Changing Demographics In Career & Technical Student Organizations, Elizabeth Hunt Galloway

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The state of Georgia’s demographics has consistently changed in the last twenty years. Since 2010, the population of Georgia has steadily increased by 1% (Georgia Population by Year, County, Race, & More, 2023). A mirror of the state population increases occurred in the school system with 1% growth each year between 2010 and 2022 (Georgia Population by Year, County, Race, & More, 2023). The demographics of the state of Georgia has changed along with the population with an increase in Hispanic and Black population while the White population has decreased (Hauer, n.d.). The need to increase membership in Career Technical …

Student Knowledge Of Sexual Assault Resources, Kali Forden

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Despite the changes in policy and the endorsement of mandatory reporting among college students over time, less than half of survivors of sexual assault report the incident to police or university officials (Cantor et al., 2020). Further, while there is little research on the subject, Moore and Baker (2016) found that a student’s residence can influence whether they report a sexual assault. This project sought to extend this research to determine whether a student’s residence and knowledge of available resources effects the likelihood to report a hypothetical sexual assault. Additionally, it sought to determine the relationship between reporting a sexual …

Social Bonds And Perception: Investigating Individual And Contextual Differences In Empathic Processing, Tyler J. Robinson

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Empathy is defined as the process by which individuals consciously experience affective states that are similar to a target’s affective state (de Vignemont & Singer, 2006). Singer and Lamm (2009) assert that empathy is a malleable construct and can be influenced by various factors. Relatedly, more research is needed to understand whether positive empathy patterns similarly to negative empathy (Morelli et al., 2015). The current study sought to investigate how differences in perspective-taking and degree-of-closeness influence an individuals’ emotional response to an ostensibly positive vignette. Results reliably suggest a main effect of degree-of-closeness on individuals’ positive affect, whereas relatively little …

Burnout Of Women In Agriculture, Ashley Rivers

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Agriculture is considered one of the foundations of the United States. Women have played an important but often overlooked role in the history of agriculture. Despite many significant contributions, women have been left out of the history and advancements of agriculture. This research examined the lived experiences of 56 women who are involved in production agriculture and the factors that can contribute to stress and burnout in this area. By identifying how females view their roles and various aspects of their work, valuable insights can be gained into the experiences women face. Financial challenges and gender bias were identified as …

Teacher Perception Of Instructional Coaches: A Quantitative Study On The Impact Of Support And Professional Development, Tiffany Walker

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative study investigates teachers’ perceptions of instructional coaches, including math coaches, reading coaches, and instructional partners. It examines how these perceptions influence teachers’ professional growth and instructional practices within a suburban school district in Alabama. Grounded in Adult Learning Theory, Social Learning Theory, and Reflective Practice, the research seeks to understand the role and effectiveness of instructional coaching in enhancing teaching quality and student outcomes across the P-20 educational framework. The study employs a survey methodology, collecting data from 55 teachers across various schools, grade levels, and subject areas to analyze their experiences and the impact of coaching on …

The Effectiveness Of Aac Training For Nursing Students To Increase The Knowledge And Success For Communicating With Patients With Complex Communication Needs, Hanna Hill Webb

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Effective communication is an essential practice for nurses and is fundamental for the care of patients. Nurses have significant difficulties communicating with patients with complex communication needs (CCN), which can lead to communication breakdowns and sentinel events. While AAC is a viable option for communicating with patients with CCN, nurses do not receive any training on how to effectively communicate or use AAC with patients with CCN. Nursing students are in the ideal position for learning how to use AAC and communicate with AAC, as they are in the process of learning and entering the field for medical placements. This …

Sociosexual Orientation And Dark Triad Personality Traits Impact On Deception In Relationships, Kristin Lena

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Within the last 10 years, research has suggested that it has become more common for individuals to engage in casual sex. Research has consistently shown that sociosexual orientation, dark triad traits, and deception are all related. This study sought to examine the linear relationship between sociosexual orientation, dark triad personality characteristics, and the use of deception in a relationship. Participants (n = 135) completed this study online and were recruited from a midsize university. Findings did suggest a positive correlation between sociosexuality and deception, as well as a positive correlation between dark triad traits and deception. The findings of …

The Effects Of Early Exposure To Prescription/Illicit Drugs And Drug Metabolites On Larval Zebrafish Behavioral And Motor Function Development, Jacob Thomas, Dena Weinberger, Bikram Subedi, Brandon Capps

