Digital Commons Network^™

Ascertaining The Growth Of A Company A System Dynamics Approach, Fakir Mohideen Noor Mohideen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Business is often about creating change for other businesses. At times, these changes affect only the company and at other times they affect the entire industry. There is a time in the life of a business when its fundamental way of functioning is questioned and is subjected to change. That change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights, or it might even signal the beginning of the end. This fundamental change in any business is known as an inflection point. Understanding the nature of its inflection point and responding to that point suitably will help to safeguard a …

Development Of A Knowledge Management Model In Large-Scale International Space Science Projects, Jose Luis Nunez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large-scale international science projects (LISPs) are those projects where two or more countries formally agree to cooperate toward the achievement of a scientific, research and development, or engineering goal. In general, only projects exceeding $1 billion U.S. are considered LISPs, so sheer size commands attention, and because they are so costly and visible, failure can lead to significant scientific, financial and political consequences. This researched focused on how 7 different critical success factors impacted the level of technical interface knowledge shared among international partners involved in a large-scale international space science project (LISSP) – the International Space Station (ISS), which …

Designing A Document Delivery System For Ucf S Interlibrary Loan Department, Abha Y. Trivedi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interlibrary Loan entails obtaining copies of library materials not found in the library's collection on behalf of the library's patrons (borrowing), as well as providing copies of library materials requested by other libraries (lending). The dynamic nature of today's library environment is well illustrated by the rapid changes occurring in the role of interlibrary loan. The vision statement of the University of Central Florida Library is: The library performs a central role of adding value to information for the academic community by creatively improving and providing information resources and services. The library strives to create an environment that encourages the …

Creating A Family-Centered Plan: Family Negotiation In Child Welfare, Margaret Severson, Kim Burns

Journal of Family Strengths

In this article, the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings for child welfare negotiations, assessment strategies useful in preparing for such negotiations, and practice implications for child protective service workers involved in the process are explored. Particular emphasis is given to the benefits of employing negotiation techniques in child welfare matters. The opportunities to use negotiation strategies are numerous in the child welfare arena. They range from formal mediation of an adoption plan, to family group conferencing of a placement issue, to negotiating a visitation and access plan with a parent. Common to all of these situations is the recognition that families …

Preserving Family: Themes From A Qualitative Study Of Kin Caregivers, Don Cohon, Lisa Hines, Bruce A. Cooper, Wendy Packman, Elizabeth Siggins

Journal of Family Strengths

This article presents themes from a qualitative study of 58 African American female kinship caregivers in San Francisco. Core concepts that emerged describe various paths along which children move into kin homes, and caregivers' mixed emotional reactions to becoming surrogate parents. Women also discussed multiple family roles they assumed after taking in children. Responses highlight three primary reasons for becoming caregivers that center on providing for and protecting these children—particularly from the perceived threat of the public foster care system—and ultimately preserving the family unit. Paradoxically, caregivers' reasons mirror the stated goals of the public foster care system, which they …

Heart And Soul: A New Rhythm For Clinical Externships, Leslie Larkin Cooney

St. Thomas Law Review

The message of Therapeutic Jurisprudence is simple - focus on emotional life and psychological well-being and practice law as a healing profession - but the application of Therapeutic Jurisprudence to clinical teaching can have far ranging results. "Lawyers trained to be professionals have not been trained in how to respond to the anxiety, hurt feelings, and other emotions ... ," Law students arriving today in our clinical education settings require extra attention to the development of interpersonal skills for a variety of reasons. This article explores the concepts and development of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and outlines the benefits derived from incorporating …

Practicing (And Teaching) Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Importing Social Work Principles And Techniques Into Clinical Legal Education, Susan L. Brooks

St. Thomas Law Review

Practicing Therapeutic Jurisprudence ("TJ") requires proponents to advance a particular normative framework. As a clinical social worker turned lawyer, who is now also a clinical law teacher, I believe strongly that the field of social work provides a useful framework for legal education and practice. As I will demonstrate through examples from my teaching and my students' practice experiences, the role of the clinical law teacher is uniquely and well suited to apply social work values, principles, concepts, and techniques. By importing these core social work elements into the clinical legal education, faculty can truly teach future lawyers to practice …

