Digital Commons Network^™

Employers’ Attitudes Towards Individuals With A Physical Disability During The Hiring Process, Alix Jean-Joseph

Theses and Dissertations

Decades of research in the field of disability and employment have recorded various negative and positive employer attitudes towards the disabled. In comparison to other disability categories, the physically disabled tend to evoke more negative stereotypes, attitudes, and misconceptions in employers. Physical appearance and physical deformities continue to be a barrier to full participation in employment. Thus, additional research is needed to understand and explore how these attitudes are impacting employment experiences. The purpose of this study was to examine employers’ attitudes towards individuals with a physical disability during the hiring process.

An online survey was completed with the collaboration …

Haitian Centenarians: An Undocumented Phenomenon, Erna Dasilma

Theses and Dissertations

A ceaselessly neglected phenomenon until recent years, especially in developing countries, centenarians bring unique wisdom, perspective, history and science to our society based on their lived experiences. Although there is a strong interest in the experiences of individuals who are over 100 years old, few formal research studies have been conducted concerning centenarians, principally in developing countries. One of the central goals of conducting this study was to bridge the gap in the literature when it comes to centenarians in less developed countries, given the lack of reported statistics, with emphasis given to those living on the battered, but resilient …

The Teacher’S Role In Increasing Student Engagement In High School Social Studies Courses, Quarnitra L. Price

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study explored (a) how teaching practices of high school teachers influence student engagement levels and performance in social studies classes, (b) how teachers might deliver more student relatable social studies content, (c) how teachers might help students relate to and become more engaged with important social studies concepts, and (d) how teachers can motivate students to become well-informed and fully engaged citizens. This study also examined existing barriers that prevent students from learning or engaging in social studies coursework.

Research findings suggest teachers play essential roles in how students perceive social studies content and respond to lessons …

Motor Competency's Relationship To Interpersonal Coordination In Stationary Basketball Dribbling, Daniel Bell

Theses and Dissertations

A gold standard for student pairing strategies in a physical education setting has still yet to be discovered and is a widely debated topic in the field. Inclusion and equitable learning environments are areas of emphasis for practitioners while trying to find new ways to elicit these things to benefit students. Interpersonal coordination (IC), a social phenomenon on which this study focused, has direct applications for pairing strategies in physical education. In essence, IC is a state in which two individuals non-consciously mimic each other’s motor patterns. IC was measured between 182 student pairings performing stationary basketball dribbling. Participants included …

Instructional Coaching: Self-Efficacy, Resilience, And Joy, Aimee Marie Volk

Theses and Dissertations

At the time of this study, research on instructional coaching suggests positive outcomes for teacher retention and student achievement. However, merely providing an instructional coach to support a teacher is not sufficient. Effective coaching programs are built around foundational, structural, and instructional coaching program standards as well as employ coaches who are capable and effective in a multitude of content, instructional, and behavioral situations. Research illustrates that coaches vary significantly in effectiveness. Therefore, coaching outcomes may produce inconsistent results among various coaching programs and even between individual schools within the same school district. In other words, not all coaches or …

Three Studies Of Research-Based Pedagogy In Physical Chemistry: Development Of A Zno Thin Film Experiment, Analysis Of Student Discourse By Graph Theory And Cognitive Engagement, Building A Physical Chemistry Faculty Network., Dilhara Liyanage

Theses and Dissertations

Three research projects, each focusing on a different aspect, development of a ZnO thin film experiment, student’s cognitive engagement behavior, and building of a faculty network, are presented in this dissertation.

In the first project, a physical chemistry laboratory experiment was developed to answer the question, “How do electrons move in a solid?”. The experiment structure follows the POGIL-PCL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning - Physical Chemistry Laboratory) model. Students begin by using the PhET “Quantum Bound States” animation to compare energy levels for single atoms to energy levels of a lattice containing many potential wells, and they incorporate that …

From The Margins To The Center: Legitimation Strategies From An Alt-Right Case Study, Lauren C. Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a growing interest in understanding Donald Trump’s election in 2016 as part of the historical trajectory of white racial identity politics, we do not know much about how ideas deemed “radical right” become mainstreamed. My study builds on extant research that implicates the emergence of the think tank industry by viewing one such right wing think tank as a racialized organization. My analysis focuses on the organizational strategies of the National Policy Institute (NPI). Google searches for NPI spiked in 2016 with their vocal support of Trump and visible organizing in D.C. Using Williams’ (2018) theoretical framework of organizational …

Cultural Production In Qatar: Design, Dialog And The New Authentic, Asma Derouiche

Theses and Dissertations

Qatar, as a rapidly modernizing Arab country with a highly heterogeneous emergent community, is working to achieve a balance between accelerated development and cultural identity. Qatar’s cross-cultural environment and diverse attributes offer unprecedented opportunity to produce forward-looking, “100% Qatari Products,” that express a New Authentic.

