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2016

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Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing In The Classroom, Melissa Tombro Jan 2016

Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing In The Classroom, Melissa Tombro

Milne Open Textbooks

Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom is dedicated to the practice of immersive ethnographic and autoethnographic writing that encourages authors to participate in the communities about which they write. This book draws not only on critical qualitative inquiry methods such as interview and observation, but also on theories and sensibilities from creative writing and performance studies, which encourage self-reflection and narrative composition. Concepts from qualitative inquiry studies, which examine everyday life, are combined with approaches to the creation of character and scene to help writers develop engaging narratives that examine chosen subcultures and the author’s position in relation to …

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French Proficiency At The Secondary And Post-Secondary Levels, Kirsten Wienckowski Jan 2016

French Proficiency At The Secondary And Post-Secondary Levels, Kirsten Wienckowski

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

As a general rule, It is claimed that the four years of foreign language courses taken In high school are equivalent to the first four semesters of foreign courses taken at the university level. In fact, most universities grant college credit for scoring well on the foreign language Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams taken by students following the completion of thelr study of a foreign language In high school. This claim prompts an exploration of proficiency levels achieved by students studying French at the secondary and post-secondary levels through evaluations of the French AP, 18, College Level …

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Hedonia And Eudaimonia: Associations With Academic Success, Wellbeing, And Neuropsychological Functioning, Maria Kryza-Lacombe Jan 2016

Hedonia And Eudaimonia: Associations With Academic Success, Wellbeing, And Neuropsychological Functioning, Maria Kryza-Lacombe

Dissertations and Theses

This study examined the relations between happiness and academic success and wellbeing in a diverse, urban college sample by viewing happiness through the lens of hedonia (seeking pleasure and relaxation) and eudaimonia (seeking meaning), and their neuropsychological correlates. Undergraduate students (n=76; 68.4% female; mean age [SD]=21.17 [3.12]) completed self-report measures of hedonia and eudaimonia, and depression, anxiety, and stress. They also completed objective measures of “cool” executive functioning (WAIS-IV Digit Span, Stroop Color-Word test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and a Stop Signal task) and “hot” executive functioning (Iowa Gambling Task, Temporal Discounting Task). Semester GPA was collected from school records. …

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“Why Italian? Why Not Italian?” Jhumpa Lahiri, Amara Lakhous, Ali Mumin Ahad, Maristella Lorch And Their Unique Journeys Through Italian Language, Mariagrazia De Luca Jan 2016

“Why Italian? Why Not Italian?” Jhumpa Lahiri, Amara Lakhous, Ali Mumin Ahad, Maristella Lorch And Their Unique Journeys Through Italian Language, Mariagrazia De Luca

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

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Japanese Women's Fight For Equal Rights: Feminism And The Us Occupation Of Japan, 1945 - 1952, Jessica Pena Jan 2016

Japanese Women's Fight For Equal Rights: Feminism And The Us Occupation Of Japan, 1945 - 1952, Jessica Pena

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

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"Language Preference And Cognitive Availability Of Sexual Identity In Gay Japanese Bilinguals: An Analysis Of Habitual Use Of Linguistic Categories", Sebastian Cordoba Jan 2016

"Language Preference And Cognitive Availability Of Sexual Identity In Gay Japanese Bilinguals: An Analysis Of Habitual Use Of Linguistic Categories", Sebastian Cordoba

Dissertations and Theses

Sexuality is a very private matter in Japan. Japan’s cultural mores and concepts of family unity have led to very conservative attitudes toward homosexuality. For instance, gay people generally fear disgracing their families, and this fear might prevent them from revealing their sexual identity to others, and so keeping it secret. Thus, homosexuality in Japan is a highly controversial topic. Being gay in Japan is not as tolerated as it is in some Western cultures (McLelland, 2000). Homosexuality is an issue that is not acknowledged by mainstream Japanese society – it is taboo and not spoken about publicly. The present …

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Evaluating Distributed Word Representations For Predicting Missing Words In Sentences, Saniya Saifee Jan 2016

Evaluating Distributed Word Representations For Predicting Missing Words In Sentences, Saniya Saifee

