Digital Commons Network^™

Contextual Conditions Related To The Undergraduate Experience And The Nature Of Alumni Involvement: A Qualitative Study, Kasey G. Evans

Masters Theses

The researcher used qualitative methodology to analyze the perspectives of 5 alumni of a mid-sized Midwestern institution regarding their experiences as an undergraduate at the institution and the context of their current relationship with their alma mater. Overall, participants placed a value on giving back to the organizations and groups that they were most involved with as an undergraduate. The participants do not currently give to the institution financially but would like to in the future. The study suggests that undergraduate context is vital to future involvement with the institution.

Resident Assistant Training And Students With High Functioning Autism, Tyler Fisher

Masters Theses

Utilizing qualitative methodology, Resident Assistants' perceptions were examined with regards to the training they receive for identifying and assisting High Functioning Autistic Students. Current Resident Assistants were interviewed and themes were developed. RA's expressed dissatisfaction with current training concerning the characteristics of this population. Specifically, participants shared the need for additional training on identifying HFA students and the referral process to disability services. Lastly, participants shared feeling strong support from supervisors; however, lack the knowledge and confidence to effectively support these students.

A Study On The Personality Characteristics Of Dreamers, Joshua Lambert

Masters Theses

Nightmares are frightening dreams that cause the dreamer to wake, with the events that occur within the nightmare well remembered after awakening. There are those who experience nightmares frequently (at least one nightmare a week). While studying nightmares, Hartmann (1989, 1991) theorized a distinct personality trait he referred to as boundaries of the mind, and conceptualized a boundary continuum ranging from thin boundaries to thick boundaries. Those with thin boundaries were hypothesized to express permeability between cognitive processes, whereas those with thick boundaries are thought to better separate cognitive processes. Those who experience frequent nightmares are typically shown to report …

Cyber-Victimization, Depression, And Social Anxiety Among College Students, Kenna L. Mager

Masters Theses

Cyber-victimization, a new form of bullying, emerged with the development and evolution of technology. Recent research shows discrepancies in cyber-victimization definitions and there are inconsistencies of methods used to measure cyber-victimization. This paper reviewed the literature on cyber-victimization and developed a new scale to measure cyber-victimization with the intention of making cyber-victimization research more consistent. The current study examined known correlates of cyber-victimization (e.g., depression and social anxiety) in a sample of college students using the newly developed measure. The current study also explored the moderating role of social support in the relationship between cyber-victimization and depression, as well as …

Being Bromo In A Heterosexual Dominated Culture: A Qualitative Approach, Nathan J. Wehr

Masters Theses

Homosexual males want to be a part of a social fraternity for the same reasons heterosexual males want to join a social fraternity, however, homosexual males going through recruitment could soon be welcomed into an environment that is not supportive of homosexual males. Studies have proven that unwelcoming and unsupportive environments can hinder identity development of males who are either homosexual, questioning their sexual identity, or bisexual (Long, 2011). This study was designed to focus on the support fraternities have for homosexual members joining fraternities and the level of support as a fraternity community. Using a qualitative approach, the researcher …

Moral Judgments Of Differing Transgressions & The Influence Of Willingness To Seek Counseling & Religiosity, Marni Naleway

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine how moral judgments differ towards substance abusers and unfaithful spouses. Furthermore, the study compared judgments regarding the gender of the transgressor, the transgressor's willingness to go to counseling, and the participant's level of religiosity. Participants in the study were provided with a scenario describing a substance abuse transgression or an infidelity transgression followed by a survey of questions inquiring about their judgments towards the transgressor. Results indicated individuals judge a transgressor more harshly in an infidelity transgression compared to a substance abuse transgression. Results also indicated a gender bias between transgressions as …

Metagenomic Analysis Of The Lacrimal Caruncle Region Of Canis Lupus Familiaris Using Miseq Technology, Seun A. Ikugbayigbe

Masters Theses

The identification of ocular microbiota may allow early diagnosis and treatment strategies against eye diseases and disorders with canines. However, clinical microbial identification has been limited to cloning and conventional culture-based studies, which typically underestimate community diversity. In this report, lllumina MiSeq analysis of the 16S rRNA gene was used to examine the microbiome of the lacrimal caruncle region from five healthy dogs. The breeds sampled were a Golden Retriever (Dog A), a Weimaraner (Dog B), a Shih Tzu mix (Dog C), a Yorkie mix (Dog D), and a Dachshund (Dog E). MiSeq analysis revealed a total of 370 operational …

