Digital Commons Network^™

An Evaluation Of An Independent Study Program In Six Charter Alternative Schools, Carolyn Jun

Theses and Dissertations

Alternative education programs were designed to meet the needs of at-risk students who were not succeeding in a traditional classroom environment. This mixed-methods study examined a particular type of alternative education program—a secondary independent study program—in six charter alternative schools in Los Angeles County, California. The data included student records, field notes, and semi-structured interviews from 24 current students, their parents, and 12 teachers—selected by a stratified random sample of the population at the six sites. This study examined the participants’ perceptions of the purpose of the program, their motivations to be at an alternative school, change in GPA from …

A Study Of High-Performing At-Risk High School Students And Their Perceptions On Academic Success And Achievement, Charles H. Pak

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to explore and describe the school factors experienced by students at an alternative high school with an independent study program and a 90% CASHEE passage rate and to identify those factors, if any, that students perceived as contributing to their improved academic performance. The school factors included: the nature and quality of the school learning environment, learning experiences, program interventions, and the independent study program. This study was guided by the following 5 research questions: 1. How do students who have been enrolled at SMHS for at least 1 year and who …

The Use Of Experiential Acceptance In Psychotherapy With Emerging Adults, Lauren Ford

Theses and Dissertations

Emerging adulthood is recognized as a growing developmental stage that varies within and across cultures. Existing research generally characterizes this period as one of identity exploration, instability, self-reflection, and optimism. For many in this cohort, life events that were once organized into a stable sequence such as entering the workforce, marriage, and having children are increasingly a highly individualized and somewhat unstructured trajectory. This lack of structure provides opportunities and potential challenges to those transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. To this end, experiential acceptance may be an important target skill for intervention in guiding emerging adults through this tumultuous period. …

Opening Doors: A Collective Case Study Of Integrating Technology In The Preschool Through 3rd Grade Classroom In A Developmentally Appropriate Way, Amy Louise Cox Cameron

Theses and Dissertations

Children today are growing up in a technology-saturated world and yet early childhood teachers do not typically include technology in their classrooms, or if they do, they include it inappropriately. The literature states that integrating technology in early education can yield many benefits, but many teachers of young children avoid using technology because they do not know how to incorporate it appropriately. This dissertation is an exploratory observational study of early childhood teachers (preschool through third grade) who integrate technology in their programs in developmentally appropriate ways. This study involved three classroom teachers who were identified as model teachers at …

Acceptance And Commitment Therapy For The Treatment Of Information Processing Biases Associated With Social Anxiety Disorder, Tejal Shah

Theses and Dissertations

The present research is a critical analysis of the psychology literature on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) as a treatment for individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). The primary purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing body of literature in the application of ACT for anxiety disorders generally, and for SAD more specifically, in order to examine the potential utility of ACT as a treatment for SAD. This includes critical analysis and synthesis of major themes in the literature pertinent to this area of inquiry. Furthermore, the study explores the connection between the individual …

Site Administrators' Perceptions Of Barriers And Enablers To Parent Involvement In Urban Title I Charter Schools, Jessica T. Boro

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore site administrators perspectives of barriers and enablers to parent involvement in urban Title I charter middle schools, specifically related to communication, volunteering, and decision making. The study design allowed for in depth analysis of participants interview responses. A total of ten charter school site administrators participated in the semi-structured interviews that informed this study. The semi-structured interviews consisted of six interview questions and nine probing questions. The participant interview responses to the interview protocol were coded to highlight key words and statements to extract themes that informed the study findings. The …

A Human Resource Perspective On The Development Of Workforce Agility, Azuara Alejandro Virchez

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored workforce agility from a human resource perspective. This included its main determinants, such as adaptability, proactivity, resiliency, business orientation, and self-awareness; the interventions through which it is developed, such as performance management processes, training, and coaching; and finally the main challenges that organizations face when developing it, such as cultural context and the lack of strategic clarity. The empirical analysis provided several insights on the development of workforce agility. Although limited to a small sample, the study provided evidence supporting the need for future research on the definition of the characteristics of an agile workforce, the definition …

