Digital Commons Network^™

Simulation Using A Standardized Patient To Measure Perception And Congruency Of Spiritual Care For A Veteran From Three Perspectives To Inform Nursing Education And Practice, Mary E. Desmond

Dissertations

Spiritual care refers to a purposeful process of helping another find meaning and purpose

in life through a mutual connection. Providing spiritual care is a professional nursing mandate, yet nurses report barriers in education and practice. Veterans want spiritual care to promote quality of life, and to cope with military experiences and chronic conditions. Patients report receiving less than desired spiritual care and nurses report infrequent provision of spiritual care. It is also unclear how congruent patients and nurses are in their perceptions of spiritual care. A spiritual care simulation and performance checklist was developed using a review of the …

Exploring The Implications For Educational Leadership: A Case Study Of Cristo Rey St. Martin College Preparatory High School, Julie Lynn Frey

Dissertations

This is a case study of Cristo Rey St. Martin High School, member of the Cristo Rey Network. Cristo Rey St. Martin has been able to make gains in closing the gap with regard to student entrance into college for low-income minority students, making it a unique and appropriate case to study. The purpose of this research was to study the formation of the leadership at Cristo Rey St. Martin College Preparatory High School.

The case study consisted of interviews, observations, shadowing of the principal, and document analysis.

Major finding include mission creation explicit to student achievement, a student centric …

Making Use Of Teacher Mentors: Understanding The Impact Of Teacher-Student Relationships On Student Academic Achievement, Sara Haas

Dissertations

The University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) has determined that if a high school student completes freshman year with the necessary course credits to be promoted to tenth grade and has no more than one F for one semester/course in a core content area then they are considered on track to graduate high school within four years and ultimately be college and career ready (Allensworth & Easton, 2005). The CCSR did further research and published a report examining the factors that indicated what a middle grades student would need to be on track as high school freshman …

An Exploration Of Elementary Teachers' Beliefs And Perceptions About Science Inquiry: A Mixed Methods Study, Linda Hamadeh

Dissertations

In order for science-based inquiry instruction to happen on a large scale in elementary classrooms across the country, evidence must be provided that implementing this reform can be realistic and practical, despite the challenges and obstacles teachers may face. This study sought to examine elementary teachers' knowledge and understanding of, attitudes toward, and overall perceptions of inquiry-based science instruction, and how these beliefs influenced their inquiry practice in the classroom. It offered a description and analysis of the approaches elementary science teachers in Islamic schools reported using to promote inquiry within the context of their science classrooms, and addressed the …

Self-Serving Cognitive Distortions, Externalizing Behaviors, And School Exclusion Among Adolescents With Emotional Disturbance, Claudia Hernandez

Dissertations

Students of color and students with disabilities, especially those with Emotional Disturbance (ED), are at increased risk for exclusionary discipline and juvenile justice involvement (Skiba, Arredondo & Williams, 2014). Within exclusionary discipline research, students' behaviors and discipline referrals are examined, but students' maladaptive thinking patterns or cognitive distortions remain largely unexplored. Within juvenile justice research, however, the cognitive distortions of incarcerated youth have been widely studied. The overarching hypothesis for the current study was that students' self-serving cognitive distortions would be related to their externalizing behaviors, as measured by office discipline referrals (ODRs), and these ODRs would be related to …

Characterization Of Multi-Albumin Pegylated Complexes Synthesized Using "Click" Chemistry As Drug Delivery Systems, Jonathan Alejandro Hill

Dissertations

Due to its ability to transport hydrophobic materials through the bloodstream, human serum albumin has become an intriguing component for drug delivery systems. The most pressing concerns with current albumin-based systems are the risk of pathogenic transfer associated with human-sourced blood proteins, the negative effect on osmotic pressure due to administration of a large dose of albumins, the potential immune response and loss of biological activity due to heavy modification of these albumins, and the need for organic solvents for preparation of these products. Key residues in the two main drug binding sites, DS1 and DS2, are conserved in bovine …

The Blackboard And The Colorline Madeline Morgan And The Alternative Black Curriculum In Chicago Schools 1941-1945, Michael Hines

Dissertations

On May 28, 1942, Chicago Public Schools adopted a new curriculum with the rather mundane title Supplementary Units for the Course of Study in Social Studies. Although the title was less than provocative, the content was revolutionary, both for Chicago and for the nation. The Supplementary Units marked one of the first times that a major American public school system had adopted African American history as part of its standard, citywide social studies curriculum. The story of the development, adoption, and implementation of this curriculum intersects issues of race, politics, history, and education. At its center are the efforts of …

Disordered Eating Treatment Programs For Adolescents And Emerging Adults: A Meta-Analytic Review Of Treatment Effectiveness And Moderators Of Treatment Success, Alexandra Kirsch

