Digital Commons Network^™

Pre-K In The Public Schools: Evidence From Within U.S. States, Timothy J. Bartik, Brad J. Hershbein

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

In the past 15 years, four-year-olds’ enrollment in state-funded pre-kindergarten in the United States has doubled, and advocates have pushed for further expansion. Although research has shown that pre-K programs can have important benefits, most existing studies have focused on small or state-specific programs that may not generalize to other areas or contexts. The uniqueness of our paper is its scope: our data cover the last two decades, span nearly all states, and allow for intrastate variation. For the average state program, we find no evidence of effects on the average student’s test scores, assignment to special education, or grade …

Samuel Adams And John Hancock: The Relationship That Determined The Formation Of America, Bruce D. Griffiths

Theses and Dissertations

This paper argues that the relationship between Samuel Adams and John Hancock and their cooperation played critical/pivotal roles, especially in garnering New England support for the beginning of the American Revolution as well as the ratification of the Constitution.

Agricultural Revolutions In America’S Heartland: The Corn Belt And The Making Of American Capitalism, Benjamin J. Marley

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The family farm has been the foundation of America’s cheap food model. This research examines how cheap food from the Corn Belt was produced from 1840s to the late twentieth century. It investigates how the interrelationships between family farming, proletarianization-housewifization, and national and world markets configured and reconfigured. Utilizing a world-ecological framework, I argue that Illinois and Iowa, the heart of the Corn Belt, were the epicenter of two successive agricultural revolutions that fundamentally transformed world accumulation and world nature. The analysis is centered on the development of successive agricultural revolutions over the longue durée of capitalism, with the greatest …

The Influence Of Cognitive Moral Development And Leader Regulatory Focus On Employee Ethical Decision Making And Behavior, Brandon Hendrix

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

Recent events in business, private, and public settings suggests that people continue to struggle with ethical issues. This study drew on theories of cognitive moral development and leader regulatory focus to increase our understanding of the forces that shape ethical perceptions, decision making, and behavior. I hypothesized that employee cognitive moral development is negatively related to the approval of questionable/unethical behavior. Results indicate employees exhibiting lower levels of cognitive moral development were more accepting of unethical or questionable moral behavior. I also hypothesized that leader regulatory focus would moderate the negative relationship between employee cognitive moral behavior and tolerance for …

Analysis Of The Upper Cotton Valley Group In The Northeastern Mississippi Interior Salt Basin, Theresa A. Woehnker

Master's Theses

The Mississippi Interior Salt Basin (MISB) is a major negative structural feature in the interior onshore northeastern Gulf of Mexico. The Cotton Valley Group is an Upper Jurassic – Lower Cretaceous subsurface siliciclastic unit that has been studied extensively in the MISB for the last several decades because of its high potential as a reservoir rock. This study focuses on the Shuler Formation in the Upper Cotton Valley, which consists of an upper Dorcheat Member, and a lower Shongaloo Member. The boundary between these units correspond to a transgressive-regressive sequence boundary, which marks the beginning of a rise in sea …

Investigating Faculty Perceptions Of Technological Pedagogical, And Content Knowledge (Tpack) At A Newly Established University, Jessica Daniell Hruska

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is in response to Garrett’s (2014) dissertation on “A Quantitative Study of Higher Education Faculty Self-Assessments of Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPaCK) and Technology Training” which has been the inspiration and guide throughout the design of this study. The purpose is to assess the perceptions of tenure and non-tenure faculty on technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPaCK) at a recently established university in Texas. More specifically, this study compared and contrasted the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPaCK) of faculty use of technology tools in face-to-face, blended learning and online environments as methods to enhance learning based …

Natural Resources, Quality Of Institutions And Public Spending: The Algerian Case, Rima Souidi, Djamila Kasmi Belkacem, Lylia Sami

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

We attempt in this paper to estimate the impact of the endowment of natural resources, particularly oil rent, as well as the impact of the quality of institutions, on the level of public spending in Algeria. Our purpose is to test, by the application of an econometric estimation (OLS and 2SLS), the significance of the variable oil rent and the variables indicating the institutional quality of public expenditure management. Moreover, it was interesting to add the interaction term between rent and the variables indicating the quality of the institutions to see the indirect and common effect on the dependent variable. …

The Spatial And Temporal Domains Of Modern Ecology, Lyndon Estes, Paul R. Elsen, Timothy Treuer, Labeeb Ahmed, Kelly Caylor, Jason Chang, Jonathan J. Choi, Erle C. Ellis

