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Hungry For Food And Community: A Study Of Visitors To Food And Wine Festivals, Mohammed Lefrid, Edwin N. Torres

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The present study explored the effects of various food and wine festival experience elements (e.g. authenticity, entertainment, and spending time with others) on visitors' sense of community, identification, and place attachment. The authors conducted survey research with 304 former visitors to food festivals. Data were analyzed using partial least square – structural equation modeling. Results revealed that food and wine festival experience elements (e.g. authenticity, entertainment, and spending time with friends and family) positively influenced visitors' sense of community, identification with the event, and attachment to the hosting destination. Significant findings relating to the mediating effect of sense of community …

Tropical Cyclone Storm Surge Detection In Slash Pine Radial Growth Along The Northern Gulf Of Mexico Coastline, Alyssa C. Crowell

Master's Theses

My thesis examines the ecological impact of tropical cyclone (TCs) storm surge on coastal slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. elliottii Engelm) communities along the Gulf of Mexico in the southern United States (U.S.). Previous research has shown slash pine radial growth trends can be examined to identify long and short-term growth changes associated with TC passage, providing insight into overall stand health and resiliency through time. However, this previous research encompasses just one site in Mississippi. My thesis expands the spatial footprint of TC-surge impact on slash pine radial growth with the addition of three new sites.

I examined …

Association Between Suicide Rate And Human Development Index, Income, And The Political System In 46 Muslim-Majority Countries: An Ecological Study, S. M. Yasir Arafat, Marthoenis Marthoenis, Murad Khan, Mohsen Rezaeian

Brain and Mind Institute

Very little has been researched assessing the relationship between the suicide rate and the ecological perspectives of the country, especially in the Muslim majority countries. We aimed to determine the association between suicide rate and the ecological parameters of 46 Muslim majority countries. We extracted the Muslim majority countries and their suicide rate, income distribution, distribution of the WHO region and continents, and Human Development Index (HDI). We assessed the correlation of the proportion of Muslim populations, the total population of the countries, number of suicides, continent, income group, political system, and HDI score with the suicide rate. The median …

Reading Igor Stravinsky's Poetics Of Music In Christian Higher Education, John Macinnis, Mark Peters

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This article presents the composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) as an historical educator in the context of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures on Poetry at Harvard University (1939–1940), published as The Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons. As music professors at North American institutions of Christian Higher Education, the authors each read Stravinsky’s Poetics with students in music classes. We describe here our different pedagogical methods and how we employ Stravinsky’s Poetics to form students with Christian approaches to culture-making.

Towards More Equitable Nature-Based Coastal Adaptation In California: Recommendations For Improving Social Equity In Funding, Policy, And Research, California Ocean Science Trust

State & Federal Reports and Publications

This report was produced by Ocean Science Trust (OST) with funding from
the Honda USA Foundation, and is intended to provide framing and insights
to support advancement towards more equitable approaches to nature-based
coastal adaptation and shoreline management in California. This report also provides nine evidence-based policy recommendations and seven research needs for improving social equity in coastal management, funding decisions, and research related to nature-based coastal adaptation, and can help inform alignment between the State of California’s equity, biodiversity, and coastal resilience goals.

View the report's resources here.

Human / Nature

In Case You Missed It

JULY 2022

Gis Training In Transportation And Environmental Justice For Promoting Student Success In Steam Education, Joowon Im, Alan Klein, Amruta Sakalker

TREC Final Reports

Transportation land uses have a significant impact on vulnerable ecologies, especially in a rapidly urbanizing region like Dallas-Fort Worth. To study this relationship, the research team will develop a pilot ArcGIS lab course to expose high school students to critical regional tools and technology. This course will demonstrate the connections between transportation planning and design and environmental justice. The College of Architecture Planning and Public Affairs at UT Arlington will partner with CityLab high school in the Dallas Independent School District to develop a four-week lab course curriculum in ArcGIS and other emerging regional mapping technologies.

