Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between Spatial Ability And The Conservation Of Matter In Middle School, Merryn Cole, Jennifer Wilhelm, Briana Marie-Mcknight Vaught, Corinne Fish, Hailey Fish

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Faculty Publications

Research has shown that spatial ability plays a key role in understanding STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) content, including chemistry. Conservation of Matter (CoM) is an essential but challenging topic for chemistry students of all ages to grasp; it is often taught in a way where students memorize it but do not learn what it means conceptually. This research explored the relationship between understanding spatial ability and conceptual understanding of CoM in middle school students. CoM was examined in two ways using the Conservation of Matter Assessment (CoMA): through questions on conservation of atoms and the conservation of mass. …

Utilizing A Theory Of Change Process To Establish Framework For A Student Success Course, Sy Bridenbaugh

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

The student success course has become a staple of the college experience. As the academic and social environment continues to shift with each new incoming cohort, having a designed and evaluated framework to utilize during student success course development can be a useful tool. Research surrounding student success in college is abundant. Having a framework that draws on this research for setting learning objectives and determining high impact practices for a student success course could assist in current and future curriculum development.

This study focuses on a student success course offered through the College of Education at the University of …

Orienting New International College Students During A Global Pandemic: Spatiality’S Contributions To Staff Work Practices, Thomas W. Teague Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

U.S. colleges must increasingly respond to a wide range of complex forces and simultaneously fulfill their missions and support students. To address many of these forces, some have turned to internationalization efforts like recruiting and enrolling international students. In light of these efforts, critics have called for institutions to better, more appropriately support these students, given their challenges and needs. This call has amplified during the recent COVID-19 global health pandemic.

Traditional student support services tend to center around Tinto’s Theory of Student Departure. Examples of support programming are frequently shared, yet rarely detail how institutional staff actually perform them …

“I’M Like Their Gps”: How Mathematics Faculty Support Underprepared Community College Students In Corequisite Courses, Bonita B. Tyler

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

As American community colleges replace prerequisite developmental mathematics courses with corequisite courses, the work of faculty to support underprepared students merits attention. This curricular change means underprepared students are enrolling directly in both college-level content courses with required corequisite support courses for necessary remediation, thus broadening the range of student skills and abilities in the classroom. Faculty work is significantly impacted by this change. Previous research indicates that corequisite course configurations have mitigated some problems with the traditional multi-course sequence of developmental courses. Noticeably, scholars described course structures in detail but failed to describe adequately how students were actually supported. …

“I Felt Seen”: A Mixed-Methods Investigation Of Culturally Responsive Teaching In Postsecondary Education, Caiti Siobhan Griffiths

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Instructors’ beliefs and behaviors shape students’ learning environments (Bandura, 2007). Culturally responsive teaching can make instruction more relevant and supportive to historically marginalized students (Gay, 2000, 2018). Instructor support and care for students are important to undergraduate persistence (Tinto, 1986, 1993). However, White postsecondary instructors may not feel prepared to use culturally responsive teaching (Heitner & Jennings, 2016; Sue et al., 2009). This study used a sequential mixed-methods design to examine postsecondary instructors’ self-perceptions, and students’ lived experiences, related to culturally responsive teaching. In Fall 2020, instructors (N = 99) rated their self-efficacy for culturally responsive teaching on a …

Exploring Preservice Teachers’ Practices And Perspectives On Whiteness: Development And Initial Validation Of The Whiteness Components Scale, Falynn Amor Thompson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

For decades, educational scholars have considered and investigated a number of factors (e.g., teacher beliefs and expectations, racism, and inadequate school resources) that maintain the negative schooling experiences of Black students. Recently, scholars have identified components of whiteness as factors informing the adverse educational experiences of these students. To date, however, few researchers have empirically examined attitudes, behaviors, and perspectives of whiteness in educational settings and among educational stakeholders. In addition, no study has explored an association between whiteness components and Black students’ overall educational experiences. The dearth of these studies in the educational and psychological literatures is due in …

"Now Thinking About It, It's Freedom": Conceptualizing Sexual Pleasure For Fat, Queer Women, Carolyn Elizabeth Meiller

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Research considering the positive aspects of sexuality, such as pleasure, within a cultural context is especially important for groups of people that are often seen as separate from the experience of sexuality, such as fat, queer women. Due to perceptions of their bodies and how their sexuality goes against traditional heteronormativity, fat, queer women's experiences with sex and pleasure are under represented. Using a critical sexuality framework, the present study sought to explore the definitions and experiences of sexual pleasure for fat, queer women.