Dissertations and Theses

In recent years, the distributed representation of words in vector space or word embeddings have become very popular as they have shown significant improvements in many statistical natural language processing (NLP) tasks as compared to traditional language models like Ngram. In this thesis, we explored various state-of-the-art methods like Latent Semantic Analysis, word2vec, and GloVe to learn the distributed representation of words. Their performance was compared based on the accuracy achieved when tasked with selecting the right missing word in the sentence, given five possible options. For this NLP task we trained each of these methods using a training corpus …

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A Two-Level Identity Model To Support Interoperability Of Identity Information In Electronic Health Record Systems., Xu Chen Jan 2016

A Two-Level Identity Model To Support Interoperability Of Identity Information In Electronic Health Record Systems., Xu Chen

Doctoral

The sharing and retrieval of health information for an electronic health record (EHR) across distributed systems involves a range of identified entities that are possible subjects of documentation (e.g., specimen, clinical analyser). Contemporary EHR specifications limit the types of entities that can be the subject of a record to health professionals and patients, thus limiting the use of two level models in healthcare information systems that contribute information to the EHR. The literature describes several information modelling approaches for EHRs, including so called “two level models”. These models differ in the amount of structure imposed on the information to be …

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Perceptions Of Tennessee School-Based Agricultural Education Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Globalizing The Agricultural Curriculum, Nathan W. Conner, Katelyn Butcher Jan 2016

Perceptions Of Tennessee School-Based Agricultural Education Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Globalizing The Agricultural Curriculum, Nathan W. Conner, Katelyn Butcher

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Faculty Publications

The agriculture industry is part of an interconnected world that is continually navigating complex trade regulations and cultural barriers. Graduates of School-Based Agricultural Education programs need to be prepared to positively communicate with people from all over the world and to have an understanding of international agricultural practices. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of Tennessee School-Based Agricultural Educators towards globalizing the secondary agricultural curriculum. Twenty-six School-Based Agricultural Educators were interviewed for this study. The interviewees represented the entire state of Tennessee, including both urban and rural programs. The use of thematic analysis allowed the following …

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Justice Scalia's Bottom-Up Approach To Shaping The Law, Meghan J. Ryan Jan 2016

Justice Scalia's Bottom-Up Approach To Shaping The Law, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Justice Antonin Scalia is among the most famous Supreme Court Justices in history. He is known for his originalism and conservative positions, as well as his witty and acerbic legal opinions. One of the reasons Justice Scalia's opinions are so memorable is his effective use of rhetorical devices, which convey colorful images and understandable ideas. One might expect that such powerful opinions would be effective in shaping the law, but Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy was often too conservative to persuade a majority of his fellow Justices on the Supreme Court. Further, his regular criticisms of his Supreme Court colleagues were …

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Peer Review: Navigating Uncertainty In The United States Jury System, Anna Offit Jan 2016

Peer Review: Navigating Uncertainty In The United States Jury System, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article examines American prosecutors’ approaches to uncertainty during voir dire. At different points during trial preparation— and during jury selection itself—lawyers draw on multiple interpretive systems to make sense of ordinary citizens. Taking Assistant United States Attorneys in a federal jurisdiction in the Northeast United States as a case study, and drawing on ethnographic research, I focus on three systems prosecutors alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) use to evaluate jurors: (1) probabilistic and evaluative analogies, (2) juror-types generated from the details of criminal cases, and (3) local knowledge stemming from prosecutors’ relationships and experiences outside of the courtroom. I show …

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People Interpret Robotic Non-Linguistic Utterances Categorically, R Read, T Belpaeme Jan 2016

People Interpret Robotic Non-Linguistic Utterances Categorically, R Read, T Belpaeme

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

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Fundamental Frequency Characteristics Of Modal And Vocal Fry Registers, Heidi Brubaker, Jason Albertson Whitfield Ph.D., Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers D.M.A. Jan 2016

Fundamental Frequency Characteristics Of Modal And Vocal Fry Registers, Heidi Brubaker, Jason Albertson Whitfield Ph.D., Jane Schoonmaker Rodgers D.M.A.