High school students will …

Estimating The Economic Impacts Of Transportation-Related Supply Chain Disruptions In The Post-Earthquake Environment, Divya Chandrasekhar, Sua Kim, John Downen, Joshua Spolsdoff

TREC Final Reports

Transportation systems play a critical role in maintaining supply chains for effective post-disaster recovery. Modeling the potential economic impact of transportation-related disruptions, therefore, is an important step to promoting pre-event community wide recovery and resilience planning. But existing supply chain and economic impact models are cost prohibitive and overly sophisticated for use by public sector entities with limited resources. There is also limited understanding of how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) adjust to post-disaster transportation disruption and how this experience influences their future preparedness for similar events. This project had two objectives: (1) to analyze the economic impact due to …

Mobility For The People: Evaluating Equity Requirements In Shared Micromobility Programs, Anne Brown, Amanda Howell, Hana Creger

TREC Final Reports

Technology-enabled shared micromobility services have expanded mobility for some travelers, but significant barriers to use limit their uptake among certain groups. To address these barriers, cities and professional transportation organizations have undertaken two distinct efforts to operationalize equity in shared micromobility services: 1) drafted equity frameworks in an attempt to clearly define equity within the transportation context and to provide guidelines for what cities should consider when designing equity-based mobility programs; and 2) some cities have attempted to ameliorate access disparities by establishing new requirements for shared micromobility programs. Both equity frameworks and program requirements mark important steps to operationalizing …

Differences Between African American And White Males In Grades 6-8: Comparative Evidence From Selected Texas Rural Schools, Sheenah Maria Hopkins-Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The academic achievement gap among Black males in grades 6-8 across Texas is a growing concern. Based on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), secondary data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was used to evaluate scores from a sample of Texas rural schools. In this quantitative, non-experimental methods study, the dependent variable examined was the STAAR reading score at the “meets grade level,” and the independent dichotomous variables examined were: race, whether or not the student was classified in one of the following groups: ECD, at-risk, and special education. Academic trends from the 2017-2019 academic school …

Mapping Of Wetland And Riparian Habitat For The National Wetlands Inventory: East And Southeast Idaho, Sara K. Owen, Eric J. Dressing, Ryhan T. Sempler, Kay L. Hajek, Linda Vance, Danielle J. Yashinovitz, Halie Devos, Phoebe Ferguson, Shelby C. Erwin, Brianna B. Bal, Brandon A. Brown

EMMA Publications

No abstract provided.

Afn 122 Revised Syllabus Redesigned At The Anti - Racist Pedagogy Workshop At Bmcc, Remi Alapo

Open Educational Resources

In this advanced survey of African history, we will examine a vast place over a manageable span of time: all of Africa from the sixteenth century to the present. Because Africa is the cradle of humankind, it is diverse in language, culture, and history. There is greater human genetic and linguistic variation in Africa, for example than on any other continent. The same is true for cultural variation, though such diversity among Africa’s populations co-exists with a range of shared spiritual, ideational, and material perspectives. Over the past five centuries, the forces of international enslavement, commerce, colonialism, and its legacies, …

Course Design Worksheet Goals And Content, Remi Alapo

Open Educational Resources

In addition to the required texts, we will be reading and supplementing with other resources and videos in our class discussions. Some particularly important works include a novel on the life of a middle-class Senegalese woman during the colonial era (So Long a Letter) and about the work and moral dilemmas involving corruption in post-independent Africa (The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born), and Chinua Achebe’s (Things Fall Apart) Things Fall Apart is part tragedy and part documentary. It is the story of Okonkwo and his tragic death after the coming of the white man; …

Peacebuilding Through Education: The Case Of Cameroon’S Anglophone Crisis, Thomas D Aquin Mbatna Taiwe