Prolonged Fatigue In Ukraine And The United States: Prevalence And Risk Factors, Fred Friedberg, Nathan L. Tintle, Jake Clark, Evelyn Bromet

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Background: Prolonged, severe, unalleviated fatigue may be disabling whether it occurs on its own or in conjunction with medical or psychiatric conditions. This paper compares the prevalence and correlates of prolonged fatigue in general population samples in Ukraine versus the US. Methods: Population surveys were conducted in 2002 in both Ukraine (Ukraine World Mental Health [WMH] Survey) and the US (National Comorbidity Survey-Replication; NCS-R). Both surveys administered the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI 3.0), which contained modules assessing: neurasthenia (prolonged fatigue); mood, anxiety, and alcohol/drug use disorders; chronic medical conditions; and demographic characteristics. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine …

Semantic Shift To Pragmatic Meaning In Shared Decision Making: Situation Theory Perspective, M. Canan, A. Sousa-Poza, S. F. Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The way humans establish communication depends on the generation and conveyance of meaning. Linguistically, meaning in information is dependent on the meaning that is ascribed to signifiers in the context of the communication. These signifiers can include items such as words, phrases, signs, and symbols. Conveyance of meaning may, however, imprecise and prone to error. The meaning of information in communication may arise from a change in the context in which a signifier is placed (intrinsic), or a change in the paradigm with which the signifier and context are perceived (extrinsic). In simple situations, where paradigms are reconcilable, semantic shift …

Romania's Participation To The European Assessment Project Titled Hyunder, Multi-Criterial Analyses Of Salt Cavern Locations, Ioan Iordache, Dorin Schitea, Adriana Marinoiu, Mihaela Buga, Mihai Balan, Ioan Stefanescu, Adrian Gheorghe, Mihaela Iordache, Viviana Cigolotti (Ed.), Chiara Barchiesi (Ed.), Michela Chianella (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of the work is to assess the potential, the actors and relevant business cases for large scale storage of renewable electricity by hydrogen underground storage in Romania. This presentation intends to provide a picture of the multi-criterial analyses of salt cavern locations in Romania.

The energy sector is facing with the necessity to store large energy quantities for short to long term in order to adapt to the increasingly intermittent renewable energy. The results of this presentation have originated from an ongoing European assessment project by the name of HyUnder (FCH JU, grant 303417) regarding utilization of salt …

Key Factors Driving Personnel Downsizing In Multinational Military Organizations, Ilksen Gorkem, Resit Unal, Pilar Pazos

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Although downsizing has long been a topic of research in traditional organizations, there are very few studies of this phenomenon in military contexts. As a result, we have little understanding of the key factors that drive personnel downsizing in military setting. This study contributes to our understanding of key factors that drive personnel downsizing in military organizations and whether those factors may differ across NATO nations’ cultural clusters. The theoretical framework for this study was built from studies in non-military contexts and adapted to fit the military environment.

This research relies on historical data from one of the largest multinational …

Engineering Analytics: Research Into The Governance Structure Needed To Integrate The Dominant Design Methodologies, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the ASEM-IAC 2014, Cotter (2014) explored the current state of engineering design, identified the dominate approaches to engineering design, discussed potential contributions from the new field of data analytics to engineering design, and proposed an Engineering Analytics framework that integrates the dominate engineering design approaches and data analytics within a human-intelligence/machine-intelligence (HI-MI) design architecture. This paper reports research applying ontological engineering to integrate the dominate engineering design methodologies into a systemic engineering design decision governance architecture.

