Digital Commons Network^™

Information Literacy In Charter Schools: An Institutional Ethnography, Katherine Klein

Theses and Dissertations

A strength of US charter schools is their opportunity to carve out an educational niche. Without the same regulation and district control present in traditional public schools, a charter school’s approach can seriously impact how the school addresses information literacy. In our current culture, we are saturated with media and technology, and students learn about navigating, evaluating, and using information responsibly and creatively at school. However, there is currently no published research on how charters do this critical work with their students, particularly with fewer libraries and librarians in the sector. This study uses institutional ethnography to map ruling relations …

Some Likelihood-Based Methods For Clustering Functional Data, Tong Shan

Theses and Dissertations

The analysis of functional data is an increasingly relevant part of statistics. The exploratory data analytic method of cluster analysis plays a very important role in different fields. Over the years, researchers have developed many clustering approaches, striving to achieve more accurate and efficient clustering. In Chapter 1, we aim to improve the accuracy of our outcome when clustering functional data. To achieve this goal, we use a predictive likelihood function which serves as an objective function to optimize in order to determine the most appropriate clusters. To optimize the objective function over the space of clustering partitions, we produce …

Clusters In The Storm: Regional Economic Specialization Before And After Hurricane Harvey, Gwyneth King Waddington

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, large-scale disaster events have dominated headlines. As the world faces an increasing number of such disasters, it is crucial to understand their impacts beyond immediate monetary losses. Disasters not only directly impact individuals and businesses but may also reshape the spatial patterns of the regional economy. Through a case study of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, this study examines how disaster events influence regional economic specialization patterns and contribute to uneven impacts across economic supersectors and geographies. Expanding on previous methodologies, this study incorporates temporal analysis tools to identify and investigate case studies of economic change. …

Using Critical Literacy To Illuminate Multicultural Perspectives In A Second Grade Classroom, Amelia Marzieh Hecker

Theses and Dissertations

Teaching about equity and diversity can be a challenge for elementary school teachers due to many factors including lack of understanding, resistance from parents, and discomfort due to the current political climate. This action research aims to examine the experiences of the teacher and second grade students as they use cultural literacy to explore multicultural texts. This action research took place in an upper-middle class community in the suburban area of Long Island, near New York City, where most participants identified as white. The data for this research took place over a six-week period. Observations, transcripts, journaling, and artifacts were …

Relative Hazard Losses Along The Atlantic And Gulf Coasts, Erin Kemp

Theses and Dissertations

Coastal areas face a variety of natural hazards, many of which are increasing in frequency or severity due to climate change. Continued coastal development emphasizes the need for a better understanding of the impact of these hazards on coastal communities. This study aims to improve this understanding by investigating temporal, spatial, and causal patterns in county-level relative losses (RL) from hazards along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts from 2001 to 2021. Three research questions are addressed: 1) Are relative losses increasing over time in coastal counties? 2) Where are the highest relative losses among coastal counties? and 3) Which hazards …

Enhancing Self-Efficacy In Ap Psychology Through Targeted Intervention Strategies, Felicia Jennifer Butler

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-method action research case study was to measure the effects of an individualized intervention on academic self-efficacy and academic achievement in an Advanced Placement (AP) psychology class. The study focused on four students who received a failing grade on the first unit test and took place over an eight-week period. Quantitative data was collected in the form of assessment data (both formative and summative), survey questions modeled after the General Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (GASE), and assignment completion. Qualitative data was collected in the form of semi-structured interviews and open-ended reflection questions. The findings suggest that psychology …

Separate But Not Equal: A Sequential Explanatory Mixed Methods Study Of Adjunct Structural Empowerment, Experiences, And Perceived Needs In A Midwestern Community College, Shauna Sowga

Theses and Dissertations

Higher education institutions are increasingly reliant on contingent or gig-based labor in the form of adjunct faculty. Adjunct faculty make up the majority of community college faculty, yet they tend to receive the least support, resources, and training investments from colleges. This is no different at Metro Community College, a large, urban college in the Midwest. The problem of practice for this study revolves around Metro Community College social sciences adjunct faculty’s needs for support, resources, and training to do their jobs effectively. This sequential explanatory mixed methods study examined these adjuncts’ structural empowerment, experiences, and perceived needs for support …

Spatio-Temporal Modeling & Goodness Of Fit Testing For Ecological Fire Data, Jedidiah Olof Lindborg

