Digital Commons Network^™

Tweets About Tornado Warnings: A Spatiotemporal And Content Analysis, Raelene C. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the United States, tornadoes frequently occur throughout the entire year. With each tornado there is a tornado warning that the National Weather Service (NWS) issues with a goal of protecting life and property. By using social media, these messages quickly reach the public. By analyzing Twitter data, this study aims to gain a spatiotemporal understanding of tweets, including when and where they most frequently occur. Most tweets occur within the warning time (temporal) and inside the warning polygon (spatial). To gain a better understanding of the information the tweet contains, a content analysis shows key warning characteristics such as …

East Branch Of The Cooper River, 1780-1820: Panopticism And Mobility, Lisa Briggitte Randle

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years historical archaeologists have employed the panoptic plantation approach to examine issues of surveillance and control at plantations. Despite new scholarship in the area of the panoptic plantation, few studies place the enslaved laborer at the center and the planter-elite on the periphery. Failure to broaden the scope of studies that focus on enslaved laborers minimizes the importance of the differences in perception, cognition, and landscape between the planter-elite and the enslaved laborers. The aim of this study is to determine potential enslaved laborer mobility and how cognitive predictive models can aid in identifying potential locations for archaeological …

Historical Inquiry And Student Perceptions Of Cultural Groups In A Social Studies Classroom, Michelle Pope

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses a problem of practice stemming from the accountability movement and its emphasis on high-stakes testing in the social studies classroom. An examination of the problem of practice led to the research question: How does the use of the scientifically based method of historical inquiry affect student perceptions of cultures other than their own? The purpose of this action research study was to examine the use of historical inquiry as a means of combating the lack of depth in a formal curriculum focused on high-stakes testing and a hidden curriculum that promotes a “top-down,” Eurocentric approach to history …

Translating Slavery As Told To My Daughter, Victoria L.A. Carvelli

Theses and Dissertations

I am translating an excerpt of the work L’esclavage raconté à ma fille, by the French Guianese politician Christiane Taubira. A former Minister of Justice of France, Taubira is famous for her legislative work in recognizing slavery as a crime against humanity and instituting national educational efforts on the subject. The book is an exposition of the history of slavery, set in a storytelling, question-and-answer style, which has the merit of bringing a conversational and accessible aspect to a difficult topic.

I chose this work at the recommendation of one of my professors, and when I was unable to find …

Anthropogenic Influences On Sedimentation In The Chicken Creek Watershed Of South Carolina, Tyler L. Dearman

Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogeomorphic changes in response to destructive agricultural practices followed the arrival of European settlers into the Americas. The southeastern Piedmont physiographic region of the USA was severely affected by erosion and sedimentation following settlement in the 1700s and farming up through the 1930s. Deep floodplain aggradation formed uninterrupted alluvial deposits that extended many km. This research examines anthropogenic impacts of land-use change on valley bottom sedimentation in the Chicken Creek Watershed of South Carolina. Abrupt contacts between pre-settlement floodplain soils and a thick overburden of legacy sediment are common throughout the two-km study reach and provide clear evidence of extensive …

Internal Gravity Wave Detection During The 21 August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse, Michael J.W. Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Total solar eclipses supply both visual captivation and a controlled meteorological experiment through a sudden decrease in solar radiation. However, along with commonly expected changes in weather conditions, prior research suggests an adjustment of atmospheric dynamics caused by both a decrease in local incident solar radiation and the Moon’s sweeping shadow across the Earth at supersonic speed. The result is the potential production of internal gravity waves, which transfer both energy and momentum vertically to and from the upper levels of the atmosphere. A series of radiosondes were launched before, during, and after the 21 August 2017 eclipse in Batesburg, …

Analysis Of Evacuation Behaviors And Departure Timing For October 2016’S Hurricane Matthew, Erika O. Pham

Theses and Dissertations

During a hurricane, an individual’s risk perception does not remain static. Spatial and temporal variations of a hurricane will shift perceptions of risk, and complicating this dynamic are information-seeking processes increasingly reliant on the individual’s self-motivated interpretation of information sources. Initial evacuation resistance or willingness could change even after evacuations are ordered, affecting evacuation preferences and departure times. Because Hurricane Matthew’s continually shifting track had virtually nonstop coverage, evacuation decisions were also being modified as residents either grew more or less certain of their safety.

