Digital Commons Network^™

The Story/History Of Japan: Producing Knowledge By Integrating The Study Of Japanese Literature And Japanese History, Peter Kvidera

2021 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Exploited And Empowered Inclusion: Contesting The Flawed Consumer In The United States, Wendy A. Wiedenhoft Murphy

2021 Faculty Bibliography

Compared to affluent consumers, the consumption practices of poor and low-income consumers have received less attention in the global North, where they have been marginalized as flawed. This paper hopes to address this neglect by providing an exploratory profile of poor and low-income consumers in the United States. It will challenge that these consumers are flawed by explaining how they participate in consumer society via exploitative inclusion and empowered inclusion. It concludes by suggesting ways that less affluent consumers can experience expanded empowerment.

A Battleground No More: Cosmopolitanism, The Culture Wars, And The Urban-Rural Divide In Ohio Elections, 2004-2020, Colin D. Swearingen, Thomas Lindstrom*

2021 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

Cannibals, Gorillas, And The Struggle Over Radical Reconstruction, Daniel P. Kilbride

2021 Faculty Bibliography

No abstract provided.

A Portrait Of Post-Industrial Portland, Oregon, Madelyn Vander Veen, Mark D. Bjelland

Summer Research

Overlay of contemporary and historic land use maps allowed us to identify former industrial districts that have been redeveloped for new uses. Portland’s Pearl District and South Waterfront are the city’s best examples of post-industrial areas that have been transformed into thriving mixeduse neighborhoods. These two post-industrial districts offer a valuable lens through which to view the changing inner city. Places of physical labor have been transformed into spaces where a new class of knowledge workers live, work, and play. The rising importance of the city’s culture, education, and health care sectors is exemplified in these two post-industrial districts. Here …

Lebanese Colonial Hang-Ups: Anti-Blackness And The Kafala System In Lebanon, Sarah Gonzalez Noveiri

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lebanon’s colonial legacy has not only influenced the legal and political systems which operate in the country today. As I hope to demonstrate in this dissertation, the strength and cementation of these systems can be seen as a consequence of negotiations of identity, citizenship and nation state that took place during the Ottoman Empire and French colonial rule. The Kafala is one of such systems that developed through the Ottoman Empire and against the backdrop of European colonization. Discourses of race, citizenship, gender and sexuality that were being negotiated by colonial citizens and colonial powers, served to cement the racialized …

Inspiring And Aspiring Educators: An Intersection Of Historic And Current Education Landscapes, A. Brooke Boulton, Steven M. Baule, Mark Johnson, Danielle E. Tamke, Lisa J. Bronk, Shelley M. Wolfe, Alicia R. Swanson, Donavan Bailey, Davidson L. Blanchard, Katey R. Leverson, Brennan J. Kent, Regina Mustafa

Education Doctorate Books

The book Inspiring and Aspiring Educators: An Intersection of Historic and Current Education Landscapes is a collection of graduate student writings from the 2021 summer Education Doctorate Residency at Winona State University.

A Race Around The World, Lilly Zhou

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

Afterschool club that learns about different cultures, foods, holidays, and landmarks from countries around the world through interactive presentations. Hands-on activities help the students focus on teamwork, creativity, and active recall.

Developing A Strategy For The National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network, Michael H. Cosh, Todd G. Caldwell, C. Bruce Baker, John D. Bolten, Nathan Edwards, Peter Goble, Heather Hofman, Tyson E. Ochsner, Steven Quiring, Charles Schalk, Marina Skumanich, Mark D. Svoboda, Mary E. Woloszyn

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Soil moisture is a critical land surface variable, affecting a wide variety of climatological, agricultural, and hydrological processes. Determining the current soil moisture status is possible via a variety of methods, including in situ monitoring, remote sensing, and numerical modeling. Although all of these approaches are rapidly evolving, there is no cohesive strategy or framework to integrate these diverse information sources to develop and disseminate coordinated national soil moisture products that will improve our ability to understand climate variability. The National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network initiative has developed a national strategy for network coordination with NOAA’s National Integrated Drought …

Multiplex Social Factors Affecting Hiv Prevalence In Colorado, Jesse Cannella

Scholarship in Medicine - All Papers

Objective: The objective of this paper was to investigate and analyze the relationships between the prevalence of HIV and geographic location, high-risk behaviors, and education status in Colorado in 2020. Methods: The author of this paper conducted Spearmen correlations on HIV prevalence with rural status, rates of flu vaccinations, and drug overdose deaths, as well as performed stepwise linear regressions on the variance of HIV prevalence accounted for by rates of teen births, sexually transmitted infections, high school graduation, and college education status. Results: Incidence of other STIS and teen births (F2,42 = 7.69, p = .001), as well as …

2021-2022 Graduate Catalog, Wku Graduate School

Graduate School

Graduate School catalog regarding admissions, curriculum and policies.