Dissertations

This meta-analysis systematically reviewed interventions for disordered eating in the adolescent and young adult population. A systematic search identified 30 interventions that could be compared to controls and 88 specific interventions that could be compared to other specific interventions. An in-depth analysis of the current state of the literature is provided. Results indicated that eating disorder interventions were effective overall when compared to control for both eating disorder and non-eating disorder outcomes, with differential effects across diagnoses, outcome categories, and outcome source, as well as some maintenance of effects at follow-up. Additionally, multiple moderators of treatment effectiveness for eating disorder …

Elevated Hydrostatic Pressure Selectively Enhances Matricellular Gene Expression In Human Trabecular Meshwork Cells, Jonathan Lautz

Dissertations

Primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) is a progressive optic neuropathy

characterized by loss of peripheral vision secondarily associated with elevated intraocular pressure (IOP). Transforming growth factor (TGF)-β2 is markedly elevated in the aqueous humor (AH) of patients with POAG. It has been previously shown that TGF-β2 increases IOP, in part, by inducing expression and release of endothelin-1 (ET-1) and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) within the trabecular meshwork (TM). ET-1 and CTGF may ultimately lead to increases in IOP by enhancing TM cell contractility and extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition. Here we confirm that TGF-β2 enhances mRNA content of ET-1, CTGF, and …

Transport For Early Modern London: London's Transportation Environment And The Experience Of Movement, 1500-1800, Noah Paul Phelps

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates two closely related topics regarding London's transportation environment. The first was to determine the shape of early modern London's transportation infrastructure and determine who was responsible for its design, construction and maintenance. The second goal was to investigate the experiences of those moving about the city. In some cases, it was possible to find substantive information on London's transport milieu; for example, the number of gates and the size of the wall surrounding the city from Stow's 1598 Survey of London or the rules regarding street cleaning in London's Letter Books. In most cases, however, it was …

Cruzando Fronteras: The Immigration Experiences Of Central American Women, Cecelia Quinn

Dissertations

The present study explores the immigration experiences of Central American women. As violence and poverty mounts in the Northern Triangle; Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, immigrants continue to migrate north. Immigrant women risk their lives seeking safety, opportunity, and reunions with loved ones. Central American women's immigration journeys are unique and they face the added dangers of gender-based violence. This exploratory, qualitative study guided by feminist standpoint theory allowed the women to tell their stories in their own language, as they saw fit. Twelve Central American Latinas shared their immigration experiences, responding to semi-structured interviews. Through interpretive phenomenological analysis and …

Forgetting How To Hate: The Evolution Of White Responses To Integration In Chicago, 1946-1987, Chris Ramsey

Dissertations

After the Supreme Court made restrictive covenants illegal in 1948, violence became the default response for numerous white communities across the South Side of Chicago when African Americans moved into €“ or just passed through €“ their neighborhoods. The civil rights movement's high-profile successes in the first half of the 1960s and the media attention Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s open housing marches on the Southwest Side of Chicago brought to segregation in the urban North made brute force unacceptable to the public at-large. White ethnic residents on Chicago's Southwest Side realized they could no longer resort to violent means …

Investigating The Effects Of Student Engagement On Latina/O Community College Students, Manuel Salgado

Dissertations

As the growth of the largest ethnic minority group, Latina/os, continues to grow there is an increasing concern that the current educational system is not effectively meeting the academic needs of this group of students. The community college sector has gained greater recognition for its potential to meet the needs of a much broader scope of students, particularly low-income and students of color. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the Latina/o experience and the factors that contribute to college success among community college students. Specifically, this study used hierarchical multiple regression and logistic regression analysis to investigate …

"Let's Get Together And Chew The Fat": Women, Size And Community In Modern America, Amelia Earhart Serafine

Dissertations

"Let's Get Together and Chew the FAT: Women, Size, and Community in Modern America" argues that between 1948 and the 1980s, women in America formed communities around issues of size in order to claim agency over their bodies. Primarily concerned with losing weight, many women in these groups nonetheless created new tools and abilities with which to resist oppression based on body size. Some women went as far as to form explicitly positive fat identities and reject compulsory slenderness. This dissertation investigates four cases studies: TOPS (Take off Pounds Sensibly), Overeaters Anonymous, Weight Watchers, and the Fat Liberation movement of …

Centering The Margins: Elevating The Voices Of Women Of Color To Critically Examine College Student Leadership, Natasha T. Turman

Dissertations

The leadership viewpoints of Women of Color (WOC), in general, and WOC collegians specifically, are not widely available or recognized. This exclusion and oversight is a disservice to all. The inadequate inclusion of WOC's perspective in leadership literature is due to the assumptions of race and gender neutrality in leadership studies. Viewing leadership as a set of universal constructs, garnered from a select few and generalized to a great many, is not adequate to understanding the leadership experiences of WOC within dominant-culture environments. To address these deficits, critical leadership scholars have proposed that leadership be (re)conceptualized from a multicultural perspective, …