This research investigates the evacuation behaviors associated with Hurricane Matthew in October of 2016. It …

Validation Of Virginia's Juvenile Risk Assessment Instrument, Jessica P. Schneider

Theses and Dissertations

Utilizing a validated risk assessment tool to predict future offending is recommended as best practices in corrections by a number of professional organizations (Latessa & Lovins, 2010). Guided by the risk-needs-responsivity model, risk assessment tools have evolved to help inform criminal justice practitioners by identifying offenders most in need of intervention or supervision, guiding the case plan to optimize outcomes (Bonta & Andrews, 2007). The Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) utilizes the Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument (YASI) at all stages of contact with youthful offenders, including intake, probation, commitment, and parole (DJJ, 2016). However, risk assessment instruments do …

A Comparison Of Quality Indicators Between Medicare Accountable Care Organizations And Health Maintenance Organizations Using Publicly Available Data, William W. Campbell Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore differences in quality between Medicare Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) and Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO). Three outcomes measures reported by these plans use different methodologies but possess enough alignment to permit comparison: percent of diabetic patients with last HbA1c > 9.0%, colon cancer screening rate and ER visits per 1,000. These outcomes are the dependent variables (DV). A secondary purpose is to explore differences in quality based on the size of the beneficiary population served, using the same measures.

As the Medicare program faces threats to its solvency in coming decades, with 10,000 baby …

Will You Accept This Rose?, Sasha Baskin

Theses and Dissertations

Using figures from the popular culture program The Bachelor in a large-scale tapestry-style weaving, I address the drive to create idealized simulations in order to better understand one’s own reality and identity. Natural dye and traditional weaving processes in combination with digital weaving technology allow me to literally integrate the juxtaposition of analog and digital elements which defines a woven image.

Dye work and pattern allow for large gestural drawing marks while individual threads overlap to create literal pixelized imagery. I examine the act of weaving as the creation of screens through which one can see, hide, or obscure. I …

Natural And Anthropogenic Drivers Of Tree Evolutionary Dynamics, Brandon M. Lind

Theses and Dissertations

Species of trees inhabit diverse and heterogeneous environments, and often play important ecological roles in such communities. As a result of their vast ecological breadth, trees have become adapted to various environmental pressures. In this dissertation I examine various environmental factors that drive evolutionary dynamics in threePinusspecies in California and Nevada, USA. In chapter two, I assess the role of management influence of thinning, fire, and their interaction on fine-scale gene flow within fire-suppressed populations of Pinus lambertiana, a historically dominant and ecologically important member of mixed-conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada, California. Here, I find evidence …

On Being A Good Neighbor, Kathren M. Cutshall

Theses and Dissertations

This research supports the design of a museum dedicated to reconciliation on the issue of human slavery. Throughout the museum guests will be ushered through contemplation to prepare for the context of the museum, gallery exhibitions chronicling the slavery and corporate apologia. The aim of the museum is to aid guests toward taking ownership of the history of slavery while simultaneously offering up forgiveness for it. Platforms for spoken word art, lecture halls and spaces dedicated to dialogue will be included. The chronological progression through the museum will move guests from introspection to education, personal acceptance to forgiveness. Guests will …

"Let The Castillo Be His Monument!": Imperialism, Nationalism, And Indian Commemoration At The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument In St. Augustine, Florida, Claire M. Barnewolt

Theses and Dissertations

The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest stone fortification on the North American mainland, a unique site that integrates Florida’s Spanish colonial past with American Indian narratives. A complete history of this fortification from its origins to its management under the National Park Service has not yet been written. During the Spanish colonial era, the Indian mission system complemented the defensive work of the fort until imperial skirmishes led to the demise of the Florida Indian. During the nineteenth century, Indian prisoners put a new American Empire on display while the fort transformed into a tourist destination. The Castillo …

Black Lives Examined: Black Nonfiction And The Praxis Of Survival In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Ariel D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework …

Edgelands, Anne Bujold

Theses and Dissertations

Animal imagery has been part of the human effort to understand our place in the world since the beginning of recorded history. Through examining the role and use of animal imagery in the creation of cultural signals, I have developed a framework for my practice. Edgelands employs representations of feral animals as symbols for the “misfit” to emphasize the value of those who do not fit in. My experience as a woman in the field of metal work informs my material choice and process, subverting ironwork motifs and the purpose of gates and boundaries. Edgelands overlaps a series of material …

What Lies Beneath, Meg Wachs

Theses and Dissertations

What is the very first thing you notice about a person? Appearance? What if the first thing you saw was everything that they were trying to hide? We would see every flaw but we would also see every truth. What Lies Beneath is an exploration of interior and exterior and an exposure to the dark and abject inside all of us; the parts we keep hidden and the things that build up until they have no place else to go. Rooted in an examination of the human psyche, my thesis explores the difference between the facade we project to the …