This thesis explores social dynamics governing cultural production in Qatar, and it challenges unproductive manifestations of social hierarchy—particularly related to norms surrounding the default working relationship between designers and artisans. The research highlights and celebrates the inherent diversity of the Qatari artifact, creating a platform and methods wherein designers and artisans collaborate equally and meaningfully. …

Exploring The Creation Of Immersive And Responsive Spaces For Interrelationship Through The Concept Of Playfulness, Yonghun Jung

Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 is causing serious damage to many countries. As of May, the number of confirmed patients worldwide is at 3.35 million and the death toll stands at 239,000 people. As a way to prevent the pandemic, most countries encourage people to keep social or physical distance and self-quarantine. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they recommend that people stay at least six feet away from each other and the South Korean government also recommend keeping their distance from each other at least two meters.

Because of the current situation, …

A Girl Is A Girl Is A Girl, Paige Lizbeth Morris

Theses and Dissertations

It is well known that Western society uses men’s visual pleasure as a means to determine womxn’s value; her success is dependent on her compliance with culturally determined beauty standards. This process turns womxn into commodities and reinforces notions of gender complementarity, perpetuating a lifetime of servitude to patriarchal ideologies. It reminds the non-male that she is incomplete, insufficient, insignificant, and so easily dismissable. It forces her to be dependent, to shut up, to sit down, and to enjoy it.

In an effort to reject these presumed histories and narrow connotations of womxn, I have analyzed my gender performance in …

University Hackathons: Managerialism, Gamification, And The Foreclosure Of Creativity, Anthony L. Clary

Theses and Dissertations

This research presents a generative critique of hackathon events held in the contemporary research university. Through the analysis of cultural imaginaries and embedded techno-political forms, it works toward an assessment of whether these events support, foreclose, or redirect ideas of the future that might otherwise challenge technocratic, accumulatory, and/or hierarchal organization. Informed by institutional histories and firsthand field research at events, dynamics of entrepreneurialism, gamification, and techno-solutionism are extrapolated and problematized. Ultimately, this research draws on a historical materialist approach to understanding how and why hackathon events have flourished in the university setting. Corroborating recent theories of platform capitalism, vectoralism, …

Orbiting Forward (Thoughts On The Nature Of Conflict - Sighs On The Struggles Of Change), Bushra A. Alsughayer

Theses and Dissertations

Today’s world is a wide open hyper-connected sphere where human societies worldwide exist in a complex crossroads of historical conditions, ideologies, and power structures. A pool of constant confrontations, minor or major, between the traditional and the progressive, the local and the international, the materialistic and the transcendent, the pragmatic and the idealistic, and countless layers of meaning. For an individual who exists in such an intense moment of history, it seems almost inescapable to be exposed to, affected by, or even involved in a major conflict. A situation that makes individuals always in a critical position where every role …

Legal Permanent Residents In The Us Labor Market: Occupational Mobility Of High-Skilled And Low-Skilled Immigrants, Larissa Ferreira Coelho

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the vast research concerning immigrants and occupational mobility, little is known if the patterns for high-skilled and low-skilled workers differ. In this project, I analyze the pre-to-post migration occupational mobility of legal permanent residents in the US by using occupation and migration histories from the New Immigrant Survey. I contrast the first occupation in the US to the last occupation abroad using descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, and multinomial logistic regression models. Findings show different patterns of occupational mobility for low-skilled and high-skilled workers. High-skilled immigrants were less likely to experience downward occupational mobility than their low-skilled counterparts. The high-skilled …

Transforming Trauma: Performing The Works Of William Shakespeare As Rehabilitation For Incarcerated Individuals, Elyssa Mersdorf

Theses and Dissertations

This paper is the summation of my research and exploration into the history, social ramifications, and individual psychological impact of incarceration and the use of theatre as a vehicle of rehabilitation. Throughout my studies, I encountered evidence in the forms of personal accounts from theatre practitioners, scholarly articles, inmate testimonials, and historical journals regarding the success of such carceral theatre programs in the reformation of the prisoners they serve. How have past prison procedures and strategies hindered or helped inmates in their preparation for their transition from life in a penitentiary to reintroduction into larger society? What are the financial …

Come And Get Your Capital, Sis: The Use Of Twitter To Compensate For Gendered And Racialized Job Networks Among Creatives, Sasha A. Pierre- Louis