Honors Projects

This study examined the distribution of fundamental frequencies in the connected speech of 14 healthy young adults. Acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency was performed on previously collected speech samples of a phonetically balanced reading passage. For the first three sentences of the reading passage, fundamental frequency contours were extracted using PRAAT, a speech analysis software package. The accuracy of these contours were visually verified and manually corrected when needed. The distribution of the fundamental frequency histories for each sample were then analyzed using Gaussian Mixture Model analyses in MATLAB. For most speakers, four statistical modes were identified in the data …

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Writing Without Boundaries : Examining A Professional Writer's Environment Using Activity Theory, Lindsey Crane Jan 2016

Writing Without Boundaries : Examining A Professional Writer's Environment Using Activity Theory, Lindsey Crane

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This research used activity theory as a framework to explore the physical and figurative locations of writing in a professional setting. The researcher conducted a six-week case study of a technical writer in an IT department for an educational services company to examine how she navigates her environment during the writing process. After identifying one of her activity systems, the researcher interviewed and observed the writer as she collaborated with three subject matter experts on a writing project. The findings reinforced how writing is a social process and revealed how the company's "no boundaries" philosophy impacts the writer's work and …

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The Genre Of The Linguistics Article Within Studies Of Language Variation And Change : A Diachronic Perspective, 1891-2015, David Durian Jan 2016

The Genre Of The Linguistics Article Within Studies Of Language Variation And Change : A Diachronic Perspective, 1891-2015, David Durian

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

I analyze the rhetorical and structural elements of the genre of the linguistics article, specifically within the subfield of studies of language variation and change, also known as "American sociolinguistics." As my analysis demonstrates, the genre of the linguistics article in studies of language variation and change can most profitably be analyzed as having been shaped by intellectual movements occurring during three distinct eras. During the first era (1891--1954), the variationist linguistics article was primarily a "discovery text." That is, many of the topics discussed are first studies of those topics or first studies of the communities in which particular …

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The Role Of Authentic Leadership And Interpersonal Trust In The Language Development Success Of Middle School English Language Learners, Tracy Renea Taylor Jan 2016

The Role Of Authentic Leadership And Interpersonal Trust In The Language Development Success Of Middle School English Language Learners, Tracy Renea Taylor

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The current research on second language acquisition suggests that it takes between 5 and 7 years of schooling in a bilingual education program for full academic proficiency in a second language to be attained. This quantitative study focused on students who, after more than 7 years in a bilingual education program, had yet to meet the criteria for being considered fully English proficient. This study examined middle school English language learners' perceptions of their teachers as authentic and trustworthy leaders in an effort to identify two variables that might contribute to the students' continued status as limited English proficient. Additionally, …

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The Ideal Judge: How Implicit Bias Shapes Assessment Of State Judges, Rebecca D. Gill, Rafael Oganesyan Jan 2016

The Ideal Judge: How Implicit Bias Shapes Assessment Of State Judges, Rebecca D. Gill, Rafael Oganesyan

Political Science Faculty Research

Judicial Performance Evaluation (JPE) is generally seen as an important part of the merit system, which often suffers from a lack of relevant voter information. Utah’s JPE system has undergone significant change in recent years. Using data from the two most recent JPE surveys, we provide a preliminary look at the operation of this new system. Our results suggest that the survey component has difficulty distinguishing among the judges on the basis of relevant criteria. The question prompts intended to measure performance on different ABA categories are also indistinguishable. We find evidence that, on some measures, female judges do disproportionately …

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Psalms On The Shannon: A Collection Of Choral Pieces In The Irish Celtic Style, Greta E. Hanks Jan 2016

Psalms On The Shannon: A Collection Of Choral Pieces In The Irish Celtic Style, Greta E. Hanks

Senior Honors Theses

The Irish music tradition has a rich heritage ranging from ancient ballads to nineteenth-century dances. One area of Irish music, a subset of Celtic music in general, that has been somewhat underrepresented in modern times is Irish choral music. Scripturally-based choral singing has been part of the Irish tradition ever since medieval monks began Christianizing the Celts. Today, several choral groups in Ireland are working to revive the art of Celtic choral singing. This collection, presenting psalms set to choral music in the Irish style, is one modern composer’s endeavor to join the Irish choral genre, incorporating traditional harmonic elements …

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Growth In The Midst Of Perpetual Dependency, Hannah A. Lackey Jan 2016