The Martyr’S Desire: Levinas, Girard, And Infinite Responsibility, Joshua Alan Lawrence

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Perhaps the whole of human history could be summed up with one word: economy. The law of the home and the home of all law. Without fail, this situation results in a structured devotion that must decide what to do with desire. And the economic decision often follows a violent trajectory, most commonly described as sacrifice. Today, states will make efforts to conceal this underlying logic, but the insidious configurations of ‘real politik’ usually surface with a frightening intensity.

My project considers these problematic vestiges through Emmanuel Levinas’s reconfiguration of subjectivity. To address these bio-historical realities, my work highlights the …

Assessing The Variations Of Educational Attainment At National And Subnational Levels Using Hierarchical Linear Models, Bingxin Qi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Education is a human right, and equal access to education is not only crucial for an individual’s well-being, but also essential for eradicating poverty, ensuring long-term prosperity for all, transforming the society, and achieving sustainable development. Measuring education development, especially the variations of educational attainment, in a timely and accurate manner can help educators, practitioners, scientists, and policymakers compare and evaluate various education indicators at both subnational and national levels. This research presents an approach that combines multi-source and multidimensional data including population distribution, human settlement, and education data to assess and explore educational attainment trajectories at both national and …

Student Expressions Of Aesthetic Learning Experiences, Jodie L. Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aesthetic learning experiences are grounded in qualities influenced by the arts: perceptive, sensorial, imaginative, and creative. While the concept of aesthetic experience has been applied broadly within education, student expressions of such experiences have been neglected. This poses a problem of equity both ethically in that the suppression of student voice is perpetuated and pragmatically in that the range and form of aesthetic learning expressed by students is insufficiently attended to and acted upon.

Theoretically guided by John Dewey’s explications of an aesthetic experience and conceptually supported by three interpretive frames—Eisner’s dimensions of schooling, Uhrmacher et al.’s instructional arc, and …

Educators' Perceptions Of Using Twitter As A Professional Development Tool, Bradford Lusk

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Educator professional development has the power to affect day-to-day educational practice. Every school district wrestles with planning professional development for improving educators professionally to better student achievement. With the largest portion of the budget being spent on personnel, developing educators and staff professionally should be a school district’s main priority. Taking into consideration the nature of adult learners and changes in educational and technological resources, professional development is ripe for a change. The purpose of this case study was to explore educators’ perceptions of using Twitter to receive and engage in professional development over a five-week period. Interviews of the …

Promoting Inclusive Metrics Of Success And Impact To Dismantle A Discriminatory Reward System In Science, Sarah W. Davies, Hollie M. Putnam, Tracy Ainsworth, Julia K. Baum, Colleen B. Bove, Sarah C. Crosby, Isabelle M. Côté, Anne Duplouy, Robinson W. Fulweiler, Alyssa J. Griffin, Torrance C. Hanley, Tessa Hill, Adriana Humanes, Sangeeta Mangubhai, Anna Metaxes, Laura M. Parker, Hanny E. Rivera, Nyss J. Sibiger, Nicola S. Smith, Ana K. Spaulding, Nikki Traylor-Knowles, Brooke L. Weigel, Rachel M. Wright, Amanda E. Bates

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Success and impact metrics in science are based on a system that perpetuates sexist and racist “rewards” by prioritizing citations and impact factors. These metrics are flawed and biased against already marginalized groups and fail to accurately capture the breadth of individuals’ meaningful scientific impacts. We advocate shifting this outdated value system to advance science through principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. We outline pathways for a paradigm shift in scientific values based on multidimensional mentorship and promoting mentee well-being. These actions will require collective efforts supported by academic leaders and administrators to drive essential systemic change.

