Digital Commons Network^™

Attitudes And Perceptions Of High School Career And Technical Education In California's Central Valley, Michael Bard De Vore

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the attitudes and perceptions of community college leadership, union officials and high school school-to-career counselors regarding high school vocational education in the California's Central San Joaquin Valley, and to identify characteristics deemed most necessary in the design of a high school vocational education program. This researcher investigated this problem using the following questions as guides: 1. What are the attitudes/perceptions of community college leaders, union officials and high school school-to-career counselors, regarding high school vocational education in California's Central San Joaquin Valley? 2. How do the attitudes/perceptions of community college …

Client Perceptions Of The Most And Least Helpful Aspects Of Couple Therapy, Jessica Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Couple therapy research has traditionally utilized either quantitative or qualitative methods to examine the mechanisms of change and outcomes in couple therapy. Also, while studies have examined couples' experiences in therapy, few have specifically examined the most and least helpful aspects of therapy according to the couple. The purpose of the present study was to utilize a mixed-methods design to examine couples' written responses about their experiences in therapy. Two hundred ten individual responses were obtained from a sample of 134 couples who sought Traditional Behavioral Couple Therapy (TBCT) or Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) for marital distress as part …

The Next Generation Of Community College Presidents: Critical Characteristics, Competencies, And Professional Experiences, Kathleen Plinske

Theses and Dissertations

Community colleges are an essential component of the higher education system and are critical to the nation's economic development. A number of challenges face community colleges, including the anticipated retirement of 84% of community college presidents within the next decade. In order to preserve their vitality, community colleges must be prepared to effectively select candidates to fill a large number of presidential vacancies. While the ultimate authority for hiring a community college president resides with boards of trustees, few studies have directly explored the perceptions of trustees regarding the desired qualifications of an ideal presidential candidate. The purpose of this …

Iranian Americans And The Mmpi-2: Considering Cultural Factors In The Assessment Of Psychopathology, Negar Shekarabi

Theses and Dissertations

Psychological assessment is essential for the purposes of diagnosis and case conceptualization, design and implementation of therapeutic interventions, and referral decisions for adjunctive services. The development of assessment tools that are culturally appropriate and meet the needs of diverse ethnic groups within the United States are necessary to ensure clinical decisions are made with data that are culturally valid for these groups. Of specific interest in this dissertation is the Iranian-American population, which has grown substantially in the United States over the last two decades. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) is one of the most commonly used assessment tools …

The Girl Was Naive, After All, Jacqueline Bazarte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Agricultural Certifications And Beekeeping: Lessons From An Apicultural Cooperative In Northeastern El Salvador, Central America, Jason Andrew Seagle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Beekeeping, and especially the production and sale of honey, is an on-farm diversification strategy that has significance to rural livelihoods in some of the most economically and environmentally marginalized regions of the world. Beekeeping also supports sustainable agriculture since it requires that vegetation and forest cover remain intact. However, the limited resources of beekeepers, including marketing constraints, make it difficult for them to realize the full value of their beekeeping enterprises. This professional paper focuses on the Eco-Morazán Cooperative in El Salvador as a case study to examine the costs, benefits and market potential of three types of certification schemes: …

Acute Cellular Uptake Of Abnormal Prion Protein Is Cell Type And Scrapie Strain Independent, Christopher Scott Greil

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are fatal neurodegenerative diseases that include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and sheep scrapie. TSE disease pathology and mechanisms within the central nervous system (CNS) of an infected host largely remains unclear. At the cellular level, the uptake of protease resistant prion protein (PrP-res), which strongly correlates with infectivity and is a valid marker for TSE infection, is one of the earliest events that must occur during TSE infection. Given the difficulty of clearly distinguishing input PrP-res from either PrP-res or protease-sensitive PrP (PrP-sen) made by the cell, the uptake of PrP-res from an infectious inoculum …

Assessment And Potential Adjustments To The Snow-Related Algorithms In Biome-Bgc, V4.2, Deana Ann Dewire

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Many watersheds throughout the mountain west are snow-melt dominated. Recent studies suggest that climatic shifts throughout the 20th century have diminished snowpack around the west, a trend that may accelerate in the future. Loss of critical snowpack could negatively affect the ecosystems and communities that have come to depend on it. Process models offer a way to illuminate the effects of climate change on snowpack. BIOME-BGC, a well established eco-system process model, contains a simple snow melt model for predicting daily snow water equivalent (SWE). The model requires standard daily meteorological data and can, therefore, be extrapolated over long periods …

Cottonwood Establishment In A Gravel-Bed River, Claudio Ivan Meier

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I investigated the processes of establishment of the cottonwood Populus trichocarpa T.&G. along the pristine, 5th order, wandering floodplain of the gravel-bed Flathead River, Montana, USA. The focus of my research was to determine the mechanisms explaining successful recruitment on recently formed, unvegetated bars, covering a range of spatial scales from within-bar (~ 1 to 10 m) to across-reach (~ 1 to 10 km). Results are based on field observations and measurements over three growth seasons (2005 through 2007), as well as outdoor and laboratory experiments.

