Digital Commons Network^™

Graduate And Employer Perceptions Regarding Job Preparedness Skills Of Design Technology Graduates, Bonnie Higgins

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate graduate and employer perceptions in regard to the job preparedness level of graduates from a design technology program at a single Midwestern university in five skill category areas: (a) general work habits and skills, (b) communication skills, (c) technical skills, (d) graphic communication skills, and (e) project management skills.

This study was conducted as evaluation research and implemented an internal formative evaluation conducted through the administration of surveys to two distinct groups. Fifty-nine (27.4%) program graduates from 2001 -2006 completed and returned the 19-item survey, while twenty-seven (67.5%) employers of program graduates …

Development Of Photography Curriculum Program: Facilitating The Transition From Academic Theory To Business Practice, John M. Osborne

Theses and Dissertations

Competition for job openings is becoming increasingly difficult for college graduates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2007), "Photographers can expect keen competition for job openings. The number of individuals interested in positions is much greater than the number of openings" (~27). As a result of this increasing competition, this study is intended to develop a model curriculum for a four-year baccalaureate degree program in photography with a business emphasis. More specifically, this study is aimed at developing curriculum that will enable students to more readily transition from academic theory into business and industrial practice.

In this study, a …

Differential Item Functioning Analysis Of The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, Jared Andrew Lees

Theses and Dissertations

Differential item functioning (DIF) is present when examinees who have the same level of a trait have a different probability of correctly answering a test item intended to measure that trait (Shepard & Averill, 1981). The following study is a DIF analysis of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), a preference profiling instrument developed by Herrmann International to help individuals identify their dominant preferences and then classify their level of dominance into four preference quadrants. Examinees who completed the American English version of the instrument were classified as the reference group and examinees of the International English version were classified …

Greening American History: Incorporating An Environmental Perspective Into United States Survey Courses, Nelson Paul Rosit

Theses and Dissertations

To paraphrase a well-known historian, there is too little nature in the study of history. Although environmental history is a well established field, nature and the physical environment are still often excluded agents in history pedagogy. The following essay is an effort to remedy this problem. This dissertation has two main objectives. The first is to define and describe environmental history and present a rationale for its inclusion as a major component of survey history courses. The second is to outline ways college teachers can include an environmental perspective in their instructional strategies. It includes three sample lesson plans that …

Identification Of Psychological Stressors For Long Duration Space Missions: Psychological Stressors Among Five Astronauts And Cosmonauts, Melinda S. Marsh

Theses and Dissertations

As humans continue to experience space missions of longer and longer duration, more and more high intensity stressors are going to be experienced. Although physiological stressors have been studied, there have been few studies on the psychological stressors. Those that are present primarily focused on the polar environment as a space analogue. In order to answer the question of how stressors may affect future astronauts and cosmonauts, the evolutoinary reasons behind stress must be considered not only the type and intensity of the stressors.

Five astronauts and cosmonauts representing three space agencies were surveyed regarding their experiences with ten types …

Grice's Conversational Implicature Revisited: A Discourse Analysis Of Reproductive Loss In Women's Talk, Barbara Hauser

Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, Grice's Conversational Implicature Revisited: A Discourse Analysis of Reproductive Loss in Women's Talk, it is my intent to explore the discursive modalities of reproductive loss narrated by women, who, at different stages of gestation, have lost one or more children. Rooted in a theoretical framework in discourse analysis, my thesis seeks to analyze how women, having participated in an interview with a female interlocutor who lost a child herself, narrate their experiences of reproductive loss.

My hypothesis is that the more personal information about the experience of reproductive loss the participant is supposed to share, the …

Fremont Finery: Exchange And Distribution Of Turquoise And Olivella Ornaments In The Parowan Valley And Beyond, Cady Brooke Jardine

Theses and Dissertations

The Fremont tradition developed on the northern Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin between A.D. 1 and A.D. 1350 (Talbot 2000a). Research on exotics in the Fremont area, specifically turquoise and Olivella shell, has been sporadic until recently (Hughes and Bennyhoff 1986; McDonald 1994; Janetski 2002). In this thesis, I present new data on Olivella and turquoise artifacts found throughout the Fremont region, including the Parowan Valley sites, Nephi Mounds, and Kay's Cabin, as well as a spatial distribution of Olivella and turquoise in the Fremont area. I performed microprobe analysis on blue-green artifacts from Kay's Cabin and found most …