Reading Material: Personal Libraries And The Cultivation Of Identity In Revolutionary South Carolina, Gabriella Angeloni

Theses and Dissertations

In South Carolina, a colony known for its wealth and transatlantic connections, private libraries offer a unique lens through which to explore the culture of reading and book ownership that was an essential part of daily provincial and early national life. Largely overlooked by historians, personal libraries functioned as statements of wellrounded, often cosmopolitan identities before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. A careful reading of newspaper advertisements, probate inventories, loyalist claims, and correspondence, in conjunction with extant books, bookcases, portraiture, and spaces allows us to reconstruct the culture of reading and book-ownership that dominated Lowcountry society before 1800. Doing …

Characterizing Health Behavior Information: Developing A Surveillance Text Mining Framework Using Twitter For Diet, Diabetes, Exercise, And Obesity, George Shaw Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Previous studies have documented the relationship that exists among diabetes, diet, exercise, and obesity. Obesity increases people’s risk of developing heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Exercise and proper dieting are modifiable lifestyle behaviors that can help with reducing people’s overall weight and risk to various chronic conditions like diabetes. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) is the annual Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Twitter provides researchers with a new opportunity and alternative data source to collect information regarding health behaviors using real-time data. Previous studies have demonstrated Twitter’s ability to monitor …

“Catering To The Local Trade”: Jewish-Owned Grocery Stores In Columbia, South Carolina, Olivia Brown

Theses and Dissertations

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe fled persecution, anti-Semitism, and violence in search of the “American dream.” Both the Rivkin family and the Kligman/Baker family found their way to Columbia, South Carolina, rather than staying in urban centers like New York and Philadelphia. While both families eventually operated grocery stores in Columbia, their respective roles within their communities were very different.

Jacob Rivkin, and later his son Caba, originally ran a grocery in the heart of the Jewish community that sold kosher products unavailable elsewhere in the city. The popularity of Rivkin’s Grocery led to …

Frontier Re-Imagined: The Mythic West In The Twentieth Century, Michael Craig Gibbs

Theses and Dissertations

T The author begins by reviewing Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “Frontier Thesis” and by surveying the twentieth-century consensus of the “New Western Historians.” The author then poses a question: even though the physical frontier “closed” in the late-nineteenth century, did American writers turn away from the imaginative frontier? To a great extent, the writers of literary fiction did turn to other material during the modernist period. Simultaneously, however, Westerns began to dominate popular fiction and film. More notably, writers such as Raymond Chandler began to transform the traditional Western. In Philip Marlowe, Chandler created an urban cowboy; this cowboy locates …

Investigation Of Hydrologic Change In The South Fork Edisto Basin 1981-2016, Alexander Preston Butler

Theses and Dissertations

Increased demands on water resources coupled with an increased awareness of the need to preserve environmental flows have led to a need to understand how anthropogenic activities may have impacted water resources in South Carolina. The South Fork of the Edisto River has been facing increasing demands for both surface water and groundwater. This research investigated if and why hydrologic change, as indicated by a change in the rainfall/ stream discharge relationship, occurred in the South Fork Edisto Basin, in South Carolina, between the years 1980-2016. A double-mass curve analysis, which is corroborated by runoff coefficients, indicates that a fundamental …

Latina Sorority Membership Impact On The Experience And Persistence Of Latinas In Higher Education, Luz Danela Randolph

Theses and Dissertations

Latinas face many challenges upon their matriculation to a university, including culture shock, acclimation and sense of belonging. Such challenges threaten their retention and success. Having support or a sense of belonging within higher education are notions that influence Latina students to continue or persist in school. An emphasized venue, which supports the educational journey of undergraduate Latinas, is involvement in organizations that reflect their culture. The problem addressed was the need to investigate how sorority involvement impacted their experience and persistence. Conducting research on Latina sorority membership and whether it has an impact on the experience and persistence of …

Educational Technology Integration Among Community College Instructors, Oybek Turayev

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last two decades, educational technology (ET) integration has become an increasingly important aspect of higher education, particularly with the growth of online, distance and hybrid courses and degree programs. Furthermore, accrediting agencies such as the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) are paying close attention to online and hybrid courses and degree programs, making effective use of ET even more important to colleges and universities. Even in traditional, on-campus classrooms, some instructors are not using ET effectively to augment teaching and learning.