Adult Sexual Desire And The Best Interest Of The Child, Richard G. Wilkins, Trent Christensen, Eric Selden

St. Thomas Law Review

In Lofton v. Secretary of the Department of Children and Family Services, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit sustained Florida's legislative decision to restrict adoption to heterosexual married couples or unmarried individuals not engaged in homosexual conduct. The court rejected claims by prospective homosexual parents that Florida had impermissibly intruded upon their familial privacy rights, unconstitutionally burdened their right to private sexual intimacy, and - by treating homosexual applicants for adoption differently than heterosexual applicants - transgressed the commands of the Equal Protection Clause. The court properly rejected these contentions. All of the plaintiffs' claims ultimately …

Institutionalizing Service Learning In Higher Education: To Change Or Not To Change?, Paula Kay Reams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Trust, Risk, And Prior Knowledge On Consumer Preferences, Chad William Hinkle

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Examining Collaboration In The Classroom Through The Use Of Weblogs, Adam Michael Gutschmidt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the potential utility of weblogs within the classroom environment. The specific questions of interest surrounding use of weblogs in group projects included (1) influencing students’ anxiety related to group work, (2) assisting groups in meeting their expectations and achieving success, and (3) understanding how students perceived the weblog as a communicative tool within a small group context. Ninety undergraduate students attending a private Midwestern university participated in the study. All participants were enrolled in one of the multiple sections of the communication module course, Group Decision Making. Participants completed both a …

Exploring The Half-Life Of Internet Footnotes, Michael Bugeja, Daniela V. Dimitrova

Iowa Journal of Communication

Vanishing online references are becoming a problem for scholars. This exploratory study examines use of online citations, focusing on 2003 AEJMC conference papers accepted by the Communication Technology and Policy division. Authors analyze papers using URL reference addresses in bibliographies and document some 40% of online citations being unavailable a year later. Results show that .edu is the most stable domain. Error messages for "dead" URL addresses also are explored. Finally authors offer much needed recommendations for researchers who use Internet citations.

Unique And Ordinary Problems In Internet Research: Research Ethics, The Law, And Power Politics In Institutional Review, Mark D. Johns

Iowa Journal of Communication

While some regard Internet as public texts, much of interest to researchers is actually human social interaction, subject to institutional review. The law leaves much to the discretion of institutional review boards (IRBs). Reviews are influenced by concerns for protecting institutions from liability, negative publicity, or scrutiny from funding sources. This creates an "atmosphere of apprehension" for IRBs, and challenges Internet researchers, because their work demands innovative methods in a field unfamiliar to most IRBs. This paper is intended to offer both cautions to those anticipating internet research, as well as advice on dealing with the IRB.

"Dragonslaying." Review Of Democracy Defended, By G. Mackie, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

Early in the Iliad, the Achaians convene an assembly. There are a lot of them and they're unruly, too. "[Tihe place of their assembly was shaken, and the earth groaned / as the people took their positions and there was tumult. Nine heralds / shouting set about putting them in order, to make them cease their / clamour and listen to the kings beloved of Zeus."' Clutching the scepter that has come to him ultimately from Zeus, the very symbol of his right to speak and be heard, Agamemnon bitterly proposes that the Achaians give up. Nine years of struggle …

Screening Historical Sexualities: A Roundtable On Sodomy, South Africa, And Proteus, Noa Ben-Asher

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Proteus (2003; 100 min., Canada and South Africa) is a low-budget feature film, directed by John Greyson (Toronto) and Jack Lewis (Cape Town), that made the international rounds of “art cinema” and queer festivals in 2003 and 2004, with limited theatrical release in New York, Toronto, and other cities. The film advances Greyson’s and Lewis’s experiments with political essay-narrative forms both in their respective documentary, experimental, and dramatic videos dating back to the early 1980s (including Lewis’s Apostles of Civilized Vice [1999]) and in Greyson’s theatrical feature films beginning with Urinal in 1988. Based on an early-eighteenth-century court record, Proteus …

The Law And Culture Of The Apology In Korean Dispute Settlement (With Japan And The United States In Mind), Ilhyung Lee

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article addresses the apology in civil dispute settlement in Korea, Japan's neighbor across the East Sea, using the U.S.-Japan comparative discussion as a helpful frame of reference. Part I provides the necessary background on the meaning of the apology and the leading commentary along the U.S.-Japan axis, beginning with the work of Wagatsuma and Rosett. Culture appears in this discussion in two regards. First, a question arises as to whether the very meaning of the apology as noted in the commentary reflects the U.S. cultural orientation, or instead has universal application. Second, some argue that cultural norms explain the …

University Of Michigan Law School Faculty, 2005-2006, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Biographies of the University of Michigan Law School faculty.