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

THE EFFECTS OF EARLY EXPOSURE TO PRESCRIPTION/ILLICIT DRUGS AND DRUG METABOLITES ON LARVAL ZEBRAFISH BEHAVIORAL AND MOTOR FUNCTION DEVELOPMENT

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Biology

Murray State University

Murray, Kentucky

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters In Science

By Jacob Thomas, B.S., Murray State University

December 2024

Acknowledgements

Brandon Capps, who pretty much did a whole third of the legwork on this project and saved me lots of headaches;

Chandler Maddox, one of the University of Kentucky’s finest undergrads who came in from the top rope with a folding chair …

Intrinsic Motivators For Participation And Persistence In Intercollegiate Athletics, Kevin Saal

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Since its inception, intercollegiate athletics’ conflicting existence vacillates between a history of rich, co-curricular and developmental experiences for young people, and a multi-billion-dollar industry transformed by limitless commercialization, expense and exploitation. The “professionalization” of intercollegiate athletics and blurring of motivational factors influencing participation and persistence threatens its holistic academic and developmental purpose (Duderstadt, 2000, p. 78). This dissertation provides a review of motivational theories, in addition to summarizing numerous contextually relevant intrinsic and extrinsic regulators impacting human behavior. Through a quantitative research methodology this study proposes research broadly investigating intrinsic motivation, seeking to develop a better understanding and establish …

The Private Law Of Self-Help, João Marinotti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Individuals regularly take steps to protect themselves, their property, and their broader legal interests. They carry pepper spray, have guard dogs, and install fences. Such measures are colloquially deemed methods of self-help. Yet, despite its ubiquity, self-help as a legal concept has been chronically understudied. Consequently, American private law is missing a doctrinally coherent and prescriptively useful framework for self-help. As a matter of legal theory, this conceptual void is problematic in and of itself; the doctrinal incoherence stemming from this analytical gap decreases the law’s stability and undermines its predictability.

But the concern is not merely theoretical. The magnitude …

In Pursuit Of Collective Liberation In Feminist Constitutionalism, Yvette Butler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A review of After Misogyny: How The Law Fails Women and What to Do About It. By Julie C. Suk.

Wholistic Healing: Challenges And Opportunities For The Church, Anna Galeniece

All Books

Edited by Anna M. Galeniece

Exploring The Root Factors Impacting Work Zone Accidents: A Mixed-Methods Study, Bahaa Chammout, Muaz O. Ahmed, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Work Zones Are Vital For Improving Infrastructural Utilities Yet Pose Significant Dangers For Workers And Drivers Who Are Often Unfamiliar With These Areas. Prior Research Examined Various Aspects Of Work Zone Accident Causation; However, The Interrelationships And Critical Combinations Among The Contributing Factors Have Not Been Fully Analyzed. This Study Aims To Identify The Underlying Factors Contributing To Work Zone Accidents And Evaluate The Different Combinations Among Them. To This Purpose, Accident Factors Were Derived From A Total Of 133 Research Articles Addressing Work Zone Safety. Social Network Analysis (SNA) And Clustering Were Used To Comprehensively Model The Identified Factors. …

In It And Of It: A Black Principal’S Self-Examination Of Anti-Blackness And Critical Leadership Praxis, Donya Odom

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Narrative inquiry is my research method, and my goal is to validate the use of narratives, including my reflective memos, journal reflections, and interpretations of various artifacts that share my students' experiences. As a Black woman and an educator, I emphasize the importance of culturally responsive school leadership for K-12 principals, which includes fostering connections with and amplifying the voices of marginalized Black students to improve their academic engagement. My study also highlights my experiences' critical role in building positive relationships with the school community, particularly in enhancing Black students' climate and cultural experiences. With this study, I shed light …

Survivor Guilt And Posttraumatic Stress Among Young Adult Survivors Of Childhood Cancer, Alexandra Neenan

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Childhood cancer survivors are at risk for a variety of adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs in a small, but notable, minority of childhood cancer survivors. Little is known about modifiable factors that may increase the risk of developing PTSD as a young adult survivor. One of the difficulties that has been minimally explored in this group is exposure to the deaths of other children with cancer, despite a 25% 15- year mortality rate among children who are diagnosed with cancer. The current study was among the first to explore potential impacts of this high …

Towards A Transparency-Based, Value-Sensitive Design Solution For Bias In Self-Driving Cars: An Ethical Violation Assessment And Risk Analysis Framework On Consumer-Held Values, Nada Ahmad Madkour

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Background: The rapid growth of automated systems and artificial intelligence (AI), particularly, self-driving cars (SDCs), has attracted significant investments and can potentially contribute to humanity’s flourishing. However, before widespread adoption, it is important to address ethical violations such as bias in AI, highlighted by many real-world cases of bias in AI leading to unfair outcomes in tools like facial recognition, hiring software, and pedestrian detection. Bias in AI can lead to potentially fatal outcomes in SDCs, emphasizing the need for a thorough examination of bias in SDCs.

