Digital Commons Network^™

Considerations For Delivery Of Online Professional Development Courses For Childcare Professionals, Heather Marie Bauer Olsen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

In an age of increasing accountability, childcare professionals are held responsible for providing young children quality early care and education. The unfortunate reality is that it is challenging for childcare professionals to pursue training because of the cost of training, family responsibilities, and scheduling conflicts. The Internet has the capability to knock down those barriers in the childcare profession, and has expanded the availability of information and has created avenues for teaching and learning.

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the factors that will give online professional development instructors a better insight into the characteristics …

Psychopathic Traits And Social-Cognitive Processes In Aggressive Youth, Colleen Morris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychopathy is associated with severe and violent aggressive behaviors, poor treatment outcomes and high rates of recidivism. In youth, conduct problems and callous/unemotional characteristics are associated with characteristics of adulthood psychopathy. Downward extending adult criteria to youth is problematic. However, there is substantial evidence that adults with psychopathy traits began that developmental trajectory in childhood. This study adds to the developing literature clarifying the construct of psychopathy in youth, including the nature of callous/unemotional traits and the relationship to social-cognitive processes. Results indicate the callous/unemotional trait significantly predicted empathic concern, perspective taking, cognitive dysregulation, and outcome values in obtaining a …

Toward The "Tipping Point" Decision Aids And Informed Patient Choice, Jaime S. King, Annette M. O'Connor, John E. Wennberg, France Legare, Hilary A. Llewellyn-Thomas, Benjamin W. Moulton, Karen R. Sepucha, Andrea G. Sodano

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sacrament Of Deification: The Eucharistic Vision Of Alexander Schmemann In Light Of The Doctrine Of Theosis, Janet Puppo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study posits that the Eastern Christian doctrine of theosis, or deification, informs, enhances and illuminates Eucharistic understanding. It argues that the Eucharistic vision of Orthodox priest and theologian, Father Alexander Schmemann, offers the most cogent evidence in support of the intrinsic link between the Eucharist and the doctrine of theosis. Based on Schmemann's observations that a Eucharistic crisis exists in the Church as a result of liturgical indifference and secularism, this study seeks to retrieve the patristic vision of the Eucharist that synthesized the world, the Church and the Kingdom of God in an interdependent and harmonic balance. The …

The Postmodern Turn In Higher Education: Incorporating Narrative Literacy Into The Discipline Of Communication, Leeanne Marian Bell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The consensus across the curriculum of the centuries is that education is imperative and important, a 'good' for public life and a means by which to attain the good life. This dissertation will focus on a constructive hermeneutic that allows one to ask: 'What is the conversation taking place during this historical moment in education, and how can communication and rhetorical studies provide one potential answer through communicative engagement with our postmodern moment?' This question, the focus of this project, rests on the need to recognize narrative multiplicity in the classroom, particularly in the communication classroom in higher education. This …

Reflective Analysis Of The Role Spirituality Plays In Educational Leaders' Coping Successes With A Focus On Gender Divergence, Bettie Bertram

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between spirituality and the ability to cope as an educational leader. The role gender plays was also analyzed to determine if there were any differences in the ability to cope as an educational leader founded on gender. The sample for this study consisted of 65 executive leaders from the public educational sector ranging in age from 32 to 64 years of age. The sample was composed of a mix of women and men, the majority of participants Caucasian. The participants selected were college graduates with at least 12 years of …

The Experience Of Transitioning To The Caregiving Role For A Family Member With Alzheimer's Disease Or A Related Dementia, Kathleen Czekanski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alzheimer's disease is a chronic, debilitating disease that currently affects approximately 5.1 million Americans (Alzheimer's Association 2007). The majority of these individuals are being cared for at home by family caregivers who are known to suffer from more depression and burden than any other group of caregivers. The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to explore the lived experience of transitioning to the role of caregiver for a family member with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia. The study followed purposeful sampling and eight women and two men with a mean age of 66.3 participated in the study. These …

Patient Experiences With The New Nurse Practitioner Role In New Brunswick Canada, Trudean Hahn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The role of nurse practitioner (NP) has been flourishing in the US since the late 1960's. In Canada, the implementation of the role was slower to get established and has experienced a new thrust in recent years with shortages of family physicians and the implementation of new NP programs. The role of the NP was given royal assent in the province of New Brunswick, Canada in June, 2002 and the first NPs were hired in 2003. The purpose of this interpretive description study was to examine patient responses to this new role of NP in New Brunswick. Purposeful sampling was …