Holmes, Alice, And Ezeulu: Western Rationality In The Context Of British Colonialism And Western Modernity, Andrew B. Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Western rationality, contextualizing that subject in British colonialism and Western modernity. Using Scott Lash's description of academic characterizations of modernity, I explore the “high" modernity of the social sciences represented in the books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle. I then explore the cultural studies critique of that characterization of modernity in the book Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe. Using the theory of Jean Francois Lyotard, Martin Heidegger, and Theodor Adorno, I look at Western rationality through its manifestation in British colonialism. I argue that …

Reliability Of Pre-Service Teachers Coding Of Teaching Videos Using Video-Annotation Tools, Brigham R. Dye

Theses and Dissertations

Teacher education programs that aspire to helping pre-service teachers develop expertise must help students engage in deliberate practice along dimensions of teaching expertise. However, field teaching experiences often lack the quantity and quality of feedback that is needed to help students engage in meaningful teaching practice. The limited availability of supervising teachers makes it difficult to personally observe and evaluate each student teacher's field teaching performances. Furthermore, when a supervising teacher debriefs such an observation, the supervising teacher and student may struggle to communicate meaningfully about the teaching performance. This is because the student teacher and supervisor often have very …

Navajo Baskets And The American Indian Voice: Searching For The Contemporary Native American In The Trading Post, The Natural History Museum, And The Fine Art Museum, Laura Paulsen Howe

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the display of Navajo baskets and examines some of the possible meanings Navajo baskets can reveal. Acknowledging that the meaning of a work of art changes when it is placed in different environments, the thesis explores what meanings are revealed and what meanings are concealed in basket displays in three venues: the trading post, the natural history museum, and the fine art museum. The study concludes that the fine art museum has the most potential to foster a dialogue about the contemporary Navajo, whose identity is a product of continuity and change. Chapter one discusses the basket's …

La Guérison Par Le Récit Chez Gabrielle Roy, Kathleen L. Byrne

Theses and Dissertations

The therapeutic nature of Gabrielle Roy's works enables an Aristotelian catharsis to take place for her audience. As her readers plunge into their individual past, they can have an awakening. Upon realizing that the characters in Roy's literary creation hold to a specific definition of elusive happiness and after discovering that they also are plagued by a fixation to some type of Freudian trauma, the readers can recognize similar behavior in themselves. Though likely they were unconscious of their ongoing distress before, now it becomes clear that their tendency to displace themselves in pursuit of a utopian existence is perpetual …

Taking Mormons Seriously: Ethics Of Representing Latter-Day Saints In American Fiction, Terrol Roark Williams

Theses and Dissertations

My paper examines the ethics of representing Mormons in serious American fiction, viewed through two primary texts, Bayard Taylor's nineteenth-century dramatic poem The Prophet and Maureen Whipple's epic novel The Giant Joshua. I also briefly examine Walter Kirn's short stories “Planetarium” and “Whole Other Bodies.” Using Werner Sollors' and Matthew Frye Jacobson's writings on ethnicity as foundational, I argue in that Mormonism constitutes an ethnicity, which designation accentuates the ethical demands of those who represent the group. I also use W.J.T. Mitchell's theories of representation as the basis of my arguments of the ethics of representing ethnicity. As ethical theorists, …

An Investigation Of An After-School Science Enrichment Program, Jennifer Lyn Jamison

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to investigate an after-school science enrichment program and its components. The study was conducted in a middle school in the Evesham Township School District located in the Burlington County region of South Jersey. The participants included sixty-one students taken from the four sessions of the science program, three teachers of the program, twenty parents of the students, and the program director. Data sources included interviews held with each of the participants, anecdotal notes recorded in a teacher research journal, and student artifacts. I found positive results in the operation of the program, because of …

Carlo Cattaneo: The Religiosity Of A Relunctant Revolutionary, Carolyn Bennett Ugolini

Theses and Dissertations

Carlo Cattaneo (1801-1869) would have been a remarkable man in any time period. He was interested in everything, and as a man of ideas was involved in the astonishing technological and stimulating political events of the nineteenth century. He encouraged the building of railways as a way to unite the Italian peninsula, and he was involved in connecting Italy to the rest of Europe through the St. Gothard Tunnel. An innovator of gas lighting in his native Milan, the great Lombard thinker was a prolific writer, and kept prodigious notes and copies of his correspondence. His economic and scientific involvement …

The Need For Retail Shopping Convenience: An Empirical Examination Of Its Antecedents And Consequences In Mexican-American Consumers And White, Non-Hispanic Consumers In The United States, Michelle Bednarz Beauchamp

Theses and Dissertations

Inherent in the process of marketing is the notion that consumption requires both time and effort. While shopping, consumers may spend time and effort to complete several tasks such as searching for information, traveling to the store?s location, searching for a parking spot, traveling through the store, locating the product they wish to purchase, and completing the checkout process. Convenience is defined as anything that reduces consumer time and effort expenditures and is becoming increasingly important to consumers in the United States. This dissertation provides insight into an emerging consumer need--the need for retail shopping convenience (NRSC). Specifically, this dissertation …

