Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of Modeling Instruction In A High School Physics Classroom, Mark E. Arseneault

LSU Master's Theses

The purpose of this research was to study my effectiveness as a high school physics teacher using a traditional approach to instruction compared to a Modeling approach. The study was conducted at a high school near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Both groups consisted of 1 section of honors physics and 1 section of regular physics each. Conceptual understanding and problems solving gains were measured using pre/post Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Mechanics Baseline Test (MBT) results, respectively. Students’ level of science reasoning was also measured at the beginning of the school year only, using the Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning …

Change In Developmental Quotient In Toddlers Assessed For Autism Spectrum Disorder, Lindsey Willis Williams

LSU Master's Theses

ASD is marked by significant delays in social and language development, while development in other areas, such as cognitive functioning, can be highly variable from person to person. Though preschool-aged children with ASD often exhibit a profile of developmental delays similar to children with other developmental disorders at a discrete moment in time, few studies have investigated possible differences in rate of skill acquisition in developmental domains in children with different disorders. Sensitive periods of development are marked by less stability in performance of developmental skills. Results of prior studies suggest that if appropriate early interventions are applied during sensitive …

Student, Esquire?: The Practice Of Law In The Collaborative Classroom, Nantiya Ruan

Scholarly Works

Law faculty and non-profit lawyers are working together in a variety of partnerships to offer students exposure to "real life" clients in the first year of law school, as well as in advanced courses in substantive areas. Teachers engaged in this client-centered advocacy through experiential frameworks have broken out of their isolated silos in the law school (e.g., legal writing, clinical, externship, and doctrinal) and begun to work together. To help students develop a sense of professional identity, cultivate professional values, and tap into key intrinsic motivations for lawyering, such as serving the public good, collaborative classrooms have an important …

Black Gay Genius Interview With Lisa C. Moore, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

An interview with the publisher of Redbone Press, the small press, black lesbian owned and operated, that republished the archival material of Joseph Beam, excavating the work of the gay black male icon and writer of Brother to Brother and In the Life.

The Appeal Of Narrative In Research, Colette Daiute

Publications and Research

"I saw the bird flattened on the ground outside my door . One of the kindergarten child walked toward me slowly, crying. That's when I knew it was time to act."

The very brief narrative above occurs amid myriad spheres of social relations. These relations are not all apparent, but understanding narrative meaning requires understanding narrating as an interactive process. As researchers we enhance our Methods if we know how to read narratives as complex social processes. This openi11g narrative expresses a sequence of two past events.1 The narrative involves action ("walked," "act") and consciousness ("saw," "crying," "knew"). From the …

Green Buildings, Corporate Social Responsibility, And Stock Market Performance, Mary Nguyen

University Honors Theses

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which focuses on environmental, social and governance risks and issues, has become an important item on the corporate agenda. CSR has been found to affect consumer attitudes, employee performance, cost structure and corporate image. Previous research on CSR have determined inconsistent relationships with firm value. CSR-related strategies have generally shown a positive relationship with different measurements of firm value, however there some studies have shown the opposite. Other studies found that the relationship between CSR related strategies and market value is too weak to determine any conclusions. However, previous studies neglect the importance of green buildings …

Strengthening United Nation’S Global Human Rights Policies Against Exploitation By Multinational Corporations In South East Asia, Marcellius Smith

University Honors Theses

In this paper I will argue that multinational corporations have exploited the resources, endangered the environment and produced goods for profit at the expense of cheap labor by the inhabitants of less developed nations, specifically the people in South East Asia who sometimes work long hours in unsafe environmental conditions to maintain a decent living. I will also argue why it is important for all nation-states throughout the world have a moral obligation to strengthen the United Nation’s policies against such exploitation through regulations and other means deemed acceptable by the world populace.