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study explores peacebuilding promotion in Cameroon's schools amid the Anglophone crisis. The crisis is characterized by a violent social rebellion affecting education and society in Cameroon (Egoh, 2020). The theoretical framework for the study is critical peace education. According to Zembylas (2018), critical peace education must consider revising peace education curricula in former colonies, enriching them with local cultures to develop sustainable peace.I conducted a multiple case study inquiry in four Cameroonian schools using semi-structured interviews and observations and analyzed documents. The logic of replication was used, and a cross-case analysis and discussion led to recommendations for peacebuilding, including …

Effects Of Frankincense Compounds On Infection, Inflammation, And Oral Health, Cassio Luiz Coutinho Almeida-Da-Silva, Nallusamy Sivakumar, Homer Asadi, Anna Chang-Chien, M. Walid Qoronfleh, David M. Ojcius, Musthafa Mohamed Essa

All Dugoni School of Dentistry Faculty Articles

Boswellia trees, found throughout the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, are the source of frankincense oil. Since antiquity, frankincense has been traded as a precious commodity, but it has also been used for the treatment of chronic disease, inflammation, oral health, and microbial infection. More recently, the bioactive components of Boswellia trees have been identified and characterized for their effects on cancer, microbial infection (especially infection by oral pathogens), and inflammation. Most studies have focused on cell lines, but more recent research has also investigated effects in animal models of disease. As natural products are considered to …

Semantic Representation Of Road Infrastructure Information, Tianjiao Zhao

Dissertations (1934 -)

A multi-sectoral collaboration completes a successful transportation infrastructure project. The cooperation involves designers, contractors, operators, users, government agencies, and maintenance staffs. Throughout the project's life cycle, a huge amount of data is generated and stored in various sectors. Therefore, an efficient information cross-sector exchange approach is necessary. Additionally, the World Wide Web is ubiquitous and enmeshed with multiple business processes. Therefore, it is imperative to represent business information in a format that improves information exchange as well as automated processing of business data. Ideally, road data scattered across different information sources, such as design software, geographic information systems (GIS), cost …

August Vollmer, Traffic In Women, And The Theory Of Organized Crime, Paul Knepper

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

During the 1920s, the League of Nations carried out the first intercontinental investigation into the traffic in women. Although this work is virtually unknown in criminology, the investigators, William Snow and Bascom Johnson, formulated the conceptual language of “trafficking” used today. It was also during the 1920s that Frederick Thrasher and John Landesco published their pioneering works on “organized crime” drawing on research in Chicago. The advantages of the League’s model can be seen in the response to a 1924 report of a white slave traffic ring in Los Angeles by August Vollmer, the celebrated founder of professionalism in American …

Mangrove Dispersal Disrupted By Projected Changes In Global Seawater Density, Tom Van Der Stocken, Bram Vanschoenwinkel, Dustin Carroll, Kyle C. Cavanaugh, Nico Koedam

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The degree to which the distribution of mangrove forests will be impacted by climate change depends on the dispersal and establishment of sea-faring propagules, which drive forest rejuvenation, gene flow and range expansion. Climate change affects sea surface density via changes in temperature and salinity. However, these changes have not been mapped and it remains unclear how these factors may impact mangrove propagule dispersal. Here, we provide evidence for strong warming of coastal mangrove waters and elevated geographic variability in surface ocean density under representative concentration pathway RCP 8.5 by 2100. The largest changes will occur in the Indo West …

Disease Surveillance By Artificial Intelligence Links Eelgrass Wasting Disease To Ocean Warming Across Latitudes, Lillian R. Aoki, Brendan Rappazzo, Deanna S. Beatty, Lia K. Domke, Ginny L. Eckert, Morgan E. Eisenlord, Olivia J. Graham, Leah Harper, Timothy L. Hawthorne, Margot Hessing-Lewis, Kevin A. Hovel, Zachary L. Monteith, Ryan S. Mueller, Angeleen M. Olson, Carolyn Prentice, John J. Stachowicz, Fiona Tomas, Bo Yang, For Full Author List, See Comments Below