Purpose: To enhance AI ethics by providing tools to support transparency and value- …

“We Gon’ Be Alright”: How Resiliency & Africultural Coping Behaviors Factor Into African American College Students’ Intentions To Seek Mental Health Services, Taylor Garland

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Background: African Americans, apprehension toward utilizing mental health services (MHS) has a long history in the United States. The low rates of utilizing MHS can result in detrimental health consequences, both mental and physical, despite there being a developing literature base on how evidence-based treatments are effective in therapy with African Americans.

Objective: There is expansive literature on several factors (e.g., stigma, cultural mistrust) that contribute to African Americans’ hesitancy concerning seeking MHS. The current study aimed to add to this literature base. Specifically, this study sought to acknowledge both African American college students’ choices to use alternative coping strategies …

The Building Leader’S Role In Developing And Supporting Meaningful Student Voice At The High School Level, Beth Grzelak-Lee

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

School leaders are the mediators of a school’s culture. At the high school level, students can contribute to, and even co-construct, their schooling experience with school leaders. Yet there is not a significant literature regarding how high-school building leaders develop and support student voice. Through the research method of semi-structured interviews with three high school principals in a district committed to elevating student voice, this study sought to identify the key behaviors, attitudes, and language used by a school leader working to develop and support student voice as an integral part of the high school experience. Additionally, it sought to …

In A Hell Of Our Own Creation: Spatial Context And The Wehrmacht’S Genocidal War In Eastern Europe, 1941–1943, Charles Joseph Calcaterra

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A multitude of social, ideological, psychological, and environmental factors encouraged German servicemen to willingly commit atrocities in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. How should historians contextualize which factors held greater influence over servicemen deployed to different sectors of the vast Eastern Front? Charles Calcaterra highlights soldiers’ responses to their surrounding environments—the landscape of Eastern Europe—to explain why frontline divisions killed and destroyed indiscriminately in accessory to the Holocaust while rearguard personnel socially justified roundups, executions, and the horrid maltreatment of Red Army prisoners of war. Through the lens of military geography, the spatial contexts that fostered frontline units’ …

Supervising With Intercultural Competence: A Phenomenological Study Of Mid-Level Higher Education And Student Affairs Professionals, Alexander T. Boesch

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Many mid-level higher education and student affairs professionals are responsible for the supervision of entry-level professionals. As the population of entry-level professionals continues to diversify, it is necessary for mid-level student affairs supervisors to engage effectively across differences of culture and identity in their supervisory relationships. This qualitative study explored the phenomenon of supervising with intercultural competence. Mid-level student affairs supervisors who had intercultural mindsets and supervised across salient identity or cultural differences were interviewed in a semi-structured format, and the data was analyzed using the interpretative phenomenological analysis method. The findings introduce a model for supervising with intercultural competence. …

Perceptions Of School Shooters: How The Race Of A School Shooter And His Video Game Playing Habits Influence Observers’ Explanatory Attributions About His Crime, Brian Beaupre

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The current experiment is an exploration of how people arrive at causal explanations for instances of mass school shootings in the United States. Specifically, this study utilized a fictitious shooter vignette approach with a 2 (White vs. Black shooter) x 2 (shooter played violent vs. nonviolent video games) between-subject ANOVA to determine if these variables would differentially influence the participants’ levels of agreement with various causal attributions about why a mass shooter would engage in such an act of violence. In particular, this study explored participants’ utilization of internal (e.g., innate characteristics like the shooter’s race or gender) or external …

Asynchronous Class For Algebra I Preparation, Hunter Garretson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Algebra I is the first high school mathematics class students take making it an important building block in the student’s growing mathematical foundation. Mitigating any losses in knowledge over the summer by using educational review tools has been proven helpful in previous studies. Every student comes from a different background, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, culture, etc., allowing each student to have a different summer experience. A meta-analysis looking into the concern of Summer Learning Loss (SLL) found that while some of its sample size would make summer knowledge gains, more than half of the sample size was projected to suffer from …