The Functional Role Of Leaf Nutrients In An Old-Field Successional Community, Kirstin I. Duffin

Masters Theses

In functional ecology, traits that capture aspects of plant performance are used to understand how organisms interact with their environment. Leaf nutrients are an example of a functional trait that directly links to plant metabolic processes and therefore may describe plant assemblage dynamics. Multivariate leaf nutrient analyses may be used with other functional traits to understand ecological strategies because they are a direct measure of leaf metabolic processes and can describe nuances in plant allocation patterns. In this thesis, I explored (1) whether a suite of leaf nutrients (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and magnesium) was related to plant growth …

Mental Illness In Early American Fiction: Charles Brockden Brown And The Sentimental Novelists, Katie E. Walk

Masters Theses

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of the United States of America as a new nation. This development brought with it new ideologies and social and political change; included in these changes was the way that sexual conduct outside of marriage was dealt with. Because the emerging legal system became less concerned with matters of morality, some people became frightened that sexual promiscuity would become rampant. The sentimental novel or seduction tale became a means of attempting to control sexual behavior when the law was not able to step in.

The way that madness, a term …

Financial Literacy: Past, Present And Future Impact On College Freshmen, Jennifer Monkman

Masters Theses

This study researched the financial literacy of first-year students relating to their personal finances and financial aid at a rural, Midwestern, four-year public institution. The participants in the study were limited to first-year students with no previous college credit. There were 97 participants in this study, with 84 participant's completing the entire survey. Results of the study indicated that overall students did have financial literacy relating to their financial aid. The results also indicated that students main and original source of financial knowledge came from their parent or guardian. Recommended for Student Affairs Professional is to create more comprehensive orientation …

The Effects Of Cued Speech On Phonemic Awareness Skills, Jessica M. Phillips

Masters Theses

Research suggests phonemic awareness is enhanced through multimodality training. Cued Speech is a multimodality system that combines hand signs with mouth movements to represent phonemes of the spoken language. This system has been utilized successfully in developing phonological awareness with children with hearing loss. However, no research is available on its effectiveness with children who are not deaf or hard-of-hearing. The efficacy of the use of Cued Speech for the enhancement of phonological skills in typically developing 1st grade students was evaluated in this study. Twenty-six 1^st graders identified as low-achieving readers by their classroom teachers were administered the …

Veterans' Perceptions And Use Of Student Support Services At A Midwestern University, Amanda J. Starwalt

Masters Theses

The number of student veterans on college campuses is increasing (NCVAS, 2012). There is a need to support these students, but how? Campuses must take a closer look at the student services they offer to student veterans, and how they are being utilized (McBain, Kim, Cook, & Snead, 2012). In this study, six student veterans were interviewed to better understand what resources and support student veterans utilize on campus. It was found that student veterans are similar to adult learners and bring with them experiences and responsibilities which play an important role in the support and services they utilize. Student …

Another Look At The Feminist Language, Ruth M. Pitman

Quaker Religious Thought

No abstract provided.

Review Of Auto/Pathographies, Edited By Tamar Tembeck, Sandra Lim

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Auto/Pathographies offers a unique perspective on the subject of illness and the body by departing from tendencies to gaze and quickly consume diseased bodies as sites of spectacle, heroic suffering, and victory. Rather, the intention presented here is to activate in the observer a sense of corporality and existential engagement in relation to the unique processes of living, enacting, and even dying through illness and disease. As the cover image of this catalogue suggests, a good portion of the exhibition is devoted to the art and life of British photographer Jo Spence (1934 - 1992) and the body …

The Derivative Nature Of Corporate Constitutional Rights, Margaret M. Blair

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Article engages the two hundred year history of corporate constitutional rights jurisprudence to show that the Supreme Court has long accorded rights to corporations based on the rationale that corporations represent associations of people from whom such rights are derived. The Article draws on the history of business corporations in America to argue that the Court’s characterization of corporations as associations made sense throughout most of the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, however, when the Court was deciding several key cases involving corporate rights, this associational view was already becoming a poor fit for some corporations. The …

Indemnification As An Alternative To Nullification, Robert A. Mikos

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The federalization of criminal law arguably threatens the states’ traditional police powers. Congress has criminalized myriad activities the states condone (or at least tolerate); it has denied federal criminal defendants rights they would enjoy in state proceedings; and it has imposed harsher punishments for crimes proscribed by both levels of government. In many instances, Congress’s decision to supplant the policy choices made by the states appears unjustified by any legitimate federal interest. The conventional wisdom suggests there is very little the states themselves can do to stop the federalization of criminal law and the resultant diminution of state prerogatives. The …

