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Homing Place: Towards A Participatory, Ambulant And Conversive Methodology, Misha Myers

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

The practice-as-research project Homing Place proposes a transferable percipient-led methodology of performance and research activated by ambulant and conversive mechanisms as the culmination of this research. The thesis is comprised of a range of activity that represents a moment and way of writing practice. Three artworks that comprise part of the practical component of this thesis--- way from home, Take me to a place and Yodel Rodeo-- each involved participation and contribution from particular audiences and social groups in spatial and conversational modes of performance executed through processes of wayfinding, mapping and walking. One of the primary contributions of knowledge …

Non-Governmental Organizations And Hiv/Aids In Kolkata, India: A Discursive Analysis Of Policy And Programming, Elizabeth Grace Williams

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

This thesis presents the findings from a study that explores the language and discourses of HIV/AIDS in India circulating at different levels of the policy process during the early years of the pandemic, with a particular focus upon the work of NGOs in Kolkata, West Bengal. The study was exploratory and used Walt and Gilson's (1994) analytic framework of content, context, actors and process to guide data collection. Eleven NGOs were identified for case studies using a snowballing technique. The research design used multiple methods of data collection including semi-structured interviews, informal interviews, participant observation, the keeping of a research …

Walter De Maria: The Lightning Field, Janet Mccann

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

Walter De Maria (b.1935) is best known for The Lightning Field, a large-scale, remote outdoor work constructed in New Mexico, USA, and completed in 1977. Both De Maria and The Lightning Field have largely been critiqued solely within the art-historical framework of 'Land Art'. This thesis argues that such a framework has been too homogeneous and too narrow in its scope to do justice to the true complexities either of the artist's practice or of the visitor's experience of The Lightning Field, which involves considerably more than the dramatic spectacle of lightning. It proposes that De Maria's wide-ranging artistic career …

Twenty-One Countries, Millions Of Native Speakers, And One Semester To Teach It All: Linguistic Variation In Entry Level College Textbooks For Spanish, Nicole Joanne Gilmore

Master's Theses

There is a great deal of linguistic variety in the Spanish that is spoken throughout the world. Differences such as the use of vosotros, voseo, and seseo, are steadily employed in some areas, while other people groups express themselves in a totally different manner. Because such a wide range of linguistic nuances exist, textbook authors are faced with the difficult task of choosing which elements to include and which to exclude from their writings. In this study, I have examined 17 different beginning level textbooks for college students of Spanish with a particular focus on the teaching of the following …

Accurate Cylindrical-Coordinate Numerical Models For The Analysis Of Hydrologic Tests, John Edward Keller

Dissertations

Analytical solutions to well hydraulic problems have restrictive assumptions that often do not match real world conditions. Although numerical models more closely match reality, they either ran too slowly to be practical or lacked accuracy because of coarse grid spacing and large time steps. Advances in computer power over the last few decades now allow for accurate, fast numerical models that handle complex flow systems. The purpose of this dissertation was to develop flexible and accurate numerical modeling codes for the simulation of hydrologic tests. One of these numerical modeling codes, the Slug Test Simulator (STS), was designed for the …

Quantifying The Slip Rates, Spatial Distribution And Evolution Of Active Normal Faults From Geomorphic Analysis: Field Examples From An Oblique-Extensional Graben, Southern Turkey, Sarah J. Boulton, Alexander C. Whittaker

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

No abstract provided.

Mineralogy And Micromorphology Of An Atacama Desert Soil, Chile: A Model For Hyperarid Pedogenesis, Michael S. Howell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Atacama Desert is the oldest and driest desert on Earth. Hyperarid soils in this desert are dominated by rare (or exclusive) salt minerals and assemblages. Previous research details salt origins and abundance, however pedogenic processes involved in salt distribution are not adequately explained. Therefore, the main goal of this investigation was to identify and document evidence for hyperarid pedogenesis (via salt mineralogy and soil micromorphology) at a field site, Oficina Ercilla, located ~80 km northeast of Antofagasta, Chile within the Central Depression and hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert. This study presents an interpretational model for hyperarid pedogenesis, which …