Gait Kinematics In Sled Dog Fitness, Ashley Maio

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The sport of sled dog racing has become popular in recent years, where teams of dogs navigate Arctic conditions anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand miles, usually within 10 days. To prepare for these competitions, dogs are subjected to rigorous training months prior to the race that results in significant changes to the physiology of their bones and muscles. This study aims to determine differences in gait kinetics between female and male sled dogs. Ten dogs, five females and five males, were recorded trotting from a lateral view for three weightbased trials to simulate different amounts of weight …

The Cardiorespiratory Differences Between Physically Trained Vs Untrained Collegiate Competitive Riffle Athletes, Jakob Rankin

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research study will examine the differences in cardiorespiratory response of trained vs untrained physically active collegiate athletes participating in the sport of Competitive Rifle. The goal of this study is to determine how the heart and lungs respond from participation in Competitive Rifle with division one collegiate and intercollegiate club athletes. If successful, this study will help to determine a correlation of athletic performance in the sport of Competitive Rifle and structured physical training. We will also compare the results of males vs females within both division one and club athletes. The final output of this project is to …

The Effects Of Social Support On Recovery Outcomes Of Hip Fracture Patients, Preshecca Ragavan

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This literature review, completed under the guidance of Ms. Anuja Sarode-Paciorek from Summa Health - Akron, will investigate the effects of social support on the recovery outcomes of hip fracture patients. As part of this literature review, I will collect and analyze several scientific journal articles previously published on this topic to gain an overview of what prior knowledge clinical researchers have already gathered about this topic. As part of the analyses, each article will be thoroughly read and briefly summarized. Then, these summaries will be used to compile a list of a few strengths and a list of a …

Importance Of Wrap-Around Services In Primary Schools, Alyson Giunto, Liberty Posey, Elli Spicer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Our project will include an explanation of wrap-around services available for primary students and their families. We will start by explaining what a wrap-around service is and why they are important. We will do this through a secondary literature review including grouping services into the tiers in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In three sections, we will focus on aspects of Maslow’s hierarchy and how the wrap-around services relate to those needs. The tiers include physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. Physiological needs include food, water, and shelter. Safety makes sure that individuals can focus on their …

Eurhythmic Use For Syncopation In An Instrumental Class, Kristen Flinner

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Dalcroze Eurhythmic approaches affect syncopated rhythm integrity in an instrumental class. One graduate and five undergraduate music education majors enrolled in a string methods course took part in this study. A pre-assessment was completed using an etude for cello comprised of syncopated rhythms. Following a sequence of four Dalcroze Eurhythmics-inspired lessons, post-assessment results showed an improvement in the fluidity and rhythmic accuracy of the six participants on the performance of the cello etude.

Optimization Of Buffers Used In Phycobiliprotein Extraction From The Cyanobacterium Acaryochloris Marina, Rinah Fleisher

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Optimization of buffers used in phycocyanin extraction from A. marina was explored including acetate, phosphate, and citrate buffers as well as deionized water as a negative control. Samples were extracted in triplicates for each trial with two extraction trials completed overall for citrate buffer (n=6), phosphate buffer (n=6), acetate buffer (n=6), and deionized water (n=6). Results reflect no statistical difference in phycocyanin content (μg/mL) between each buffer or deionized water control. Though no statistically significant differences between treatment groups were found, phosphate buffer yielded the greatest phycocyanin content and the deionized water negative control yielded the lowest phycocyanin content overall. …

Art Therapy Awareness: A Social Media Campaign, Hannah Barnes

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A push towards advocating for mental health has made mental health services and care a primary focus. There are numerous ways to receive mental health care, art therapy being one option. This project seeks to provide information and resources on art therapy while also bringing awareness to the field and challenging misconceptions.

High School Students' Perceptions Of Banned Books, Carissa Hennen

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research study consisted of interviews with twelve students ages 14-18 at a Northeastern Ohio high school to determine their opinions regarding banned books and content restrictions in schools. With book bans increasing and becoming a divisive topic, many adult figures such as parents, politicians, educators, and school administrators have made their opinions known, but student perspectives are often disregarded. This study seeks to further the research on opinions of book bans by extending these questions to students to fill this gap in research and gain deeper insight into the perception of high school students in regard to school curriculum. …