Religion And Remarriage Among American Women: Evidence From The National Survey Of Family Growth, Susannah Mercedes Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Divorce has been and remains a prevalent occurrence in the United States and, while rates are not increasing as they once were, it still remains an extremely common phenomenon. As of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report on divorce and remarriage, 56% of men and 59% of women ever married have been divorced. Despite these statistics, the vast majority of Americans still value marriage as an institution. This study aims to examine the role religion plays in the propensity and timing of remarriage. Using logistic and OLS regressions, and data pooled from the 1995 and 2002 National Survey of …

Capital And Punishment:Supporting The Death Of Deterrence, Amanda Paige Cook

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has examined certainty and severity of punishment as serving a deterrent function. This research examines the effects of economic, cultural, and social capital, as well as the effects of certainty, severity, and prior punishment on likelihood of re-offending. Data collected at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility suggest that traditional deterrence indicators are insufficient for predicting likelihood of re-offending. This research finds that prior punishment increases likelihood of re-offending, a finding completely counter to that of traditional deterrence. Re-offending may be best understood by considering the effects of punishment on increasing prison capital and decreasing real world capital. The …

Climate For Sexual Minorities In Counselor Education Programs, George R. Beals

Theses and Dissertations

The counseling profession requires its professionals to be ethically aware, culturally aware, and personally aware. Counselor Education departments strive to create environments that foster multicultural interactions and environments that provide sufficient safety for persons to be self-expressive and self-reflective. Such environments support the personal growth required to be effective counselors and agents of change. The purpose of this research was to measure the climate for sexual minorities in Counselor Education programs. Using the Climate for Sexual Minorities in Counselor Education Programs Survey (CSMCEPS) to collect information from faculty and graduate students, this research attempted to describe the level of acceptance …

Economic Freedom And Social Capital Determinants On Economic Growth Of Developed And Developing Nations, Debjani Chakrabarti

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the determining effects of non-economic factors on economic growth of developed versus developing nations. While earlier economic theories have traditionally focused on land, labor, capital and technology as the principle determining factors of economic growth, latter-day normative theorists demonstrated the importance of cultural forces and human capital variables on economic growth of nations. This dissertation is an extension of this emphasis put on economic growth by the latter-day normative theorists. Economic activities for developed and developing nations have been used as a proxy stock variable (for economic growth) for three points in time ? 1980, 1990 and …

The Development Of Southern Association For College Student Affairs: Setting A New Course For Success, Bobbie Jean Wescovich-Mann

Theses and Dissertations

There have been numerous studies conducted concerning how various businesses, management groups and library science organizations address the preservation of their history, the development of goals, the evaluation of those goals and how these lead to the positive development of their organization. However, to date, the researcher has been unable to locate research that has been conducted to assess how Student Affairs associations preserve their history and how they evaluate the effectiveness of their goals or even if they do evaluate their goals. Based on research conducted through in-depth interviews, review of the data raises questions regarding the way SACSA …

Attachment Style, Self-Esteem, And Perceived Peer Norms As Predictors Of Sexually Risky Behavior Among 17-24 Year Old College Students, Susan Harris Eaves

Theses and Dissertations

Unhealthy sexual behavior continues to increase among the college student population despite education regarding its risks and consequences. Counselors are continually being faced with consumers reeling from such consequences. Because prior research has indicated statistically significant relationships between attachment style and sexual behavior, self-worth and sexual behavior, and peer norms and sexual behavior, this study examined the explanatory and predictive value of each of these variables when analyzed simultaneously. Specifically, the age at first intercourse, number of sexual intercourse partners, number of oral sex partners, frequency of cheating behaviors, and number of one-night stands were assessed across 855 students attending …

County Level Suicide Rates And Social Integration: Urbanicity And Its Role In The Relationship, Jacob Travis Walker

Theses and Dissertations

This study adds to the existing research concerning ecological relationships between suicide rates, social integration, and urbanicity in the U.S. Age-sex-race adjusted five-year averaged suicide rates for 1993-1997 and various measures of urbanicity are used. Some proposed relationships held true, while others indicate that social integration and urbanicity are so intertwined in their effects on suicide that no clear, unidirectional pattern emerges. The religious affiliation measure captured unique variations in the role religion plays in this relationship; depending on how urbanicity was measured. Findings suggest closer attention needs to be paid to how both urbanicity and religious affiliation are measured. …

Intrapersonal Communication And Well-Being, James Abbott

Theses and Dissertations

This research explored the experience of self-talk (intrapersonal communication) among subjects of varying well-being, considering multiple characteristics of self-talk such as tone, content, timing, and subject awareness. The research questions were: (R1) How is intrapersonal communication used and experienced by those with higher and lower levels of self-assessed well-being? (R2) To what extent are subjects of varying well-being states aware of their intrapersonal communication?

