Digital Commons Network^™

Educating Pastoralists And Extension Officers On Diverse Livestock Diseases In A Changing Environment In Tanzania, Christopher Gustafson, Elizabeth Vanwormer, Rudovick Kazwala, Asha Makweta, Goodluck Paul, Woutrina Smith, Jonna A. K. Mazet

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

East African pastoralists and their livestock are vulnerable to alterations in resource availability and disease transmission and frequently face poor access to livestock health services. Government veterinarians tasked with guiding health services must prioritize livestock health risks and allocate limited resources across disparate ecosystems with different disease threats. To identify livestock diseases of concern and strategies for improving herd health and resilience, we conducted community focus groups with pastoralists and interviewed pastoralist household leaders, village extension officers, and government veterinary officials in south-central Tanzania, an area experiencing rapid population growth and environmental change. All participants discussed pastoralist access to livestock …

Kids Count The State Of The Child In Tennessee 2013, Tennessee. Commission On Children & Youth.

The State of the Child in Tennessee

No abstract provided.

An Empirical Analysis Of The Role Of Geography In Sustainability Education, Makayla Jane Bonney

Theses

Many within and outside of the discipline of geography see it as a highly appropriate home for sustainability studies. Despite a history of human-environment education within geography and support from professional research or education organizations, some studies show that geography has not developed a lead role in sustainability education. This study examines the role of geography in offering "Sustainability Focused" courses as reported by AASHE STARS institutions with geography programs. The results show that although geography departments are highly utilized when available at an institution -offering the highest proportion of sustainability courses, averaging 14% of "Sustainability Focused" curriculum- there is …

Fish And Fruit For Food Justice Success, Nickelle A. Raschick

Pomona Senior Theses

Given the critical role of food justice organizations in providing for the 49 million Americans who live in food insecure households, one of the most important questions that can be answered today is what determines the success of such an organization. This paper analyzes case studies from Sitka, AK and Portland, OR, aiming to communicate a better understanding of which factors result in an organization’s success and which factors lead it to failure. That information is used to establish guidelines that other organizations seeking to be relevant contributors to the food justice movement can follow. Ultimately, my research discovers that …

Demographic Makeup And Population Projections For Southern Nevada: Understanding The Emerging Healthcare Needs In Our Community, Jennifer Pharr, Courtney Coughenour, Shawn Gerstenberger

Nevada Journal of Public Health

Even with a leveling-off of population growth from 2008 to 2011, Southern Nevada had one of the fastest growing populations in the nation over the past decade. While population growth is projected to increase for the next ten years, the rate of growth will be slower than in the past decade. The Hispanic population, as a percentage of the total population, is projected to surpass the White population somewhere near the year 2030. The Southern Nevada population is aging, as the median age in the region increased between 2000 and 2010. The 65+ age group is projected to increase as …

Building A Sustainable Community Through Public Engagement: A Study Of Southern Nevada, Jennifer Pharr, Courtney Coughenour, Shawn Gerstenberger

Nevada Journal of Public Health

This manuscript is the first of a series written for the Nevada Journal of Public Health. The series is result of research conducted for the Southern Nevada Strong, Sustainable Communities Grant. During Year One of the planning process, we created a Southern Nevada Existing Conditions Report. This report highlighted where the region stood on key metrics including: demographics and population projections, access to healthcare and health outcomes, healthy community, housing, environment, economy and education. For this special issue of the Nevada Journal of Public Health, the report was separated into seven articles related to each of these metrics. The articles …

Gardens As Educational Tools In Urban Public Schools, Michelle Diane Wheat

Theses & ETDs

Urban public school education has become increasingly decontextualized from the natural world over time. This causes a division within students that impacts how they learn, what they learn, and their mental health. Children's knowledge is increasingly devoid of environmental awareness. In addition ADHD, depression, and obesity have been linked to this separation. These problems are exacerbated by a culture of standardized tests motivated by financial concerns, and the gearing of education toward career preparation. Children learn to fear nature and reap none of the benefits that immersion in nature can foster. School gardens, especially in urban areas, can provide a …

Religious Diversity, Education, And The 'Crisis' In State Neutrality, Benjamin L. Berger

Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper Series

Education – and particularly public education – has become a crucible for the relationship between state and religious diversity, a principal site for contemporary debates about the meaning of secularism and the management of religious difference. This is so across a variety of national traditions, and despite wide differences in the historical and “emotional inheritances” surrounding the configuration of law, politics, and religion. Through an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thought about responsibility and freedom in education, this article works towards a better understanding of why education is such a crucial and fraught field in the modern encounter between religion and …

Religious Diversity, Education, And The "Crisis" In State Neutrality, Benjamin L. Berger