Filipino Physician-Turned Nurses: A Phenomenological Study, Victor Rey Cui Vapor

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Foreign nurses have augmented the United States nursing workforce. The Philippines has remained the world's leading exporter of nurses, including the United States. More recently, a new phenomenon has emerged involving Filipino physicians who went back to school to take up nursing in the Philippines in order to migrate to foreign countries to work as nurses. The purpose of this study was to describe and to interpret the lived experiences of Filipino physician-turned nurses in the United States. Phenomenology was used as research design, with data obtained from a purposive sample of eight (8) self-identified physician-turned nurses in Las Vegas, …

Gender Segregation And The Physical Education Classroom, Amanda Kopplin-Rodgers

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of single sex classrooms and student learning through an examination of the research on how females and males learn and the effects of gender segregation in the general education classroom. The discussion will also include the impact of Title IX on physical education classrooms and the effects of segregation in physical education classrooms. Limited research has been conducted to investigate the relationship among several variables affecting learning including: hearing, brain development, student gender, age, body image, self-esteem, teacher gender, and which type of classroom is most conducive to student learning. …

Forest City: The City On The Hill, Teresa Pietsch

Graduate Research Papers

Studying the local community helps students learn more about the place they live. It helps them comprehend the past, perform in the present, and predict the future. Understanding its history and people builds a sense of pride and belonging. Currently, the local community is studied by the third grade at Forest City Elementary. Teaching and learning about the community requires careful selection and presentation of materials. Students learn through narratives, primary sources, cultural universals, and the interaction between new sources of information and prior experiences. Unfortunately, information about the community of Forest City is lacking. Material is not easily accessible …

Bound By Injustice: Challenging The Use Of Shackles On Incarcerated Pregnant Women, Dana Sussman

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The use of shackles to restrain a pregnant woman during the birthing process is a barbaric practice that needlessly inflicts excruciating pain and humiliation. It is widely condemned by members of the international community, including leading medical and public health associations. Although human rights advocates have effected significant policy change in the past ten years to eliminate the use of shackles on women in labor, it remains routine practice in many American prisons and jails. Reproductive rights advocates should consider this a reproductive justice issue and build on the gains of the human rights community to bring legal claims challenging …

Catalog 2009-2010, University Of North Florida

UNF Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.

Hydrologic Interdependencies And Human Cooperation: The Process Of Adapting To Droughts, Joanna Endter-Wada, Theresa Selfa, Lisa Welsh

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

The Bear River Basin, which includes portions of Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming in the United States, has a dynamic history of human hydrologic adaptations in relation to a highly variable water supply. These adaptations are embedded in a geographical setting highly influenced by the legal, policy, and institutional contexts that govern allocation of water in this generally arid region. In response to several years of drought and a historically low water year in 2004, water users in the Bear River Basin tested the efficacy of the “law of the river” and innovative agreements that they had negotiated in recent years …

The Colorado Trust’S Healthy Communities Initiative: Results And Lessons For Comprehensive Community Initiatives, Ross Conner, Doug Easterling

The Foundation Review

· This article summarizes how 29 diverse communities throughout Colorado implemented the Colorado Healthy Communities Initiative (CHCI), which was conceived and funded by The Colorado Trust to engage community residents in the development of locally relevant strategies to improve community health.

· In line with the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities model, CHCI emphasized (a) inclusive, representative planning; (b) a broad definition of “health”; (c) consensus decision making; and (d) capacity building among local stakeholder groups.

· Communities implemented an array of projects (on average, six per community) that extended well beyond traditional health promotion and disease prevention. The most …

Scope, Scale, And Sustainability: What It Takes To Create Lasting Community Change, Tina R. Trent, David M. Chavis

The Foundation Review

· This article examines success factors that relate specifically to the ability of a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) to achieve the scope and scale required to generate community-level outcomes and to sustain those positive impacts over time.

· The CCIs selected for study represent a wide range of goals, strategies, and organizational structures.