Frozen, Old, Or New? : Comparing Biochemical Markers And Tissue Oxygenation In Transfused Blood, Connor Wiles

University Honors Theses

The transfusion of red blood cells is a necessary therapy used to treat anemia that often results from traumatic hemorrhage. The traditional method of storing red blood cells prior to transfusion in the United States has been as a liquid in a refrigerated fashion at a temperature between two and eight degrees Celsius. Throughout the storage duration, the red cells undergo a series of structural, functional, and biochemical changes commonly known as the storage lesion. Increased length of storage has been associated with increased rates of infection, as well as higher incidents of mortality. We hypothesized that this prospective, randomized, …

Addressing The Unmet Need : An Analysis Of The Global Prevalence Of Refractive Error And Its Possible Solutions, Sonam Narayan

University Honors Theses

This paper analyzes the global prevalence of refractive error as the top cause of vision impairment, and explores future solutions that could be implemented to eradicate the issue. The practice of donating both recycled and ready-made eye glasses/spectacles is discussed, in addition to the VOSH groups that provide these resources and their public health outlooks.

For The Hard Of Hearing: A Catholic Novelist Confronts Modernity, Louis Benjamin Maltese

University Honors Theses

In the early part of the 20th century German Catholic theologian and cultural critic, Romano Guardini, published The End of Modernity, outlining the conceptual shift of self-identity and cosmology from Antiquity to Modernity. Characterizing modernity as turning upon a false self-identity termed “mass man.” This false image of life furthers the individual person’s fragmentation, and deafens their ability to hear the Catholic voice. Walker Percy’s familiarity with Guardini is most explicit in The Last Gentleman where Percy represents the difficulty of hearing the call of Catholicism. Recently, Paul Elie and Dana Gioia have pointed out the lacking literary presence …

Network Analysis-Based Psychoeducation For Gad, Corinna Scott

University Honors Theses

Psychoeducation, providing essential information for a client about psychological and physiological processes, is typically the first step in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) but its content and implementation is currently underdeveloped. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a prevalent mental disorder in the United States. Often, persons with GAD and their primary care providers and family do not recognize or understand the meaning of their symptoms because of the diffuse and imprecise nature of the diagnosis. This thesis aims to investigate a systems network analysis of generalized anxiety disorder to explore suggestions for enhancing psychoeducation as an initial intervention for GAD clients. A …

Sense Of Place And Stakeholder Involvement In Rural Environmental Management, Jessica Lynn Beutler

University Honors Theses

There is a growing need for involvement of local communities in environmental management in order to develop dynamic and holistic management strategies. Communities have direct impact on the ecosystems they live in; therefore, it is vital to understand the environmental values and knowledge of environmental threats held by those communities. Integrating the community’s knowledge into local environmental management can help engage instead of alienate them. The relationship between rural communities and their local environment in Puget Island, WA was investigated by conducting interviews with residents, examining at their values and understanding of environmental issues. Additionally, this research investigates how sense …

A Renewed Look At Ideology And Legislative Professionalism, Jacob Voegele

University Honors Theses

In the 1960s a wave of transformations took place within American State Legislatures. Reforms included expanded session length, and increase in staffing and legislator salaries. While some states adopted these reforms quickly, others were more resistant and lagged behind. Scholars have developed a variety of possible explanations for this phenomenon, however the influence Ideology has often been overlooked. This paper examines the relationship between Ideology and Professionalization by surveying Oregon Legislators. Oregon is ideally suited for such a study as the legislature recently approved the change to annual sessions and increases in legislator pay. The data gather from the survey …

Fragments Of Struggle : Five Short Stories By Kobayashi Takiji, Benjamin Robert Burton

University Honors Theses

Fragments of Struggle is a collection of five English translations of short stories by Kobayashi Takiji, the hero and martyr of prewar Japan's proletarian literary movement. The short works in this project showcase the breadth of Takiji's style, and bolster the argument that he may have been a much more complex, and experimental, writer than he is often given credit for. Furthermore, this collection may feature some of the first English translations of wall fiction (kabe shōsetsu), a sub-genre of the Japanese proletarian literary movement that thrived in the early 1930s.

Children Of Alcoholics: How Patterns And Perceptions Of The Past Affect The Future, Lindsey Anne Cochran

University Honors Theses

Parental alcoholism and its effects on children has been a problem widely researched for years. This thesis seeks to find the patterns and roles that are established for children living with parental alcoholism and if/why these patterns are maintained into the individual's adulthood. In doing so, parental alcoholism and its effects on children and adult children will be examined through the lenses of symbolic interactionism and family systems theory. Several concepts that affect roles and patterns are discussed, some of the more prominent being: a) symbols, b) circular causality c) feedback loops, and d) roles. Through an in depth theoretical …

If It Wasn't This: Collected Short Stories, Kevin Dorn

University Honors Theses

Collected short stories dealing with limitations in various forms.