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of fire data sets resulting from controlled burns was performed. Spatio-temporal models were applied to the data sets to determine which covariates are significant in predicting fire temperature. The data sets were censored and only contain temperatures above 300C, due to a limitation in the measuring device. To handle the censoring, an extrapolation was used to reconstruct the temperatures below 300C. Models were created and run for a data set with the extrapolated temperatures and a data set with all censored temperatures removed. Several aspects of the model were evaluated, such as the chosen hyperparameters, the spatial covariance …

Cultivating Smiles On The Frontier: The Making Of Brazil’S Soybean Capital And Community Building In Sorriso, 1980-2020, Nathalia Francio Cocenza

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the transformation of Sorriso, a small municipality in Mato Grosso, Brazil, into one of the world's leading soybean producers, placing its local history within the broader context of global agricultural and economic shifts from 1980 to 2020. Sorriso represents the unique convergence of local, regional, and international forces that reshaped Brazil's agricultural landscape. This study critically examines the political, environmental, and social dynamics that positioned Sorriso at the forefront of soybean production, illuminating the town's transition from a remote frontier settlement to a global agribusiness hub.

Through a detailed analysis of previously unstudied archival sources, interviews with …

Naqbu: Cosmological Undercurrents In Sumer And Akkad, Fiona Eirene Andrews

Theses and Dissertations

The concepts of primordial incomprehensibility, ordered creation, and the liminal chaos between them, form a foundational framework in Mesopotamian intellectual culture. The distinctive ways in which these concepts manifest in Sumero-Akkadian cultures suggest a systematic cosmological substructure — characterized by the paradoxical, cyclical, and co-creative relationships between forces such as Infinity and measure, generation and destruction, and definition and obscurity — that remains insufficiently examined in current scholarship. Drawing from diverse corpus of Mesopotamian creative works, Kabbalistic exegesis, and post-modern scholarship, this thesis seeks to elucidate the essential dynamics within that substructure. By proposing a semiotic hermeneutical strategy attuned to …

‘If You Design For The Future To Treat Of Witches:' Diabolic Service Magicians, Astrologers, And Witchcraft In John Dunton's Athenian Mercury, 1690-1697, Lauren Rebecca Rowe

Theses and Dissertations

Originating in the print stands of seventeenth-century London, the Athenian Mercury enjoyed a nearly miraculous seven-year run time as the most well-known and successful anonymous question and answer periodical of its time. Conceptualized and produced by bookseller John Dunton, the Mercury existed as an interface for intellectual discourse readily accessible to men and women. Kept entirely anonymous on the part of the author and reader, the intellectually curious could write questions to the Mercury and receive answers in turn on a vast variety of subjects twice a week. Aside from the more expected queries on science, love, mathematics, and religion, …

Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos: Hip-Hop And The Carceral State In The East San Francisco Bay Area, William Maclane Hull

Theses and Dissertations

“Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos: Hip-Hop and the Carceral State in the East San Francisco Bay Area” explores the histories of urban redevelopment and deindustrialization, racialized poverty, police and the carceral system, and hip-hop culture in Oakland and other parts of the eastern San Francisco Bay Area. It explores East Bay politics and urban development in the 1900s, which resulted in the flight of industries and wealthy white residents to the suburbs and the erosion of public services. Black community organizations and funk music alike articulated the damages done by these processes in the 1960s. Subsequently, politicians and …

Non-Traditional Socio-Environmental And Geospatial Determinants Of Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementia Mortality, Skanda Moorthy, Jean-Eudes Dazard, Zhuo Chen, Shruthika Palanivel, Salil Deo, Sanjay Rajagopalan

Student Scholarship

Importance: Recent data point to the impact of non-traditional environmental and social factors on Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias (ADRD) mortality. Our study aimed to determine the extent to which antecedent air pollution, social vulnerability, and geospatial features in the environment associate with ADRD mortality. Design: This was a cross-sectional study conducted across the mainland United States. County level Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), particulate matter air pollution (PM2.5) were linked to ADRD mortality. Patient Rule Induction Method (PRIM) was used for delineating and characterizing “bumps” or spikes in mortality. SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values were used to rank variables by predictivity and …

Unmanned Aerial Systems (Uass) In Rangeland Ecosystem Management: Assessing Grazing Impacts At Willits, California, Pramil Khanal

Master's Theses

California's rangelands, vital for biodiversity and cattle production, face threats from land use changes and climate changes, necessitating robust management strategies. While overgrazing has been studied extensively, the effects of light rotational grazing on vegetation have seldom been assessed. This study used Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) and multispectral imagery to assess the seasonal impacts of light rotational grazing on vegetation health and coverage in wetland mitigation areas near Willits, California. Data were collected in May (spring) and November (fall) 2024 using a DJI M3M drone and MicaSense camera capturing RGB and Near-Infrared (NIR) bands. Green Chromatic Coordinate (GCC) and Normalized …

Full Issue, Vol. 16

Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Uni Impact: Faculty/Staff Scholarly Publications And Featured Awards Newsletter, V3i1, 2024, Rod Library. Research & Sponsored Programs. Uni Foundation. University Of Northern Iowa.

