice 2-leaf stage and five preflood-N rates ranging from 0-224 …

Non-Volatile Memory Adaptation In Asynchronous Microcontroller For Low Leakage Power And Fast Turn-On Time, Jean Pierre Thierry Habimana

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents an MSP430 microcontroller implementation using Multi-Threshold NULL Convention Logic (MTNCL) methodology combined with an asynchronous non-volatile magnetic random-access-memory (RAM) to achieve low leakage power and fast turn-on. This asynchronous non-volatile RAM is designed with a Spin-Transfer Torque (STT) memory device model and CMOS transistors in a 65 nm technology. A self-timed Quasi-Delay-Insensitive 1 KB STT RAM is designed with an MTNCL interface and handshaking protocol. A replica methodology is implemented to handle write operation completion detection for long state-switching delays of the STT memory device. The MTNCL MSP430 core is integrated with the STT RAM to create …

Rewriting Web 2.0 Discourses Of The Local For Socio-Spatial Literacy Theory, Erin Daugherty

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to provide a framework for engaging with two spatial concepts that have been foundational to theorizing literacy across time but have often been taken for granted as passive backdrops to the social action of literacy practice: the notions of “the local” and “the global.” By interrogating the histories, both past and ongoing, of these two spatial concepts as they are interwoven into the sociocultural paradigm of literacy theory, research, and pedagogy, this project identifies new ways that literacy researchers and educators can attend to spatial concepts so as to promote and encourage literacy research and learning that …

Extreme Far-Right Murder-Suicide Attacks In The U.S. And Germany: A Comparative Storyline Analysis, Hayden Lucas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite increasing empirical research on suicide terrorism since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, prior studies have focused primarily on radical Islamic terrorism in non-Western contexts. As a result, less is known about how murder-suicide attacks committed by other ideological movements unfold, particularly the extreme far-right in North America and Europe. Researchers have begun to theorize the social and psychological processes believed to play a role in the radicalization of suicide terrorists. However, the observable, situational processes shaping radicalized individuals when planning, preparing for, and executing suicide terrorism remain underexplored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify intervention points by …

Envisioning A New Pakistani Home: Gender, Class, And Identity In Women’S Urdu Journals, 1947-1960, Mehreen Jamal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The women’s journals published in Urdu during the first decades of Pakistan were vital to understanding the middle-class aspirations for a new national identity, since independence raised concerns among the dutiful citizens for the reformation of the new society, particularly concerning private lives. The writers and readers of these journals belonged to a generation whose lives and ideas had been formed by the Muslim reform literature of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the independence of Pakistan in 1947 to roughly the 1960s, writers in women’s journals engaged in refashioning the ideas of a new Pakistani middle-class respectability, foreseeing …

An Adventure Therapy Mountain Bike Program For Middle School Students: A Pilot Study, Cian L. Brown

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adolescence is a time of significant physical, mental, emotional, and social development marked by numerous transitions and challenges. Middle school is one of the earliest and perhaps first times of significant social and physical transition that impacts early adolescent development. As a result, schools are becoming a primary care setting for children and families to identify and address mental health needs. However, only 2% of school mental health services are provided by licensed professionals. Therefore, schools and service providers continue to seek out comprehensive modalities that can efficiently provide preventative and responsive interventions to students beyond individual and school counseling …

Immersive Systems And User Engagement Through Neurois Lens, Ali Balapour

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Immersive systems (e.g., Virtual Reality) are at the forefront of the next generation of innovative technologies. Recent technological advancements have made them viable for businesses and individuals to adopt. For example, some realtors now offer virtual house tours in the absence of walk-ins. The concept of “immersion” is at the heart of these technologies. However, despite the fact that this concept has been studied for almost three decades, our understanding remains weak and inconsistent. Specifically, there remains a lack of consensus on what it is, its antecedents, and how it should be measured.

