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Storytelling Failure In The Vale Of Leven: How A Bacterial Outbreak Became A Wicked Problem, Kyle P. Vealey

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rhetorical work of a public inquiry investigation into an outbreak of Clostridium Difficile at the Vale of Leven Hospital in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland that resulted in 143 cases of infection and the tragic deaths of 34 patients. In light of these deaths and subsequent protests from local citizens, the National Health Service (NHS) Scotland launched a public inquiry in 2009 to investigate the events precipitating the outbreak. Extending rhetoric and technical communication’s sustained engagement with post-accident reports, this study explores how citizens and government officials accounted for the causes, boundaries, and impact of the outbreak. Specifically, …

Writing Their Way To The University: An Investigation Of Chinese High School Students' Preparation For Writing In English In High Schools, Cram Schools, And Online, Cong Zhang

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, drawing from activity theory, I investigate how Chinese students prepared themselves for undergraduate studies in U.S. universities in terms of English writing from three perspectives: English writing instruction in high schools, private supplementary tutoring (PST) in English writing in cram schools, and experience with writing online and using online resources. On the basis of data from a questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, and examinations of written materials and a forum, I provide a picture of the writing instruction experience and writing background that Chinese students bring to writing classrooms in U.S. universities. It was found that other than …

Utilizing The Signaling Theory In Order To Enhance Minority Recruitment In Law Enforcement, Donald B. Terheide

Open Access Dissertations

Minority recruitment has been an emphasis for law enforcement agencies for decades. These agencies have attempted to recruit minority officers through different venues, including college visits, career fairs, advertising, high school visits, community organizations, and other avenues in an attempt to have their department more representative of the community. However, there has been a limited amount of research on the potential applicants’ perspective concerning how these recruiting efforts have persuaded them, and the messages conveyed to the applicants.

This dissertation has been written utilizing the Signaling Theory, and determining what signals are sent to minority applicants, and how they are …

The Utility Of Visually Nontraditional Scores In The Collegiate Voice Studio, Jennifer Voigt

Open Access Dissertations

The incorporation of learning science into vocal pedagogy has been a slow process with advancements in biology and physics dominating change in the field. However, recent research into learning styles and the processing of motor skills has revealed areas that could be enhanced within standard vocal teaching procedures. This study addresses the possibility of filling these gaps with the inclusion of visually nontraditional scores as a teaching tool. Specifically, this paper examines the utility of these scores within the collegiate voice studio. Visually nontraditional scores can contribute to a variety of learning needs and facilitate the acquisition of new technical …

Visions And Ecstasies, A Mass, Shawn M. Crouch

Open Access Dissertations

Visions and Ecstasies, A Mass was commissioned by the Saint Martha Concerts® for the Saint Martha-Yamaha Concert Series in Miami, Florida made possible by a grant from Alfred Allan Lewis and Ralph Lutrin. The composition is a setting of the Latin Ordinary Mass with additional text by early Catholic women mystic writers, and is scored for SATB choir, mezzo-soprano soloist and two pianos. The composition is 50 minutes in duration. Dr. Karen Kennedy and the Frost Chorale will premiere the work on April 22, 2016 at Barry University’s Broad Performing Arts Center, with mezzo-soprano soloist Robynne Redmon. This essay gives …

An Introduction To Akira Yuyama And His Confections With A Discussion Of Its Pedagogical Effectiveness, Dan Sato

Open Access Dissertations

This thesis introduces Akira Yuyama, a prolific living composer of highest distinction for his contributions to, most notably, repertoire dedicated to performances by young musicians. Confections: A Piano Sweet is arguably his most creative opus and this thesis includes an analysis of the work for its musical content as well as its effectiveness in the pedagogical context. Yuyama’s Confections has been a best-seller for over four decades in Japan and is one of the most popular set of pieces assigned to young piano students. Despite its popularity and uniqueness as programmatic music about food, the composition nor its creator have …

The Life And Piano Works Of Mutsuo Shishido – A Synthesis Of Cultures And Sounds, Akina Yura

Open Access Dissertations

Despite the plethora of substantial Japanese classical composers, information about their lives and compositions are relatively unknown outside their homeland. Considering the formidable quality of their compositions, these composers deserve a place within the mainstream of classical music scene. Composer Mutsuo Shishido (1929-2007) is one of the most important of these composers, as he left many appealing works and has been garnering increasing attention among classical musicians. A pupil of André Jolivet and Olivier Messiaen, and a contemporary of Toru Takemitsu, Shishido is a unique and captivating composer with the style of synthesizing Western classical contemporary music with traditional Japanese …