UNI Impact: Faculty/Staff Scholarly Publications and Featured Awards Newsletter

Highlights the scholarship, research, and other scholarly work produced by University of Northern Iowa faculty, students, and staff.

This issue covers the period of January - June 2024.

Monarch: Old Dominion University Magazine, Victoria Bourne (Editor)

Monarch Magazine

Summer 2025 issue of Monarch, the Old Dominion University Magazine.

Subtitled: GLOBAL IMPACT: Monarchs Make a Difference by Land and by Sea

Ai Tools In Natural Resources And Environmental Systems For The Classroom, Research, Extension And Industry, Derek M. Heeren, C. T. Agouridis, Debabrata Sahoo, Isaya Kisekka, Trisha L. Moore

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

This white paper synthesizes a series of panel insights on AI adoption across education, Extension, research and industry contexts within natural resources and environmental systems. It emphasizes that while advanced machine learning and generative AI introduce structural shifts in autonomy, scale, and cognitive augmentation, their value lies in augmenting, not replacing, human expertise. Applied tool examples include decision‑support systems for rural water operators, HAB‑diagnosis apps integrating image classification and natural‑language guidance, an irrigation educational chatbot tailored to user background, and sensor‑driven orchard AI for light interception estimation and data gap filling. A recurring design imperative involves co‑development with end users, …

A Historic Context For House Moving: Why Moved Houses Are Eligible For The National Register Of Historic Places, Ian Tomashik

Historic Preservation Final Projects

Structural moving, the process of moving complete buildings to new sites, has shaped American landscapes for over two centuries. Thousands of wood-frame houses were moved with surprising frequency between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Yet, moved buildings are “ordinarily” ineligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This project explores this exclusion two parts: an analytical essay that argues for their inclusion for nomination and a historic context survey that explains the prevalence of house moving. The essay first explains the National Register’s rationale for questioning the historic significance of moved buildings. It also examines why large-scale house …

Between Florida And The World: Young People And The Politics Of Citizenship, Jessica Flach

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critically examines how American high school students experience and make sense of global citizenship within the context of a commercial educational tour. Drawing on a case study of students from a Title I public high school in Florida, the research interrogates the narratives of civic transformation promoted by educational travel companies and explores how these narratives intersect with students’ lived realities. Combining ethnographic methods, interviews, and critical discourse analysis, the study reveals that global citizenship is not meaningfully realized through such travel experiences; rather, it is fragmented, depoliticized, and often disconnected from the civic education students receive in …

Adaptation Planning To Mitigate Flood Risk: Bellevue, Nebraska As A Case Study, Michael Nti Ababio

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

Flooding remains one of the most pressing natural hazards in the United States, with increasing frequency and intensity driven by climate change. This thesis explores the adaptation planning strategies employed to mitigate flood risks in Bellevue, Nebraska, a city significantly impacted by the 2019 floods in eastern Nebraska. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines quantitative analysis of flood vulnerability with a critical review of local planning policies using documents, zoning ordinances and institutional frameworks. Spatial analytical tools such as Global Moran’s I and Hot Spot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*) were used to detect clustering of inundated buildings during the 2019 …

2025-2026 Global Feedback Report: Uni Scholarworks, University Of Northern Iowa, Rod Library

Library Documents & Reports (entire collection)

This library report was prepared by the Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Northern Iowa as part of assessment efforts demonstrating the reach and impact of departments and programs at the University of Northern Iowa. The global input is related to specific works found in UNI's institutional repository, UNI ScholarWorks (http://www.scholarworks.uni.edu.)

