Digital Commons Network^™

Trajectories Of Well-Being: Results From The Americans’ Changing Lives Study, Cassondra M. Lyman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is considerable interest in elucidating the dynamics of well-being over long periods of time, including how well-being dynamics are influenced by depression. The Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) study has followed the health and well-being of a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States for 25 years (N1986 = 3,617; N1989 = 2,867; N1994 = 2,562; N2002 = 1,787, N2012 = 1,427). Leveraging data from the ACL study, the present investigation employed growth mixture models to identify unobserved subpopulations (i.e., latent classes) typified by change in well-being over time. Three predominant trajectories for well-being were identified: relative stability …

“She’S On Her Way Up”: A Case Study Of Mercy Otis Warren And The Gendered Politics Of Commemoration, Sara Ann White

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2001, a statue of eighteenth-century Bill of Rights advocate Mercy Otis Warren was erected on the Barnstable County Superior Courthouse lawn in Barnstable, Massachusetts. The story of the statue’s eventual placement is a fascinating case study of how the gendered politics of commemoration can play out over time in local communities. The saga of Warren’s commemoration is inextricably bound up with the history of efforts to commemorate Warren’s brother, James Otis Jr., and eventual arguments that Warren’s work deserved recognition in its own right. We first see gendered politics at play as Warren’s real accomplishments were consistently overshadowed by …

Improving Academic Engagement And Task Completion Using Antecedent Physical Exercise In An Elementary School Classroom, Grace N. Maxwell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effectiveness of antecedent physical activity interventions in enhancing academic engagement and task completion among first-grade students displaying off-task behaviors. The research involved three student participants from a first grade general education classroom. An ABAB reversal design was used to assess the impact of the intervention. The intervention, implemented by the classroom teacher, consisted of short, structured physical activities conducted before targeted academic periods. Results revealed significant improvements in both academic engagement and task completion following the implementation of the physical activity interventions. The findings suggest that incorporating brief physical activities into daily classroom routines can lead …

Specification, Enforcement, And Measurement Of Integrity Policies, Kevin Dennis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The first step to improving an organization's security posture is to define the organization's security goals. At a technical level, these goals are expressed as security policies. Security policies are predicates over programs, that return true or false if the program adheres to the policy. Defining these policies correctly is thus essential to ensuring the overarching security goals are met, but it is often quite difficult to translate human-oriented goals into their technical policy counterparts. In addition, these policies must be specified so that they are enforceable while minimizing false positives and false negatives. Integrity policies, which specify how data …

Enhancing Novice Teachers’ Social Justice Practices Through Critical Professional Learning: A Critical Participatory Action Research Study, Brianna C. Connors

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a crucial need for social justice-oriented educators in today's classrooms given the growing population of America's multicultural student population. Social justice-oriented teacher preparation programs (TPPs) have contributed significantly to shaping the pedagogies of teacher candidates, better equipping them to serve all students. The transition period following teacher candidates' engagement in the TPPs, however, presents political, contextual, and personal challenges for novice teachers (NTs) dedicated to teaching for social justice. This research presents findings from a critical participatory action research (CPAR) study delving into the experiences of NTs engaged in critical professional learning (CPL). The purpose of this research …

Exploring The Enlightenment Function Of Thought Experiments: Unveiling An Underdeveloped Dimension Absent In Typologies, Dominique Greene-Sanders

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thought experiments (TEs) are imaginative tools used across various fields to explore theoretical and practical issues. This dissertation focuses on the application of TEs in ethics, specifically emphasizing the underdeveloped enlightenment function. The traditional use of TEs in ethics often aims to clarify, support, or refute specific claims through an argumentative structure. However, this work argues that TEs also play a key role in enhancing ethical competence by acknowledging the complexities of ethical dilemmas and fostering moral skills like critical thinking, moral reasoning, and ethical awareness through non-argumentative and non-theory-centric means.