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Ocean warming endangers coastal ecosystems through increased risk of infectious disease, yet detection, surveillance, and forecasting of marine diseases remain limited. Eelgrass (Zostera marina) meadows provide essential coastal habitat and are vulnerable to a temperature-sensitive wasting disease caused by the protist Labyrinthula zosterae. We assessed wasting disease sensitivity to warming temperatures across a 3500 km study range by combining long-term satellite remote sensing of ocean temperature with field surveys from 32 meadows along the Pacific coast of North America in 2019. Between 11% and 99% of plants were infected in individual meadows, with up to 35% of plant tissue damaged. …

The Devil And Tom Robot: The Use Of Robotics To Impact Empathy In Secondary Students Of American Literature, Susan K. Porter-Voss

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this action research study was to evaluate the effect of a robotics-based intervention on empathy for students enrolled in secondary English and literature courses. Empathy, as a concept, is an integral component of reading comprehension and student motivation. A decline in reported individual levels of empathy among young adults can negatively influence longitudinal academic and career success. Robotics present a promising method in which to impact student learning in K-12 environments. Student manipulation of Wonder Workshop Cue robots in designed challenges was integrated within literature content standards for English III. The outlined study measured the impact of …

Differentiating Pleistocene Alloformations In The South Carolina Coastal Plain Through Lithologic, Textural, Mineralogical, And Cluster Analyses, Charles Andrew Wykel

Theses and Dissertations

Currently, there is no textural or mineralogic basis for identifying and differentiating Pleistocene strand deposits in the South Carolina (SC) Lower Coastal Plain (LCP). Historically, geologic mapping of the SC coastal plain uses geomorphologic and biostratigraphic techniques for identifying and mapping LCP surficial strand deposits. While useful, both approaches have problems. The aim of this study is to develop a cost-effective approach to differentiate and identify strand deposits of different Pleistocene alloformations occurring in the SC LCP. To accomplish this task, four strand samples were taken from the Ten Mile Hill, the Ladson, and Wicomico alloformations in Horry County, SC. …

Where Are The Girls? Exploring Influences On Female Eighth Grade Public School Students’ Choices Of Technology Classes In Texas: A Mixed Method Action Research Study, Shasta Colon

Theses and Dissertations

There is a continuing trend of unrepresented female students in STEM classrooms, particularly in technology courses. There is a focus on the K-12 learning environment to increase the number of female STEM students, which will encourage a growth in participation for females in the STEM field (Sassler, Glass, Levitte, & Michelmore, 2017). The purpose of this study was to increase the number of females students who enroll in technology courses in a public school in Kether Independent School District (KISD). The participants were 66 eighth–grade female students who were enrolled in the College and Career Readiness (CCR) and Technology Applications …

Dying Of Pestilence: Gender, Stature, And Mortality From The Black Death In 14th Century Kyrgyzstan, David Wayne Hansen Ii

Theses and Dissertations

Bioarchaeological studies have provided important information about mortality patterns during the Second Pandemic of Plague, including the Black Death, but to date have focused exclusively on European contexts. This study represents a temporal and spatial expansion of plague bioarchaeology, focusing on Central Asia, the origin of the Second Pandemic. I examine the relationship between stature, gender, and plague mortality during an outbreak of plague at two fortified settlements in northern Kyrgyzstan in 1338-39, the earliest archaeological sites known to contain victims of the Black Death in Eurasia.

Stature is frequently used in bioarchaeology as a proxy for exposures to developmental …

Geography Of A “Foreign” China: British Intellectuals’ Encounter With Chinese Spaces, 1920-1945, Yuzhu Sun

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how eleven British intellectuals, who lived in or traveled to China from the early to mid twentieth century, represent Chinese spaces and how Chinese spaces shape their identities. This group of writers includes WilliamSomerset Maugham, Robert William Swallow, Ann Bridge, Stella Benson, Maurice Denton Welch, Harold Acton, Osbert Sitwell, Peter Quennell, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, and J.G. Ballard. Multiple genres, including travel writing, diaries, poetry, and fiction, based on the authors’ real experiences in China constitute the research corpus. Current scholarship has researched these works fromhistorical andsocio-political viewpoints, but the spatial perspective has been ignored. Edward Soja’s …

