Digital Commons Network^™

Exploring Digital Portfolios And Their Effects On Test Scores, Dithmar Kenneth Rualo

Theses and Dissertations

Many educators in the field are looking for ways to grade their students. Many of our youth can learn new concepts and attain academic growth but have difficulties in the traditional lecture-based classroom. Digital portfolio incorporation in our secondary classrooms may be a solution to engaging learners through various interactions using online learning tools, interaction with peers, and their teachers. This exploratory study investigated the current value of digital portfolios in improving academic performance in today’s classroom. Much of the trend was popular ten years ago. The research explored how current educators in the secondary school setting feel about the …

Marketization Without Marginalization? Approaches To Integration In A Dual Enrollment Magnet School, Shannon Mumolo

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the well-documented benefits of integration and Southern California’s racial, socioeconomic, and linguistic diversity, California and U.S. efforts to promote integrated magnet schools have been minimal and primarily driven by local districts. Attempts to evaluate magnet programs primarily focus on student outcomes, yet surprisingly few studies examine approaches used by school leaders to establish and achieve program outcomes. This study contributes to the knowledge and practice of magnet implementation by exploring one California high school’s efforts to establish a dual enrollment magnet program. An explanatory mixed methods case study design was used to understand how school leaders promoted student integration …

Women Of Color In Higher Education Institutions: Strategies To Attain Administrative Leadership Positions, Oghenemano O. Evero

Theses and Dissertations

Race and gender continue to be contributing factors to the disparity and lack of representation that exists among higher-education leaders. This study examines the lived experience of women of color to identify the strategies they utilized to attain administrative leadership roles at a Higher Education Institution (HEI). Participants included women of color leaders with at least 5 years of experience in higher education and in a leadership role. Participants also had advanced degrees. Using a narrative inquiry design, the study involved semi structured interviews to gather data from the sample population. The seven (7) women of color HEIs administrative leaders …

An Evaluation Of Cultural Integration And The Malleability Of Socio-Cultural Constructs In Global Organizations, Sheri Mackey

Theses and Dissertations

This study responds to calls for pragmatic context-driven scholarship to evaluate the perceived need for cultural integration in global organizations. This paper aims to fill the gap between theoretical frameworks and contemporary phenomena with a grounded theory, quantitative ethnography study designed to explore the perceived need for cultural integration to improve business outcomes in global organizations, while also evaluating the perceived need for a dedicated framework to develop cultural integration to shift socio-cultural epistemic frames in global teams. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 global executives, while 173 surveys were completed by global team members. Analysis of …

Slava Ukraini: A Psychobiographical Case Study Of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’S Public Diplomacy Discourse, Amber Brittain-Hale

Theses and Dissertations

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's public diplomacy during the Russo-Ukrainian conflict was examined in this dissertation. Zelenskyy’s discourse emphasized his action-oriented traits, Ukrainian identity, and nationalism. The study employed LTA, and LIWC-22, for natural language processing analyses of Zelenskyy's public speeches and diplomatic discourse. Zelenskyy demonstrated agency, adaptability, collaboration, and positive language patterns, suggesting confidence and optimism, according to the data. In addition, the research emphasizes how domestic and international factors influence state behavior, as well as how political demands, cultural, historical, and political factors influence Zelenskyy's decision-making.

This dissertation sheds light on a global leader's psychobiographical characteristics, beliefs, and motivations during a …

Effects Of Corporate Cultural Distance On Private Company M&A Outcomes, Court Carruthers

Theses and Dissertations

Despite nearly $5 trillion of annual global merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, the degree of shareholder value created by M&A remains a topic of debate. The historical view is that M&A does not increase value for acquiring firms, however recent public company financial research suggests that returns are highly variable, rather than uniformly negative. Cultural differences between acquiring and acquired companies, or corporate cultural distance (CCD), are noted as a potential cause of this variability, however, public company findings remain inconclusive. Although private equity (PE) is responsible for approximately 20% of annual M&A transaction value, nearly all prior research is …

Women Of Color In Higher Education Institutions: Strategies To Attain Administrative Leadership Positions, Oghenemano O. Evero

Theses and Dissertations

Race and gender continue to be contributing factors to the disparity and lack of representation that exists among higher-education leaders. This study examines the lived experience of women of color to identify the strategies they utilized to attain administrative leadership roles at a Higher Education Institution (HEI). Participants included women of color leaders with at least 5 years of experience in higher education and in a leadership role. Participants also had advanced degrees. Using a narrative inquiry design, the study involved semi structured interviews to gather data from the sample population. The seven (7) women of color HEIs administrative leaders …

