Digital Commons Network^™

Creating An International Learning Community, Marc D. Andresen

Doctor of Ministry

Thousands of university students travel to the United States every year to engage in higher education, both as undergraduates and as graduate students. This provides a strategically rich opportunity for Christian ministry that has potential for global impact. Part of this potential is to provide ministry leadership training, particularly if students are from countries that allow little freedom for such education. The challenge is to offer culturally appropriate leadership training that is applicable in various cultural contexts and that does not inadvertently cause offense by violating cultural norms of the various students. The desire is to create an educational environment …

Changes In Fgm/C In Somaliland: Medical Narrative Driving Shift In Types Of Cutting, Richard A. Powell, Mohamed Yussuf

Reproductive Health

In Somalia, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) prevalence is nearly universal at 98 percent. This qualitative study sought to explore: 1) views and experiences of married and unmarried men and women on FGM/C and potential changes in its practice; 2) individual, family, and societal factors contributing to any changes, or continuation of FGM/C; 3) the knowledge, views, and experiences of healthcare workers who offer FGM/C services and their role as change agents rather than providers; and 4) how healthcare systems’ capacities can be strengthened for management and prevention. The study finds that normative changes appear to be occurring in Somaliland society …

The Rationale And Relevance Of Existing Cadres Of Frontline Health Workers And Potential For New Mid-Level Cadres, Oladimeji Oladepo, Ekechi Okereke, Akinwumi Akinola

Reproductive Health

Front-line health workers (FLHWs) are expected to perform necessary maternal, newborn, and child (MNCH) services appropriately and effectively; however, few studies have investigated the extent to which FLHWs perform requisite primary health care (PHC) services. This study seeks to better understand not only FLHWs’ knowledge and performance of MNCH services, but the factors promoting and inhibiting their services in selected rural local government areas of Nigeria’s Bauchi and Cross River states. It also investigates the potential for a new PHC worker cadre, soliciting stakeholders’ perceptions about its feasibility for addressing maternal and newborn disease burdens in rural communities. The study’s …

A Discussion Starter On The Possibilities And Implications Of Cultural Intelligence For Worship, Garfield O. Harvey

Doctor of Ministry

Globalization influences the development of international interactions among leaders serving in cross-cultural settings and creates challenges for those who are unprepared to lead cross-culturally. For this project, cultural intelligence is the phenomenon investigated as a recommendation for cross-cultural worship. Cultural intelligence (CQ) refers to a person’s capability to adapt to the cultural environments they engage. This research examines how CQ may influence the strategic design of a church congregation’s worship practices, while honoring their cultural and biblical behaviors. Leading worship with CQ is of paramount importance if churches desire to engage people inside and outside their congregations effectively. One observation …

The Psalms Of The Spirit: A Study Of The Divine Use Of Ruach In The Book Of Psalms, Charles H. Gaulden

Selected Faculty Publications

dissertation is a theological study of the divine spirit (רוּ חַ ) in the bookof Psalms, more specifically within Psalms 51; 104; 139; and 143. By the expres-sion “divine use of רוּ חַ ,” the theological focus is narrowed to רוּ חַ in close lan-guage connection to Yahweh himself with various personal expressions such as “his spirit, your spirit, your good spirit, your holy spirit, and your noble spirit.” The research begins in division one with an analysis of all non-divine uses of רוּ חַ in the Psalms that have been variously translated in connection with “an-gels, breath, human disposition, …

Originalism And Indians, M. Alexander Pearl

Faculty Articles

Indian tribes, in the context of US. constitutional theory, do not fit. They are an anomaly in American governmental structure. Tribal governments exist today within the constitutional framework of the United States only by virtue of acrobatic displays of rhetorical legal reasoning and mythologized interpretations of history. Originalist theory can provide a clear exit from the inconsistencies and inaccuracies underlying the foundation of federal Indian law. Typically, scholars embracing an originalist position are thought of as conservative. A conservative position is typically associated with opposition to tribal sovereignty. In contrast to those traditional views, I argue that an originalist view …

Language-Related Communications Challenges In General Aviation Operations And Pilot Training, Bradley S. Baugh, Alan J. Stolzer