Mild Hydrofunctionalizations Of Olefins Using More Cost-Effective Metal Catalysts, Alexander James Villani-Gale

Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is the study of alkene hydroaylation reactions. In the first chapter, a review of the relevant literature concerning zinc- and iron-catalyzed hydroarylation of unsaturated bonds is presented. In chapter two, the development of a zinc-catalyzed hydroarylation of alkenes is presented, which is quickly followed by a detailed investigation into the probable mechanism. Chapter three discusses the development of an iron/silver-catalyzed arene prenylation reaction, followed by the development of an iron/zinc-catalyzed arene prenylation reaction. The final section of chapter three discusses the adaptation of the iron/zinc-catalyzed arene prenylation into an undergraduate organic teaching laboratory.

The Sustainability Of Evaluation Capacity Building Interventions: An Exploratory Study, James Wade

Dissertations

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) is a practice that can help organizations conduct and use evaluations; however, there is little research on the sustainable impact of ECB interventions. This study provides an empirical inquiry into the sustainability of multiple ECB interventions. Ten ECB practitioners, identified through snowball sampling, were interviewed. They identified 16 organizational leaders from non-profits, higher education institutions, and foundations that "bought in" to ECB and were at least six months removed from an ECB contract. Analysis of these interviews resulted in a blended empirical and theoretical model that highlights the developmental process of ECB sustainability. This model highlights …

Detection Of Unknown Emerging Contaminants In Natural Water Using Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Qian Wang

Dissertations

Recently, a great deal of concern has been given to the quality of drinking water. Lake Michigan is the drinking water source of Chicago area. It is very important that the quality of drinking water meets the standard setup by the EPA. However, there is a group of chemicals that are not being monitored regularly or are unknown to researchers and are the so-called emerging contaminants.

So the objective of this study is to using tandem-mass spectrometry to detect and identify emerging contaminants. Water samples were obtained along a few locations along the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. By using …

What Is The Relationship Between Vitamin D Status, Pregnancy Symptoms And Quality Of Life?, Jennifer Woo

Dissertations

Purpose and Background/Significance: The main purpose of the study is to determine: (1) to determine if there is a relationship between vitamin D status, pregnancy symptoms, health promoting behaviors, and quality of life and (2) to determine if differences exist in pregnancy symptoms, health promoting behaviors and quality of life between African American and Hispanic women. There is evidence to show that vitamin D deficiency has been associated with numerous symptoms such as musculoskeletal pain, poor sleep, and depression. However, whether low levels of vitamin D is associated with these and other symptoms during pregnancy is unknown. What is known …

"Playing The Game Or "Buying In": Charter School Teachers And Professionalism In An Era Of Choice And Accountability, Beth Louise Wright

Dissertations

Charter schools were initially created with the intention of empowering teachers to implement school and classroom strategies in accordance with their educational expertise. Such autonomy and respect for teacher expertise indicates a commitment to teacher professionalism. Yet charter schools have also have higher rates of teacher turnover and hire fewer credentialed, experienced teachers. In the context of shifting and contested notions of teacher professionalism, charter schools provide insight into how teachers fare under contemporary educational policy arrangements. This comparative qualitative case study investigates how charter schools have lived up to their theoretical promise for teacher professionalism. The study finds that …

Populism During The Estado Novo, Michael Conniff

Faculty Publications, History

Although the elections were suppressed during the Estado Novo, some politicians gained valuable experience with techniques that would later be called populism. This article describes the creation of this style by Mayor Pedro Ernesto and the careers of six other leaders called populists. We conclude that the Vargas regime really helped the rise of populism.

Comparing Ebooks Across Different Platforms, Providers, And Devices, Emily Chan, Susan Kendall

Faculty and Staff Publications

Health science Health science ebooks on eight different platforms eight different platforms eight different platforms were evaluated on their were evaluated on their were evaluated on their were evaluated on their ability ability ability to accommodate to accommodate to accommodate varying learning styles varying learning styles varying learning styles varying learning styles varying learning styles and needs in a responsive, a responsive, a responsive, device device -agnostic environment. These health environment. These health environment. These health environment. These health science ebooks from the San José José State University State University State University State University Library were evaluated on: Library were …

Privacy And Anonymity In A Reference Librarianship Digital Archive, Emily Chan

Faculty and Staff Publications

Processing, digitizing, and describing the Pacific Library Partnership’s System Reference Center (SRC) archive in an appropriate mannerThe archive contains complex reference questions from 1972‐2004. Participating libraries referred difficult reference questions to SRC after local resources and capabilities had been exhausted.