Critical Success Factors Of Latino Entrepreneurs, Carlos A. Linares

Theses and Dissertations

Latino entrepreneurs in the U.S. face myriad challenges in their pursuits, with unique obstacles owing to their minority and, sometimes, immigrant status. This study investigated the critical success factors of Latino entrepreneurs in the United States. This study utilized a Delphi methodology to identify the critical success factors and thematic analysis of the identified success factors to create the theoretical model. An expert panel of individuals of Latino origin who identified either as active entrepreneurs or individuals with at least 2 years of experience working in a leadership role with an organization that serves or works with Latino entrepreneurs (e.g., …

Voices From Below: The Politics Of Leprosy Control In Southeastern Nigeria, 1926-1960, Odinakachukwu Kingsley Eze

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Leprosy was an endemic disease in colonial Southeastern Nigeria but became an epidemic between the 1920s and 1940s. Unlike malaria and sleeping sickness, its endemicity did not impede European penetration at the dawn of the twentieth century. However, its spread across Nigeria intensified during colonial rule, with acute prevalence in regions hitherto prone to the disease. Therefore, from the 1920s to 1960, Southeastern Nigeria became the epicenter of British policies tailored towards preventing, curing, and eradicating leprosy disease in Nigeria. Existing research has established the involvement of different actors in this course–including Christian missionaries, colonial officials, specialized agencies, and international …

Psychometric Properties Of The Spanish Ucla Ptsd Reaction Index For Dsm-5€“Brief Form In Puerto Rico Following Hurricane Maria, Evan Edward Rooney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Trauma exposure among youth is a significant public health issue and is associated with psychiatric symptoms and impaired functioning. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, have become an increasingly salient source of traumatic exposures for youth. However, not all youth exposed to traumatic experiences go on to develop posttraumatic stress symptoms or other maladaptive reactions. Given the high need for psychological support and low resource context engendered by hurricanes, efficient and evidentiary tools for assessing risk are needed to effectively identify youth most in need of services. The present study will use a sample of 96,108 Puerto Rican youth (Grades: 3-12; …

A Storyteller's Remove: Place-Noticing In Welty's Disturbed Landscapes, Lucy Gaines

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mississippi author Eudora Welty’s particular attunement to her characters’ place and time earned her canonization among southern authors bound by a peculiar sense of place. Our understanding of place, though, is rapidly evolving, spreading theoretical roots across disciplines and striving to keep up with global environmental change. Adopting frameworks from ecology, sociology, and comparative literature, this work seeks out the common denominators between Welty’s sense of place and our present perspectives, training our eye to notice relationships previously unconsidered. Unmistakable throughlines in Welty’s writing and photography offer fertile grounds for tracing place theory through visual and critical analysis, and find …

Assessing The Accuracy Of Dental Age Estimation Methods In A Native American Pediatric Sample, Cal Matthew Mcgehee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dental age estimation is a common method used to determine the age of juvenile individuals in forensics, medicine, and bio-archaeology. This thesis examines how accurate three dental development methods are in estimating the ages of two Native American sample groups. Further, it will explore how different variables like sex, age, secular (temporal) change, and an individual’s body mass index (BMI) affect dental development rates in the two groups of individuals. The first group consists of 60 Native Americans between the ages of 7 and 21 years of age who received dental work between 1970-1990 by Dr. James Economides of Albuquerque, …

Plea Bargaining In Homicide Cases: An Empirical Exploration In One State, Michael O'Hear, Darren Wheelock

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Are The Spratly Islands An Outlying Archipelago Of China? Politico-Legal Implication Of Proclaiming The Spratly Islands As A China’S Outlying Archipelago That International Lawyers Should Know, Youngmin Seo

Emory International Law Review

The issue of the outlying archipelago of continental states under the UNCLOS system has become a serious point of contention among international lawyers. This article shows what rules international lawyers in states possessing outlying archipelagos may have found for their outlying archipelagos, thereby assessing the Chinese claims to the Spratly Islands as an outlying archipelago. This article also explores how a future Chinese proclamation of special baselines for the Spratly Islands as an outlying archipelago negatively influences the development of the South China Sea dispute, harming Chinese national interests as opposed to conventional wisdom in China.