Changes In Selection Pressure Can Facilitate Hybridization During Biological Invasion In A Cuban Lizard, Dan G. Bock, Simon Baeckens, Jessica N. Pita-Aquino, Zachary A. Chejanovski, Sozos N. Michaeolides, Pavitra Muralidhar, Sungdae Park, Douglas B. Menke, Anthony J. Geneva, Jonathan B. Losos, Jason J. Kolbe

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Hybridization is among the evolutionary mechanisms most frequently hypothesized to drive the success of invasive species, in part because hybrids are common in invasive populations. One explanation for this pattern is that biological invasions coincide with a change in selection pressures that limit hybridization in the native range. To investigate this possibility, we studied the introduction of the brown anole (Anolis sagrei) in the southeastern United States. We find that native populations are highly genetically structured. In contrast, all invasive populations show evidence of hybridization among native-range lineages. Temporal sampling in the invasive range spanning 15 y showed …

The First Days And The Last Days, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw

Interpreter Foundation Books

Like a perfectly formed pair of bookends, the Book of Moses and Joseph Smith’s inspired translation of Matthew 24 (JS—Matthew) bracket within their pages the essential survival guide for our times. In the “first days,” Adam and Eve looked forward to Christ’s coming; in the “last days,” we look backward to Christ’s mortal life and forward to His return in glory. In the beginning, Enoch learned the ordinances and covenants that would allow his people to dwell in the presence of God; to the end, we will treasure the same ordinances and covenants. Through faith in Jesus Christ and faithfulness …

Tigard-Tualatin School District Enrollment Forecasts 2021-22 To 2030-31, Portland State University. Population Research Center, Charles Rynerson, Mac Cunningham

School District Enrollment Forecast Reports

This report presents the results of a demographic study conducted by the Portland State University Population Research Center (PRC) for the Tigard‐Tualatin School District (TTSD). The study includes analyses of population, housing and enrollment trends affecting the District in recent years, estimates of the impacts of housing development on TTSD enrollment, and forecasts of district‐wide and individual school enrollments for the 2021‐22 to 2030‐31 school years. Typically, the most recent October enrollment count is used as a baseline, or “launch” year for enrollment forecasts. However, due to the COVID‐ 19 pandemic, October 2020 enrollment is an anomaly. Therefore, we used …

Black Women's Suffrage, The Nineteenth Amendment, And The Duality Of A Movement, Danielle M. Conway

Faculty Scholarly Works

America is at an unprecedented time with self-determination for Black women, and this phase of the movement is reverberating throughout this nation and around the world. There is no confusion for those who identify as Black women that this movement is perpetual, dating back to the enslavement of Black people in America by act and by law. One need only look to the intersecting crises of 2020 to discern the reality of Black women’s—and by extension the Black community and by further extension individuals and groups marginalized, subordinated, and oppressed by white patriarchy—perpetual struggle for civil and human rights.

To …

Informing Sustainable Urban Forestry Policy With Carbon Sequestration Analysis, Ellen Danford

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Urban forestry is an environmental solution for an increasingly city-centered world. The ecosystem services that trees provide in natural settings, including carbon sequestration, oxygen production and aesthetic beauty, also apply in urban settings. Every tree in the Western Kentucky University (WKU) urban forest provides these services and each tree was measured to determine how much carbon they sequestered a year on average between 2015 and 2020. With an interactive map of the forest and its carbon sequestration, the condition of the forest and change over the five year period was analyzed. Comparing the welfare of the forest with the plans …

Drought In The Breadbasket Of America And The Influence Of Oceanic Teleconnections, Grace Campbell

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

From 1980 to 2020, drought events accounted for 11.4% of the billion-dollar disasters in the United States (U.S.) yet caused the second highest total amount in damages at $236.6 billion. With the average cost of a drought being upwards of $9.5 billion, these natural disasters can create serious problems in agriculture. Drought is defined as a period of below average precipitation that causes damage to agriculture and water supply. Previous research has linked drought events in the U.S. Great Plains to oceanic teleconnections in the Pacific and Atlantic basins, indicating the influence of the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO), …

Pathways To Self-Governance And Success: An Exploratory Study Of Community Gardens In Louisville, Kentucky, Amanda Beavin

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Those involved in community gardens face multiple challenges to survival, including land tenure, lack of funding, lack of sustained interest, and poor infrastructure, but many successful, long-lasting gardens have found management style to be a key aspect of their success. This project investigated three community gardens in Louisville, Kentucky, in order to determine how self-governance, or internal management by gardeners, overlaps with other success indicators and what development processes lead to successful self-governance. Using qualitative, semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the researcher gathered and analyzed data relative to each garden site’s land tenure, community engagement, environmental design, resource mobilization, and …

