Digital Commons Network^™

Walking In Two Worlds: Living An Animistic Spiritual Worldview In The Western United States, Joanne Dorpat Halverson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

An abundance of culturally derived ideological influences inform our lives. The dominant culture exerts a powerful influence on understandings of reality. For some people, their spiritual way of being in the world deviates from cultural norms. In this qualitative study I sought to understand the lived experience of people who hold an animistic spiritual worldview and yet function well within society. They walk in two worlds. The research design employed both phenomenological and heuristic methods. To understand the socio-cultural-historical context of the study a lengthy background was provided. Six individuals who self-identified as adhering to animistic spirituality living on the …

Eating Disorder Metaphors: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis Of Women's Experiences, Rachael Brooke Goren-Watts

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Eating disorders have reached epidemic levels in the United States and cause immense pain and suffering. Given the high fatality and relapse rates of eating disorders, as well as the numerous medical complications associated with them, it is useful to know more about how individuals view their eating disorder, and the meaning making during the recovery process in order to better understand the experience. Narrative theory, and specifically the metaphors women use to story their experience, enrich our understanding of eating disorders within a social constructionist lens. This qualitative meta-synthesis utilizes hermeneutics and identifies and describes the metaphors that women …

Sustaining Voice Through Leadership: How Do Deaf Leaders Sustain Voice In Challenging Dominant Systems, Darlene Goncz Zangara

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The vehicle in communicating cultural identity, recognition, and justice is voice. Reclaiming or sustaining one's voice is to stand up for what one believes in, or to preserve one's identity and place in society. The deaf individual or any other marginalized individual is expected to proceed through a series of deliberations to determine favorable actions that will be persuasive, with the goal of embracing the voice of the marginalized. The deaf individual's voice or meaningful intentions will need to be effectively interpreted into mainstream American society's language and paradigms. This requires one to reconstruct the meanings and mediate the facts …

Understanding Faculty Perceptions Of The Future: Action Research For Academic Librarians, Kara Josephine Malenfant

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The intent of this study was to aid academic librarians in examining their perceptions of the future of higher education, engaging disciplinary faculty members to understand their views, and determining actions to take to shape the future. In this mixed methods study, scenarios about the future of higher education served as the basis for collecting quantitative (survey) and qualitative (focus group) data at one institution. During this study, staff, faculty, and administrators at one library developed new ways to craft strategies and make decisions, shifting their focus from strategic planning as an event to strategic thinking as a process, a …

Enough Hope To Spare: The Transformative Experience Of Birth Parents As Leaders In Child Welfare, Nicole R. Bossard

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study explores the transformative experience from client and service recipient to collaborative leader and partner in child welfare. Rather than expanding on existing literature that examines the nature and quality of the client experience from a service or customer satisfaction perspective, this study reflects the lived experiences of "real, bonafide" birth parent leaders in child welfare systems in the State of Kansas, several counties in Washington state, and Contra Costa County, California. The goal of the study is to illuminate the journey from clienthood to leadership as experienced by the nine birth parent leaders in the study through research …

Communication Channels Utilized By Emirati Females To Enact Leadership, K. Kathleen O'Neill

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the communication channels six Emirati females concurrently employed in organizations in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in which they had supervisory responsibilities; formal, legitimate authority; and positional leadership roles recalled using with their direct reports to enact leadership. In particular, the study attempted to ascertain the reasons for the selection of communication channels when engaged in downward communication with organizational subordinates. Data were collected via three interviews with each participant over a four week period. Interviews were conducted both face-to-face and via telephone. Data were analyzed via thematic content analysis to …

Statutory Meanings: Deriving Interpretive Principles From A Theory Of Communication And Lawmaking, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Daniel B. Rodriguez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Musical Persona: The Use Of Human Speech In The Music Of Steve Reich, Rachel E. Weiss

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

From his earliest works to his most recent ones, Steve Reich has found ways to incorporate human speech into his music. The natural melodic qualities of the human voice, which he called "speech-melody," interested him from the beginning of his musical career. In his early tape pieces, Reich manipulated recordings of human voices in order to create varied melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns. Later, he used such recordings for both their melodic content and subject matter in Different Trains (1988), The Cave (1993), City Life (1995), Three Tales (2002), and WTC 9/11 (2011).;Using human speech as a foundation, Reich composed …

Multilingual Ontologies For Cross-Language Information Extraction And Semantic Search, David W. Embley, Stephen W. Liddle, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Yuri Tijerino