Crazy Mountain Fiber Fest 2025, Sweet Grass County, Montana, Ava Worbets, Kika Bradford, Megan Schultz

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This study was conducted for the Sweet Grass County Chamber of Commerce to provide insight into the characteristics of attendees of the 2025 Crazy Mountain Fiber Fest. Fifty-two attendees of the event completed the survey. Results show that 92% of respondents were residents of Montana, of which 33% were from Sweet Grass County. Out-of-county respondents spent an average of 3.9 nights in Montana, reporting a total spending of $8,770.00, mostly in hotel/motel/bed and breakfasts. Results provide event organizers with useful data for future event planning, making improvements to the event, event marketing/promotion, and understanding the visitor spending associated with the …

From Uncertainty To Strategic Failure: U.S. Military Interventions And The Complexity Of Nation-Building In Afghanistan, Goddy Uwa Osimen, Oluwamurewa Newo

Journal of Strategic Security

The American occupation of Afghanistan from 2001-2021 is widely regarded as a strategic failure, particularly after the Taliban took over the government in 2021. This work seeks to observe the strategic flaws of the 20-year occupation from the perspective of nation-building within the state. Using the theoretical lens of strategic culture and borrowing from Huntington’s discourse on the clash of civilizations, this article notes that nation-building failure in Afghanistan can be attributed to the ideological differences between the West and the Middle East. Using a descriptive qualitative approach and secondary sources such as books and peer-reviewed articles, the study employs …

Schizophrenia Care Among People Experiencing Homelessness In The Matanuska Susitna Borough, Mary K. Wargo

Consortium Library Prize Winners

Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder that often manifests in early adulthood (Jauhar et al., 2022). Positive symptoms include reality distortions, disordered thinking, hallucinations, or delusions; while negative symptoms are seen in an individual’s lack of motivation and expression (Jauhar et al., 2022; Norris, 2019). Cognitive deficits are also a clinical feature (Harvey et al., 2022; Jauhar et al., 2022). Schizophrenia affects an estimated 0.3 – 1.6% of the United States population (Finnerty et al., 2024). Most recent data from Alaska reveals 1,664 Alaskans live with schizophrenia (Heun-Johnson et al., 2019). Despite the small percentage of the population with a …

Use Of High-Throughput Phenomics With And Without Fungicide As A Wheat Breeding Tool, Gerardo Ivan Rivera Collazo

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is an important food staple for many countries around the world and current consumption and production data demonstrate a production deficit. Breeders are challenged to help close this gap in production by selecting better cultivars with improved yields. Several methods aim to accelerate the breeding process to reduce the time required for releasing an elite variety. One of the main breeding bottlenecks is the lack of fast and reliable phenotypic data acquisition that could dissect physiological and morphological plant data. High-throughput remote sensing could have the potential to reduce this bottleneck by streamlining data acquisition, …

Mpo Citizens’ Advisory Committee Training Across Florida, Tia Boyd, Taylor Dinehart, Jeff Kramer

CUTR Internal Grant Research Program

Federal law and guidance require Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) to involve the public in the comprehensive, cooperative, and continuing (3C) transportation planning process (see 23 CFR Subpart C § 450.316). Additionally, Florida statute s. 339.175 F.S. further requires that all MPOs in Florida have a citizens’ advisory committee (CAC) or an alternative program or mechanism to ensure citizen involvement in the transportation planning process.

CAC members often have an interest in transportation, but they may lack a foundational understanding of transportation planning processes, MPOs, or the roles and duties of the CAC. Training can help fill these knowledge gaps and …

Ai And The Narrative Of The Everyday Life: Machine Learning Applied To The Social Mapping Of Rural Music Festivals., Enrique Villamuelas García, Eva Hurtado Torán, Eduardo Roig Segovia

Artículos científicos

Given the growing ubiquity of AI and the consequent valorization of data in territorial representation, it becomes crucial to analyze how multimodal algorithms interpret spatial narratives and community dynamics. This research studies the effects of algorithmic automation on social mappings. Using "Balboa Observa" project, a collaborative web mapping initiative that documents Observatorio Music Festival in Spain, the study explores the interaction between collective cartography, ethnographic analysis, and AIdriven data processing. Unlike conventional AI practices, the prioritizes analyses that avoid imposing structured categories on everyday narratives, allowing inclusion of sensitive information for deeper festival impact understanding. Through multimodal algorithms like CLIP …

Put-In Bay Current Conditions Report, Molly Schnoke, Jack Yochum, René-Simone Martin

All Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs Publications

This document serves as a current conditions report for the Put-In-Bay island chain of North, Middle, and South Bass Islands in Lake Erie. The following sections will cover financial, tax, and levy data; the geographic context of the three Bass Islands, including the land area of the Township and governmental structure; percentage of public and privately-owned land summary; public education; and demographic, housing, and economic data for the households on the islands.

Volume 11 Issue 10 (July 1912)

The Soul Winner

No abstract provided.