Challenges In The Application Of Geometric Constraint Models, C. R. Mcclain, Ethan P. White, A. H. Hurlbert

Biology Faculty Publications

Discerning the processes influencing geographic patterns of species richness remains one of the central goals of modern ecology. Traditional approaches to exploring these patterns have focused on environmental and ecological correlates of observed species richness. Recently, some have suggested these approaches suffered from the lack of an appropriate null model that accounts for species’ ranges being constrained to occur within a bounded domain. Proponents of these null geometric constraint models (GCMs), and the mid-domain effect these models produce, argue their utility in identifying meaningful gradients in species richness. This idea has generated substantial debate. Here we discuss what we believe …

A Comparison Of Anxiety Levels Among Women In Mixed Gender Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities And Women-Only Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities, Veronica I. Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether women who participate in a mixed gender residential substance abuse treatment facility experience more general anxiety during treatment than do women in a women-only setting and whether there a difference in the general anxiety levels of women in a women-only substance abuse treatment facility whether children are present or not. The voluntary participants of the study included 64 women who were selected from 4 residential treatment settings, 2 mixed gendered and 2 women-only, 1 with women and children. The women were asked to complete the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) that …

Is There A Place For Sexual Difference In Ernesto Spinelli's Existential Phenomenological Psychology? An Irigarayan Response To The Work Of Ernesto Spinelli, Aloysius Joseph

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My critique begins with the philosopher-psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray's claim that all inter-subjective relations are subtended by sexual difference, and that forgetting this is ignoring a foundational aspect of human relations. For Irigaray, sexual difference is not mediated by biology or some ontological difference that culture identifies as "man" or "woman," but a particular relation to the body and to language that structures inter-subjectivity. I draw from the work of Ernesto Spinelli, as he is a contemporary scholar-practitioner of existential phenomenological psychology who is particularly attuned to the constitution of inter-subjectivity in therapeutic praxis. I began with Spinelli's critique of contemporary …

The Impact Of Organizational Culture, Feminist Theory And Leadership Of The First Seven Presidents On The Historical Development Of Mercyhurst College (1926-1972), Mary Lee Lynch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The religious heritage and ideals of many American Catholic colleges and universities are associated with the orders of women religious that established women's colleges in the 19th century and served them through the 20th century. The social histories of their individual colleges are just beginning to be written. This study provides historical information on the first seven Sister of Mercy presidents of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. It searches out the role each of these presidents played not just in maintaining the culture of the institution but also in making significant adaptations to it. The study focuses on female centered …

The Documentation And Preservation Of Art-In-Architecture Of Michigan: The Section Of Fine Arts Projects, Cheryl Ann Chidester

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The Section of Fine Arts’ Art-in-Architecture program created public and permanent cultural artifacts that expressed and recorded American beliefs, values, and stories for future generations. Many of these artworks have been saved. Sadly, others have been neglected, mistreated, or forgotten. This project focuses on The Section’s post office art installations in Michigan. The Section of Fine Arts, one of FDR’s New Deal programs of the Depression era, operated under the auspices of the Treasury Department. The program utilized symbols of the common man to tie together a nation’s scattered and often isolated communities, to promote a common heritage and purpose, …

Acquisition And Retention Of Cpr Knowledge And Skills For Junior Level Baccalaureate Nursing Students, Andrea Ackermann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The acquisition and retention of CPR knowledge and skills has been a topic of concern for the past 20 years and there is concern that severe deterioration of knowledge and skills has been evident in only a few weeks after training. The use of human patient simulation (HPS) scenarios has been beneficial in teaching a variety of nursing skills in a risk-free environment. This type of training has been recommended by nursing educators but there is no evidence of increased acquisition and retention of CPR skills for nursing students using HPS scenario.