Balkanophonia, Mirjana Petrovic

Open Access Dissertations

This essay describes my process in composing the orchestral suite Balkanophonia, which is inspired by and contains allusions to Balkan folk music, more precisely Serbian and Macedonian traditional music. The suite consists of four movements. Drawing upon the research of ethnomusicologist Miodrag Vasiljevic and other prominent scholars, I also discuss the indigenous musical scales and harmonic principles found in the source material, which I utilized in this work. Even though my orchestral suite has inevitably been influenced by my classical musical education and knowledge of Western art music in general, I strove to portray the traditional sound of the Balkan …

Rhetoric And Feminism In The Americanization Era: The Ywca's Rhetorical Education Program For Immigrant Women, Gracemarie Mike

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines the Young Women’s Christian Association’s International Institute movement from an administrative perspective. Founded in the United States during the Americanization Era of the early 20 th century, the International Institute movement developed programs and services for immigrant women. One of the most prominent, and least examined, aspects of the movement was its work in the area of rhetorical education for non-English speaking immigrant women. Using a feminist, administrative historiographic methodology, this project positions the work of the International Institute’s administrators ecologically among other Americanization efforts taking place in this time period. Arguing that the International Institute movement …

Technical Communication In Place-Making Professions: Exploring The Network Pictures Of Urban Designers, Fernando Sanchez

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation addresses how professional writing as a field can pay attention to broader definitions of design in order to help further conversations of spatial justice (the act of helping to promote equity in matters of development in urban spaces). I begin by noting the conversations that have circulated regarding the relationship between urban design and rhetoric, noting that professional writing can help add a unique lens to the conversation. The second chapter provides an overview of how design is discussed in technical communication scholarship. Here, I showcase how most of these discussions regarding research in design have centered on …

Analysis Of Scientific Argumentation In Two Physical Chemistry Classrooms Using The Pogil Approach, Alena C. Moon

Open Access Dissertations

The benefits of facilitating argumentation in science education have been well reported (Jimenez-Aleixandre & Erduran, 2007). Engaging in argumentation has shown to model authentic scientific inquiry as well as promote development of content knowledge. However, less emphasis has been placed on facilitating argumentation in upper level undergraduate courses, though it is important for evaluating undergraduate curricula to characterize upper level students’ scientific reasoning. This work considers two implementations of the POGIL physical chemistry curriculum and evaluates the classroom argumentation. The researchers aimed to consider the content of the arguments and dialectical features characteristic of socially constructed arguments (Nielson, 2013). To …

Grounding Robot Motion In Natural Language And Visual Perception, Scott Alan Bronikowski

Open Access Dissertations

The current state of the art in military and first responder ground robots involves heavy physical and cognitive burdens on the human operator while taking little to no advantage of the potential autonomy of robotic technology. The robots currently in use are rugged remote-controlled vehicles. Their interaction modalities, usually utilizing a game controller connected to a computer, require a dedicated operator who has limited capacity for other tasks.

I present research which aims to ease these burdens by incorporating multiple modes of robotic sensing into a system which allows humans to interact with robots through a natural-language interface. I conduct …

Measuring Fluency: Temporal Variables And Pausing Patterns In L2 English Speech, Soohwan Park

Open Access Dissertations

This paper examines temporal variables and pausing patterns in L2 English speech to investigate fluency as a measurable component of oral proficiency. Fluency can be defined as ‘speed and smoothness of oral delivery’. We can measure the speed of oral delivery through calculating temporal variables such as speech rate and mean syllables per run where ‘run’ is the vocal chunk between silent pauses. The smoothness of oral delivery can be measured through examination of pausing patterns by classifying the placement of pauses. Pauses may be placed in expected positions such as clause/phrase boundaries or in unexpected positions. Pause placement in …

A Defense Of The Ambiguity Theory Of 'Knows', Mark R. Satta

Open Access Dissertations

In recent years, questions regarding the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions (sentences of the form ‘S knows that P’ where S is a subject and P a proposition) and knowledge denials (sentences of the form ‘S doesn’t know that P’) have been at the fore of a certain sector of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language. These questions include “How do we determine the truth conditions of a particular knowledge ascription or denial?”, “What sorts of factors are relevant in this determination?”, and “Is context among the relevant factors in a non-trivial way, and if so, how?” A variety of …

Learning In Vision And Robotics, Daniel P. Barrett

Open Access Dissertations

I present my work on learning from video and robotic input. This is an important problem, with numerous potential applications. The use of machine learning makes it possible to obtain models which can handle noise and variation without explicitly programming them. It also raises the possibility of robots which can interact more seamlessly with humans rather than only exhibiting hard-coded behaviors. I will present my work in two areas: video action recognition, and robot navigation. First, I present a video action recognition method which represents actions in video by sequences of retinotopic appearance and motion detectors, learns such models automatically …

Conexiones Transatlanticas: Expandiendo Limites En El Mundo Hispano (1890-1910), Argelia Garcia Saldivar