Faculty Publications

Valuable local information is often available on the web, but encoded in a foreign language that non-local users do not understand. Can we create a system to allow a user to query in language L1 for facts in a web page written in language L2? We propose a suite of multilingual extraction ontologies as a solution to this problem. We ground extraction ontologies in each language of interest, and we map both the data and the metadata among the language-specific extraction ontologies. The mappings are through a central, language-agnostic ontology that allows new languages to be added by only having …

Bashkirs Between Two Worlds, 1552-1824, Mehmet Tepeyurt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examines the transformation of the Bashkir society from a nomadic and semi-nomadic society to a sedentary society under the Russian empire's control from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. In particular, it analyzes inter-ethnic relations and the consequences of these relations for both Bashkirs and other peoples in Bashkiria.;The historical Bashkir lands formed Russia's southeastern frontier for more than two hundred years and the penetration of non-Bashkir groups into the region was a slow and arduous process. On the one hand, the region was an extremely dangerous place: the nomadic groups were quite hostile to the arrival …

Formulating A Conceptual Framework To Understand Native American Perceptions Of Place And Identity: A Temporal Examination Of The Spatio-Social Effects Of Uneven Development Through Accumulation By Dispossession, Denyse Wyskup

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research dialectically conceptualizes how capitalist uneven development and subsequent occurrences has shaped, and continues to shape, Native American perceptions of place and identity. Specifically, this research focuses on accumulation by dispossession, a key component of uneven development, and the spatio-historic effects this form of dispossession has had on Native American lifeworlds. This research focuses primarily upon federal legislation in the form of treaties, acts, and court rulings as the predominant component sustaining accumulation by dispossession and, in turn, perpetuating uneven development within Native American communities. In order to more holistically conceptualize the impacts of accumulation by dispossession three Native …

Leadership Development For Today’S Ktunaxa Youth: Command Structure Versus The Crazy Dog Society, Christopher Horsethief

International Journal of Servant-Leadership

Block (2008) opens his book on the structure of belonging with the statement, "[S]ocial fabric of community is formed from an expanding shared sense of belonging...shaped by the idea that only when we are connected and care for the well-being of the whole that a civil and democratic society is created" (p. 9). The concept of belonging has been addressed directly in servant-leadership studies, including belonging to community or organization (Ba Banutu-Gomez, 2004 ), belonging and resiliency (Wheatley & Kellner-Rogers, 1998), belonging through a sharing of humanity with followership (Birkenmeier, Carson, & Carson, 2003). It can also be argued that …

Theorizing Practice In Economic Geography: Foundations, Challenges, And Possibilities, Andrew Jones, James T. Murphy

Geography

Over the last decade or so there has been an identifiable shift in the interests of many economic geographers towards a concern with practices: stabilized, routinized, or improvised social actions that constitute and reproduce economic space, and through and within which socioeconomic actors and communities embed knowledge, organize production activities, and interpret and derive meaning from the world. Although this shift has gained significant momentum its general theoretical significance remains somewhat unclear and the concept is vulnerable to criticisms that it is incoherent, too 'micro-scale' in emphasis, unable to provide valid links between everyday practices and higher-order phenomena (eg, institutions, …

The Legal Pluralism Phenomenon: Emerging Issues On Protecting And Preserving The Sacred Ifugao Bulul, Mayo Buenafe

Nebraska Anthropologist

Legal Pluralism is a pervasive social phenomenon encompassing issues relevant to the protection and preservation of indigenous peoples' intellectual and cultural properties. This study focuses on the sacred lfugao bulul or lfugao rice granary guardian spirit, which is being sold and traded as antiques, cultural properties, and tourist souvenirs. The sacred lfugao bulul is studied as an intellectual and cultural property and explores how it can be authenticated, preserved, and protected within three legal systems: Customary Law (lfugao rituals, beliefs, and practices), State Law (Cultural Properties Protection and Preservation Act or P.D. 374), and International Law (Intellectual Property Code of …

Reframing Assessment Of Grantee Perceptions: Reconsidering Effectiveness With Broader International Stakeholder Engagement, Laurel Pendleton, Michael Y. Moon

The Foundation Review

· Stakeholder engagement is important in philanthropy because it allows grantmakers and grantees to pool their respective resources more effectively to address their shared target issues.

· As more and more foundations and other grantmaking entities venture into the expansive world of self-evaluation, it is prudent that these methods be examined in light of international funding relationships.