Geography

To understand ecological phenomena, it is necessary to observe their behaviour across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Since this need was first highlighted in the 1980s, technology has opened previously inaccessible scales to observation. To help to determine whether there have been corresponding changes in the scales observed by modern ecologists, we analysed the resolution, extent, interval and duration of observations (excluding experiments) in 348 studies that have been published between 2004 and 2014. We found that observational scales were generally narrow, because ecologists still primarily use conventional field techniques. In the spatial domain, most observations had resolutions ≤1 m2 …

Historical Biogeography And Natural History Of Nocturnal Wasps In The Southwestern Deserts With Special Emphasis On The Genus Chyphotes (Hymenoptera: Chyphotidae), Emily A. Sadler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Deserts are interesting places due to the large number of plants and animals that live there. Nocturnal wasps are extremely abundant in deserts, but they are difficult to identify and their life cycles are not well known especially the families of Chyphotidae, Tiphiidae (Brachycistidinae), and Mutillidae (velvet ants). In this dissertation, I determine how to correctly identify a particularly difficult group of species that all have black heads from the family Chyphotidae. This is important because these species make up a large proportion of specimens collected. Also, I expanded our knowledge on the distribution of the species of these three …

U.S. Fish And Wildlife Service Summer Fellowship: Gis Study Of Threatened And Endangered Species In Colorado, Jeanie Lai

Sustainability and Social Justice

This report provides a detailed account of my fellowship experience with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Region 6 Office in Lakewood, CO during the summer of 2017 made possible by the Student Conservation Association (SCA) sponsored by Directorate Fellows Program. The internship was completed in the Region 6’s Branch of Decision Support in Ecological Services under the direction of Spatial Ecologist John Guinotte. I was a GIS Technician tasked with work responsibilities involving listed threatened and endangered species relevant to the region. Those work responsibilities included refining spatial Area of Influence (AOI) ranges, updating databases, and creating a …

Exploring Existing Innovative Education Models: A Best Practice Guide For A New School Design In Lewiston, Maine, Katie Bosse

Sustainability and Social Justice

The purpose of this research is to both identify best practices in innovative school design and then identify a guide to assist new school design teams on how to make the transition out of current practices of traditional education. First, I describe the current structure of traditional education, the challenges schools face in regard to school structure, community, and academics. Then I examine six public schools that are working to create strategies to address the challenges stated in traditional schools. Through school site visits and interviews with teacher and faculty, I explore the strategies of existing innovative school models and …

Using Song Lyrics In Teaching An Undergraduate Statistics Course, Joseph Marc Zagerman

All Theses And Dissertations

Contemporary pedagogical theory examines the shift from passive to active instructional techniques in order to enhance student engagement and learning. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to develop a deeper understanding of the lived educational experiences of Millennials enrolled in an introductory statistics course when song lyrics were used as an instructional technique. Gardner’s (2011) theory of Multiple Intelligence served as the theoretical framework of this study and provided implications for higher education. Seven traditional undergraduate students participated in this study in which song lyrics were used to inform and reinforce the six steps of hypothesis testing. Data …

Biblical Literalism And Implications For Learning, Sara Austin

All Theses And Dissertations

Given that everything we learn is scaffolded onto prior knowledge, how and what we learn is infinitely complex. There are many factors influencing learning, including environment, social and institutional attitudes, access, conditioning and biases. Among the social and environmental factors, religious affiliation is a powerful force which can either encourage educational pursuit, or discourage and demonize it.

This study used Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory (2003) to examine the lived experiences of individuals who were raised in biblical literalist faith traditions. The researcher conducted loosely structured interviews with each participant to learn about their educational and spiritual journeys as they left …

Resident Perspectives Of The Resident-Tourist Relationship: Examining Tourist Attractiveness And Social Determinants Affecting Jeju Residents’ Satisfaction And Commitment Towards Chinese Tourists, Gyunghoon Kim

All Dissertations

Successful tourism is based on a good relationship between tourists and the residents. To date, the resident-tourist relationship has been understood through two major approaches. The studies emphasizing the industrial aspects of tourism consider tourists as customers who bring economic benefits to a destination, while seeing residents as beneficiaries of the tourists’ expenditure during their trip. Other studies that see the resident-tourist relationship in terms of a host-guest relationship assume that residents, as hosts, should treat their guests with respect, while disregarding the industrial aspects of tourism. These two approaches have amplified the skewed and incomplete understanding of the resident-tourist …

If At First You Do Not Succeed: The Student Benefits Of Multiple Trials On Summative Assessments, Emily Faulconer, John Griffith, Hayden Frank

Publications

Learning management systems offer flexibility in assessments. In Canvas, questions can be pulled from pools, customizing each quiz. Canvas also allows unique feedback options. Unique feedback can be programmed for students whether they got the question correct or incorrect. Feedback can even be customized based on which wrong answer was selected. Canvas also allows multiple attempts on assessments, with various options for awarding credit (final attempt, best score, average score, etc.). Combining immediate feedback with multiple attempts is a power - yet underexplored - tool.