Book Review: Rewired: Research-Writing Partnerships Within The Frameworks, Ann Agee

Faculty and Staff Publications

On many campuses, writing skills and research skills are supported in separate instructional silos. When it comes to college composition assignments, however, writing and research are interdependent, and this close relationship is evident in the many common elements shared by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. How the core concepts in these frameworks interconnect and how librarians and writing instructors can work together to implement them in the classroom is the focus of Rewired.

Cooperation Between University Librarians And Faculty Writers And Poets, Mantra Roy, Erin Vonnahme

Faculty and Staff Publications

From book abstract: "Libraries, writers, and poets have long had a close working relationship. Rapid changes in technology has not changed the importance of this cooperation: book talks and readings are as popular as ever-and the ways librarians support local writers with workshops, festivals, widely varied community events, are presented in creative ways in this volume."

A Potential Tool For Clinicians; Evaluating A Computer-Led Dietary Assessment Method In Overweight And Obese Women During Weight Loss, Adrianne Widaman, Nancy Keim, Dustin Burnett, Beverly Miller, Megan Witbracht, Keith Widaman, Kevin Laugero

Faculty Publications

Many Americans are attempting to lose weight with the help of healthcare professionals. Clinicians can improve weight loss results by using technology. Accurate dietary assessment is crucial to effective weight loss. The aim of this study was to validate a computer-led dietary assessment method in overweight/obese women. Known dietary intake was compared to Automated Self-Administered 24-h recall (ASA24) reported intake in women (n = 45), 19–50 years, with body mass index of 27–39.9 kg/m2. Participants received nutrition education and reduced body weight by 4%–10%. Participants completed one unannounced dietary recall and their responses were compared to actual intake. Accuracy of …

Mechanical Characterization Of Parts Produced By Ceramic On‐Demand Extrusion Process, Amir Ghazanfari, Wenbin Li, Ming Leu, Gregory Hilmas

Faculty Publications, Mechanical Engineering

Ceramic On‐Demand Extrusion (CODE) is an additive manufacturing process recently developed to produce dense three‐dimensional ceramic components. In this paper, the properties of parts produced using this freeform extrusion fabrication process are described. High solids loading (~60 vol%) alumina paste was prepared to fabricate parts and standard test methods were employed to examine their properties including the density, strength, Young's modulus, Weibull modulus, toughness, and hardness. Microstructural evaluation was also performed to measure the grain size and critical flaw size. The results indicate that the properties of parts surpass most other ceramic additive manufacturing processes and match conventional fabrication techniques.

Native Advertising: A Close Look At An Emerging Advertising Unit, David Kamerer

School of Communication: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This study is a content analysis of a random sample of in-feed native ads, as curated by the Sharethrough Native Advertising Leaderboard. A native ad is paid content that looks like organic content and is served in the same feed. Native ads can earn premium CPMs for publishers, while giving advertisers a “lean in” format that online readers may actually enjoy. What are these native ads like? They utilized a mixture of assets including text (almost all), photos (an average of five), videos (almost half had one or more), interactive elements (20 percent) and GIFs. Only 75 percent of ads …

The Use Of Informativity In The Development Of Robust Viromics-Based Examinations, Siobhan C. Watkins, Catherine Putonti

Bioinformatics Faculty Publications

Metagenomics-based studies have provided insight into many of the complex microbial communities responsible for maintaining life on this planet. Sequencing efforts often uncover novel genetic content; this is most evident for phage communities, in which upwards of 90% of all sequences exhibit no similarity to any sequence in current data repositories. For the small fraction that can be identified, the top BLAST hit is generally posited as being representative of a viral taxon present in the sample of origin. Homology-based classification, however, can be misleading as sequence repositories capture but a small fraction of phage diversity. Furthermore, lateral gene transfer …

A Review Of Neogene And Quaternary Pikes Of Southeastern Europe And A New Species From The Early Pleistocene Of Nogaisk, Ukraine, Terry C. Grande, Oleksandr M. Kovalchuk, Mark V. H. Wilson

Biology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The fish genus Esox (Teleostei, Esocidae) has been recorded from thirty late Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene localities where forty-one bone-bearing strata are exposed in the territory of Ukraine, Russian Federation, and Republic of Moldova. From eight localities the genus is reported or described for the first time. A detailed description and morphological analysis of the currently available osteological material demonstrates the presence of four species in the studied area: (i) Esox sibiricus (late Miocene–early Pliocene); (ii) Esox moldavicus (early Pliocene–early Pleistocene); (iii) Esox nogaicus sp. nov. (early Pleistocene, Calabrian); (iv) Esox lucius (early–middle Pleistocene). The Northern Pike (Esox lucius …