A quasi-experimental design was used to compare the …

Fatigue's Influence On Workload, Situation Awareness, And Performance In A Military Simulation Of Combat, Carlotta M. Boone

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Military operations routinely require military personnel to consistently perform their duties over several hours or days. Tasks that require prolonged work can lead to mental fatigue and decreased performance. The transactional model proposes that individuals cope with changes in the environment and maintain performance. This ability to cope is determined by factors of the environment and the individual's personality. One environmental factor that can influence coping is extended task performance. This study examined the effect of extended task performance and its interaction with task difficulty. Participants interacted with the military simulation game Command and Conquer: Generals™ for three hours. They …

Generational Differences Among Community College Students In Their Evaluation Of Academic Cheating, Kathleen E. Wotring

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

Values development is an important part of the mission of community colleges, and upholding academic integrity is one way in which colleges advance this mission. Community colleges serve a multigenerational student body, more diverse than most four-year institutions of higher education, and different generational cohort groups hold different values and attitudes. The purpose of this study was to determine whether community college students varied by generation in their evaluation of academic activities as cheating, and to further determine whether such variation interacted with demographic variables and the extent to which personal morality is grounded in a religious belief system. Based …

Neighborhood Defined Feature Selection Strategy For Improved Face Recognition In Different Sensor Modalitie, Satyanadh Gundimada

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A novel feature selection strategy for improved face recognition in images with variations due to illumination conditions, facial expressions, and partial occlusions is presented in this dissertation. A hybrid face recognition system that uses feature maps of phase congruency and modular kernel spaces is developed. Phase congruency provides a measure that is independent of the overall magnitude of a signal, making it invariant to variations in image illumination and contrast. A novel modular kernel spaces approach is developed and implemented on the phase congruency feature maps. Smaller sub-regions from a predefined neighborhood within the phase congruency images of the training …

Development Of Fast, Distributed Computational Schemes For Full Body Bio-Models And Their Application To Novel Action Potential Block In Nerves Using Ultra-Short, High Intensity Electric Pulses, Ashutosh Mishra

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

An extremely robust and novel scheme for computing three-dimensional, time-dependent potential distributions in full body bio-models is proposed, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first of its kind. This simulation scheme has been developed to employ distributed computation resources, to achieve a parallelized numerical implementation for enhanced speed and memory capability. The other features of the numerical bio-model included in this dissertation research, are the ability to incorporate multiple electrodes of varying shapes and arbitrary locations. The parallel numerical tool also allows for user defined, current or potential stimuli as the excitation input. Using the available computation …

Jurisprudential Schizophrenia: On Form And Function In Islamic Finance, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Chicago Journal of International Law

This Article is divided into three parts, excluding this Introduction. In part II, I briefly discuss the contemporary practice of Islamic finance and the interpretive principles that gave rise to it. Part III explains precisely why, from the standpoint of potential investors such as my father, this practice is deeply, ontologically flawed. Part IV sets forth another model of an Islamic financial institution, based on functional approaches to the jurisprudence, and explains the benefits provided by such an institution.

The Emerging Culture Of Health Care: Improving End-Of-Life Care Through Collaboration And Conflict Engagement Among Health Care Professionals, Debra Gerardi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Spiritual Leadership As An Effective Leadership Style For The Public School Superintendent, Sherri Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Historically, the job of a public school superintendent has been to manage the operations of the district. With the pressures and changes in today's world, there is a requirement for school leaders to command more skills than merely management skills. In order to understand what skills effective school leaders need, more research into effective leadership techniques and skills is necessary. More current research has begun to study a higher moral method of leadership, one in which the leader allows his spirituality to guide all of his decisions and relationships. The study of spiritual leadership focused on education, specifically, the superintendent, …

The Elgamal Cryptosystem Is Better Than Th Rsa Cryptosystem For Mental Poker, Ipek Tetikoglu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cryptosystems are one of the most important parts of secure online poker card games. However, there is no research comparing the RSA Cryptosystem (RC) and Elgamal Cryptosystem (EC) for mental poker card games. This paper compares the RSA Cryptosystem and Elgamal Cryptosystem implementations of mental poker card games using distributed key generation schemes. Each implementation is based on a joint encryption/decryption of individual cards. Both implementations use shared private key encryption/decryption schemes and neither uses a trusted third party (TTP). The comparison criteria will be concentrated on the security and computational complexity of the game, collusions among the players and …

A Comparison Of Self-Acceptance Among Counselor Education Master's Degree Students At The Beginning, Practicum Level, And Graduation From Their Program Of Studies, Baljinder Uppal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this study was counselor trainees' self-acceptance; because this examiner proposed there is a parallel process between the client's relationship with the counselor and the counselor's relationship with oneself. This study was an investigation of the differences between three nonequivalent groups: Group A - Beginning Counselor Students, Group B -- Beginning Practicum Counselor Students, and Group C - Graduating Counselors to measure differences between the three groups. The study was researching their responses from the Unconditional Self-Acceptance Questionnaire-Revised (USAQ-R) as an individual assessment instrument. This investigator measured the effects of gender to determine if group differences in response …