The dissertation begins by explaining the nature and historical …

The Effects Of Scenic Pictures And Progressive Time Delay On Intraverbal Responding, Breanna White

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of tact prompts to establish single responses to questions about intraverbal categories. Scenic pictures, a visual depiction of multiple exemplars belonging to a stimulus class, may increase the likelihood that individuals will emit multiple responses when answering categorical questions, and promote response variability. The purpose of this study was to extend Glodowski and Rodriguez (2019) by evaluating the effectiveness of a larger array of visual stimuli and progressive time delay on varied intraverbal responding with individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder between the ages of 8 and 17 within a private school for individuals with …

Subtropical Estuarine Ecosystems Display Both Long-Term Stability And Change, Garrett L. Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Subtropical estuaries often support abundant and diverse faunal assemblages, but it is unclear how these productive ecosystems are responding to climate change. In the eastern Gulf of Mexico, estuarine faunal assemblages have been sampled for decades as part of a fisheries-independent long-term monitoring program. I assessed trends in submerged aquatic vegetation, water temperature, and the abundance, richness, and structure of faunal assemblages over more than two decades in four estuarine systems using this dataset. I used both univariate and multivariate analyses to quantify and describe the dynamics of these habitat and faunal variables. Further, I separated my analyses for summer …

Us Elementary Teachers’ Perspectives With The Use Of Rubrics In Elementary Classrooms: A Shift From Traditional Assessment To Alternative Assessment, Roaa Adel Alajaji

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to explore US elementary teachers’ perceptions of their experiences using rubrics as a tool for student self-assessment and metacognition (assessment for learning) to improve elementary students’ achievement and their instructional decision-making at a private American elementary school in South Florida. The constructivist learning theory by Piaget (1970) and Vygotsky (1978), which emphasized that knowledge is best gained through the interaction of experiences and ideas in one’s mind and the interaction with others, framed the study. Three semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight elementary teachers: three third-grade teachers, three fourth-grade teachers, and two fifth-grade teachers. Using thematic …

Did I Do That?: Lived Experience And Media Representation Of The Awkward Black Girl, Kendra Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For my thesis project I will introduce the Awkward Black Girl as a new race gender script. Though there are minor nuances of the Awkward Black Girl within television, Issa Rae’s performance of the Awkward Black Girl in Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and the HBO hit series Insecure remains prevalent to contemporary media representations. Though there is limited scholarship within the field of Communication available about the Awkward Black Girl, most of the scholarship consists of analysis and discourse centering Rae’s portrayal in her web series and television show. I explore Quinta Brunson’s portrayal of the Awkward Black Girl …

Effects Of Intercultural Interactions In 3d Virtual World On Efl Students’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, Foreign Language Anxiety, And Motivation, Umi H. Saidah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Virtual worlds (VWs) as emerging technologies have been perceived as positive by students for foreign language (FL) learning. VW affordances of presence and immersion have enabled FL researchers and practitioners to design and develop classroom-like environments in virtual settings, allowing authentic intercultural interactions from different geographical locations, in a variety of languages. This study conducted mixed methods research to deliver English lessons via an immersive 3D VW for avatar-context-avatar interactions via voice chat with a view to improving ICC necessary for effective intercultural interaction. The avatar-avatar interactions were between a native English-speaking instructor and English as a foreign language (EFL) …

Causes And Consequences Of Word Skipping During Reading: Evidence From The Co-Registration Of Eye Movements And Eeg, Sara Milligan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Skilled readers skip approximately one third of the words in the text while reading for comprehension (Rayner, 1998). Therefore, a prominent question for decades among reading and language researchers has been how people are able to recognize words and comprehend text without even looking at all of the words. Eye tracking studies have established that some information about an upcoming word in the text can be identified while still looking at the previous word (Rayner, 1975), but it remains an open question whether words that are skipped are thoroughly identified or if skipping decisions are based on shallow heuristic factors, …