· Six factors were found to cut across scope, scale, and sustainability. These factors include having a single broker or entity that holds the vision of the change effort; clearly defined roles; alignment among interventions, resources, and geography; meaningful community engagement; competent leadership and staff; and strategic, …

The Challenges Of Place, Capacity, And Systems Change: The Story Of Yes We Can!, Pennie Foster-Fishman, Robert Long

The Foundation Review

· Yes we can!, a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, was designed to improve educational and economic outcomes within the foundation’s hometown of Battle Creek, Mich. Since 2002, Yes we can! has supported five core strategies designed to trigger the systems changes needed to reduce educational and economic inequities in Battle Creek.

· Yes we can! has achieved some important wins to date; for example, more residents are involved, more neighborhoods have stronger neighborhood associations, and more organizations are engaging residents in their decision-making processes. However, the scale of wins remains small, and the …

Proving Foundation Impact On Public Policy Empirically: The Case Of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation And Consumer Choice For Adults With Developmental Disabilities, Ann Whitney Breihan

The Foundation Review

· Foundations that work on national public policy issues face challenges in demonstrating impact.

· This case study of how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s initiative to support choice of program provider for developmentally disabled adults uses some advanced statistical techniques to demonstrate the impact of the foundation’s funding.

· This study suggests that to get the greatest impact on policy change, foundations should consider offering modest competitive grants to governmental departments; spending the funds in regional groupings; and focus on jurisdictions that have demonstrated interest in the policy area by spending their own funds.

Setting The Table For A Sustainable And Just Food System, Kien Lee, Kolu Zigbi, Marjorie Nemes

The Foundation Review

· As consumers and producers, people of color have been affected disproportionately by systemic problems in the food system.

· This article describes the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a joint effort of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the capacity of organizations led by people of color to engage in policy and advocacy work.

· Grantees successfully built their capacity to engage in policy work (e.g., increased capacity to identify policy targets), increased their organizational capacity (e.g., diversified boards), improved their communities’ capacity (e.g., created opportunities for dialogue and improved …

Measuring The Impacts Of Advocacy And Community Organizing: Application Of A Methodology And Initial Findings, Lisa Ranghelli

The Foundation Review

· The increasing emphasis by funders on strategic grantmaking and measurable outcomes may be a disincentive to support policy and advocacy work, because of the perception that outcomes can be difficult to assess.

· A tool for measuring impact can reduce the barriers to funding advocacy and policy work.

· The tool draws upon the literatures on evaluating advocacy and organizing, social capital building efforts, and return on investment approaches to evaluation.

· The tool was applied in two sites, where funders found it useful to understand advocacy impacts and learn how advocacy can enhance their grantmaking goals.

Subsurface Mapping And Reservoir Analysis Of The Upper Devonian Venango And Bradford Groups In Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Michael F. Coughlin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The Upper Devonian Bradford and Venango groups of southwest Pennsylvania are the principal reservoirs in Westmoreland County. These reservoirs were deposited in several fluvial-deltaic environments as part of the "Catskill delta complex". Although these sandstone units have been actively drilled for many years, uncertainties remain in depositional environments, stratigraphic identification, and correlation in the subsurface. Approximately 135 geophysical logs were correlated, and subsurface maps were generated for the reservoirs. The reservoir units of interest include the Fifth, Bayard, Speechley Stray, Speechley, and Balltown B. By linking geologic parameters to reservoir quality and production, the analysis has provided a better understanding …

Spillover Effects In Financial And International Development, John Dogbey

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The main objective of this dissertation is to explore some possible externalities that exist in the international context in the areas of finance and development economics. Chapter one is an introduction to this study. Chapter two examines contagion in exchange market pressure, currency crisis and currency stability. In this chapter I test whether exchange market pressure, in general, is contagious and proceed to test separately for contagion in currency crisis and currency stability. I construct an index of exchange market pressure for a panel of 118 countries and choose a threshold from which positive or negative deviations denote currency crisis …

The Influence Of A Challenge Course Based Pre-Orientation's Curriculum Integration On Participants' Perceived Self-Efficacy, Simon J. Grout

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This present work employed a quasi-experimental study to examine the change of college and academic self-efficacy perception of first year students following their experience upon participation in a Challenge Course Based Orientation Program (CCBOP) covering varying levels of University 101 curriculum integration. In total 68 first year students out of an available 96 participated in the study. Four individual programs were chosen, two were randomly assigned a 'Holistically integrated' treatment (n=37) and the remaining programs were assigned 'Non-integrated' treatment (n=31). All participants completed the College Self-Efficacy Inventory (CSEI), and College Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (CASES) prior to and immediately following the …