Statistical Engineering: A Causal-Stochastic Modeling Research Update, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the ASEM-IAC 2012, Cotter (2012) summarized prior works that led to the proposal for statistical engineering, identified the gaps in knowledge that statistical engineering needs to address, explored additional gaps in knowledge not addressed in the prior works, set forth a working definition of and body of knowledge for statistical engineering, and set forth proposals of potential systems contributions the Engineering Management profession could make toward the development of statistical engineering. In 2014, the ASQ Statistics Division, DOT&E, NASA, and IDA co-sponsored a Statistical Engineering Agreement to jointly research development of the discipline of statistical engineering. The statistics community …

Research Agenda Into Human-Intelligence/Machine-Intelligence Governance, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Since the birth of modern artificial intelligence (AI) at the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, the AI community has pursued modeling and coding of human intelligence into AI reasoning processes (HI Þ MI). The Dartmouth Conference's fundamental assertion was that every aspect of human learning and intelligence could be so precisely described that it could be simulated in AI. With the exception of knowledge specific areas (such as IBM's Big Blue and a few others), sixty years later the AI community is not close to coding global human intelligence into AI. In parallel, the knowledge management (KM) community has pursued understanding of …

Learning By Doing - Energy Systems Management, Nima Shahriari, Adrian V. Gheorghe

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Climate change concerns have confronted energy policy makers by unprecedented challenges in the 21st century. Revolution of renewable energy technologies, as well as more efficient energy systems, has been promising in the context of global warming. However, these technologies are not maturing and chaning. Consequently planning for development of these resources requires dealing with various multidisciplinary research questions such as financial feasibility of renewable energy projects. Nevertheless, there is considerable lack of education programs offering multidisciplinary approach for addressing the current energy challenges. Based on the 21st evolving energy landscape, an interdisciplinary graduate certificate course work was designed at Old …

Identification Of Magnetite In Lunar Regolith Breccia 60016: Evidence For Oxidized Conditions At The Lunar Surface, Katherine H. Joy, Channon Visscher, Michael E. Zolensky, Takashi Mikouchi, Kenji Hagiya, Kazumasa Ohsumi, David A. Kring

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Lunar regolith breccias are temporal archives of magmatic and impact bombardment processes on the Moon. Apollo 16 sample 60016 is an ‘ancient’ feldspathic regolith breccia that was converted from a soil to a rock at ~3.8 Ga. The breccia contains a small (70 × 50 μm) rock fragment composed dominantly of an Fe-oxide phase with disseminated domains of troilite. Fragments of plagioclase (An95-97), pyroxene (En74-75, Fs21-22,Wo3-4) and olivine (Fo66-67) are distributed in and adjacent to the Fe-oxide. The silicate minerals have lunar compositions that are similar to anorthosites. Mineral chemistry, synchrotron X-ray Absorption Near Edge Spectroscopy (XANES) and X-ray Diffraction …

Are Aquinas And Whitehead Metaphorical And Analogical All The Way Down?, Robert Masson

Theology Faculty Research and Publications

The paper argues from the perspective of a significant strand of interpretation of Aquinas and from insights in cognitive linguistics that a fruitful dialogue between Whitehead and Thomism needs to take into account that metaphysics and talk about God are metaphorical and analogical all the way down. Cognitive linguistics provides an explanatory scheme for explaining how Aquinas’s tectonic use of analogy shifts the ground of our conventional fields of meanings to create space to conceptualize what otherwise would be beyond grasp and to make inferences possible that otherwise would be unthinkable. The essay concludes with a question, admittedly from a …

Empirical Investigation Of The Laminar Thermal Entrance Region And Turbulent Flow Heat Transfer For Non-Newtonian Silica Nanofluid In Hexagonal Tubes, Emeke Kevin Opute

Theses and Dissertations

This research seeks to determine for the flow of stable dispersion of 9.58% silicon-oxide (SiO2) nanoparticles by volume in water through three hexagonal tubes of hydraulic diameters 1.67 mm, 2.42 mm and 3.26 mm, the pressure drops across the length of the tubes with and without the application of constant heat flux to the test section. Constant heat flux was applied on the wall of each test section (by electric resistance method). The operating temperature range of 15-63°C was maintained for the experiments. Data were analyzed using conventional hydrodynamic and thermal correlations. The test sections were selected and set up …

Observing Range Of Motion (Rom) In Baseball Athletes During An Off-Season Resistance Training Program And Practice, Jimmy Justin Morin