Growth In The Midst Of Perpetual Dependency, Hannah A. Lackey

Senior Honors Theses

International aid is a powerful, beneficial tool that has been known to improve many situations in a variety of targeted communities. While aid does provide basic necessities and resources to beneficiaries, it has the potential to simultaneously hinder or slow the development and independence of the assisted people groups if not correctly implemented. Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) based in Boone, North Carolina, provides a variety of domestic and international relief services that break the trend of dependency through their encouragement of local self-sufficiency and growth. Specifically, Samaritan’s Purse’s Karamoja Integrated Maternal Child Health (KIMCH) project, based in …

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Older Mexican Americans: Role Of The Family And Mental Health Service Utilization, John M. Gonzalez, Denise Longoria, Romeo Escobar, Leyla Feize Jan 2016

Older Mexican Americans: Role Of The Family And Mental Health Service Utilization, John M. Gonzalez, Denise Longoria, Romeo Escobar, Leyla Feize

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

This study explored role of the family and mental health service utilization by older Mexican-Americans. Using qualitative exploration, the study investigated family factors influencing their mental health service utilization. The researcher used a purposive sample and interviewed 20 older Mexican Americans, who completed outpatient mental health services located in Texas. Kleinman’s explanatory model (1980) guided the ethnographic content analysis. Findings show the family took several roles to facilitate use of mental health services. The family was involved with respondents throughout the process of help-seeking and accessing mental health services. Family members helped respondents recognize their mental distress by noticing behavior …

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Decoding Impressions: Understanding Appearances A Nonverbal Training Program, Michelle Lynn Spring Jan 2016

Decoding Impressions: Understanding Appearances A Nonverbal Training Program, Michelle Lynn Spring

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Given the multitude of clothing options, jewelry, and adornments that exist in the modern world and the variety of colors these artifacts are available in, there is a need to understand the how appearance cues impact impressions. Saussure’s theory of Semiotics was used as the framework for this project as a means to decoding the sign structures associated with appearance cues that influence impressions. This project outlines an active training program that walks students through the semiotic theory, the elements of appearance cues and the resulting impressions that may be formed by artifact choices. The goal of this project is …

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A Gendered Lens Of Understanding Confidence, Abbey Johnston Jan 2016

A Gendered Lens Of Understanding Confidence, Abbey Johnston

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Women make up approximately half of the U.S. workforce, yet far fewer women than men reach senior management and leadership positions. Women enter the workplace at levels similar to men, with comparable credentials and expectations, but their career paths rapidly diverge. This discrepancy among males and females can be associated, in part, to the documented difference in confidence between men and women. This study addressed the critical topic of how gender may impact an individual’s understanding and level of confidence and utilized the theoretical lenses of Mead’s (1934) Symbolic Interactionism and the Standpoint Theory of Harding (1991) and Wood (2004). …

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Knowledge And Resistance: Feminine Style And Signifyin[G] In Michelle Obama’S Public Address, Tracy Valgento Jan 2016

Knowledge And Resistance: Feminine Style And Signifyin[G] In Michelle Obama’S Public Address, Tracy Valgento

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the public discourse of the first African American first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. I argue that Michelle Obama uses the double-voiced discourses of feminine style and African American Signifyin[g] to negate post-race and post-gender mythologies that suggest that American society is “beyond identity”. Looking at three of Obama’s speeches: Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic National Convention Speech, The Remarks by the First Lady at Memorial Service for Dr. Maya Angelou, and Remarks by the First Lady at Tuskegee University Commencement Address this thesis argues that Michelle Obama performativity interrogates and questions gender and race relations …

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Preservice Teacher Reflections About Short-Term Summer Study Abroad Experiences In Italy, Jaime Colwell, Diane Nielsen, Barbara A. Bradley, Mindy Spearman Jan 2016

Preservice Teacher Reflections About Short-Term Summer Study Abroad Experiences In Italy, Jaime Colwell, Diane Nielsen, Barbara A. Bradley, Mindy Spearman

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This chapter studies 21 preservice teachers' blog reflections about working in an Italian classroom and living with a host family during a four-week study abroad program in Northern Italy. During the program, preservice teachers were required to blog about their experiences living and studying abroad using personal blog sites. To encourage more candid reflection about the program, the blog posts could be related to any aspect of the program preservice teachers chose to reflect on. After setting the context of the study through description of the study abroad program and its requirements, the authors present qualitative findings regarding preservice teachers' …