Developing Customized Nrcs Unit Hydrographs (Finley Uhs) For Ungauged Watersheds In Indiana, Tao Huang, Venkatesh Merwade

JTRP Technical Reports

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS, formerly the Soil Conservation Service, SCS) unit hydrograph (UH) is one of the most commonly used synthetic UH methods for hydrologic modeling and engineering design all over the world. However, previous studies have shown that the application of the NRCS UH method for some ungauged watersheds in the state of Indiana produced unrealistic flood predictions for both the peak discharge and the time to peak. The objective of this work is to customize the NRCS UH by analyzing the role of its two key parameters, namely, the peak rate factor (PRF) and …

Centering F.A.M.I.L.Y. In Black Girls Stem Learning, Crystal Morton, Lawren Nelson, Idaila Wilmoth

Indiana STEM Education Conference

The Fostering and Maximizing Interdisciplinary Learning Year-round (F.a.M.I.L.Y) was a one-year pilot study that provided Black girls and their caregivers with an opportunity to complete collaborative, life-enriching, multidisciplinary, and socially transformative STEM experiences to explore how these learning experiences impact Black girls and their caregivers' enjoyment of STEM, interest in STEM content and careers, and understanding of STEM as a tool for personal and social change. Seven families for a total of 11 scholars and seven caregivers participated in the study. We hosted 10 online learning sessions and one end-of-year face-to-face session. …

Deriving Spatially Explicit Direct And Indirect Interaction Networks From Animal Movement Data, Anni Yang, Mark Q. Wilber, Kezia R. Manlove, Ryan S. Miller, Raoul Boughton, James Beasley, Joseph Northrup, Kurt C. Vercauteren, George Wittemyer, Kim Pepin

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Quantifying spatiotemporally explicit interactions within animal populations facilitates the understanding of social structure and its relationship with ecological processes. Data from animal tracking technologies (Global Positioning Systems [“GPS”]) can circumvent longstanding challenges in the estimation of spatiotemporally explicit interactions, but the discrete nature and coarse temporal resolution of data mean that ephemeral interactions that occur between consecutive GPS locations go undetected. Here, we developed a method to quantify individual and spatial patterns of interaction using continuous-time movement models (CTMMs) fit to GPS tracking data. We first applied CTMMs to infer the full movement trajectories at an arbitrarily fine temporal scale …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Ember Alerts: Assessing Wireless Emergency Alert (Wea) Messages In Wildfires Using The Warning Response Model, Erica D. Kuligowski, Nicholas A. Waugh, Jeannette Sutton, Thomas J. Cova

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

When evacuation is necessary in a wildfire event, affected communities must be alerted and warned of the imminent danger and instructed on what to do to protect themselves. One channel available to message providers in the United States is Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) disseminated via IPAWS. Recent wildfire events have shed light on the need to improve WEA strategies and messages when alerting exposed populations of imminent fire threat. The purpose of this article is to assess how, when and where WEAs have been used in US wildfires; whether they comply with guidance set out by Mileti and Sorensen’s Warning …

Factors For Success: Supporting Black Doctoral Students, Shondra L. Marshall, Clyde Barnett Iii, Quentrese Hinton, Courtney Brieann Morris

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Myriad factors impact Black doctoral student lived experiences. Black doctoral students face unique challenges in educational institutions that are not shared by their White cohorts. This literature review surveys current scholarship about these challenges and the educational experiences that emerge from them. Using an intersectional framework, the authors review the extant literature from the perspective of four primary themes: socialization, mentoring, financial wellness, and belonging. The authors contend that improving practices related to each of these areas can result in improved experiences and outcomes for Black doctoral students as they matriculate through graduate programs.

Reconstructing The Ecological Relationships Of The Latest Cretaceous Antarctic Dinosaurs And How Functional Tooth Morphology Influenced Diet And Ecological Niche Among Basal Ornithopod Dinosaurs, Ian Broxson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

Of the final three connected Gondwanan landmasses, the dinosaur fossil record of Antarctica in the Cretaceous is the least complete. Most dinosaur faunas in this time period (145 Ma to 66.0 Ma) are widely separated geographically and temporally from one another by million years. However, a group of non-avian dinosaurs from the James Ross Basin (JRB) of the Antarctic Peninsula, composed of two elasmarians, a parankylosaurian ankylosaur, a hadrosaur and a suspected megaraptor, all are represented by fragmentary remains have emerged from the same horizon of the Sandwich Bluff Member (SBM) of the López de Bertodano Formation and were thus, …

Gpcrs And Fibroblast Heterogeneity In Fibroblast-Associated Diseases, Nidhi V. Dwivedi, Souvik Datta, Karim El-Kersh, Ruxana Sadikot Md, Mrcp, Apar Kishor Ganti, Surinder K. Batra, Maneesh Jain