Economic Benefits Of The National Cooperative Soil Survey Program, Archana Pradhan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) is the primary source of information on the soil resources in the U.S. The information provided by the NCSS program has played a significant and important role in diverse fields. This study estimates the net benefits of the information provided by the soil survey program to the production of selected crops. Benefit estimates are based on relative productivity gains related to the provision of soil information at the county level. The estimated value of increased crop yields less estimated soil survey production costs provides a lower-bound estimate of the total economic benefits of the …

An Analysis Of U.S. History Textbooks: The Treatment Of Primary Sources, Misty D. Rodeheaver

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines the treatment of primary sources in three of the most widely adopted secondary U.S. History textbooks. Specifically examined were the types of primary sources, location of corresponding questions, classification of corresponding questions according by the Depth of Knowledge and the Library of Congress steps in examining primary sources, and presence of answers in the narrative. An instrument was created to assure transparency in assessing the textbooks. The results were examined through the interpretative frame works of historians and the various perspectives within the social studies. All texts incorporated many primary sources but varied greatly in their presentations …

The West Virginia Uncovered Etrainer; Creating An Online Multimedia Training Guide, Jessica M. Rhodes

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This professional project contains an external Web site, which serves as a multimedia journalism training guide for weekly rural newspapers in West Virginia. The training guide focuses on issues that many small rural newspapers face, including small staffs and limited budgets and resources. Small rural weekly newspapers in West Virginia serve as beacons of community journalism within their counties. Through the use of multimedia, they can enhance their Web sites to document the lives of those in their community in ways that are far more diverse than print journalism. This professional project also discusses the issues of social responsibility and …

Holocene Landform Evolution And Natural Site Formation Processes At The West Blennerhassett Archaeological Site (46wd83-A), Wood County, West Virginia, Ryan W. Robinson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study utilizes sedimentary, pedological, and archaeological data recovered from the West Blennerhassett site (46WD83-A), a deeply stratified archaeological site located at Blennerhassett Island, an Ohio River island in Wood County, West Virginia, to determine a site-specific history of landform evolution and natural site formation processes. Archaeological investigations were conducted at West Blennerhassett by the Cultural Resources Section of Michael Baker Jr., Inc. in 2002 and 2003 as part of the environmental studies for the U.S. Route 50 Blennerhassett Bridge Project for the West Virginia Division of Highways and the Federal Highways Administration. These investigations revealed stratified archaeological deposits extending …

The Changing Illinois Indians Under European Influence: The Split Between The Kaskaskia And Peoria, Gerald A. Rogers

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The Illinois Indians are generally studied as a prominent group in the Illinois Country that continually became more dependent after increased European Influence. This study looked at the split within the Illinois Indians, particularly between the Kaskaskia and Peoria. The fracturing of the Illinois Indians was a prominent point in the decline of the group. Under European influence, many Kaskaskia became Christians and moved their village closer to the French. Alternatively, the Peoria challenged the Christian religion and remained in the Lake Peoria region. By using primary and secondary literature on the topic, the split between the Kaskaskia and Peoria …

School Choice In Bermuda: A Qualitative Study Of The Influence Of Social Networks On Parental School Choice, Janette E. Musson

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Gender Equality In Secondary Education: A Study Of Girls' Educational Access And Participation In Jordan Between 2000 And 2005, Fatima Omar Belal

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Migration And Gender: The Case Of A Farming Ejido In Calakmul, Mexico, Claudia Radel, Birgit Schmook

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

As one of Mexico’s last agricultural frontiers, southern Mexico’s rural farming municipality of Calakmul has long been marked by rural in-migration. In the last few years this process has given place to an explosive growth of primarily male labor out-migration, particularly to the United States. The authors trace the outlines of the migration process from the perspective of one rural Calakmul community, to explore effects of men’s transnational migration on the household and community status of the women remaining behind. Analysis is based on quantitative data collected in 2004 from 25 households, and on in-depth qualitative interviews in 2005 with …