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to observe possible changes in ROM of the shoulder and the hip after an off-season resistance training program and practice. The participants engaged in their normal off-season fall ball practice and off-season training regimen. Participants (N=20) were recruited from The University of North Dakota Baseball team. Before the athletes began their off-season training, a pre-test measurement was taken on shoulder Internal Rotation (IR), External Rotation (ER), Horizontal Adduction (HAdd), and hip and knee flexion. Resistance training took place three days a week for twelve weeks, and fall ball practice was four days a week …

Developing Novel 3d Antennas Using Advanced Additive Manufacturing Technology, Milad Mirzaee

Theses and Dissertations

In today’s world of wireless communication systems, antenna engineering is rapidly advancing as the wireless services continue to expand in support of emerging commercial applications. Antennas play a key role in the performance of advanced transceiver systems where they serve to convert electric power to electromagnetic waves and vice versa. Researchers have held significant interest in developing this crucial component for wireless communication systems by employing a variety of design techniques. In the past few years, demands for electrically small antennas continues to increase, particularly among portable and mobile wireless devices, medical electronics and aerospace systems.

This trend toward smaller …

Secondary Social Studies Teachers’ Perceptions Of Special Education, Kelli Ann Odden

Theses and Dissertations

Through educational reform and federal mandates, general and special education teachers’ responsibilities are designed to intersect. Focusing on secondary social studies teachers, the purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the teachers’ perceptions of special education and how this influences the implementation of special education services in the classroom. From data collected through interviews and analyzed through Moustakas’ phenomenological design, two textural themes emerged (expertise and communication) in addition to three structural themes (placement, Individual Education Plan (IEP)-Reader’s Digest Version, and time). Findings indicate that social studies teachers appreciated the role of special education, but their perception was focused …

Turn That Frown Upside Down: The Experience Of Higher Education Faculty Moving From Disillusionment To Vitality, Robert J. Martin

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study examined the journey of six higher education faculty

members who encountered a state of professional disillusionment in their careers but later

moved to a professional sense of vitality in the professoriate. Building on the extant

literature, this study investigated this phenomenon of moving from professional

disillusionment to vitality in the professoriate through the lenses of life course, agency,

and job satisfaction. These components provided the structure for the study’s conceptual

framework. Employing interpretative phenomenological analysis based on semistructured

interviews, the study traced the journey of these professors to understand how

the key encounters of their lived experiences …

30 Day Lunar/Martian Planetary Habitation Analog: Subjective Crew Analysis Of Behavioral Health, Travis Nelson

Theses and Dissertations

Long duration spaceflight poses risks to astronauts from stressors including challenging living environments, rigorous workloads, physical and mental fatigue, interpersonal conflict, mission uncertainty, emergencies, isolation and confinement. Analog space exploration simulations on Earth provide researchers with controlled environments to train and study human spaceflight operations. The findings of this study provided data on self-assessed metrics from an analog crew (N=3) who independently completed subjective reports of sleep quality, stress, anxiety, fatigue, mental exertion, and also provided objectively assessed sleep quality data by biometric watches. The daily mean reports from subjects were compared across time in order to ascertain possible quarterly …

Iron Deficiency Increases Growth And Nitrogen-Fixation Rates Of Phosphorus-Deficient Marine Cyanobacteria, Nathan S. Garcia, Feixue Fu, Peter N. Sedwick, David A. Hutchins

OES Faculty Publications

Marine dinitrogen (N²)-fixing cyanobacteria have large impacts on global biogeochemistry as they fix carbon dioxide (CO₂) and fertilize oligotrophic ocean waters with new nitrogen. Iron (Fe) and phosphorus (P) are the two most important limiting nutrients for marine biological N₂ fixation, and their availabilities vary between major ocean basins and regions. A long-standing question concerns the ability of two globally dominant N₂-fixing cyanobacteria, unicellular Crocosphaera and filamentous Trichodesmium, to maintain relatively high N₂-fixation rates in these regimes where both Fe and P are typically scarce. We show that under P-deficient …

Designing Fiction-Based Close Reading Experiences For The High School English Language Arts Classroom, Aubrey Jean Mcnary

Theses and Dissertations

The Common Core State Standards are forcing educational professional to develop high-level literacy skills and habits in a student population that is indisputable diverse and generally ill prepared for the demands of the secondary classroom. The practice of close reading is a means of literacy instruction that continually pushes students back into the text to answer text-dependent questions of varying, yet higher, levels of thinking. A variety of lesson plans and text-dependent questions were generated for three pivotal novels to demonstrate close reading as a means of achieving CCSS-level reading and thinking in the general secondary ELA classroom.