Mount Carmel Abandoned Property Issue, Jack Zollicoffer, Jb Thompson, Mike Moshier

Coal Region Field Station Student Projects

Vacant and abandoned properties are something that has been prevalent for decades. Whether it be in areas suffering national disasters, a job-loss shock, or a population shift, abandoned houses are a concern in many places. Mount Carmel has experienced an outflux of its population which has had a negative effect on the already vacant housing issue. This project investigates solutions to the vacant and abandoned property issue occurring in Mount Carmel through case studies of other towns that have also experienced the challenges of abandoned properties.

Additionally, using an Arc Collector App that students created of Mount Carmel last year, …

Anthracite Outdoor Adventure Area (Aoaa) Corridor Analysis, Sabrina Malagón, Bryan Marine, Logan Mcginn, Anna Millar

Coal Region Field Station Student Projects

This research investigates the potential economic opportunity that is provided to the Shamokin area because of the creation of Anthracite Outdoor Adventure Area (A.O.A.A.). Using spatial analysis, we illustrate travel to the area, commercial mapping and potential accommodation mapping. The exponential growth of A.O.A.A. that has been seen so far illustrates the necessity to rethink commercial zoning in the future, and although there are plans for hotels and future investors, we argue to maximize economic and social benefit to the Northumberland county area, it is necessary to address those challenges and create short-term solutions to bring as much economic prosperity …

Institutional Processes To Determine Community Engagement Impact : A Collective Case Study., Amanda Marie Bowers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative, collective case study is designed to examine the processes by which urban, metropolitan institutions determine the impact their community engagement has within the local community. The study addresses the lack of research on community engagement at the institutional level, the processes that track and coordinate engagement, as well as the perspectives of community partners in this work. Research is more developed regarding individual engagement activities and student learning outcomes than it is to institutional accountability structures or community impact. Studies that center the institution as the unit of analysis are needed to address these limitations in research and …

Decisions Set In Stone: Spatial Analyses Of Ozark Rock Art Sites, Elements, And Motifs With Gis, Jordan Lee Schaefer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to spatially analyze rock art distributions in the Salem Plateau section of the Arkansas Ozarks. Statistical tests, such as chi-square and t-testing, are applied to provide an objective view of rock art patterning in relation to the overall landscape. The data collected from these methods allow one to discern the locational preferences for rock art, which potentially reveal cultural details about the people involved with its creation. Multiple analytical perspectives are applied throughout, initially focusing on comparisons with expected values and random points. Later statistical tests use bluff shelter distributions as reference data …

Alive Inside Out : Challenges And Patterns Of Spiritual Formation Of Christian Professionals In A Creative Access Context, Matthew Gh Koh

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Reframing The Republic: Images And Art In Post-Revolutionary America, Lauren Lyons

History

Following the American Revolution the United States had to prove they deserved to be a player on the European world stage. Images were one method the infant nation used to make this claim and gain recognition from European powers. By examining early American portraits, eighteenth and nineteenth century plays, and American and European propaganda this paper will argue that images were used to show the United States as a world power. This argument will be presented with a particular emphasis on classic motifs and Republican imagery. By evoking the Golden Age of both Rome and Greece the United States was …

Today And Yesterday, Vol. 42, Summer 2018, Illinois State University, Department Of History

Today and Yesterday

Newsletter of the Illinois State University Department of History

Persistence Of Cultural Heritage In A Multicultural Context: Examining Factors That Shaped Voting Preferences In The 2016 Election, Anna M. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The prevailing discourse about the myth of the “melting pot” of American culture implies that heritage cultures are eliminated in favor of a homogenous “American” norm. However, this myth belies the persistence of our cultural heritage in forming our attitudes, morals, and habitual patterns of thought, each of which shape how we participate in our democracy through voting. By contextualizing voting predictors such as authoritarianism, social dominance, and sexism in developmental and ecological theories, this dissertation shows how they are shaped by culture and transmitted through consumption of media and interaction with members of one’s community and family. In an …