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

English is the basis for aviation communications worldwide creating challenges for both native and non-native English speakers. An unfortunate outcome of language-related communications issues, whether indirectly or directly, has been aircraft mishaps. As aviation grows worldwide, the potential for miscommunication increases. Previous studies have concentrated on commercial aviation accident analysis. A similar focus on general aviation operations and pilot training incidents in the U.S. is needed. Voluntary incident reporting is a key component in Safety Management Systems in order to address problems before they become accidents. This project studied voluntary incident reports to analyze the number of language-related reports filed …

U.S. Supreme Court Surveys: 2016 Term. Matal V. Tam: Free Speech Meets "Disparaging" Trademarks In The Supreme Court, Niki Kuckes

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

An Application Of Natural Language Processing For Triangulation Of Cognitive Load Assessments In Third Level Education, Luis Alfredo Contreras

Dissertations

Work has been done to measure Mental Workload based on applications mainly related to ergonomics, human factors, and Machine Learning. The influence of Machine Learning is a reflection of an increased use of new technologies applied to areas conventionally dominated by theoretical approaches. However, collaboration between MWL and Natural Language Processing techniques seems to happen rarely. In this sense, the objective of this research is to make use of Natural Languages Processing techniques to contribute to the analysis of the relationship between Mental Workload subjective measures and Relative Frequency Ratios of keywords gathered during pre-tasks and post-tasks of MWL activities …

Assesing Completeness Of Solvency And Financial Condition Reports Through The Use Of Machine Learning And Text Classification, Ruairí Nugent

Dissertations

Text mining is a method for extracting useful information from unstructured data through the identification and exploration of large amounts of text. It is a valuable support tool for organisations. It enables a greater understanding and identification of relevant business insights from text. Critically it identifies connections between information within texts that would otherwise go unnoticed. Its application is prevalent in areas such as marketing and political science however, until recently it has been largely overlooked within economics. Central banks are beginning to investigate the benefits of machine learning, sentiment analysis and natural language processing in light of the large …

An Exploration Of Parliamentary Speeches In The Irish Parliament Using Topic Modeling, Fiona Leheny

Dissertations

The only resource available in the public domain which highlights parliamentary ac tivity is parliamentary questions. Up until the last ten years, manual content analysis was carried out to classify these. More recently, machine learning techniques have been used to automatically classify and analyse these data sets. This study analyses the verbal parliamentary speeches in the Irish Parliament (known as the D´ail) over a ten year period using unsupervised machine learning. It does so by applying a less utilised topic modeling technique, known as Non-negative Matrix Factorisation (NMF), to de tect the latent themes in these speeches. A two-layer dynamic …

Diversity And Cultural Competence In The Lis Classroom: A Curriculum Audit, J. A. Jacobs, Nicole A. Cooke

Faculty Publications

In a case study examining a library and information science graduate curriculum, 18 graduate students engaged in a comprehensive diversity audit of the School of Information Science curriculum. The diversity audit was a student-generated review of 108 syllabi and permitted students to engage in an action-learning project that benefited the school and allowed them, and the school’s faculty, to see first-hand why diversity and cultural competence are important facets of library and information science curricula.

Men, Masculinity And Perceptions Of Higher Education Sexual Violence Programming: A Qualitative Analysis, Merry M. Snyder

Departmental Honors Projects

Research suggests that sexual assault on college campuses is very prevalent. Although institutions are taking measures towards prevention, social norms have left the role of men in addressing sexual violence under-examined. Through my two-part research, I examined the relationship between men and these systems. I first conducted interviews with Higher Education Professionals in the Upper Midwest to explore how the dominant forms of masculinity have played a role in campus programming. This research was concerned with how schools are engaging men on campus and addressing harmful forms of masculinity. The themes that emerged through these interviews provided the basis for …

The Controversial Passage Of Proposition 227, Erin E. Kinney

Departmental Honors Projects

When Proposition 227 passed in 1998, it essentially ended a thirty-year program of bilingual education in California of students with limited English proficiency, and replaced it with a controversial, year-long, intensive English-immersion program. Paying close attention to how each side of the debate was framed in televised programming and local newspapers, this paper examines why such a controversial law was able to pass by popular ballot. After researching the popular opinions of the previous program of bilingual education as well as the narrative of the state concerning how it views its immigrant populations, with the children of Latin American immigrants …