At the within-bar scale, I used a paired-plot sampling design to compare closely-located sites …

A Moving Experience: The Classroom Activities And Art Camp, Michelle S. Montierth

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My final creative project began as an effort to incorporate bodily movement into the curriculum of my two-dimensional fine art classes in order to give students more opportunities for success in learning. My idea was to design, plan and execute many activities in order to provide students with a more kinesthetic learning environment. In the beginning, I focused on teaching some of the fundamentals of art using activities that would give the students opportunities to move their bodies. I found myself constantly on the lookout for new ways to incorporate movement in art, which led me to organize a summer …

Demography And Ecology Of A Declining Endemic: The Olympic Marmot, Suzanne Cox Griffin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Protected areas serve to conserve species, habitats, and ecological processes. However, biological systems within even large parks are increasingly affected by outside perturbations. The Olympic marmots (Marmota olympus) are ground-dwelling squirrel that inhabit high-elevation meadows almost exclusively within Olympic National Park Despite this protection, anecdotal reports in the 1990's of disappearances from historically occupied locations suggested that the species was in decline. I used demographic monitoring, habitat surveys, and non-invasive genetic sampling to evaluate population status of the species and consider the effects of several possible stressors. Olympic marmots disappeared from ~50% of well-studied colonies, and abandoned burrow complexes were …

Social Capital And Vanua: Challenges To Governance Development In A Community-Based Natural Resource Management Project In Cuvu Tikina, Fiji Islands, Paul David Clark

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Indigenous Fijians believe that survival of their culture is inextricably linked to their position as land and resource owners. This is summed up in the dual meaning of the term ‘vanua’, which literally means land but also symbolizes the cultural and socio-political traditions of the people. These traditions form the basis of Fiji’s natural resource management system and the production of social capital in Fijian villages. Due to legally recognized resource tenure and the communal nature of village living, Fiji has been a popular site for community-based natural resource management projects (CBNRM). The aim of these projects is to empower …

Pre- And Post-Copulatory Sexual Selection In The Tortoise Beetle Acromis Sparsa (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), Paula Alejandra Trillo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Females in nearly all sexually reproducing taxa mate with multiple males. In these species, male fitness is dependent on traits used during both the pre-copulatory processes influencing mate acquisition, as well as the post-copulatory processes influencing fertilization. However, few studies have simultaneously examined pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection within a particular species, and we therefore have little understanding of how these processes interact to determine male reproductive success.

The objective of my study was to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the evolution of sexually selected traits by examining the interactions between pre- and post-copulatory processes in the tortoise beetle …

Relationships Between Flood Frequency And Riparian Plant Community Structure In Mountain Streams Of Western Montana, Motoshi Honda

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Flooding is the dominant factor structuring riparian plant communities along large, low elevation streams, but it is less clear what role flooding plays in the structure and composition of riparian plant communities along mountain streams. In the first part of this study, I examined the influence of four environmental variables (flood frequency, microtopography, light availability, and soil texture) and spatial heterogeneity on riparian plant community structure in seven study areas along mountain streams in western Montana, USA. Multivariate and spatial statistics were used to determine the relative strength of each set of factors and their interactions in explaining riparian plant …

Residential Development Patterns In Flathead County, Montana, Louis Anthony Jarvis

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Population growth in the Non-Metropolitan West has increased over the last two decades. Many researchers have argued that natural amenity concerns, the quality and diversity of the environment, and the rural nature of the non-metropolitan West are the chief factors influencing individuals’ decisions to settle. This research examines a single high-amenity county in Western Montana, Flathead County, and analyzes the factors affecting land values and the probability of residential development at the parcel level. This research develops spatial variables thought to affect land values in an ArcGIS 9.2 environment and develops a regression model that estimates land values based on …

Response Of A Neil1 Deficient Murine Epithelial Cell Line To Chromate, Laura G. Little

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

DNA is constantly exposed to oxidants which can lead to nucleobase damage. Chromium is of particular interest as a DNA oxidant because of its abundance in the environment and the ease with which it can be taken into a cell. Chromate, Cr(VI), ions are taken up by a cell through relatively non-selective anion channels which normally regulate uptake of phosphate and sulfate ions. Once in the cell, chromate ions are reduced by intracellular reductants such as ascorbate and glutathione to Cr(III). Highly reactive Cr(V) and Cr(IV) species are created during this transition which are able to directly oxidize DNA, particularly …

An Investigation Into The I-Stat Chem8+ System For The Measurement Of Sodium, Potassium, Urea & Creatinine., Gene Ferris

Theses

In the hospital environment Point of Care Testing (POCT) can be an invaluable tool in Emergency departments, Theatres, Intensive Care Units and Paediatric wards by providing rapid test results without the need for transport and laboratory processing. The study design included the collection and duplicate analysis of patient samples firstly using the i-STAT and then on the Architect c8000, a routine laboratory analyser. Statistical analysis was performed in order to determine if there is a statistically significant difference in results between the i-STAT POCT system and current laboratory instrumentation. The parameters analysed were the vital biochemical parameters Sodium (Na), Potassium …

Changing The Culture Of "Test Prep": Reclaiming Writing Workshop, Marcy M. Taylor

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Constructivist Learning Through Wikis In The Writing Classroom, Lisa M. Chizek

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

How To Improve Reading Proficiency And Interpretation While Teaching Writing, Julie Ann Mix-Thibault

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Preparing Students For Twenty-First Century Literacy, W. Douglas Baker, Kia Jane Richmond

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Learning To See And Notice The Possibilities, Helen Lundberg Williams

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

The Family Literacy Initiative: Creating Outreach And Partnerships With Parents, Kimberly Coupe Pavlock, Cathy Fleischer

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Twenty-First Century Academic Writing: The Blending Of Personal And The Academic In The Context Of Community-Based Writing, Kim M. Davis

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

"Museum In School": Redesigning A Classic Classroom Project Through Technology, Rose Cherie Reissman

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Revising Our Community: Revising Ourselves, Lisa Eddy

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Classroom Newspaper Connections Could Save Our Democracy, Ken Winter

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Legitimizing Voice: Writing Letters To The Editor, Brigitte Knudson

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.

Making Them Grateful: Bringing Positive Reflection Into The Classroom, Elizabeth Buckhold

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

No abstract provided.