Null Hypothesis Statistical Testing: A Survey Of The History, Critiques, And Alternative Methodologies, Bradley David Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Considered normative from the second half of the 20th century (Danziger, 1990), null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) has received consistent, largely unheeded criticism. Critiques have received more attention in recent years with the recognition of the replication crisis in the social sciences and the American Statistical Society’s statement and special issue on p values (Wasserstein & Lazar, 2016; Wasserstein et al., 2019). This paper seeks to provide a framework for understanding the issue by looking at the history of NHST and investigating some alternatives to the methodology. A brief review of the history, spread, and critiques of NHST is provided …

Meaningful And Interactive Learning Experiences Provided Through A Learning Management System: An Action Research Study In Ninth Grade Advanced Placement Human Geography, Daniel Robert Plonski

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods action research was to determine if increased interactive Schoology-based modules could alter learner perceptions concerning the lack of meaningful learning (learner-instructor, learner-learner, learner-content) in the culture unit of instruction in an Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG) classroom. A series of instructional modules were facilitated through the learning management system (LMS) Schoology to students (n = 16) in APHG at a southeastern U.S. high school. The interactions were designed to enhance interaction based upon the criteria provided by Piaget’s (1981) social constructivist theory, specifically Moore and Kearsley’s (2011) systems approach and Miyazoe and Anderson’s (2010) …

“When You Out In Open Spaces”: Copula Absence In Afro-Texan English And The Origins And Development Debate, Brandon Davis Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is perhaps the most studied variety of American English, and interest in its origins and development has raised enough questions to launch a thousand studies. Naturally, positions on AAVE’s origins and development have become increasingly nuanced since the debate’s inception. Increasingly, AAVE is treated less like a monolith, and interest in the dimensions of its regional diversity has grown. No position on AAVE’s origins and development can be taken seriously if it fails to consider its capacity for areal differentiation. Indeed, most positions on AAVE’s origins and development now strongly assert the likelihood of multiple …

Neighborhood Change On The Mississippi Coast After Hurricane Katrina (2006 – 2019), Margot Habets

Theses and Dissertations

Hurricane Katrina was a historic event, forever changing many lives as well as altering impacted communities in the short and long term. In the fifteen years since the storm, patterns of damage, recovery programs and dollars, and existing neighborhood change have altered demographics in coastal Mississippi. This thesis investigates how population, median age, race, and education demographics have changed at the census tract level in the fourteen years since Hurricane Katrina (2006-2019) compared to pre-Katrina trends (1990-2000). A moving average using American Community Survey data as well as interval changes measure how different neighborhoods have been altered since the storm. …

Subverting The Academic Language Hegemony: Implementing Language Architecture And Similar Pedagogies, Viviana Chavez Garcia

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

The field of English language teaching is continually evolving in order for teachers to best serve the students. The field’s connected history with colonization and racism must be acknowledged in order to confront the reasons why academic English is valued higher than all other forms of English and other languages. Under the current framework, teachers are asking multilingual students to change their language in order to reverse their own oppression. According to language architecture, the languages that students bring to class are already sufficiently cognitively sophisticated to achieve content standards and participate in academic activities. This is where the foundation …

Using Video Games To Teach Social Studies, Model Careers, And Develop Environmental Identities Within Our Classrooms, Luke Stahlmann

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Projects

Decades of research point towards great, but unfortunately untapped, potential video games provide classrooms for meaningful learning and enrichment. Despite a lot of academic thought being poured into the subject of video games’ educational value, we do not see them being used commonly within classrooms or even cohesively studied as different games are focused on and successes are measured in non uniform ways. The content created for this project focuses on taking much of the academic foundation or merit of learning through video games and advocates them to a general audience alongside modern games that exemplify learning principles covered. The …