America's Disposable Youth: Undocumented Delinquent Juveniles, Karla M. Mckanders

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Through discriminatory rhetoric state and local officials construct delinquent juvenile immigrant youth as the embodiment of a threat to public safety and American values. Accordingly, alleged delinquent undocumented immigrant children who have spent the majority of their lives in the United States, are subjected to discrimination and exclusionary practices, which enable lessened protections under the law. This article critically analyzes how undocumented delinquent youth, mainly Latino males, are constructed through the various narratives of immigrant children that are perpetuated by the media and policymakers, and how this impacts their treatment within the juvenile justice and immigration systems. Central to this …

Beyond Gridlock, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan A. Gilligan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Private climate governance can achieve major greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions reductions while governments are in gridlock. Despite the optimism that emerged from the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, almost a quarter century later the federal legislative process and international climate negotiations are years from a comprehensive response. Yet Microsoft, Google and many other companies have committed to become carbon neutral. Wal-Mart has partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund to secure 20 million tons of GHG emissions reductions from its suppliers around the world, an amount equal to almost half the emissions from the US iron and …

Towards Principles And Standards For The Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Safety, W. Kip Viscusi, Scott Farrow

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is frequently applied to decisions involving public safety which requires analyzing risk and assessing options to manage risks. Principles and standards may assist analysts, decision-makers, and the public in developing and interpreting such BCAs. Principles and standards at best represent commonly held views among a community of practice. Such views are continually evolving with advances in the field. This paper presents a modularized format towards principles and standards that may assist in focusing discussion and decisions about whether such proposals actually reflect principles and standards within the benefit-cost analysis community of practice. Among topics covered are welfare …

An Empirical Analysis Of Noncompetition Clauses And Other Restrictive Postemployment Covenants, Randall S. Thomas, Norman Bishara, Kenneth Martin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Employment contracts for most employees are not publicly available, leaving researchers to speculate about whether they contain postemployment restrictions on employee mobility, and if so, what those provisions look like. Using a large sample of publicly available CEO employment contracts, we are able to examine these noncompetition covenants, including postemployment covenants not to compete ("CNCs" or "noncompetes'), nonsolicitation agreements ("NSAs"), and nondisclosure agreements ("NDAs'). What we found confirms some long-held assumptions about restrictive covenants but also uncovers some surprises.

We begin by discussing why employers use restrictive covenants and examining how the courts have treated them. We then analyze an …

Property Is The New Privacy, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Richard Epstein’s new book, The Classical Liberal Constitution, is the latest entry in what might be called conservative foundationalist constitutional theory. The movement’s primary goal is to elevate judicial protection of economic rights to the same level that is currently accorded to non-economic or personal rights, and thus to make it much more difficult for the government to regulate economic activity. Freedom of contract, for these theorists, is on a par with freedom of speech, and property rights are as important as privacy rights. Epstein’s version of the theory, although sophisticated and nuanced, is ultimately unpersuasive for reasons I catalogue …

Rapid Response Teams Versus Critical Care Outreach Teams: Unplanned Escalations In Care And Associated Outcomes, Valerie Danesh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The incidence of unplanned escalations during hospitalization is undocumented, but estimates may be as high as 1.2 million occurrences per year in the United States. Rapid Response Teams (RRT) were developed for the early recognition and treatment of deteriorating patients to deliver time-sensitive interventions, but evidence related to optimal activation criteria and structure is limited. The purpose of this study is to determine if an Early Warning Score-based Critical Care Outreach (CCO) model is related to the frequency of unplanned intra-hospital escalations in care compared to a RRT system based on staff nurse identification of vital sign derangements and physical …

Electromechanical Lifting Actuation Of A Mems Cantilever And Nano-Scale Analysis Of Diffusion In Semiconductor Device Dielectrics, Imen Rezadad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents experimental and theoretical studies of physical phenomena in micro- and nano-electronic devices. Firstly, a novel and unproven means of electromechanical actuation in a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) cantilever was investigated. In nearly all MEMS devices, electric forces cause suspended components to move toward the substrate. I demonstrated a design with the unusual and potentially very useful property of having a suspended MEMS cantilever lift away from the substrate. The effect was observed by optical micro-videography, by electrical sensing, and it was quantified by optical interferometry. The results agree with predictions of analytic and numerical calculations. One potential application …