Differences In Speech Patterns Produced By Spanish-English Language Learners During Single-Language And Mixed-Language Remote Academic Vocabulary Instruction, Ester Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Individuals with lower proficiency in a second language tend to produce more disfluent speech patterns in the second language. Speech disfluencies refer to interruptions in the forward flow of speech and are distinct from the colloquial use of “fluency,” to characterize knowledge of a language. Prior research indicates that some speech disfluency patterns may be more common among Spanish-English bilingual children, who tend to produce more mazes (fragments of an utterance) and syllable repetitions than their monolingual peers. These patterns have been attributed to 1) acquiring a new language; 2) the influence of Spanish as a first language (L1) on …

De La Escuela Al Hogar: Centering Latine And Hispanic Student Perspectives On Caregiver Involvement In The Well-Being Promotion Program, Nicole G. Pacateque Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Latine students often face systemic barriers to accessing appropriate mental health support, highlighting the importance of culturally responsive school-based interventions to address mental health disparities (Gonzalez et al., 2022; Jackson, 2021). Although many interventions incorporate caregiver involvement, limited research has explored how Latine youth experience and make meaning of caregiver engagement in school-based mental health programs (Hansen et al., 2021; Wildmon et al., 2024). This mixed-methods study centers Latine student voices by examining how Latine students experienced and interpreted caregiver engagement in the Well-Being Promotion Program (WBPP), a school-based positive psychology intervention implemented during the 2023–2024 school year across six …

High School Acceleration And First-Year College Student Success: Do Advanced Placement Or Dual Enrollment Influence College Persistence Differently, Serge W. Desir Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment taken by high school students expanded over the past few decades due concerted efforts to make the accelerated mechanisms more available to historically underrepresented groups and to reduce the cost of higher education. Supported by years of research correlating improved first-year college performance to enrollment in such programs, AP and Dual Enrollment also allow students to earn college credit prior to enrolling at post-secondary institutions, further enhanced their appeal. Despite this enhanced popularity, little research has been done on whether there are any indications of different academic outcomes by the accelerated …

Development Of Novel Analytical Methods For The Investigation Of Mammalian Tissues And Cells, Grace A. Binder

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation endeavors to advance the frontiers of analytical chemistry by addressing critical challenges across three distinct chapters. In the first chapter, the focus is on the evaluation of digestion methods for the analysis of trace metals in mammalian tissues and the Standard Reference Material NIST 1577c. The primary goal is to optimize methodologies, laying the groundwork for reliable trace metal analysis and furthering our understanding of their roles in biological systems.

Transitioning into the realm of immunomodulation, the second chapter elucidates immune response, disease and treatment through the optimization and discovery of STING modulators, utilizing the luciferase assay for …

Time-Scale Of Groundwater Recharge In Coastal Plain Soils, Qing Du

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Understanding and modeling the timing and magnitude of groundwater recharge fromrainfall infiltration through vadose zone percolation is important for many reasons but especially because the flux is being acted on by root zone evapotranspiration (ET) and very little of rainfall infiltration ever becomes water table recharge. This study elaborates on the considerable time of the wetting front arrival and ultimate bulk recharge of rainfall infiltration in shallow water table fine-sandy soils typical of coastal plain environments such as Florida. Calibrated Hydrus-1D modeling of Florida (Myakka) soil was evaluated at varying depths of water table and hydraulic conductivities to bracket the …

A Republic Of Pawprints: The Rise And Reign Of The Alaskan Sled Dog, 1870-1970, Christopher David Adkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation charts the career of the Alaskan sled dog: how it was used as an engine of development, how it became a symbol for early American Alaska, and how it fell victim to obsolescence as newer and faster means of conveyance became available. The figure of the sled dog in the Arctic is complex. Because it was closer to the wolf in phenotype both it, and Alaska, were buffeted by the same White settler expectations and Darwinian chauvinism which afflicted its Indigenous peoples. This would intensify during the baptisms by fire of the gold rushes. Dog abuse – overwork, …