This dissertation includes two essays. In Essay …

I Matter: Understanding The Self-Care Practices Of School Counselors During The Covid-19 Pandemic And How Internal And External Factors Create Barriers, Alisha Rene Marie Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diminished self-care practices and heightened stress of school counselors is a continuing problem in education. With role ambiguity, high student-to-counselor ratios, emotional exhaustion, and others adding pressure to the roles and responsibilities of school counselors, this study investigated the self-care practices of Missouri school counselors and the internal and external factors which influence them, specifically within the context COVID-19. Clayton Alderfer’s (1972) Existence, Relatedness, and Growth theory was used as a theoretical framework for chosen self-care practices represented in this study and was supported by Robert Kegan’s and Lisa Lahey’s (2009) Immunity to Change theory to understand the competing commitments …

Social Acceleration In The Marketplace: Three Essays Exploring The Intersection Of Culture And Consumption, Sarah Grace

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer culture is fast. Goods, services, people, ideas, and values – the material and nonmaterial aspects of culture – are moving more quickly throughout the marketing system than ever before. Such acceleration effects diverse stakeholders: people, public, and planet. This dissertation explores the phenomenon of ‘social acceleration’, and specifically, the ‘acceleration of the pace of life’ which examines the feeling that time is going faster in modern societies as a result of “the increase of action episodes per unit of time” (Rosa 2013, 80). This project develops an understanding of how meanings in marketing are socially constructed in relation to …

Factors Influencing Stakeholder Support Of A Bond Referendum In A Rural Kansas School District, Joshua M. Woodward

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine factors that influence stakeholder support of bond elections targeted for capital improvements in a rural school district in Kansas. The study uses existing research to identify factors that influence school bond referendum success. To better understand the factors identified in the research literature that influence stakeholder support in the focus district, data were gathered from stakeholders within the school district of focus through a perceptual survey and focus group interviews.

The availability of research on school bond referendum success and failure is plentiful. However, specific research on factors that influence rural school …

Securing Fog Federation From Behavior Of Rogue Nodes, Mohammed Saleh H. Alshehri

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the technological revolution advanced information security evolved with an increased need for confidential data protection on the internet. Individuals and organizations typically prefer outsourcing their confidential data to the cloud for processing and storage. As promising as the cloud computing paradigm is, it creates challenges; everything from data security to time latency issues with data computation and delivery to end-users. In response to these challenges CISCO introduced the fog computing paradigm in 2012. The intent was to overcome issues such as time latency and communication overhead and to bring computing and storage resources close to the ground and the …

Peptoid-Based Microsphere Coatings For Biomaterial Applications, Jesse Leland Roberts

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peptoids are peptidomimetic oligomers that predominantly harness similarities to peptides for biomimetic functionality. The incorporation of chiral, aromatic side chains in the peptoid sequence allows for the formation of distinct secondary structures and self-assembly into supramolecular assemblies, including microspheres. Peptoid microspheres can be coated onto substrates for potential use in biosensor technologies, tissue engineering platforms, and drug-delivery systems. They have the potential for use in biomedical applications due to their resistance to proteolytic degradation and low immunogenicity. This dissertation focuses on the physical characteristics and robustness of the peptoid microsphere coatings in various physiological conditions, along with their ability to …

Analog Spiking Neural Network Implementing Spike Timing-Dependent Plasticity On 65 Nm Cmos, Luke Vincent

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Machine learning is a rapidly accelerating tool and technology used for countless applications in the modern world. There are many digital algorithms to deploy a machine learning program, but the most advanced and well-known algorithm is the artificial neural network (ANN). While ANNs demonstrate impressive reinforcement learning behaviors, they require large power consumption to operate. Therefore, an analog spiking neural network (SNN) implementing spike timing-dependent plasticity is proposed, developed, and tested to demonstrate equivalent learning abilities with fractional power consumption compared to its digital adversary.

A Descriptive Case Study Of The Challenges Of Drug And Alcohol Counselors, Ruben Herron

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Substance abuse is the number one public health problem in Oklahoma and nationally. Annual related expenses of substance abuse in Oklahoma are nearly $2 billion. This qualitative descriptive case study asks the question what are the challenges of substance-abuse counseling? The researcher will be describing in detail the history of drug and alcohol treatment and counseling in America. Using interviews, observations and document collection which will allow the interviews voices to be heard.