· In order to better understand how these tools and methods can be used internationally, we outline the opportunities presented when using frames as one basis for decision-making in complex situations.

· Using the hypothetical case of a U.S. funder seeking to understand …

"Sticky Metaphors" And The Persistence Of The Traditional Voluntary Manslaughter Doctrine, Joseph L. Hoffmann, Elise J. Percy, Steven J. Sherman

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

An Exploratory Study On International Students' Adjustment To American Universities., Grace M. Atebe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

College students in the twenty-first century face a different political, economic, cultural, and social world than students faced in the previous century. Technology and business have broken down virtually every barrier between countries. As a result, many colleges believe that they must educate and involve their students in cultures beyond their country's borders in the hope of producing inter-culturally competent students. Despite government policies and available financial assistance that encourage study abroad, the vast majority of students in Western countries do not study outside their own borders. Thus, successful integration of international students and scholars with the campus and its …

Toward A New Understanding Of Esl Students In The Composition Classroom, Vladimira Duka

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The purpose of this Master's thesis was to investigate the ways in which Composition teachers in U.S. English departments should revisit their teaching practices for native English speakers and the speakers of English as a second language likewise. The recent need for this shift in teaching practices was stressed in the thesis. Particularly, I examined how Composition teachers should reconfigure their teaching practices to redefine the standards of written English. The study aimed to demonstrate that a changing definition of the standards of written English impacted all the classroom participants, particularly diverse learners in various ways. Specifically, how a modified …

The Web 2.0 Revolution: Using Technology To Shape Standard-Based Instruction, Joern-Timo Riepel

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Different Web 2.0 applications, such as weblogs, podcasts, wikis, and twitter have revolutionized the way people interact online and opened a path to a new way of global mass-communication for every internet user. Web 2.0 applications have also proved to enhance foreign language instruction in terms of learner motivation, collaborative learning processes, time-and space independence for students across classroom boundaries, and chances for authentic language use and perception. This thesis demonstrates the uses of Web 2.0 to enhance standards-based foreign language education and address each of the five C's using 21st-century technologies. By implementing Web 2.0 as an instructional tool, …

Development Of An Emotional Pain Interview, Ben Weinstein

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study developed and tested the Emotional Pain Interview (EPI), a semi-structured interview measuring emotional pain, using community dwelling adults with a significant history of emotional pain (n = 16; emotional pain group) relative to matched controls reporting a prior significant positive life experience (n = 16; positive life experience group). The EPI and a matching positive life event interview were used to assess all participants regarding prior emotionally painful and positive life experiences. Participants completed measures of anxiety sensitivity, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. Ratings of emotional responding (i.e., Valence, Arousal, and Control/Dominance) were made for prior emotionally painful …

Enhancing Bag-Of-Words Models By Efficient Semantics-Preserving Metric Learning, Lei Wu, Steven C. H. Hoi

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The authors present an online semantics preserving, metric learning technique for improving the bag-of-words model and addressing the semantic-gap issue. This article investigates the challenge of reducing the semantic gap for building BoW models for image representation; propose a novel OSPML algorithm for enhancing BoW by minimizing the semantic loss, which is efficient and scalable for enhancing BoW models for large-scale applications; apply the proposed technique for large-scale image annotation and object recognition; and compare it to the state of the art.

The Paradox Of Law Enforcement In Immigrant Communities: Does Tough Immigration Enforcement Undermine Public Safety?, David Kirk, Andrew V. Papachristos, Jeffrey Fagan, Tom R. Tyler

Faculty Scholarship

Frustrated by federal inaction on immigration reform, several U.S. states in recent years have proposed or enacted laws designed to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and to facilitate their removal. An underappreciated implication of these laws is the potential alienation of immigrant communities – even law abiding, cooperative individuals – from the criminal justice system. The ability of the criminal justice system to detect and sanction criminal behavior is dependent upon the cooperation of the general public, including acts such as the reporting of crime and identifying suspects. Cooperation is enhanced when local residents believe that …

Domain Independent Sentiment Classification With Many Lexicons, Bruno Ohana, Brendan Tierney, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Sentiment lexicons are language resources widely used in opinion mining and important tools in unsupervised sentiment classification. We present a comparative study of sentiment classification of reviews on six different domains using sentiment lexicons from different sources. Our results highlight the tendency of a lexicon’s performance to be imbalanced towards one class, and indicate lexicon accuracy varies with the target domain. We propose an approach that combines information from different lexicons to make classification decisions and achieve more robust results that consistently improve our baseline across all domains tested. These are further refined by a domain independent score adjustment that …