Platonic Intelligence And The United States Constitution, Elizabeth M. Iglesias

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation demonstrates the Platonic logic that informs the order of value and design elements of the U.S. Constitution as defended in the Federalist Papers. The dissertation has four movements that reveal the Platonic logic of the U.S. Constitution. The first takes up the repudiation of tyranny in defense of a way of being called ordered liberty in both Plato and the Federalist. The second takes up the commitment to the supremacy of intelligence over power, an order of value that is distinctly Platonic and permeates the design logic of the U.S. Constitution. Intelligence in this context is understood as …

Seminoles, Soldiers, And Settlers: Identity And Power On The Florida Frontier, Jean Louise Lammie

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project uses an historical archaeological approach to analyze the processes of cultural negotiation between disparate social groups living in a remote borderland in the early to mid-nineteenth centuries. Florida, first colonized by the Spanish in the 1500s was passed to the United States in 1821 as part of the young nation’s nascent Manifest Destiny. The Seminoles experienced multiple colonial conflicts, dealt with new diseases, and selected aspects of European culture to incorporate into their daily practices of lifeways.

Archaeological studies of culture change tend to focus on the product of colonial interactions rather than the processes of change that …

Narrative Language Assessment And Intervention: Applications With Children With And Without Disabilities, Norah M. Almubark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Narrative is the art of conveying a sequence of causally and temporally linked events through monologic telling. Various functions can be served through narratives including sharing experiences, expressing ideas, providing entertainment, and imparting cultural or social values. Narrative language represents an authentic type of language that is useful for assessment and intervention because it can be analyzed according to content and form. The ability to use complex narrative language and produce quality narratives is associated with long-term academic and social benefits (Uccelli et al., 2019; Suggate et al, 2018). Given this crucial link, narrative language is suitable for child language …

Local Ecological Knowledge, Education, And Bilingualism: Ethnography Of A Stem Program For Elementary Students In Southwestern Florida, Barbara D. Herrera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In response to the limited inclusion of cultural relevant pedagogy in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) centered educational programs, this study illustrates dynamics that encourage inclusivity and provide a space for minority students to develop self-efficacy while also exposing them to formal modes of STEM knowledge. Elementary level English/Spanish speaking children were taught local ecological knowledge (LEK) during a STEM summer program in a city in Southwestern Florida. The use of participant observation, group interviews with the students, and interviews with the educators allowed for an in-depth analysis of the program and the established goals. This study provides insight …

Rate Of Latine Caregiver Involvement In The Well-Being Promotion Program Using Culturally And Linguistically Responsive Communication Practices, Nicole G. Pacateque Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Latine and Hispanic youth tend to have higher rates of mental health disturbances in school compared to non-Latine youth, yet they are less likely to receive support (Alegría et al., 2008). Additionally, Latine families are more likely to terminate treatment for youth early due to negative stigma, lack of culturally appropriate mental health care, racial and ethnic discrimination, and linguistic and cultural barriers involving care (Kapke & Gerdes, 2016). Best practices in school-based mental health services often involve including caregivers in care (Hoover et al., 2019) as it can benefit outcomes of treatment for the child (Richards et al., 2007). …

Advancing Text Summarization And Classification: Deep Insights From Transformer-Based Statistical Learning, Kun Bu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a part of human's daily life nowadays. Machine Learning (ML) as one aspect from AI has been rapidly developing during the past two decades, especially from the statistical learning approaches, which emphasized the use of probability and statistics to model data, such as Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for classification and regression tasks to the ensemble learning techniques, such as Random Forest, Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM), and stacking. Ensemble learning has evolved into a pivotal concept in contemporary machine learning, empowering practitioners to amalgamate multiple models to enhance generalization, accuracy, and robustness. As the field of machine …

The Thermodynamics And Structure Of Tumor Suppressor P53 And Helical Mutants Binding To Inhibitors Mdm2 And Mdmx At The Primary And Secondary Sites, Pirada Serena Higbee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

p53 is an intrinsically disordered protein that is a tumor suppressor. The transactivation domain is split into two parts (TAD1 and TAD2). These TADs bind to inhibitors MDM2, and a homolog, MDMX, but TAD1 binds with greater affinity. MDM2 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that leads to the degradation of p53. MDMX is not an E3 ubiquitin ligase, but it does prevent p53 from binding to DNA, thus preventing its tumor suppressor role.