Open Access Dissertations

Este trabajo examina las transformaciones a patrones socio-culturales en el mundo hispano, que permiten a la mujer incorporarse a la fuerza productiva; como producto de la presión ejercida por comunidades de escritoras en foros internacionales sobre el atraso educativo y cultural que sufre la mujer. En esta disertación se estudia una economía que gira alrededor de las necesidades de la mujer promovida por la prensa periódica, que además de fortalecer la industria cultural y de entretenimiento, también auto-educa a la sociedad sobre la necesidad de educación profesional, mejora de condiciones laborales y apertura a espacios comerciales y profesionales para la …

A Black Art: Ontology, Data, And The Tower Of Babel Problem, Andrew J. Iliadis

Open Access Dissertations

Computational ontologies are a new type of emerging scientific media (Smith, 2016) that process large quantities of heterogeneous data about portions of reality. Applied computational ontologies are used for semantically integrating (Heiler, 1995; Pileggi & Fernandez-Llatas, 2012) divergent data to represent reality and in so doing applied computational ontologies alter conceptions of materiality and produce new realities based on levels of informational granularity and abstraction (Floridi, 2011), resulting in a new type of informational ontology (Iliadis, 2013) the critical analysis of which requires new methods and frameworks. Currently, there is a lack of literature addressing the theoretical, social, and critical …

Toward A Genre Writing Curriculum: Schooling Genres In The Common Core State Standards, Michael J. Maune

Open Access Dissertations

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS), published in 2010 and adopted by the majority of U.S. states, established a set of expectations for student writing in K-12 education. In describing these expectations, the CCSS used three general “text type” classifications: Narrative, Informative/Explanatory, and Argumentative. While the CCSS outlines the general expectations for students writing in these text types, the linguistic and genre expectations were not fully expressed. This study examines 34 student exemplar texts provided in an appendix to the CCSS in order to determine the genre and linguistic expectations for student writing in K-12 education. Using a genre typology …

Neural Activity Reveals Effects Of Aging On Inhibitory Processes During Word Retrieval, Ranjini Mohan

Open Access Dissertations

Word retrieval difficulties are one of the most frustrating problems in older adults. Poorer access to phonological (speech sound) representation of the target word has been postulated as the underlying deficit, supported by findings of improvement in word retrieval after phonological priming. But the great variability in naming performance among older adults may reflect cognitive scaffolding or compensatory neurophysiological processes related to maintenance or decline of naming abilities. In order better understand aging effects in the underlying neurophysiological changes associated with phonological retrieval, the present study examined electrophysiological correlates of phonological priming and word retrieval in adults across the lifespan. …

The Analysis Of Salidas And Romanzas In Cuban Zarzuela, Raquel Castaneda Rubi

Open Access Dissertations

This doctoral study analyzes some of the most representative salidas and romanzas of Cuban zarzuela. The study examines the multicultural elements of the new style of composition after 1927 with the evolving zarzuela grande in Cuba, the Afro- Cuban and popular rhythms, as well as the European musical patterns that can be found in these pieces. The translation and IPA of the scores will be also provided. This compilation is the first one on the field since most of the pieces have never been published or musically analyzed.

Memories That Won't Desert. Transnational Legacies Of Francoism And The Spanish Civil War In 21st Century Novel, Comic And Film., Julie Samit

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines contemporary representations of Francoism and the Spanish Civil War and emphasizes the Republican legacy in three different media: novel, comics, and film. Its main focus is Spain, but my corpus also includes the experience of French and Mexican exiles. These works, produced for the most part by descendants of Republicans in diverse sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, establish a memorial network that goes beyond national boundaries, and that travels from generation to generation. I define the production of second and third generations who recuperate individual stories that have been repressed politically as “legacy narratives.” I argue that because …

Learning The Language Of Academic Engineering: Sociocognitive Writing In Graduate Students, Catherine G. P. Berdanier

Open Access Dissertations

Although engineering graduate programs rarely require academic writing courses, the indicators of merit in academic engineering, such as journal publications, successful grants, and doctoral milestones (e.g. theses, dissertations) are based in effective written argumentation and disciplinary discourse. Further, graduate student attrition averages 57% across all disciplines, with some studies classifying up to 50% of these students as “ABD” (All But Dissertation.) In engineering disciplines specifically, graduate attrition rates across the U.S. average 36% (both Master’s and PhD students), according to the Council of Graduate Schools. The lack of socialization is generally noted as a main reason for graduate attrition, one …

The Impact Of Deep-Brain Stimulation On Speech Comprehensibility And Swallowing In Patients With Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease, David E. Ryder

Open Access Dissertations

Objective: This is a pilot study designed to assess speech and swallowing characteristics of participants with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) before deep brain stimulation surgery of the subthalamic nucleus (DBS-STN), after the DBS-STN surgery, and at follow up evaluation sessions.