Franz Boas And The Columbian Field Museum, Martin W. Peper

Departmental Honors Projects

The Late Nineteenth Century was a period of major flux within the world of American anthropology. Two major centers of power had emerged within the nascent field. Federally sponsored anthropologists clashed with academic institutions, especially those associated with Harvard’s Frederic Ward Putnam. These two bodies found themselves at odds over methodological design and the theoretical frameworks supporting their research. These issues would span the breadth of anthropology as a field, but nowhere was it more visible than in the scope of museum studies. Public displays of anthropological thought were the most direct way that scholars were able to present their …

What Is Teacher Agency?, Alcione N. Ostorga

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Certain But Stable? A Diachronic Analysis Of Taxation In Ireland From 1970-2015, Ewan Alexander Macdonald, John Hogan, Brendan O'Rourke

Other

Certain but stable? A diachronic analysis of taxation in Ireland from 1970-2015

This paper explores the discursive development of taxation within budget speeches in Ireland from 1970 to 2015 by means of a corpus-assisted discourse analysis. We ask the following questions; how have discourses of taxation developed diachronically and what are the similarities and differences in the observable discourses? In answering these questions, this paper makes use of corpus linguistics, a methodological approach which utilises computational analysis of large bodies of text to draw statistically significant conclusions about word usage. It is expected, though not taken a priori, that …

"Regularities" And "Irregularities" In Chinese Historical Phonology, Tianrang Bu

Honors Papers

With a combination of methodologies from Western and Chinese traditional historical linguistics, this thesis is an attempt to survey and synthetically analyze the major sound changes in Chinese phonological history. It addresses two hypotheses – the Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis and the unidirectionality hypothesis – and tries to question their validity and applicability. Drawing from fourteen types of “regular” and “irregular” processes, the thesis argues that the origins and impetuses of sound change is far from just phonetic environment (“regular” changes) and lexical diffusion (“irregular” changes), and that sound change is not unidirectional because of the existence and significance of fortifying …

The Language Of Sport: Understanding Chile And Chilenidad Through Marathon Races And Fútbol Games, Lilah Drafts-Johnson

Honors Papers

This project offers a new perspective for understanding the country and culture of Chile by examining the messages embedded in sport competitions. I will first detail the success of distance runner Manuel Plaza in his second-place finish at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games, and analyze how Plaza’s success at an international competition was adopted and interpreted to represent the entrance of Chile into modern and Western society. I will then discuss the struggle between different sections of Chilean society to create and monopolize the master narrative of the events that took place following the military coup of 1973. This section …

"Overrun All This Country..." Two New Mexican Lives Through The Nineteenth Century, Isabel Hannigan

Honors Papers

This thesis reconstructs the lives of two elite Hispanic New Mexican men who grappled with upheavals on the North American continent during the nineteenth century. Union army officers and influential patrones Nicolás Pino (1820-1896) and José Francisco Chavez (1833-1904) serve as the center of this paper’s narrative chronological historical analysis. Intensive primary source work in the New Mexico State Archives reveals their footprints in the military, political, and legal spheres before, during, and after the war. The biographies of Chavez and Pino serve as a microcosm of the changes and continuities in Nuevo Mexicano social, cultural, and military practices during …

"Crooked" Language: Moroccan Heritage Identity And Belonging On Youtube, Radia Lyna Lahlou

Honors Papers

With the advent of user-generated social media, people are able to assert their ideas, opinions and positionality through online multi-way communication and participation. One such website is YouTube, a video platform where language production and identity negotiation are common. This thesis looks at a series of videos published on YouTube, entitled the "Moroccan Tag" to examine the ways five second-generation French-Moroccan YouTubers assert their national identities online. Using methods of guerrilla ethnography, I glean discourse from video content and comments to outline three key scaler processes through which identity performance manifests: through semiotic ideologies surrounding authenticity, language and imagined community. …

Gender Nonconformity And The Stereotype Content Model, Ari M. Rosenblum

Honors Papers

A recent increase in transgender visibility has highlighted gaps in the social psychology literature about attitudes and biases. There is a relatively large body of literature that examines people’s reactions to gender role violation, but little that examines reactions to gendered trait violation. To assess negative attitudes towards transgender and gender nonconforming people, this experiment asked participants to make attitude judgements (warmth and competence) about a series of gender stereotypic and counterstereotypic face-voice pairs. This procedure was based on the paradigm used to construct the Stereotype Content Model, which categorizes stereotypes/prejudice into four categories (paternalistic, contemptuous, envious, admirable). Participants also …