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Developing A Faculty-Led Study Abroad Program For Education Majors In A Non-English Speaking Country, Barbara A. Brandley, Jaime Colwell, Mindy Spearman Jan 2016

Developing A Faculty-Led Study Abroad Program For Education Majors In A Non-English Speaking Country, Barbara A. Brandley, Jaime Colwell, Mindy Spearman

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This chapter describes how faculty can plan, develop, prepare, and lead a study abroad program in a non-English speaking country for students majoring in education. It presents an overview and timeline for directing a program, discusses how to plan and develop a program, tells how to recruit and prepare participants, and describes how to support participants while living and teaching abroad. It also presents issues that faculty should consider during each phase of a study abroad, and it provides suggestions for addressing these concerns.

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Behind But Not Forgotten: It Is Never Too Late To Learn, Allison Berst Newton Jan 2016

Behind But Not Forgotten: It Is Never Too Late To Learn, Allison Berst Newton

All ETDs from UAB

Educating those who speak languages other than English is one of the biggest conundrums in education today, and literacy acquisition is relevant as more Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) enter public schools each year. For those EBs who struggle with family disruptions and literacy, the problem is even more profound. There is a gap in the literature concerning academic outcomes due to family disruptions. The purpose of this narrative case study was to describe the life experience of a 12th-grade, Hispanic, bilingual student classified as learning disabled in elementary school who was not literate in her native language or the English language, …

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Cultural Competence Practices Implemented In Hospitals And Health Systems By Minority Executives On The Top Management Team, John H. Cunningham Jan 2016

Cultural Competence Practices Implemented In Hospitals And Health Systems By Minority Executives On The Top Management Team, John H. Cunningham

All ETDs from UAB

The study examined whether hospital implementation of cultural competence practices was influenced by the racial/ethnic composition of top management. With one-third of the U.S. population identifying with a racial or ethnic group other than non-Hispanic White, and that population continuing to grow increasingly diverse, racial and ethnic minorities are increasingly accessing health care services. Yet they represent less than 1% of the top management teams (TMT) of health care organizations. The study sought to determine the extent to which health care organizations with TMTs that are representative of the racial and ethnic compositions of the communities in which they serve …

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Carving Characters In The Mind. A Theoretical Approach To The Reception Of Characters In Audio Described Films, Nazaret Fresno Jan 2016

Carving Characters In The Mind. A Theoretical Approach To The Reception Of Characters In Audio Described Films, Nazaret Fresno

Writing and Language Studies Faculty Publications

From early childhood on we are exposed to characters in books, cartoons, films, theatre plays, and video games. Through these media we enter fascinating fictional worlds that seduce our imagination with every page or scene. As the events unfold, we become captivated by the story and its protagonists, whose deeper feelings are outlined in a succession of words and/ or images that the audience needs to endow with meaning. In their search for comprehension, readers and spectators “picture” the situations described in their minds by creating multimodal representations (mental models) about the events taking place, the place and time in …

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Towards Trustworthy Authentication In Service Oriented Computing, Rasib Hassan Khan Jan 2016

Towards Trustworthy Authentication In Service Oriented Computing, Rasib Hassan Khan

All ETDs from UAB

Today's Internet and network-based applications are highly driven by the service-oriented architecture model. Given the variety of online services, we hypothesized that there is a significant non-uniformity in the behavior of users pertaining to security-oriented practices on the Internet. We performed statistical analysis on open source user-survey datasets to establish the validity of the statement. We performed further study with respect to the security-oriented behavioral practices in developing countries. We were able to determine certain traits and insecure practices that general Internet users from both developed and developing countries adopt, and addressed the corresponding issues to devise secure authentication technologies …

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Literary Texts In The Undergraduate Russian Curriculum: Leveraging Language Learning And Literary Discussion Through Scaffolding, William J. Comer Jan 2016

Literary Texts In The Undergraduate Russian Curriculum: Leveraging Language Learning And Literary Discussion Through Scaffolding, William J. Comer

Russian Language Journal

In this article, I want to summarize the broader discussion about literary texts in the undergraduate curriculum for the more commonly taught languages, consider the nature of Russian undergraduate programs in light of that discussion, and then suggest a way that upper-division Russian classes can work with literary texts through the effective deployment of scaffolding in classroom tasks.

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