Pawns Of Policy And Problematized Perception: The Sustainability Of Inequality Through The Space Of African-American Childhood, Jen-I S. Costosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African American children are simultaneously entrapped by the construct of race and while excluded from the construct of childhood. Race has bifurcated the timeline(s) and bastion of childhood in which one has clear milestones and expectations and the other is nonlinear, fickle, and subject to a suspicious gaze. Recent research describes this phenomenon as “dehumanization”, “age overestimation”, and “adultification.” However, the aforementioned classifications of African American children’s’ experience presents the assumption in which this particular group would first have to be viewed both as human and also as a child, which is arguable. Policy, both children centric and otherwise, along …

The Tuskegee Revolt: Student Activism, Black Power, And The Legacy Of Booker T. Washington, Brian P. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The Tuskegee Revolt: Student Activism, Black Power, and the Legacy of Booker T. Washington” is a historical study of a student movement that challenged prevailing educational and political ideas in the nation’s most ideologically important historically black university. The late 1960s student movement at Tuskegee Institute played a significant off-campus role in shaping local, regional, and national social movements and politics. In the process, these Tuskegee students turned their attention back on-campus, and attempted to radically revise their school’s educational framework. Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, Tuskegee Institute represents the origin of a particular (and recurring) political-educational-paradigm for …

Heat Stress Vulnerability: Analyzing The Socio-Environmental Factors Influencing Heat Stress Hospital Visits And Implementation Of Green Infrastructure In New York City, Jose Pillich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this study was to identify factors leading to heat stress hospitalizations visits in New York City through the use of climatological and social science data, thus enabling greater targeting of individuals and groups with heightened vulnerability to extreme heat. Recent research has established that climate change will increase overall temperatures in New York City in the future. Heat waves are predicted to increase in frequency and severity, adversely impacting public health and increasing heat vulnerability that could lead to heat stroke or other comorbidities. This dissertation takes into account existing data to generate a new model that …

Rising Above The Faithful: Monumental Ceiling Crosses In Byzantine Cappadocia, Alice Lynn Mcmichael

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The design of Byzantine architecture created viewing conditions that reveal social and spatial contexts of Christian ritual, private devotion, and expressions of identity. This is apparent in the decoration of ceilings, which were crucial visual elements within spatial relationships in late antique and medieval architecture but are rarely discussed because few examples survive. However, Byzantine Cappadocia, a region that is now central Turkey, has a high number of extant medieval ceilings in its rock-cut architecture. About eighty monuments there have monumental ceiling crosses that were painted or carved in relief between the sixth and eleventh centuries. In this dissertation the …

Residential Segregation And Interracial Marriages, Rose Cuison Villazor

Fordham Law Review

Part I highlights recent data on racially segregated neighborhoods and low rates of interracial marriage to underscore what Russell Robinson refers to as “structural constraints” that shape and limit romantic preferences. As I discuss in this Part, many cities today continue to be racially segregated. Notably, current data demonstrate a strong correlation between low rates of interracial marriage and racially segregated neighborhoods in those cities. By contrast, contemporary studies indicate that in cities where communities are more racially and economically integrated, the rate of interracial marriages is high. Part II argues that the association between high rates of segregation and …

Learning Logic: A Mixed Methods Study To Examine The Effects Of Context Ordering On Reasoning About Conditionals, Christina W. Lommatsch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Logical statements are prevalent in mathematics, the sciences, law, and many areas of everyday life. The most common logical statements are conditionals, which have the form “If H..., then C...,” where “H” is a hypothesis (or condition) to be satisfied and “C” is a conclusion to follow. Reasoning about conditionals is a skill that is only superficially understood by most individuals and depends on four main conditional contexts (e.g., intuitive, abstract, symbolic, or counterintuitive). The purpose of this study was to test a theory about the effects of context ordering on reasoning about conditionals. To test the theory, the researcher …

Assessment Of Potential Changes In Crop Yields In The Central United States Under Climate Change Regimes, Neil Matthews-Pennanen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Climate change is one of the great challenges facing agriculture in the 21^st century. The goal of this study was to produce projections of crop yields for the central United States in the 2030s, 2060s, and 2090s based on the relationship between weather and yield from historical crop yields from 1980 to 2010. These projections were made across 16 states in the US, from Louisiana in the south to Minnesota in the north. They include projections for maize, soybeans, cotton, spring wheat, and winter wheat.

Simulated weather variables based on three climate scenarios were used to project future crop …