Influence Of High-Intensity Turbulence On Laminar Boundary Layer Development On A Cylindrical Leading Edge: Enhancement To Eddy Diffusivity, Juli Pearson

Theses and Dissertations

The growing demand for increased efficiency in turbine engine designs has sparked a growing interest for research of air flow around curved surfaces. The turbine’s operating conditions result in material property constraints, especially in the first stage turbine vanes and blades. These turbine vane components experience extreme loading conditions of both high temperature and high turbulence intensities exiting the combustor. The surface of the turbine blades has cylindrical leading edges that promote stabilizing flow accelerations. These convex surfaces can cause a reduced eddy diffusivity across the boundary layer.

This thesis reviews measurements of velocity and turbulence intensities taken just shy …

Radiation Shielding Approaches For Planetary Surface Exploration: A Mars Case Study For Und Concepts, Arturo Ortiz

Theses and Dissertations

Surface stays on Mars may expose astronauts to high radiation doses from solar flares and galactic cosmic radiation (GCR). We estimated shielding required for a surface habitat, and assessed environments inside a planetary rover and space suit, under historically severe solar flare and GCR conditions, using the HZETRN radiation computer code. A 1m layer of Mars regolith can protect the habitat up to 30 km surface elevation. Polyethylene at 5, 10, and 15 g/cm2 can protect up to 0, 10, and 20 km, respectively. The rover protects from acute exposure up to -0.7 km while a space suit protects up …

The N-Terminus Of Type Iii Secretion Needle Protein Yscf From Yersinia Pestis Functions To Modulate Innate Immune Responses, Patrick Osei-Owusu

Theses and Dissertations

The type III secretion system is employed by many pathogens, including the genera Yersinia, Shigella, Pseudomonas, and Salmonella, to deliver effector proteins into eukaryotic cells. The injectisome needle is formed by the polymerization of a single protein, e.g., YscF (Yersinia pestis), PscF (Pseudomonas aeruginosa), PrgI (Salmonella enterica SPI-1), SsaG (Salmonella enterica SPI-2), or MxiH (Shigella flexneri). In this study, we demonstrated that the N termini of some needle proteins, particularly the N terminus of YscF from Yersinia pestis, influences host immune responses. The N termini of several needle proteins were truncated and tested for the ability to induce inflammatory responses …

Reconceptualizing Privacy: An Examination Of The Developing Regulatory Regime For Facial Recognition Technology, David James Potter

Theses and Dissertations

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration have convened a series of meetings to create a voluntary code of conduct for the commercial use of facial recognition technology. This research asks and answers three questions related to the creation of the voluntary code of conduct: 1) How is the regulatory regime of FRT emerging in the U.S.? 2) What are the roles of the various stakeholders in shaping the commercial regulation of FRT? 3) How does FRT challenge our current conceptions of privacy? Data has been gathered to answer these questions using participant observation and semi-structured interviews. The data was analyzed …

Mapping Flash Flood Potential Using Gis And The Flash Flood Potential Index (Ffpi) In The Turtle River And Forest River Watersheds In North Dakota, Dasuni Jeewandika Perera Ranapathi Arachchige

Theses and Dissertations

Flash flooding is a rapid onset natural hazard and can cause extensive property and crop damages as well as deaths. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration storm database reports 464 flash flood events from 1996 to 2013 in North Dakota causing two deaths, more than $145 million in property damage and $14 million in crop damage. The main purpose of this study is to identify the critical areas of flash flooding within two selected watersheds in eastern North Dakota. The research method relies on the use of a GIS-based model, the Flash Flood Potential Index, that incorporates physiographic characteristics from …