Social Media And Self: Influences On The Formation Of Identity And Understanding Of Self Through Social Networking Sites, Madison Ganda

University Honors Theses

Over the years, social networking sites have grown into a more modern way of socializing. The widespread use and increasing time spent on these sites cause users to create online self-presentations in order to participate. Using Goffman’s dramaturgical theory, this study looked to explain the effects of feedback associated with online identities on social networking sites with offline identity development and presentation. An online Likert-scale survey was used gauge participant’s feelings about the social networking sites they used. Analysis of the collected data used a regression model to explore possible links between feedback on posts online and individuals’ internalization of …

Traversing The United States-Mexico Border: Gender And Kinship In Migrant Families, Patrick S. Harhai

University Honors Theses

This paper explores the process of gender and kinship reconfiguration during transnational migration. Transnational migrants shift and adapt the ways in which they fulfill the cultural responsibilities of kinship and gender. This study focuses on Latin American migrants and their kin networks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Although themes of global economic, trade, and immigration are present, the focus is migration in a western context. Drawing on published ethnographies, I use data collected by anthropologists and other social science researchers in the past decade and a half to elucidate the ways in which governmental bodies control and incite …

The Impact Of Psychosocial Needs Of Adolescent And Young Adult Cancer Patients: An Analysis Of Clinical Trial Participation And Adherence, Kate Jensen

University Honors Theses

The treatment of Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology patients requires a comprehensive understanding of the psychological and social complexity of this group. Psychosocial support is often coupled with clinical treatment, but there are still unmet needs within this population regarding relevant information, mental health counseling, practical resources, and others. A significant gap in available clinical trials and participation in clinical trials has prevented progress in clinical treatment of Adolescent and Young Adults with cancer. A review of pertinent literature on psychosocial needs and oncology clinical trials was conducted in order to examine any relationship between unmet needs and clinical trial …

Comics And The Complicit Reader: Closure As A Transgressive Technique In Transmetropolitan, Kyle Knox

University Honors Theses

In recent years, the critical analysis of comic books has come to be a respected field in popular culture studies. Transmetropolitan, a 60 issue comic book created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Darick Robertson, became a one of the most popular nonsuperhero series throughout its publication by DC Comics in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Since the beginning of the present decade, scholars have paid increased attention to the thematic content of the series, identifying the text as a brutal transgressive satire of Western consumerist culture. This paper examines the formal structure of the work, primarily through …

Issues Of Authenticity In Small Scale Tourism: A Study Of The Mcdisney Experience, Jordan Nelson

University Honors Theses

The small scale tourist industry began as a rejection of mass tourism and the consumerist ideals associated with it. The search for authentic experience and authentic culture has become synonymous with small scale tourism and backpacker culture. The rejection of mass tourism typically results in a more culture centered approach to tourism which entails more interactions with locals in hopes of an authentic cultural experience. However, in this article I will discuss the issues that arise with the commoditization of culture and the people of that culture when the search for authenticity is informed by western ideals in the case …

Modeling Bus Bunching With Petri Nets And Max-Plus Algebra, Harry Newcomb

University Honors Theses

In this work, the possibilities of modeling bus bunching using Petri nets and max-plus algebra are investigated. The basic properties of max-plus algebra and Petri nets are introduced, and previous work modeling transportation networks with these tools is summarized. One previous model that incorporates a non-analytic feature is simplified to remove this feature while retaining the model's function, and it is proved that passenger interaction with the bus network cannot be modeled with autonomous timed event graphs with stop subnets.