In the present study, constructivist grounded theory methods (Charmaz, 2014) were used to analyze the definitions …

Computer Self-Efficacy And Math Performance In Adult Basic Education Students, Morgan Hilary Dow

Theses and Dissertations--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education

Domain-specific self-efficacy is increasingly known to be related to student academic performance. This study investigated the relationship between computer and math self-efficacy, math performance, and guided in-class use of an online educational program for adult basic education students enrolled in classes at an adult education program during the 2019 – 2020 school year. Initial math test scores and pre-survey results indicated no statistically significant relationship between computer self-efficacy and math performance, or math self-efficacy and math performance. After attending between 1 and 15 class sessions where an online educational program was used, post-survey results indicated no statistically significant relationship between …

The Effects Of A Strengths Based Faculty Coaching Intervention On First-Year Undergraduate Student Academic Confidence: A Mixed Methods Action Research Study, Conrad Alfred Davies Sr.

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Leadership Studies

Deficiency remediation models of education imply that students may enter the university with deficiencies, problems, or needs that imply the student needs to be “fixed” before they can proceed in their academic studies. In contrast, strengths-based education models infer that students come to the university with inherent talents, natural propensities, and behaviors that can be leveraged to overcome their challenges. These differing perspectives can influence the effectiveness of university policies designed to improve student retention. This mixed methods action research study, undergirded by student development theories, examined the effects of a strengths-based, faculty-led coaching intervention on first-year undergraduate students’ academic …

Understanding And Improving Outcomes For Students In An Underserved Secondary School In Kenya: A School-Community-University Partnership, Teresa A. Wasonga, Ximena D. Burgin, Mayra C. Daniel

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Although universities are positioned to lead change, specifically by improving educational systems, there is no evidence of universities in Kenya engaging with schools. Concurrently, the quality of education in Kenya is declining. This article explores the problem of disparities, poor educational outcomes, and ways to improve education at an underserved secondary school over the course of a three-year participatory action research project. Qualitative design was used to gather data through interviews, focus group discussions, and document analyses. Data were analyzed utilizing constant comparison technique and ecological and sociocultural theories. Emerging themes included: disparities and poor academic outcomes; focus on external …

Exploratory Analysis Of Factors Affecting Levels Of Home Deliveries Before, During, And Post Covid-19, Avinash Unnikrishnan, Miguel Figliozzi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected shopping behavior and has accelerated the adoption of online shopping and home deliveries. We administered an online survey among the population in the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Metropolitan area on household and demographic characteristics, e-commerce preferences and factors, number of deliveries made before and during the COVID-19 lockdown, and number of deliveries expected to make post-pandemic. In this research, we conduct an exploratory analysis of the factors which affect levels of home deliveries before, during, and post COVID-19. There was a significant increase in home deliveries during the COVID-19 lockdown relative to before the COVID-19 period. Households …

Ergonomic Assessment Of A New Back Table For Perioperative Nurses, Ketan Prakash Thakur

Theses

Perioperative nurses use back tables (BT) to set up instruments for surgeries consisting of a single surface requiring repetitive lifting due to the stacked trays of surgery tools. Since such actions lead to increased physical (heavyweight of trays) and cognitive (reduced visibility and increased access time) demand, the new DinamicOR table (DT) has been developed. DT has the height adjustment capability and can add up to two shelves providing an extra working area for nurses. We evaluated DT vs. BT by conducting a laboratory experiment involving 16 participants, estimating the kinematics, kinetics, and collecting their subjective feedback, NASA task load …

Brown, Massive Resistance, And The Lawyer's View: A Nashville Story, Daniel J. Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law Review

Editors’ Note: For nearly 75 years, the Vanderbilt Law Review has sought to publish rigorous, intellectually honest scholarship. In publishing the following Essay, we seek to provide an equally unflinching look at one way in which Vanderbilt Law School and its graduates have participated in the creation of inequities that persist today.