Programming For Hiv Prevention In South African Schools: A Report On Program Implementation, Priscilla Reddy, Shegs James, Ann P. Mccauley

HIV and AIDS

An evaluation study conducted in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, provides important insights into whether learners who participated in a fact-based, interactive course had more knowledge about HIV risks, prevention, and care practices; more positive attitudes toward prevention practices and people living with HIV and AIDS; and a higher prevalence of reported safe behaviors than comparable learners who did not participate in the course. Results show that the Life Skills Grade 9 Curriculum had a positive impact of students’ knowledge of HIV/AIDS, attitudes about abstinence, and intention to use condoms. There was, however, no evidence of increased adoption of such protective …

The Disintegration Of Modern Culture. Nietzsche And The Information Age, Edgar Landgraf

German Faculty Publications

The article revisits Nietzsche’s provocative claim that the Enlightenment’s emphasis on education and open exchange of information promotes rather than prevents the “loss of meaning” from a media studies and systems theoretical perspective. Nietzsche in fact ties what he understands as modern culture’s disintegration to information-processing modes of modern society, that is, as effects of the modern educational system and the mass media (at his time, the printing press). The article argues that while Nietzsche is an astute observer of modernity, his call for a return to a more authentic culture (with its daunting political implications) is indicative of Nietzsche’s …

Gender Differences In Coping: Implications For Depression And Crime, Amanda Howerton

Doctoral Dissertations

It is a common cultural belief that women employ emotion and passive focused coping methods more frequently than men. Likewise, most empirical evidence supports the idea that women are more likely to cope by modifying their emotional responses to stress, whereas males most often use and are more proficient with the problem solving approach (Billings and Moos 1984; Endler and Parker 1990; Milkie and Thoits 1993; Pearlin and Schooler 1978; Stone and Neale 1984). Despite considerable theoretical and empirical attention to these issues, there are still several gaps that remain in our understanding of the ways in which gender and …

College Students' Development Of Social Support And Its Relationship To Pre -Orientation Experiences, Brent J. Bell

Doctoral Dissertations

The work of any life transition involves specific tasks, often including the re-establishment of social support in a variety of forms (Weiss, 1974). College students are particularly affected by transition, often disrupting established support systems while transitioning into adulthood. To assist with this transition, campuses offer a number of services (e.g., admissions/alumni programs, campus visits, pre-orientation programs, first-year orientation, first-year seminars). Such services are defined in this study as Comprehensive Transitional Programs (CTP). Little is known about how CTP impact social support. This study focused on adapting the Campus Focused Social Provisions Scale (CF-SPS), as an instrument to measure social …

Visualizing The Invisible: The Role Of Race And White Racial Identity In The Teaching And Pedagogy Of New Esol Teachers, Tonda Liggett

Doctoral Dissertations

The nature of my dissertation inquiry and my overall argument explore the role that white racial identity has in the teaching and pedagogy of new ESOL teachers. Throughout this dissertation I argue for better understandings of race to raise awareness of how knowledge systems are socially constructed to support a level of inequality that disadvantages ESOL students of color. As ESOL teachers begin their work, I question how their white racial identity and cultural positionality influence their perceptions of diverse groups of English language learners and how these perceptions influence their teaching.

I focus on the social construction of knowledge …

"Woke Up This Morning With My Mind On Freedom": Women And The Struggle For Black Equality In Louisiana, Shannon L. Frystak

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of female civil rights activists in the black struggle for equality in Louisiana. Drawing on the fields of history, sociology, political science, and gender studies, this project demonstrates that women were indispensable figures in the freedom struggle in Louisiana throughout the twentieth century, and highlights their roles as organizers, participants, and leaders.