Dracula And Dictators: Changes In Tourism In Romania After The Fall Of Communism, Kelly D. Ragalie

University Honors Theses

The fall of communism in December 1989 left Romania in turmoil, reaching all aspects of life. The tourism sector was only one area in which communism had its effect before and after its demise. This paper argues that the tourism sector has felt changes in development, identity and legacy. The reign of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, the historical context in which tourism has developed and the identity of the Romanian people today are discussed in this paper. From brutality to chaos; slow economic growth to introduction of the European Union; mythological characters like Dracula and 'Dracula’s Castle': Romanian tourism is …

Helly's Theorem And Its Equivalences Via Convex Analysis, Adam Robinson

University Honors Theses

Helly's theorem is an important result from Convex Geometry. It gives sufficient conditions for a family of convex sets to have a nonempty intersection. A large variety of proofs as well as applications are known. Helly's theorem also has close connections to two other well-known theorems from Convex Geometry: Radon's theorem and Carathéodory's theorem. In this project we study Helly's theorem and its relations to Radon's theorem and Carathéodory's theorem by using tools of Convex Analysis and Optimization. More precisely, we will give a novel proof of Helly's theorem, and in addition we show in a complete way that these …

Youth Engagement And Portland Neighborhood Associations, Kelly Sellers

University Honors Theses

This research addresses the intersection between youth engagement and Portland neighborhood associations, and explores future implications for young people’s civic engagement and participation in decisions that affect their lives. Since much of the literature on public participation does not specifically address young people’s assets or needs, this research provides an exploratory view on youth perceptions of place and neighborhood associations. Through semi-structured interviews, three members of the Multnomah Youth Commission, the official youth policy body for the City of Portland and Multnomah County, shared their insights, regarding current awareness of and future hopes for Portland neighborhood associations. The lack of …

Social Constructs In Film Culture: The Effect Of It On The Performing Arts, And The Destroyed Association Of Signs To Enhance Meaning, Eileen W. Tom

University Honors Theses

Semiotics is the study of signs and how they produce meaning in society. How can the lens of semiotics (specifically the components and the relationship between the signifier and the signified) reform the audience and performer systems? This thesis serves as an examination of the relationship between the audience and performer, how each play a part in creating meaning within a given performance piece. This project provides a method on how to rebuild the world of the film to enhance a theme. The primary evidence consists of statistics gathered from a viewing of a staged reading that was written specifically …

Affect Perception In Computer Mediated Communication, Rachel E. Townsend

University Honors Theses

The perception of affect influences the subjective perception of an individual’s environment (Isbell & Burns, n.d.). Accurate affect perception leads to increased resilience and positive coping mechanisms when faced with daily life stressors (Robinson, Moeller, Buchholz, Boyd, & Troop-Gordon, 2012). Communication technologies have revolutionized the ways in which individuals connect to one another professionally and socially (Joseph B. Walther, 1992). This study investigated accurate affect perception in computer mediated communication (CMC) from a multidisciplinary perspective. One hundred fifty four research participants ( = 26.84, = 9.66) responded to a self-report questionnaire hosted by Qualtrics.com. A multiple linear regression was conducted, …

Communication Tools Towards A Bioregional Consciousness, Elona Trogub

University Honors Theses

Recognizing that ecological collapse is within reach, I draw upon the observations that poorly distributed power dynamics supported through the reinforcement of individualism, hierarchism, reductionism, linear thinking, etc. are some of the basic principles that pose a challenge when it comes to embracing new and very ancient ways of interacting with the rest of living systems. There exist “original instructions,” reinforced by recent scientific acknowledgements, that contain guidelines for needed action and interaction to prevent anthropogenic ecological collapse. I utilize storytelling as well as several of the leverage points for systems change suggested by Donella Meadows (1999) in deconstructing the …

Magnolia: A Creative Thesis Project, Stephanie Tshappat

University Honors Theses

A creative thesis project consisting of six flash fiction short stories, each one thousand words in length and linked together by a framing story.

Life Near Death: The Impact Of Support Groups For People With Terminal Cancer On Preparatory Grief, Ariel Young

University Honors Theses

Growing evidence suggests that preparedness for death can lead to positive outcomes for the dying and for the bereaved. Preparatory grief, grieving one’s own death before it occurs, is grossly understudied. More research is necessary in order to understand the needs of the dying and to design more effective support systems to meet those needs. Within the next few decades a significant increase in the number of individual’s living with long-term terminal illness and in need of end-of-life care is virtually inevitable. Current support systems may be outdated and thus inappropriate for these individuals.

This thesis reviews relevant literature regarding …