The Law School has produced legions of graduates committed to the pursuit of justice. Some alumni’s legacies, however, are more complicated. Brown, Massive Resistance, and the Lawyer’s View: A Nashville Story tells the story of one such alumnus. In many ways, Cecil Sims is a model of an …

Policing In An Era Of Sousveillance: A Randomised Controlled Trial Examining The Influence Of Video Footage On Perceptions Of Legitimacy, Megan Mohler, Christopher M. Campbell, Kelsey S. Henderson, Brian Renauer

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications and Presentations

Controversial incidents of police-citizen interactions, coupled with advancements in internet media technology has created a new dynamic of how public perceptions of the police might be influenced. This paper reports results of an experiment examining how videos of police-citizen interactions found on social media platforms might influence civilian perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice. Using 173 randomly assigned participants and a pre/post-test design, we compare perceptual effects of positive, negative, and neutral depictions of police-citizen interactions. Results indicate all media had an effect on perceptions of legitimacy, with negative content yielding the largest effects, significantly diminishing global perceptions of legitimacy, …

When Therapy Goes Public: Copyright Gatekeepers And Sharing Therapeutic Artifacts On Social Media, Amanda Reid, Pablo Miño

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Fantasy Of The Unchaste Mentality, Tara N. Summerville, Kevin Bennardo

Faculty Publications

For the past forty years, North Carolina’s rape-shield legislation has served as a laboratory of experimentation. Like the rape-shield legislation of every state, it generally prevents the admission of complaining witnesses’ past sexual history in sexual assault prosecutions. However, North Carolina’s rape-shield rule contains a unique exception not found elsewhere in the country. The exception, which we label the “fantasy exception,” permits the admission of a complaining witness’s past sexual behavior when it is offered as the basis of expert psychological or psychiatric opinion that the complainant fantasized or invented the charged assault.

This Article is the first to rigorously …

Biblical Concepts In Action: A Case For Discipleship In The Worship Ministry, Wendall D. Reed

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative historical study is to examine the discipleship of the worship ministry in the local church according to biblical principles of discipleship. Despite the biblical examples of discipleship benefits, worship ministry personnel are often not included in discipleship efforts from church leadership. The leadership and the congregation alike may assume their spiritual maturity. The preaching ministry and the worship ministry are the most public act of worship viewable by congregants. Some worship ministry volunteers and staff may feel they are expected to have already been discipled and may be reluctant to pursue discipleship engagement. This study …

Taxing Nudges, Kathleen Delaney Thomas

Faculty Publications

Governments are increasingly turning to behavioral economics to inform policy design in areas like health care, the environment, and financial decision-making. Research shows that small behavioral interventions, referred to as “nudges,” often produce significant responses at a low cost. The theory behind nudges is that, rather than mandating certain behaviors or providing costly economic subsidies, modest initiatives may “nudge” individuals to choose desirable outcomes by appealing to their behavioral preferences. For example, automatically enrolling workers into savings plans as a default, rather than requiring them to actively sign up, has dramatically increased enrollment in such plans. Similarly, allowing individuals to …

Barring Married Same-Sex Couples From Joint Adoption: Comparative Perspectives And The Case Of Taiwan, Holning S. Lau

Faculty Publications

Taiwan is the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, but it forbids married same-sex couples from jointly adopting children. This article examines this restriction through the lens of comparative law, which brings into focus two main insights. First, we see that, out of all countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, Taiwan is one of only two that bar married same-sex couples from joint adoption. As this article will explain, the fact that Taiwan’s policy is so anomalous should spur skepticism of the policy’s appropriateness. Second, judicial opinions from around the world contain persuasive reasoning that further calls into …

The Final Act -- Deportation By Ice Air, Deborah M. Weissman, Angelina Godoy, Havan Clark

Faculty Publications

Deportation is a legal concept about which much has been written. But it is more complicated. For noncitizens, forced expulsion is a lived experience occurring in time and space — an act against the body, mostly black and brown bodies. In this Article, we part ways with the well-established narratives of deportation and the punishment/non-punishment paradigm to conceive of deportation not only as a legal concept, but as a physical act — the final act — that is, the culmination of the immigration enforcement dragnet. The physical removal of persons from the United States requires a complex system comprised of …

Law In The Shadows Of Confederate Monuments, Deborah R. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

Hundreds of Confederate monuments stand across the United States. In recent years, leading historians have come forward to clarify that these statues were erected not just as memorials but to express white supremacist intimidation in times of racially oppressive conduct. As public support for antiracist action grows, many communities are inclined to remove public symbols that cause emotional harm, create constant security risks and dishonor the values of equality and unity. Finding a lawful path to removal is not always clear and easy. The political power brokers who choose whether monuments will stay or go often do not walk daily …

Boolean Network Control With Ideals, Ian H. Dinwoodie

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

A method is given for finding controls to transition an initial state x0 to a target set in deterministic or stochastic Boolean network control models. The algorithms use multivariate polynomial algebra. Examples illustrate the application.