The project focuses on the entire state of Louisiana, but more specifically in areas where civil rights organizations concentrated their efforts. While many historical studies of the movement begin with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, this …

Does Religion Matter? A Test Of Classical Theories Of Deviance On Two Different Religious Types, Jill Hume Harrison

Doctoral Dissertations

This study uniquely examines two religious types and a control group of nonreligious respondents in relation to two classical theories of crime and deviant behavior. The first objective of this research is to determine whether a conventional religion, Methodism, deters crime and deviant behavior better than an unconventional religious type, Shambhala Buddhism, and a control group of nonreligious respondents. The second objective of this research is to examine the predictive capacities of measures for Hirschi's (1969) social control theory and Sutherland's (1947) differential association theory. Constructs for these theories are used to determine the magnitude of mediating and moderating effects …

Indians And Immigrants: Survivance Stories Of Literacies, Joyce Rain Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

This item is not available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.

This project stems from my mixedblood heritage and from a community of mixedblood scholars. In this text, I relate stories of the early colonization of Southern New England, of the zones of contact between whites (primarily English) and Indians (primarily Massachusett or Wampanoag). I offer perspectives on competing views of literacy and explored texts translated from Massachusett Algonquin to see how Indians used writing to enact rhetorics of survivance which challenged the prevailing assumptions of the dominant culture. Within these texts we see how Indians continued to define themselves in …

Coming Together Or Going It Alone: How Resource -Dependent Communities Survive In Newfoundland And Labrador, Barbara Moriarty Snowadzky

Doctoral Dissertations

Rural communities world wide struggle to maintain economic viability as their populations shrink from lower birth rates and outmigration. When such locales have been dependent on a declining natural resource base, the challenge to survive is even greater. In 1992 the Canadian government announced a moratorium on cod fishing in the Atlantic Maritime provinces, which resulted in an upheaval of economic, social and cultural ways that were centered on the cod fishery for centuries. This research examined the social, economic and political history of two clusters of communities caught up in the crisis---on coastal Labrador and on the Avalon Peninsula …

Boundary -Work In United States Psychology: A Study Of Three Interdisciplinary Programs, Michael J. Root

Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1970 and 2000 scientists from three interdisciplinary programs---evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and chaos theory---contributed to changing U.S. psychology's disciplinary boundaries. These interdisciplinary scientists brought about this change through their conceptual, material, and social practices. Psychologists used "boundary-work" as a means to control the influx of these various practices. Boundary-work connotes activities that promote scientists' epistemic authority in society. Boundary-work also serves to demarcate a science's particular collection of knowledge from other collections. Through their boundary-work activities, various psychologists resisted some of the practices of these interdisciplinary scientists while making accommodations for other types of practices. These resistances and accommodations …

Faculty Perceptions Of The Effects Of Collective Bargaining Agreements On Their Professional Roles: The New England Public Higher Education Experience, Nancy J S Hamer

Doctoral Dissertations

This study, a combination of quantitative and artifact analysis, examined how New England public college and university faculty perceived their professional concerns were affected by working under a collective bargaining agreement. The professional concerns, derived from the pertinent literature, included the following: the ability of the faculty to effectively influence who joined the faculty ranks; their powers to determine the curriculum, with their related instructional practices/delivery systems, and the setting of degree requirements; determining their teaching, scholarship, and service requirements; assuring the exercise of academic freedom, and reasonable shared governance.

Coupled with these professional concerns were three research questions that …

Parenting In The Age Of Prozac: Parental Decision -Making In Social Context, Nena F. Stracuzzi

Doctoral Dissertations

Within recent years, prescriptions written for children's emotional and behavioral problems have increased significantly. Although this issue has garnered a great deal of public notice, it has received scant sociological attention. In this study, I investigate parents of children with problems, and those without, in an effort to gain insights into the social contexts that shape decisions around diagnoses and treatment. The bases of the theoretical underpinnings of this research are situated at the intersection of medicalization and mother-blame.

Survey data were collected from 235 parents in a single New Hampshire community. Respondents answered several open-ended questions on the questionnaire …

Finding The Right Time And Place: A Case Study Comparison Of The Expression Of Offender Remorse In Traditional Justice And Restorative Justice Contexts, Susan J. Szmania, Daniel E. Mangis

Marquette Law Review

No abstract provided.