Values And Success In Collegiate Athletics, Nathan Shelby Hutchens

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid commercialization of intercollegiate sports has changed the landscape of the hiring decisions and methodologies within university-associated athletic departments – especially within the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (DI-FBS) (Wong, 2017). Most notably and recently, the strategies used to hire athletic directors (ADs) have underwent considerable revision – yet successful hires are far from a sure thing. Many strategies include allusions to leadership style, yet leadership styles are as numerous as there are researchers who study them – and are rarely implemented holistically, thus making their assessment and associated outcomes tenuous at best (Peachey et al., 2015). Hambrick and …

Si-Based Germanium Tin Photodetectors For Infrared Imaging And High-Speed Detection, Huong Tran

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Infrared (IR) radiation spans the wavelengths of the windows: (1) near-IR region ranging from 0.8 to 1.0 μm, (2) shortwave IR (SWIR) ranging from 1.0 to 3.0 μm, (3) mid-wave IR (MWIR) region covering from 3.0 to 5.0 μm, (4) longwave IR (LWIR) spanning from 8.0 to 12.0 μm, and (5) very longwave IR extending beyond 12.0 μm. The MWIR and LWIR regions are important for night vision in the military, and since the atmosphere does not absorb at these wavelengths, they are also used for free-space communications and astronomy. Automotive and defect detection in the food industry and electronic …

The Intersection Of Writing Process Pedagogy And Prolepsis: A Phenomenological Case Study Of Secondary Writing Instruction, Jennifer O. Peñaflorida

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the lived experiences and essences of secondary high school students and participating teachers in a three-week summer journalism camp sponsored by the National Writing Project and funded by the MacArthur T. Foundation. This study employs Moustakas' (1994) modification of the van Kaam method for phenomenological data analysis in order to reveal the intersection of writing process pedagogy and prolepsis, a writing framework I developed. Data sources included pre-and-post writing samples, semi-structured interviews, field notes and student writing artifacts which were collected between May 27, 2019 and June 14, 2019. Data were analyzed …

Spore Dispersal Of Slime Molds And Higher Fungi Via Animal Vectors, Courtney Trimble

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Myxomycetes and dictyostelids are Amoebozoans that are cosmopolitan inhabitants of a variety of habitats, particularly forest environments. Both groups reproduce using spores which are primarily dispersed via wind in myxomycetes but this characteristic poses a problem for dictyostelids. The spores of dictyostelids are incased in a mucilaginous matrix that makes wind ineffective except in exceptional cases. It has been suggested that animals such as birds may play an important yet understudied role in the dispersal of these organisms. This study investigated how animals could potentially serve as vectors for spore dispersal of dictyostelids and myxomycetes with some limited data obtained …

Beautiful People: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Fashion Industry's Thin Ideal, Shane White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Negative body image among women has become an extremely relevant topic in the last decade. The “ideal” female body image and what a person should look like according to marketing and advertising has become a highly controversial issue. This project seeks to show how the fashion industry has, over centuries, shaped how people think they need to look and in today’s time and show how it has been a root cause of issues like body image complexes leading to negative self-perception, eating disorders, mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and addiction, and even suicide. Over the last three to four decades, …

The Interconnectedness Of Jonathan Edwards's Ontology And Trinitarianism, Holly Davis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Jonathan Edwards scholarship has been divided in recent years on the correct interpretation of his work. Scholars like Sang Hyun Lee and Amy Plantinga Pauw maintain that Edwards used a radically new dispositional ontology to understand the fundamental realities of nature. Oliver Crisp, Kyle Strobel, and Steve Studebaker have argued that Edwards used an essentialist ontology. I will defend the latter position and explain how it is tied to Edwards’s Trinitarianism. I argue for an interpretation of Edwards that situates him in his historical and theological context. The early modern philosophy of his day was marked by essentialist ontology. The …