Theses and Dissertations

Due to racialized and gendered exclusion and discrimination, Black and women jobseekers do not have the same access to social ties in the labor market as white men. A number of Black Twitter users, particularly Black women, have cultivated networks on Twitter and elsewhere as explicit alternatives to this old boys’ network. This study aimed to understand how workers in creative industries—which tend to be more reliant on referrals—use Twitter to expand their social networks and gain access to job opportunities, and how their use of Twitter differed by race and gender. Four hashtags were queried through the Twitter application …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Caregiver Goals For Urban Children With And Without Asthma, Megan M. Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric asthma is a major public health concern that disproportionately affects children of color and youth living in low-income, urban areas. The implications for public health, child health, and family functioning necessitates our understanding and addressing experiences by families who are facing barriers within their socio-demographic context in addition to the stressors associated with managing pediatric asthma. The current study applied qualitative methods to interviews with caregivers of children with and without asthma in an effort to more deeply connect with caregivers’ experiences and yield richer information about the intersection of identities as Black caregivers living in an urban setting …

Current: The River City Library, Abigail Fundling

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis orients a public library toward the James River with the purpose of strengthening Richmond’s connection to this waterway. Adapting an existing warehouse with a history of river industry, this project used evidence-based design decisions to drive its development. Using interviews, surveys, and case studies, the design is organized around a central gathering space where the river enters the building and around which spaces for study, stacks, and children flow. It also incorporates an amphitheater that evokes the feeling of sitting on the river’s shore. Using panoramic views to the river and city skyline along with a material palette …

Why We Use A New Currency: The Role Of Trust And Control In Explaining The Perception And Usage Of Bitcoin, Joseph B. Walton

Theses and Dissertations

Social media, e-commerce, global peer-to-peer technologies, and the near ubiquity of computers and smartphones allow people to interact, trust, and exchange value across traditional socio-economic control boundaries and over significant distances. Since the creation in 2008 of a new cryptographic currency system called Bitcoin, a financial technology market sector of about 250 billion USD has rapidly emerged, raising questions about the nature of currency in society and whether new types of non-national money are warranted and viable. This debate has pitted heterodox economic interests against orthodox economic interests while it has rekindled interest in theories that view money as a …

Analysis Of Stigmatic Content In State Mental Health Legislative Proposals, David L. Conley

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the proven effectiveness of mental health interventions, services remain limited across the country. Social workers have repeatedly advocated for increased funding, but mental healthcare gaps persist. Disparities could be addressed through the policy process, but critical proposals often do not pass. One of the biggest barriers is the concept of stigma, which could extend into legislatures and influence mental health-related policy outcomes as a form of structural stigma. Factors that influence legislator voting behavior are found in the literature, but studies have not explicitly focused on structural stigma or mental health-specific policy outcomes. Thus, the present study aimed to …

Heuristic One-Time Pad Encryption, James B. Joyce

Theses and Dissertations

Heuristic One-Time Pad (HOP) represents a methodology that is compliant with the requirements as established by Claude Shannon for a globally scalable and permanent encryption solution. The technique is not limited to encryption, rather, it also encompasses dynamic hashing and authentication. The two key Shannon-identified problems of continuous random number generation and secure distribution of encryption keys have been solved and are integral to the method. At each step of the algorithms, entropy is ‘1’ and unicity is ‘infinite’. All encryption key generation is independent of the value of the data being encrypted, and is dependent upon a combination of …

A Comprehensive Analysis Of The Roles, Responsibilities, And Impact Of The Chief Data Officer At Institutions Of Higher Learning, Kevin Michael Casey

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes to analyze the role of chief data officer within institutions of higher education. The role of chief data officer is relatively new in the higher education industry and is appropriate to be studied. This dissertation seeks to discover personal, educational, and career demographics of the current chief data officers in higher education, as well as begin to understand their roles, responsibilities, and impact to the institution. Finally the study analyzes current institutions with chief data officers in order to identify factors for other universities to consider when considering the appointment. The research was conducted using survey methodology …

Attributes Affecting Adoption Of Pollinator Conservation Practices, Shannon M. Westlake

Theses and Dissertations

Pollinator conservation has recently become a topic of greater interest and research around the world as native insect pollinator species increasingly face population declines. In the United States, growing concerns regarding food security and decreased biodiversity have led to the creation of programmatic and best management practices (BMPs) promotional efforts among governmental and non-governmental organizations. These efforts seek to support pollinators on public and private lands by addressing the primary causes of decline (e.g., habitat loss and increased chemical use). Although these organizations have worked diligently to increase awareness and applicability of programs to private landholders, there is still a …

Don't Fear The Nobodies: A Critical Youth Study Of The Columbiner Instagram Community, Brianna L. Wright

Theses and Dissertations

This research sheds light on how one particular group of young people, Columbiners, use social media to build and maintain a sense of community. Through a content analysis of 200 Instagram posts containing a school shooting fandom hashtag, or #Columbiner, and drawing on both Critical Youth Studies and Sense of Community Theory, this research demonstrates how Columbiners use their hashtag to create a sense of community on Instagram, to explore what it means to be young and cool, and to make sense of the problems that shape their social world, including school shootings. Exploring how this particular group of young …