Journal Articles: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest and most diverse class of signaling receptors. GPCRs regulate many functions in the human body and have earned the title of "most targeted receptors". About one-third of the commercially available drugs for various diseases target the GPCRs. Fibroblasts lay the architectural skeleton of the body, and play a key role in supporting the growth, maintenance, and repair of almost all tissues by responding to the cellular cues via diverse and intricate GPCR signaling pathways. This review discusses the dynamic architecture of the GPCRs and their intertwined signaling in pathological conditions such as idiopathic …

Urban Transportation Strategy As Urban Sustainable Indicator Frameworks Study Of Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, Rania Badawy Shokry

Mansoura Engineering Journal

— New models are being created for the planning and administration of sustainable cities as the worldwide trend toward urbanization continues. To create Masdar City, a carbon-neutral, zero-waste city that would showcase cutting-edge sustainable city architecture, the Abu Dhabi government declared in 2006 that it intended to invest $22 billion in its construction. This study aims to focus on one of the indicators of the sustainability of cities, which is sustainable transport, and to clarify how sustainable transport can be translated from Theory to Practice, by standing on the concept of sustainable cities and sustainable transport that works to enhance …

The World The Fire Wrought: A Tribute To Fran Ansley - Panel I, Jennifer Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Financial Technology In Egypt Between Opportunities And Challenges, Fady Tawakol

All Works

In Egypt, the Central Bank of Egypt is working to launch a new phase of financial technology, as one of the pillars of promotion of economic reform, and an effective and supportive mechanism for integrating the informal economy for individuals and institutions within the structure of the official economy of the state, and a way to Reality to raise and improve the standard of living and reduce poverty rates by containing certain segments of society from the marginalized, low-income and owners of small, medium and micro enterprises. The methodologies used explain the current state of financial inclusion and financial technology …

The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has materialized in the international legal response to climate change and in other diverse sites. It crosses and blurs the public-private divide. It erodes distinctions between multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. It is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Its report card is mixed: While pledging can be highly ineffective as a legal technology, the pledging world order may respond to some legitimacy …

Beyond Legal Deserts: Access To Counsel For Immigrants Facing Removal, Emily Ryo, Reed Humphrey

Faculty Scholarship

Removal proceedings are high-stakes adversarial proceedings in which immigration judges must decide whether to allow immigrants who allegedly have violated U.S. immigration laws to stay in the United States or to order them deported to their countries of origin. In these proceedings, the government trial attorneys prosecute noncitizens who often lack English fluency, economic resources, and familiarity with our legal system. Yet, most immigrants in removal proceedings do not have legal representation, as removal is considered to be a civil matter and courts have not recognized a right to government­appointed counsel for immigrants facing removal. Advocates, policymakers, and scholars have …

Linkages Between Atmospheric Circulation, Weather, Climate, Land Cover And Social Dynamics Of The Tibetan Plateau, Shobha Kumari Yadav

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is an important landmass that plays a significant role in both regional and global climates. In recent decades, the TP has undergone significant changes due to climate and human activities. Since the 1980s anthropogenic activities, such as the stocking of livestock, land cover change, permafrost degradation, urbanization, highway construction, deforestation and desertification, and unsustainable land management practices, have greatly increased over the TP. As a result, grasslands have undergone rapid degradation and have altered the land surface which in turn has altered the exchange of heat and moisture properties between land and the atmosphere. But gaps …

Unravelling And Understanding Local Perceptions Of Water Quality In The Santa Basin, Peru, Sally Rangecroft, Dextre R Maria, Isabel Richter, Bueno Cv Grados, Claire Kelly, Cecilia Turin, Beatriz Fuentealba, Hernandez M Camacho, Sergio Morera, John Martin, Adam Guy, Caroline Clason

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Water quality is an integral part of water security. Measuring the physico-chemical indicators for water quality can provide an objective picture of water health, but it does not provide information on lived experiences related to water quality, expectations of water resources, nor how the quality of water affects its usage. Perceptual information and traditional ecological knowledge on water quality can help to understand interactions between water and people, and thereby support locally appropriate sustainable water resource strategies. Accordingly, our project sought to collect and synthesise insights from local perspectives on water quality in the upper Santa River basin, Peru, a …

Orogenic-Orographic Feedback And The Rise Of The Central Andes, L. A. Evenstar, A. J. Hartley, A. E. Mather

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The rise of large mountain ranges is considered to be driven by tectonics potentially coupled with climate driven-erosion, although the role of this coupling remains uncertain. The arid climate of the Central Andes allows us to strengthen our understanding of the relative roles of these processes in mountain range development globally. Here we compile estimates of exhumation, sedimentation, aridity and surface uplift across the Central Andes for the last 50 Ma. We aim to place constraints on the relative timing of rock uplift (displacement of rocks with respect to the geoid), exhumation (displacement of rocks with respect to the surface) …