Anthology Of An Empath, Meriel Melendrez Mees

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

How can we live here together? How can we, human beings (especially those of us not considered as such, historically, presently, or in the future) and more-than-human beings live here together and care for each other? I set out to learn how a pair of permaculture farmers in Southern Humboldt lived and worked with these questions: I attempted a qualitative and quantitative analysis of twenty years of natural history journals that one of them recorded. I was particularly interested in the aesthetics of land tending, affective relationships with more-than-human beings, and disrupting settler colonialism through epistemic reparations to the Sinkyone …

The Influence Of Biological Sex, Athletic Identity And Pressure On Collegiate Athlete's Attitudes And Behaviors Toward Playing Through Pain And Injury, Margaret Anne Willis

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Injuries are to be expected when participating in all levels of collegiate sports (e.g., recreation, elite, club, intermural). It is common among collegiate athletes to continue practicing or competing despite being in pain/injured. This willingness to play hurt can cause negative consequences for athlete’s future health. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of biological sex, athletic identity and pressure on collegiate athlete’s attitudes and behaviors toward playing through pain and injury. Student-athletes involved in NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Division II sports completed two questionnaires and one measurement scale: demographic questionnaire, Risk, Pain and Injury Questionnaire …

Why Do People Donate? Motivation Of Major Donors In Higher Education, Karin Hsuan Chao-Bushoven

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Higher education has relied on private philanthropy since the establishment of the first universities in the U.S. This reliance has increased over the decades as a result of rising costs and decreased government investment. As such, it has become more critical to better understand what factors motivate philanthropists to increase their support of higher education; including direct support for teaching and research and increasing financial support for those students otherwise not able to pursue secondary education. However, much of the existing data focuses only on point-of-philanthropic-act, and neglects to examine motivational factors of long-term donors that have progressively increased their …

The Effect Of Partner Gender On Bisexual’S Percieved Lgbt+ Belonging, Danielle Siegel

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Bisexual erasure is a phenomenon in which the existence of bisexuality is broadly omitted from history, media, and research. Bisexual erasure contributes to stereotypes that bisexuality is a strictly transitional identity, only used in the process of sexually-experimenting or coming out as gay. Although well-documented in qualitative research on bisexuality, the negative effects of bisexual erasure on bisexual women’s mental health and ability to access LGBT+ resources have not been shown in an experimental context. In a vignette study, participants (N= 276) were asked to review application materials for a potential recipient of an LGBT+ exclusive scholarship award. …

Beyond Care And Order In School Climate: A Qualitative Study Of Defender And Outsider Cognitions In Bullying Situations, William S. Richards Iv

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study examined the cognitions of students who intervene or do not intervene when they witness bullying incidents along with the ways that these cognitions may relate to these students’ perceptions of school climate at a small, rural high school in Northern California. Because increasing the frequency of bystander intervention has been found in prior studies to decrease bullying, this study illuminates the cognitive processes that support agency to intervene in bullying and distinguish them from cognitive processes that reduce agency to intervene. This study also identifies possible links between the ways students perceive school climate and their agency to …

The Role Of Hardiness And Autonomy Support On College Student Engagement, Kevin Douglas Cherry

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The gap between college student enrollment and graduation rates remains a problem for college students and administrators. Literature on persistence in college suggests that factors such as hardiness and autonomy support may contribute to student perseverance through degree attainment. The current study focused on these constructs using a framework based on self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 1985). Factors related to student persistence, namely hardiness and autonomy support, were expected to positively predict college student engagement. Furthermore, hardiness was expected to moderate the relationship between autonomy support and college student engagement. College students from a university and a community college …

Full Issue: Volume 14, Number 2, Spring 2021

The Science Journal of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences

Complete .pdf file of Volume 14, Number 2 of The Science Journal of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences. Published Spring 2021.

The Relationship Between Autoimmunity And Polyautoimmunity, David Schon

The Science Journal of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences

Autoimmune disease refers to a systemic immune response by the body against its own healthy tissue and cells. This results in various non-specific and systemic inflammatory processes that evolve into more than 100 individual diseases. Numerous biological similarities exist between the different pathophysiological pathways, including biochemical cascades and inflammasome mediators. This paper aims to investigate whether contracting one form of autoimmune disease can lead to the development of polyautoimmunity and multiple autoimmune syndrome. Scientists have identified chronic levels of high stress as a contributor to higher levels of C-reactive protein and several immune modulating interleukins, which can lead to both …