The main purpose of this research study was to examine a holistic view of educational technology integration into …

The Case Of The Missing Girl: Exploring Sex-Selective Abortion Through Ethnodrama, Hamzat Amoussa Koriko

Theses and Dissertations

The study uses Ethnodrama to address sex-selective abortion in Armenia. Ethnodrama uses an ethnographic method of data collection, then presents the findings as a dramatic script or performance. The urgency and the sensitivity of the topic informed the choice of using Ethnodrama over conventional research methodologies. The study gathered data from three primary sources: government databases, international organizations working with non-governmental organizations, and ethnographic fieldwork. The fieldwork consisted of taking notes on daily observations during classroom activities, a personal journal on conversations and interaction with community members, stories from community members, informal questions and answers sessions, and a small ethnographic …

Foodways And Family: The Persistence Of Tradition Among The Germans From Russia, Dana Janette Mcveigh

Theses and Dissertations

The foods we eat and how they are prepared are shaped profoundly by where and how we live and our ethnic heritage. Specific dishes and food preparation are an intricate part of a culture’s ethnic signature. The passage of culinary knowledge through generations was accomplished by oral transmission and, more recently, cookbooks. With families becoming busier and current technological advances, new adaptations are joining traditional techniques in preserving the past. The Germans from Russia know all too well the challenges of preserving ethnic foodways. Despite not one, but two migrations, their traditional foodways of two hundred years ago can still …

Collective Efficacy And Police Homicides: Evidence From California In The 1990s, Jayme Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines certain factors relating to collective efficacy; loosely defined as the strength of a community, and the effect those factors have on police homicides in the respective communities. More specifically, this study analyzes three components that contribute to collective efficacy: linguistic isolation, residential stability, and educational attainment. Data utilized in this study include U.S. Census data as well as data from a unique dataset containing California state-wide homicides during the 1990s. Using a negative binomial regression on pooled zip code data shows that, in relation to the factors mentioned above, educational attainment is the most influential characteristic analyzed …

To “Own Yourself A Little More”: Afropolitan Feminism In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, Bridget Tetteh-Batsa

Theses and Dissertations

Afropolitanism, in part, accounts for itinerant and so autonomous Africans who shape the contours of a late-modern global history. If Afropolitanism describes the work and activism of 21st century Africans in Euro-America determined to challenge western discourses that malign Africa, it is important to witness the distinctive character and voice Afropolitan women bring to that history defining exercise. Otherwise, as critics and scholars interested in what Afropolitanism brings to the work of reframing master narratives hitherto encircled for western primacy, we risk reinforcing the injustice we address.

To fill this gap in the literature, I employ Selasi’s initial conception of …

A Mixed Method Study Of The Impact Of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, And Dual Enrollment Courses On College Transition And Success, Kazimir Bartley Gazdzik

Theses and Dissertations

In an educational environment that has limited resources, and greater pressures for increased academic standards, what is the best option to help prepare high school students for college academics? This research study: A Mixed Method Study of the Impact of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and Dual Enrollment Courses on College Transition and Success attempted to investigate the impact of advanced courses on college transition.

The results of this research showed no statistical difference in academic success or transition to college between students who had taken advanced classes and those who had not. There were also no statistical differences between students …

Metropolitan Job Loss In The Great Recession: Where Did Those Who Lost Jobs Reside?, Peter Brandt

Theses and Dissertations

The Great Recession was one of the worst economic downturns in recent history. Lasting approximately from 2007 to 2009, locations faced economic hardships of varying length and severity at regional, metropolitan, and neighborhood scales. Scholars have assessed the geographies of job loss during the recession in a variety of contexts, typically from the workplace perspective. However, the impact of job loss at a workplace location also reaches to the different home locations of the employees who lost jobs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to compare the loss of jobs during the recession, from the perspective of where those …

A Cmip5 Ensemble Assessment Of Durum Wheat Production & Climate Change In North Dakota, Usa, Timothy Douglas Hochstetler Dillon

Theses and Dissertations

In the United States (US), North Dakota is the largest producer of Durum Wheat (Triticum durum), hereinafter referred to as Durum. Durum grain has a high protein content and multiple utilities in food products. We investigated the historical trends in Durum production and yield as influenced by changes in precipitation (precip) and temperature (temp). The study accounted for variations in environmental conditions by running a dynamic crop model in thirteen Durum producing counties.

The climate of North Dakota is representative of the highly productive agricultural lands of the Northern Great Plains, encompassing five US states and two Canadian provinces. The …