Twenty semi-structured personal interviews were conducted with individuals of varying well-being and other characteristics such as age and occupation. The subjects ranged in age from approximately twenty-one to eighty. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and …

A Layered Social And Operational Network Analysis, Jennifer L. Geffre

Theses and Dissertations

To provide maximal disruption to a clandestine/terrorist network's ability to conduct missions, we must develop a means to determine the individuals' importance to the network and operations. In a network centric world, this importance is represented as an additive value of their criticality across the convergence of multiple layers of network connections. The connections layers of the network are comprised of social layers (Acquaintance, Friendship, Nuclear Family, Relatives, Student-Teacher, and Religious Mentors, Reverent Power and others), as well as layers representing interactions involving Resources, Knowledge/Skills and Temporal Local. The social criticality of an individual is measured by centrality. Event Trees …

Creation Of A Training And Development Program For Teachers Of Less Commonly Taught Languages At Brigham Young University: A Development Project, Margaret Merrill

Theses and Dissertations

This project report discusses the design, development, and evaluation of a teacher development program for teachers of less commonly taught languages in the Center for Language Studies (CLS) at Brigham Young University. Teachers hired to teach beginning language classes in the CLS are typically very proficient in the target languages, but are not trained in language teaching. Because proficiency in a language alone does not sufficiently qualify someone to teach it, this teacher development program was created to train CLS teachers in the basics of language pedagogy. The report includes a review of relevant literature on language pedagogy and teacher …

Hope For The Fatherless?: A Grounded Interpretive Approach, Anna Manja Larcher

Theses and Dissertations

Psychology's literature regarding fatherlessness is not only grim, mainly pointing out the negative consequences of fatherlessness, but it also does not provide much specific information about fatherless individuals' experiences. A pilot study revealed that fatherless individuals do not always suffer from the loss of their father and that they also have the ability to overcome the negative consequences commonly associated with father loss. The research questions for this study presented themselves naturally after reviewing the literature and after considering the results of my pilot study, namely, “What do fatherless individuals actually experience in being fatherless, and what is the nature …

Hidden Doublings: A Context For Understanding Jean D'Arras's Mélusine Ou La Noble Histoire De Lusignan, Kathryn Rimmasch

Theses and Dissertations

At the end of the fourteenth century Jean d’Arras rewrote a popular folktale. The tale told how Mélusine, a fairy who was serpent from the navel down every Saturday, married a knight and founded the fortress of Lusignan. In his introduction to the tale Jean d’Arras presents the ideas of four authority figures to convince the reader that fantastical things are possible and that his work should be taken seriously. These authority figures are David, Aristotle, Paul and Gervaise de Tilbury. It is the contention of this thesis that Jean d’Arras presents these figures in his introduction to provide context …

Reunion: A Journey Through History, Symbolism, And Fear, Vanessa Laure Fassie

Theses and Dissertations

The contents here in examine the artistic process undertaken by Vanessa Fassie to create the mixed media work, reunion. The subjects of fear, archetypal symbolism, personal and collective histories were examined through research, archival evidence, video, sound, movement, and installation. reunion, examines not only the powers of personal and collective histories through the symbolic language of archetypes, but also how fear manifests and evolves through time. The culmination of this work was the creation of an installation within the Anderson Gallery at Virginia Commonwealth University. This Thesis was created through the use of Microsoft Word 2004.

The Effects Of Concerted Cultivation On Academic Achievement, Jeremy Brandon Redford

Theses and Dissertations

Anne Lareau (2003) argues that parents' child-rearing practices have a profound effect on academic and later occupational success for children, even holding constant such important factors as gender, race and school effects. She says that social class impacts these child-rearing practices and that middle-class families use a specific type of practice called concerted cultivation. Concerted cultivation involves parents organizing children's daily activities, using reasoning skills in talking with children, and teaching them how to interact with the institutions around them. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) of 1988, the current study tests the theoretical validity of concerted cultivation. Results …

Toward A New Kinship Constellation, Nellie Helen Frances Appleby

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis attempts to elaborate on my artwork during my graduate studies, while contextualizing it within the framework of the art world and the works of other artists. A main project during this time was to minimize the singular interpretation and framing of a fine art photographic print, while expanding its possibilities of meaning through the addition of important ephemera and objects such as plants, drawings, moving imagery, conversation and the unknown.