Exploring United Methodist Adults’ Racial Attitudes And Beliefs From A Critical Race Framework To Inform Outreach Efforts With Low-Income, Black Youth In Mississippi, Brittany Radford

Theses and Dissertations

Extensive literature has documented The United Methodist Church’s’ (UMC) commitment to social justice. A current focus in the church is working with economically marginalized populations, including the 231,170 Black children and youth in Mississippi. To better understand adults that serve this population, I conducted an exploratory study to gather baseline data about UMC adults’ contemporary attitudes and beliefs about race, racism, and discrimination. A cross-sectional survey was administered at the 2017 Mississippi Annual Conference of The UMC. Using a critical race lens, I found that most of the attendees espoused moderate color-blind racial attitudes and beliefs about the frequency that …

Use Of Formative Research To Inform Family-Based Approaches To Prevent Prescription Opioid Misuse Among Mississippians, Mary Nelson Robertson

Theses and Dissertations

The United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic, which is leading to approximately 130 deaths each day. While research on family-based approaches for substance misuse prevention, such as alcohol and tobacco prevention, has been conducted, few if any studies have focused on prescription opioid misuse prevention. Previous literature suggests that a comprehensive family-based approach can be effective in preventing substance misuse at the family-level. Considering the multiple age groups the sandwich generation cares for, the sandwich generation may have greater access to reaching multiple age groups to prevent prescription opioid misuse. Therefore, the purpose of this study …

Service And Empathy: A Comparison Study Of Intercultural Experiences Among Students At Mississippi College, Victoria Rose Marshall

Theses and Dissertations

Service to the community is a key element in mission statements of public and private universities. In the 21st century, higher education shifted by establishing community engagement offices and encouraging student community service through service-learning. Previous literature indicated that experiential learning increased ethnocultural empathy and volunteerism among college students. This study compares two experiential learning programs’ influence on the ethnocultural empathy development among college students at Mississippi College, a private, religious-affiliated university to explore how this empathy increases community service. 38 students were asked to complete the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (Wang et al. 2003) and were interviewed about their …

A Study Of Veteran Student Persistence And Va Educational Benefits: 2010 National Survey Of Veterans, Scott Schneider

Theses and Dissertations

Student persistence in college has been a challenge since higher education began. One driving factor affecting a student’s ability to remain in college is that of finances. As life circumstances change, so do the financial resources required to support daily living and as these resources become scarce, a student’s ability to pay for college is negatively impacted, often resulting in a student’s inability to complete their degree. One specific group of students, military veterans, are entitled to educational benefits than can lessen the impact of financial stressors associated with attending a college or university. While no apparent formal reporting requirement …

Objekt Multifunksional Për Komunitet, Arnisa Muja

Theses and Dissertations

Arkitektura është krijimi i hapësirës-Louis Kahn. Sot hapësirat tona mund t’i ndajmë lirshëm në hapësira inividuale dhe ato publike apo të përbashkëta. Ndër vite ka lindur nevoja në shoqëri të krijohen hapësira të tilla, që do t’i shërbenin aktiviteteve sociale të përbashkëta. Për të filluar me atë se cfarë do të thotë aktivitet social, nga burimet sociologjike dhe psikologjike kuptojmë se një term i tillë u referohet disa aktiviteteve në shënjestër të njeriut që marrin parasysh nevojat e të tjerëve, preferencat dhe dëshirat në kuadër të normave të pranuara shoqërore. Pra aktiviteti social është kuptuar më shpesh si çdo veprim …

Assisting School Level Teams To Identify And Address The Needs Of Struggling Learners Through A Tiered Intervention And Aligned Professional Development Model, Tammy Dionne Person

Theses and Dissertations

The adoption of the IDEA charged schools with the responsibility of identifying students who have disabilities and special needs and then providing them with appropriate educational services so that they progress academically. Schools have adopted, implemented, and revised a variety of screening processes to identify these students. The process of trying to help students who are experiencing difficulties is often referred to as RTI. The RTI framework is comprised of a multi-tiered educational system that outlines instructional practices based on student needs. Many schools have formed teams and devised policies to explore options for student assistance. This study involved designing …

Fbi Investigations Into The Civil Rights Movement And The New Left, Meredith Donovan

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines how the FBI investigated civil rights organizations and social movements from the 1950s through the 1970s. It compares the reasons for the investigations, the investigative methods, and the extent of the investigations. The paper uses FBI files as the basis for the information and to form the argument that the FBI chose its targets based on who posed a significant threat to the status quo. The FBI had a social and political motive to suppress dissent against the government and to suppress the people who challenged laws to advance their rights. The movements examined are the civil …