Enhancing Wku Sustainable Food Systems Through Education And Local Agriculture Development, Chloe Cooper

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In an effort to increase the amount of locally sourced food utilized by dining services at WKU, the Office of Sustainability, WKU Restaurant Group, and the WKU Agriculture & Research Education Center have partnered to establish garden spaces on campus properties. This project developed a detailed plan for implementation of this effort. In addition, this project established a plan to educate students and the local community alike on the benefits of sustainable farming and locally-sourced food, while also creating profiles on local farmers from whom the university could buy crops in order to further supplement items for dining services. Using …

Antibiotic Resistant Gene Concentrations In Bacteria In Groundwater From Agricultural Waste, Koji Barnaby

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The overuse of antibiotics has led to an increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria since some antibiotics are sent into the wastewater system by waste produced by both humans and agriculture, making exposure to these bacteria more likely. The evolution of these bacteria in groundwater is of particular concern, as groundwater is used as a source of drinking water, and infections by these bacteria would be more difficult to treat. There are no policies in place to monitor or regulate antibiotic resistance bacteria in groundwater, leaving the threat to public health unknown. The study area of Crumps Cave in Smiths Grove, …

Love In The Time Of Corona: Changes To Oberlin Hookup Culture During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sophie M. Aaron

Honors Papers

My thesis is about the role that hookup culture has had at Oberlin College in forming student connections and social networks on campus before COVID, and how that has changed after COVID, and what the social importance of hooking up is, has been, and will be. People put more thought and strategy into their hookups than the literature seems to suggest. It is important to understand that while hooking up is often discussed as if its moral panic that’s out of control, there is a reason and a function that it serves where it can be enjoyable and helpful. Hookups …

Vi. Barolo Landscape Studies: Barolo Mga 360º Vermeer Rilke, Charles S. Taylor

Wine Journey: Tasting Dwelling Learning at The Kitchen Table

Oh tall tree in the ear / O hoher Baum im Ohr! astonished me years ago, reading Rilke with students. WHAT did it mean? He knew. Jubilant praise sings in my ear. An ascending tree crossed paths with astounding wine unexpectedly. Breaking in new hiking shoes in vineyard dust in Serralunga d’Alba began a 40-year-long anticipated visit to Barolo and Barbaresco. Walking also through vineyards in La Morra, Barolo and Neive, tastings at Azienda Agricola Vigna Rionda S.S. di Massolino Fiili (Serralunga d’Alba) and Castello di Neive Azienda Agricola (Barbaresco), invited private tastings at La Morra’s Poderi Marcarini and at …

M.S. Environmental Biology Capstone Project, Shanelle Thevarajah

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Chapter 1: Coexistence begins with respect: human impacts on brown bears (Ursus arctos)

Chapter 2: Grizzly bear foraging patterns in relation to human disturbances in Sweden

Chapter 3: Activity budgets and social relationships of bull Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at Denver Zoo

Chapter 4: Loris trade not so slow: conservation and welfare of slow lorises

Berryman, Matilene Spencer, Msrc Staff

Manuscript Division Finding Aids

The papers of Attorney Matilene Spencer Berryman (1926-2003), reflect a legacy of outstanding achievements and accomplishments related to her work as an oceanographer, college professor and administrator in marine and environmental science as well as an attorney. The collection spans from 1964 to 2001, and measure twenty two cubic feet. The bulk of the papers covers the period from 1973-2000. In 2010, Moorland Spingarn Research Center acquired the collection from the estate of the late Dr. Sherrill Berryman Johnson, Berryman’s eldest daughter’s. Berryman's papers primarily consist of documents relating to her educational career inclusive of materials from her graduate studies …

The Relationship Between Transportation Accessibility And Economic Development, Abigail Kiggen

Empirical Economic Bulletin, An Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates the possible relationship between transportation infrastructure accessibility and economic development in a given region. The study will incorporate data from counties in the state of Massachusetts to compare development from previous studies in the New York area. The independent variable will be transportation infrastructure accessibility, and the dependent variable will be measures of economic development. The results show that there are generally not correlations between better accessibility and economic development in a given region.