Previous research showed that increasing p53 helicity by mutating prolines to alanines increased p53's helicity but not the length of the helix. The increase in helicity increased …

Stereotyped Non-Stereotypicality: Exploring Positive Effects Of Non-Stereotypical Gender Portrayals On Consumer Perceptions, Veronika Ponomarenko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research attempts to identify contexts where non-stereotypical gender portrayals may have positive effects on consumer perceptions. It tests the perceived self-expressiveness of non-stereotypical gender portrayals as the mediating mechanism behind these effects as well as other alternative mechanisms in a comprehensive experiment. The analysis results show that an interpretation of gender through the theoretical lens of extravagance rather than self-expressiveness seems to be more appropriate. This study also introduces an overarching theoretical framework of metacognitive experiences that may explain the processes driving the effects of non-stereotypical gender portrayals on consumer perceptions. Finally, this research explores different types of gender …

Hidden Monstrosities: The Transformation Of Medieval Characters And Conventions In Shakespeare's Romances, Lynette Kristine Kuliyeva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When Shakespeare’s First Folio was published in 1623, it was entitled Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, the title designating the three genres under which his plays would be categorized for the next 250 years. Later, Irish critic Edward Dowden took it upon himself to restructure the Shakespearean canon by adding plays that were not previously published in the First Folio, reclassifying the genres of several of the plays, and establishing a new genre to accompany the previous three: romance. Within this fourth generic category of romance, Dowden situated four of the Shakespearean plays: Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; …

Spatial Patterns Of Building Damages And Associated Socio-Economic Factors By Hurricane Ian, Md Zakaria Salim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Literature shows that communities with different socio-economic conditions suffer from different levels of damage in disasters. In addition to the physical intensity of hazards, such disparities are also related to varying abilities to prepare for and respond to natural hazards. The study analyzes the spatial patterns of building damage in Hurricane Ian in 2022 and investigates the socio-economic disparities related to building damage. Specifically, this study employs NASA’s Damage Proxy Map (DPM2) to analyze Ian's spatial patterns of building damage. Then, it uses statistical analysis to assess the relationship between building damage and various physical and socio-economic variables at building …

Making The Invisible Visible: (Re)Envisioning The Black Body In Contemporary Adaptations Of Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Urshela Wiggins Mckinney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A trend in neo-Victorian adaptations -- both novels and films-- that reimage, and at times reinterpret, canonical Victorian texts is the inclusion of nonwhite, mainly Black, perspectives, which has gained considerable traction in recent years. A vital aspect of this trend is the purposeful attempt to re-establish iconic Victorian characters through Black characterizations. In doing so, filmmakers and authors are reinvigorating familiar texts to provide an inclusionary space for the Black experience previously ignored in the original texts. These adaptations, which revisit and often reinterpret Victorian fiction, have undergone notable transformations by incorporating Black characters to fill voids in traditional …

“Manne, For Thy Loue Wolde I Not Lette”: Eucharistic Portrayals Of Caritas In Medieval And Early Modern English Literature And Drama 1350-1650, Rachel Tanski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The religious Reformation in England heralded significant changes in Christian theology, clerical and lay practices, and textual interpretation. These sweeping changes encompassed nearly all avenues of intellectual thought, and debates ranged from whether or not religious texts should be written in the traditional latin or the vernacular, thereby determining whether interpretive authority remained within the clergy or became available to laypersons, to arguments over very specific aspects of theological doctrine, such as the substantive nature of the Eucharist. These debates were not confined among Church officials; politicians, monarchs, commoners, and literary authors engaged in these discussions and had been doing …