A Model For Humane Economic Development: Hernando De Soto, Property Rights, And The Preferential Option For The Poor, Robert Van Der Waag

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Model for Humane Economic Development: Hernando de Soto, Property Rights, and the Preferential Option for the Poor provides a constructive dialogue between the works of the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, and Catholic social teaching in order to assist people in less developed nations (LDCs) to escape the cycle of poverty. The dissertation argues that Hernando de Soto's insights to protect property rights, in conjunction with the Catholic Church's theological commitment to promote human dignity and human rights, through a preferential option for the poor, offers practical resources for sound economic …

Confidence And Willingness Among Preservice Teachers To Use Technology To Support Learner-Centered Strategies That Address The Diverse Needs Of Students: A Multimedia Experience, Junko Yamamoto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the change in preservice teachers' attitudes towards using technology to meet the needs of diverse students as noted by the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS*S) III. B. This research included two interventions: a research paper assignment and a hands-on practice using technology to assist students with special needs. The study took place within the coursework in an instructional technology class offered for preservice teachers. After the pre-intervention survey was collected on the 10th week of the semester, the instructor explained the research paper assignment for assisting students with special needs …

[Introduction To] The Values Of Presidential Leadership, Terry L. Price, J. Thomas Wren

Bookshelf

In this volume, presidential scholars from communication, history, law, philosophy, political science, and psychology explore the broader phenomenon of leadership. Like leadership more generally, presidential leadership is a value-laden activity, an exercise in communication, and a collective enterprise. It is also subject to psychological and historical barriers to interpretation. Finally, presidential leadership is instrumental: presidents must achieve their valued ends. Contributors address each of these aspects of leadership in essays on how presidential values are determined or constructed, how they are condoned and criticized, how they are packaged and conveyed, and how they are interpreted and acted upon.

Collegiate Aviation In China: Opportunities And Challenges, Richard O. Fanjoy, Yi Gao

Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research

The rapid growth of the aviation industry in China over the last ten years has led to a dramatic shortfall in supporting personnel and infrastructure. By 2010, the need for commercial pilots, in particular, is predicted to far outstrip current levels of production. Chinese officials have focused on collegiate aviation programs as a primary source of new pilots for their evolving aviation industry, but those institutions are already hard pressed to meet the demand. This paper examines the current structure of collegiate aviation in China as well as challenges for production growth that include the absence of a general aviation …

Freelib: A Self-Sustainable Peer-To-Peer Digital Library Framework For Evolving Communities, Ashraf A. Amrou

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The need for efficient solutions to the problem of disseminating and sharing of data is growing. Digital libraries provide an efficient solution for disseminating and sharing large volumes of data to diverse sets of users. They enable the use of structured and well defined metadata to provide quality search services. Most of the digital libraries built so far follow a centralized model. The centralized model is an efficient model; however, it has some inherent problems. It is not suitable when content contribution is highly distributed over a very large number of participants. It also requires an organizational support to provide …

The Impact Of An Employer Sponsored Walking Program On Employees' Cardiovascular Risks, Joan Breslin Sechrist

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

The problem of this study was to determine if participation in an employer sponsored walking program reduced employees' cardiovascular health risks. The independent variable was the "WalkAbout with Healthy Edge" program and the dependent variables included: body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol, amount of exercise, and tobacco use. The study population was an employer group of 1300, and 284 employees registered for the program. Due to attrition, 79 submitted the first month of step logs and participation decreased over the months respectively to 58, 40, 38, 32, and 29. Twenty-three participants submitted six months of walking logs, and pre-test …

The Effect Of Survey-Based Sentiment Measures On The Predictability And Volatility Of Stock Returns Conditioned On The Payout Yield And Issue Yield, Darryl Philip Samsell

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Survey-based sentiment indexes from the American Association of Individual Investors, Investors' Intelligence, and the Yale University International Center for Finance show strong in-sample monthly return predictability and are strong factors in explaining the cross-sectional variation in monthly returns and in explaining the excess volatility in returns beyond that explained by cash flow fundamentals proxied by the payout yield and the issue yield from Boudoukh, et al. (2007). These finding are robust to the use of numerous methods of sentiment variable computation. Sentiment is a more significant factor during the period from January 1997 to December 2005 when U.S. stock valuations …