Engineering Identity Development: A Review Of Higher Education Literature, Sarah L. Rodriguez, Charles Lu, Morgan Bartlett

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this systematic literature review was to appraise and synthesize the current scholarship pertaining to engineering identity development within the higher education context and create recommendations for future scholarship within engineering education. A review of the literature concluded that research on engineering identity development has increased over the past ten years, has been conducted primarily with qualitative methods, and has been primarily limited to academic communities focused on mathematics, science, and engineering education. In addition, current scholarship reflected that most of the work in this area has focused on the learning contexts and experiences of women and underrepresented …

Human Essence: Toward A Relational Reconstruction, Kenneth J. Gergen

Psychology Faculty Works

This chapter opens with a social constructionist perspective on human essences. As proposed, essences are not given in nature, but constructed within cultural traditions. Thus, the major challenge is not that of “getting it right” about the essence, but generating accounts that may contribute to society. A criterion of reflective pragmatism is proposed in which questions of contribution and critique prevail. In this light the chapter places in critical light the bio-cognitive and neurological explanations of human nature, especially focusing on the ideological and political implications of these orientations. In contrast, discussion opens on relational conceptions of human essence. Several …

Qualitative Psychology And The New Pluralism, Kenneth J. Gergen

Psychology Faculty Works

The burgeoning of the qualitative movement—both in psychology and the social sciences more generally—represents a major transformation in the landscape of inquiry. Reflection on this movement, both its potentials and its problems, is essential. In the present offering, I focus on a particularly significant characteristic of the qualitative movement thus far, its profound pluralism. At the outset, it is important to recognize the dependency of this movement on the deterioration of logical empiricism in social science research, and the absence of any foundational replacement. Thus, qualitative researchers have been liberated not only to employ research practices from multiple traditions, but …

The Social Construction Of Reality: Traces And Transformation, Kenneth J. Gergen

Psychology Faculty Works

Gergen provides a reflection on the intellectual context in which The Social Construction of Reality emerged and the subsequent transformation taking place in assumptions and practices. As he proposes, while the Berger and Luckmann thesis provided a major catalyst to the emerging dialogues, subsequent developments in critical theory, literary and rhetorical theory and the history of science added vital dimensions to understanding. The earlier emphasis on social phenomenology was largely eclipsed by a concern with the linguistic construction of reality; discussions of social structure and individual experience were largely replaced by a focus on the social or dialogic construction of …

The Truth Of The Matter: Why The Social Contract Dictates Legal Scholar's Sincerity, Candor, & Thoroughness, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

Legal scholars have filled books, treatises, magazines, journals and law reviews with various writings ranging from highly intricate and complex theses to oversimplified and homogenous explanations. In all its forms, legal scholarship has been both touted and taunted by external and internal critics throughout the years. Some suggest that legal scholarship should holistically "frame recommendations to responsible decision makers," and more specifically "help the reader understand law." Others suggest that it should be used to bring "restraint, proportion, perspective and atmosphere" into the legal landscape and society at large. Whatever its stated purpose and whether it be doctrinal, descriptive or …

Critical Race Ip, Deidre Keller

Journal Publications

In this Article, written on the heels of Race + IP 2017, a conference we co-organized with Amit Basole1 and Jessica Silbey,we propose and articulate a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary movement that we call Critical Race Intellectual Property (Critical Race IP).Specifically, we argue that given trends toward maximalist intellectual property policy, it is now more important than ever to study the racial investments and implications of the laws of copyright, trademark, patent, right of publicity, trade secret, and unfair competition in a manner that draws upon Critical Race Theory (CRT). Situating our argument in a historical context, we articulate …

Passive Voice Usage In Undergraduate Stem Textbooks, Huiyuan Luo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study, a corpus-based quantitative analysis, investigated the use of passive voice in terms of percentage (percentage of total passive usage), constructions (the most commonly used passive forms), and dispersion (the verbs that tended to be associated with passive usage) in college STEM textbooks, more specifically in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. The corpus consisted of twenty textbooks with over 1 million running words selected from the textbooks' chapters. By identifying the main verbs and passive verbs used in the textbooks, the percentage of passive voice usage was calculated. The statistical difference of passive constructions between disciplines was examined …

Translation As Re-Signification: How Playboy Transformed A Pushkin Poem Into An Artifact Ofthe Cultural Cold War, Tetiana Savchynska

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

No abstract provided.