Method: A within participant, single-subject experimental A-B-A-A design was used to measure changes in the dependent variables for each participant. The primary dependent variables were intelligibility scores of words and sentences, vowel space area (VSA), vocal sound pressure level (dB SPL) of sustained vowels, single words, and contextual speech, Multidimensional voice program (MDVP) analysis of phonatory stability of …

A Historical And Sociolinguistic Approach To Language Change In Mandarin Chinese: Corpus Evidence For The Development Of You-Mei-You, Wenfeng Li

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation introduces corpus-based analyses of a syntactic construction in Standard Mandarin, YOU-MEI-YOU (or ‘have-not-have’)+VP, which is used to form perfective questions. The purpose of the study is to (i) find evidence for the claim that preverbal YOU-MEI-YOU, i.e. YOU-MEI-YOU found in the new construction, is grammaticalizing into an auxiliary unit, and (ii) to investigate its historical development, including the stage of development that it has reached and its distribution over time. Using data from two databases, the present study first looks at the percentage of preverbal YOU-MEI-YOU conveying a certain grammatical meaning, i.e. sentence type and aspect. Next, the …

Being And Literature: The Disclosure Of Place In Modernity, Donovan Irven Martin

Open Access Dissertations

The dissertation develops an original ontology of place by reading Modernist literature (1864-1950) as a critical reaction to Modern philosophy (1641-1800), and builds a platform upon movements implicit in literature from which future metaphysical and epistemological inquiries can begin. Western metaphysics and epistemology have been conditioned by the Cartesian commitment to the ego cogito, primarily understood as a subject to which the world appears as represented in concepts or ideas. The postmodern and deconstructive criticisms of such philosophical foundations – and indeed, on the very notion of foundation itself – have become well worn, but have failed to offer a …

Saying The World Anew: A Philosophical Understanding Of Communication As Testimony, Jessica Nicole Sturgess

Open Access Dissertations

This study develops a philosophy of communication by investigating the crisis of directionality that follows from the dissolution of foundationalist metaphysics. Drawing from fundamental ontology and philosophical hermeneutics, this project suggests we shift our understanding of communication as a process of information exchange toward communication as an enactment of testimony. This leads to an examination of the rhetorical figure of hyperbole. It is argued that hyperbole offers unique insight into the ground of communication as all communicative acts are, in their ontological structure, hyperbolic. Moreover, this hyperbolic characterization of communication highlights the role of excess, inexpressibility, risk, and extravagance central …

Africa Is Always Bringing Forth Something New: African Worlds And Worldviews In British Enlightenment Literature, 1660-1780, Rebekah Kurtz Mitsein

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that African worlds and worldviews left an indelible mark on British Enlightenment texts, whether their authors encountered the continent first or secondhand. As eighteenth-century thinkers began experimenting with empirical and categorical strategies for making sense of the globe, Africa was an important testing ground for these burgeoning epistemological methodologies. Travelers and writers tried to reconcile observer-based methods of knowledge production with the continent’s reputedly impenetrable landscapes, unfamiliar cultures, and strange animals. Such inquiries engendered broader philosophical debates about the natures of nature, the body, and the self. Yet, I contend Africa was not a passive participant in …

Violence, Militarism And The Environment In Contemporary South Asian Literature, Saba Pirzadeh

Open Access Dissertations

Current literary scholarship on the rise in violence and militarism within South

Effects Of Online Brand Community On Value Creation Practices And Brand Loyalty: Mediating Effects Of Community Loyalty, Yongsoo Ha

Open Access Dissertations

Online brand community refers to a specialized, non-geographically bound, online group of consumers, based on social communications and relationships among brand’s consumers. This study has four objectives; (a) testing the effects of online brand community by a sum of community markers, (b) testing the effects of online brand community on value creation practices and brand loyalty, (c) testing the mediating effects of community loyalty in a relationship between value creation practices and brand loyalty, and (d) testing the effects of consumers’ motivation for participation on online brand community. A survey-based empirical study was conducted. Data were collected, using Amazon Mechanical …

Tools And Methods To Analyze Multimodal Data In Collaborative Design Ideation, Ramaswamy Senthil Kumaran Chandrasegaran

Open Access Dissertations

Collaborative design ideation is typically characterized by informal acts of sketching, annotation, and discussion. Designers have always used the pencil-and-paper medium for this activity, partly because of the flexibility of the medium, and partly because the ambiguous and ill-defined nature of conceptual design cannot easily be supported by computers. However, recent computational tools for conceptual design have leveraged the availability of hand-held computing devices for creating and sharing ideas. In order to provide computer support for collaborative ideation in a way that augments traditional media rather than imitates it, it is necessary to study the affordances made available by digital …