Racial Identity And Religiousness: Role Of Religion And Racial Identity On Substance Use In African American College Students, Chaz D. Mailey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study sought to explore the relationships between Black racial identity, religiosity, and substance use in African American college students. Religiosity has commonly been identified as a protective factor against substance use for many ethnic groups, and historically religion has played a significant role in the lives of African Americans. Surprisingly, some research suggests that while important, religiosity may not be as strong of a protective factor against abuse or excessive consumption of substances for African Americans as it is for other ethnicities (Amey, Albrect, & Miller, 1996). It has been suggested that for African Americans, a strong ethnic …

Racial Identity And Religiousness: Role Of Religion And Racial Identity On Substance Use In African American College Students, Chaz D. Mailey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study sought to explore the relationships between Black racial identity, religiosity, and substance use in African American college students. Religiosity has commonly been identified as a protective factor against substance use for many ethnic groups, and historically religion has played a significant role in the lives of African Americans. Surprisingly, some research suggests that while important, religiosity may not be as strong of a protective factor against abuse or excessive consumption of substances for African Americans as it is for other ethnicities (Amey, Albrect, & Miller, 1996). It has been suggested that for African Americans, a strong ethnic …

A Sense Of Place: Branding The Richardson Olmsted Complex Through Architectural Motif, Lisa Mauro

Theses

(keywords: Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Thomas Kirkbride, Romanesque architecture, Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, 19th century English design reformers, Richardsonian Romanesque, motif, psychology of pattern, pattern design, architectural ornament, place-branding, Buffalo, NY) Motif design and repeat patterns have been used to decorate, communicate and imbue surface with meaning across cultures and eras. It is also evident that pattern satisfies a fundamental psychological need in humans for order and beauty. Motifs are a well-suited graphic design basis from which to create an effective branding strategy with potential to communicate with a subliminal power and in a way that …

The Public Sector, Migration, And Heterogeneity, Carlos J. Lopes

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Questions on the optimal size of government always provoke intense political debate. At the center of this is the public goods problem, where certain goods and services are “under-provided” by the market due to problems with rivalry and excludability. These goods are usually provided by the public sector and financed through taxes. Questions emerge over the optimal level of provision, as different individuals value these goods differently. This dissertation consists of two studies which address preferences for the size of government from different perspectives.

The first study provides a method that can be used to estimate demand for changes in …

The Relationship Of Provider Cultural Competence And Utilization Of Prenatal Care In The Hmong Of Minnesota, Cynthia J. Larson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Experts suggest that the cultural competence of healthcare providers is a critical factor impacting healthcare services to the ethnically diverse patient populations in the U.S. and that it may play a role in improving outcomes and reducing health disparities; however, the association between cultural competence and health outcomes remains unclear. This study used a cross-sectional quantitative design grounded by cultural competency constructs and the ethnic origins theory to explore the relationships between provider cultural competence, adequacy of prenatal care, and neonatal health outcomes in Hmong women, a population whose cultural beliefs affect their use of early and adequate prenatal care. …

Latino English Language Learners In Middle School And The Effect Of General Education Teachers' Use Of The Lesson Study Collaborative Model, Chauncey Dante Reese

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

General education content teachers in an urban middle school are responsible for the academic performance of Latino English language learners (ELLs) but lack specialized training in language acquisition. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate content teachers' use of the lesson study collaborative model in teaching Latino ELLs. The theoretical framework of cooperative learning and the lesson study planning model guided this study. The research questions addressed the specific English as a second language (ESL) conversations and planning that occurred in interdisciplinary team meetings and lesson study implementation in teaching practice and student performance. Typological analysis of …

Pollution Knowledge And Urban Water Politics In The Ganges River Basin (India), Sya Buryn Kedzior

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Millions of people rely upon the Ganges River as a source of water provision and a site of disposal for sewage, solid waste, agricultural runoff and industrial effluent. The river is also a goddess in the Hindu pantheon who is worshipped for her purificatory powers, despite water quality levels that fall far short of standards for use in bathing, washing, and drinking. In recent years, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have formed to oppose both pollution of the river and the failure of state-run pollution abatement programs. They are joined by an increasingly frequent number of seemingly spontaneous protests …