Entanglement And Coherence In Classical And Quantum Optics, Kumel Kagalwala

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We explore the concepts of coherence and entanglement as they apply to both the classical and quantum natures of light. In the classical domain, we take inspiration from the tools and concepts developed in foundational quantum mechanics and quantum information science to gain a better understanding of classical coherence theory of light with multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs). First, we use polarization and spatial parity DoFs to demonstrate the notion of classical entanglement, and show that Bell's measure can serve as a useful tool in distinguishing between classical optical coherence theory. Second, we establish a methodical yet versatile approach called …

Does The Journey Matter More Than The Destination? The Contribution Of Geospatial And Local Conditions To Invasive Pomacea Maculata Distribution Across Ranchland Wetlands, Steffan Pierre

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Geospatial characteristics such as isolation and avenues of connectivity influence an invader's pattern of dispersal and distribution. However many examinations of invasion success ignore the contribution of dispersal to patterns of invasion and focus only on the local environmental/habitat factors. This study examines the interaction of geospatial characteristics, that may influence dispersal, and local environmental factors, that may govern successful occupation, on the likelihood of invasion (invasability) of wetlands within an agriculturally modified landscape. I examined the current invasion of seasonal wetlands in south-central Florida ranchland by non-native apple snails (Pomacea maculata (Ampullariidae)) as a model system for understanding this …

Development Of Human And Rodent Based In Vitro Systems Toward Better Translation Of Bench To Bedside In Vivo Results, Bonnie Berry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prospective medicinal compounds progress through multiple testing phases before becoming licensed drugs. Testing of novel compounds includes a preclinical phase where the potential therapeutic is tested in vitro and/or in animal models in vivo to predict its potential efficacy and/or toxicity in humans. The failure of preclinical models to accurately predict human drug responses can lead to potentially dangerous compounds being administered to humans, or potentially beneficial compounds being kept in development abeyance. Moreover, inappropriate choice in model organism for studying disease states may result in pushing forward inappropriate drug targets and/or compounds and wasting valuable time and resources in …

Development Of Cytotoxic Natural Killer Cells For Ovarian Cancer Treatment, Veethika Pandey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of gynecological malignancy. Cytoreductive surgery and frontline platinum/taxane-based chemotherapy provides good initial efficacy in the treatment, but poor long-term patient survival. This is mainly caused by tumor relapse due to intraperitoneal spreading and ineffective alternate therapies to treat these resistant tumors. The challenge in the field is to develop strategies that would prove effective in these patients and extend overall survival. Over the years, various treatments have been developed for the treatment of cancer amongst which, adoptive cell immunotherapy has shown promising results. But despite the efficacy seen in the clinic, there are concerns …

Why Choose? A Response To Rachlinski, Wistrich & Guthrie, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In "Heart Versus Head," Rachlinski, Guthrie, and Wistrich present experimental findings suggesting that judges sometimes rule on the basis of emotion rather than reason. Though there is much of value in their findings, they have presented a false choice. The experiments do offer strong evidence that judges' decisions can be influenced by the "affect heuristic," insofar as they show that prompting generalized feelings of good/bad and like/dislike can sway legal rulings that ought to be answered entirely on traditionally legalistic grounds. However, the experiments do not speak more broadly to the influence of judicial emotion, which is a far more …

Is Conflict A Factor In A Population's Quality Of Life? A Comparative Study Of University Students In The Palestinian Territories And Jordan, Yara Asi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As nearly one third of the world's population lives in an area that is in some way touched by war, researchers have long been interested in the varied impacts of conflict on civilians. Many indicators, measuring both physical and mental constructs, have been assessed in war-torn populations from around the world, one of which is health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) are one region in which copious research on health indicators has been undertaken in an effort to understand how long-term conflict manifests itself in noncombatant populations. However, existing studies focus primarily on indicators within the …

An Investigation Of The Information Practices Of Education Doctoral Students, Corinne Bishop

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Academic libraries are increasingly re-envisioning their services to provide expanded outreach and segmented programming for specific user groups. Many academic libraries offer segmented services and programming for undergraduate groups such as first-year experience programs and general education programs. Currently, academic libraries are also identifying and expanding their services and programming to meet the unique needs of graduate groups. In conjunction with this focus, the roles of academic librarians are also expanding in the area of outreach. In essence, academic librarians are becoming more directly involved in aligning library services and programming with academic programs and promoting change within their institutions. …