Articles & Book Chapters

Education – and particularly public education – has become a crucible for the relationship between state and religious diversity, a principal site for contemporary debates about the meaning of secularism and the management of religious difference. This is so across a variety of national traditions, and despite wide differences in the historical and “emotional inheritances” surrounding the configuration of law, politics, and religion. Through an exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thought about responsibility and freedom in education, this article works towards a better understanding of why education is such a crucial and fraught field in the modern encounter between religion and …

Engagement Of Academic Libraries And Information Science Schools In Creating Curriculum For Sustainability: An Exploratory Study, Maria A. Jankowska, Bonnie J. Smith, Marianne A. Buehler

Library Faculty Research

In 2010, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education released, “Sustainability curriculum in higher education: A call to action,” encouraging infusion of sustainability topics into universities' teaching and research. Since then, academic programs and research related to social, economic, and environmental sustainability have enriched university curricula. An exploratory study was conducted to determine the position and engagements of academic libraries and information science schools in their contributions to scholarly sustainability activities and curricular initiatives. This article presents the results of the study which reveals a number of engagements by library professionals in the areas of sustainability, such …

Scholarly Collaboration In Engineering Education: From Big-Data Scientometrics To User-Centered Software Design, Hanjun Xian

Open Access Dissertations

Engineering education research has grown into a flourishing community with an-ever increasing number of publications and scholars. However, recent studies show that a significant amount of engineering education knowledge retains a clear disciplinary orientation. If the gaps in scholarly collaboration continue to be prevalent within the entire community, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain community memory. This will eventually inhibit the propagation of innovations and slow the movement of research findings into practice.

This dissertation studies scholarly collaboration in the engineering education research community. It provides a clear characterization of collaboration problems and proposes potential solutions. The dissertation is …

The Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative: A Community-Based Approach To Improving Educational Opportunity & Achievement, Sonya D. Horsford, Carrie Sampson

Lincy Institute Reports and Briefs

Since the 1980s, the standards and accountability movement in U.S. education has focused heavily on reform at the classroom and school level, with insufficient regard for how social, political, and community contexts impact student learning and achievement (Berliner, 2006; Horsford, 2010; Noguera, 2003; Oakes, 1989; Wells et al., 2004). This emphasis on standardization and high-stakes testing has stigmatized, and in many instances, penalized low-income and historically underserved students and communities through the use of student subgroup and school designations. It also largely has ignored the research literature documenting the significant impact poverty, neighborhood context, and related out-of-school factors such as …

Akin House Curriculum Development And Living History Programming, Amanda Brown, Charlotte Fitts-Sprauge, Andrew Gray, Maya Himmelsbach, Abbey Hood, Meghan Richards, Brianna Riposa, Arnold Robinson

Education

This unit plan is comprised of a variety of inquiry-based lessons that explore the culture and way of life of the Native Americans who occupied New England. After studying the Akin house documents, materials, and narratives, I chose to focus my unit on the land and the people who came before the Akin family so that students will learn the long-view of our rich New England history.

The Global Sustainability Transition: It Is More Than Changing Light Bulbs, Michael P. Weinstein, R. Eugene Turner, Carles Ibanez

Faculty Publications

Current policies and norms to reconcile human demands for resources with the Earth’s ability to supply them have resulted in practices that mainly treat the symptoms of unsustainability rather than their underlying causes. Moreover, the increase in our knowledge about humankind’s role in ecosystems is not keeping pace with our understanding of the consequences of our actions, resulting in a deepening inability to address sustainability issues. The extreme complexity and intricate workings of the world require the expansion of our mental models in a systems-thinking framework if we are to realize a sustainable place for humans in it. The challenge …

Knowledge, Attitudes And Practices Of Environmental Justice In Higher Education, Marjorie M. Nussbaum

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Research suggests that issues of environmental justice are not being routinely included in the curriculum of the K-12 classroom and that teachers in those grades do not feel prepared to teach it. Likewise, little has been written about the addition of these topics to higher education coursework, leaving the question of inclusion at this level of education as well. This apparent lacuna may point to at least one reason why K-12 teachers are neither knowledgeable about environmental justice nor prepared to teach it. To discover the current state of inclusion in higher education, a mixed methods study was conducted to …

The Role Of A Facilitated Online Workspace Component Of A Community Of Practice: Knowledge Building And Value Creation For Nasa, Bradford Thomas Davey

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of an online workspace component of a community in the work of a community of practice. Much has been studied revealing the importance of communities of practice to organizations, project success, and knowledge management and some of these same successes hold true for virtual communities of practice. Study participants were 75 Education and Public Outreach community members of NASA's Science Mission Directorate Earth Forum. In this mixed methods study, online workspace metrics were used to track participation and a survey completed by 21 members was used to quantify participation. For …

Exploring Public-Private Partnership In Preschool Education Provision: Potential For Socio-Economic Development, Vitaly Vitaly Radsky, Aynur Nabiyeva, Ulviyya Mikayilova

Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

This paper explores the role of public-private partnerships in expanding access to preschool education. The first part of the paper summarizes global findings on the importance of quality early childhood education (ECE) for child development, participation of parents in the labor market and overall human capital development of a society. The second section provides a brief overview of the current ECE situation in Azerbaijan. The final section presents a community-based preschool model that was piloted in the Shamkir region by the Center for Innovations in Education (CIE), a Baku-based nonprofit organization as a model for expansion of ECE education in …

Determining The Individual, Organizational, And Community Level Outcomes Of A Community Leadership Development Program As Perceived By The Program Alumni, Susan Johnston Bush

Dissertations

The need for community leaders is increasing while the supply of community leaders is decreasing, leaving a gap in community leadership. Community leadership development programs (CLDP) are the most common approach to leadership development, yet the effects of CLDPs are rarely determined. In order to sustain programs that develop potential community leaders, program outcomes at the individual, organizational, and community levels must be identified.

This exploratory, non-experimental quantitative study used Black’s (2006) Leadership Program Outcomes Measure (LPOM) to determine CLDP alumni’s perceptions of the individual, organizational, and community level outcomes associated with participation in the CLDP; to describe the socio-demographic …

International Partnerships: A Model For Educational Organizations, Wesley Hickey, Janice A. Achtem, Joyce Nuner

Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Opportunities exist for faculty and students within educational leadership preparation programs to participate in international initiatives within developing countries. One way to do this is through collaboration with organizations that already have an established presence in the country. Working within these organizations provides opportunities for learning and research for the educational leadership program. If done well, such work also helps host organizations meet their mission and goals. An understanding of effective behaviors in international partnerships may benefit educational leadership programs that develop these types of service opportunities. The behaviors mirror the scholar-practitioner philosophy, of which some prominent educational leadership programs …

Civil Society Engagement And Education For Sustainable Development (Esd) In Egypt: A Case Study Of El-Warraq Area, Heba Shaheen

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the level of civil society engagement in an initiative implemented in an area in Egypt called El-Warraq. The main objective of the initiative was to promote ESD through a summer educational and recreational program using hands-on activities that bring key sustainable development concepts to school students. The main objective of this research was to examine a framework for implementing ESD in schools in Egypt. The target population in this study was EL-Warraq community. The sample used for investigation was one of the public schools chosen for the EduCamp II pilot implementation, El-Saddat School. This research was based …

Ecological Literacy: Global Planetary Stewardship Is Everyone’S Responsibility, Eileen Bobeck-Thoresen

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

No longer can nature simply be defined as ‘essences unchanged by man’ as Ralph Waldo Emerson once claimed. Technology, the result of applied science, has produced accomplishments that have made the quality of human life better in terms of health care and transportation. These advancements, however, have come at a great ecological cost as is evident everywhere in nature today. Humans need to acquire Ecological Literacy, the knowledge to lead a sustainable life. This entails meeting current needs without preventing future generations and species from doing the same. Since the days of the Industrial Revolution, the health of our planet …

Changing The World From Classrooms To Communities: Designing And Disseminating A Service-Learning Curriculum For Teaching In A Formal Education Setting, Amanda English

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

To change the world is a growing desire among many of today’s student populations, portrayed increasingly across the spectrum of media, social trends and career pursuits. While the demand grows among students for community-oriented and socially-responsible opportunities, the offerings in educational institutions must respond to these emerging requests with new and innovative academic programs. This text emphasizes the role of the developing discipline of service-learning in channeling these energies and providing students with deep and meaningful academic experiences. Its content seeks to combat misconceptions of service-learning as simply an extra-curricular activity and provide tangible methods for incorporating its concepts into …

Building A Vibrant Honors Community Among Commuter Students, Stan Van Ginkel, Pierre Van Eijl, Albert Pilot, John Zubizarreta

Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council Online Archive

Research has shown that honors programs often provide active networks of students that contribute to the development of the students’ talents (De Boer & van Eijl; van Eijl, Pilot & Wolfensberger). These contact networks are also described as “learning communities” (Wilson et al.) and “honors communities” (van Eijl, Pilot & Wolfensberger). Such communities foster productive interaction among students, teachers, and other professionals during their affiliation with the program and beyond. As a result of such connections, students discover new learning opportunities and gain experience in organizational and leadership skills. In honors programs, in particular, these contacts are an essential component …

Collaborative As Client: Lawyering For Effective Change, Robin S. Golden

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

You're Supposed To Care: Faculty Motivations To Incorporate Service Learning Into Community College Classrooms, Carol A. Katowitz

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the motivations that cause some faculty in community colleges to embrace and actively pursue service learning pedagogy in their classrooms. It also identified the catalysts that move faculty to action in implementing this approach to instruction. The qualitative phenomenological case study approach was used to hear the stories of eight faculty members representing different areas of discipline in eight different campus locations in a Midwestern statewide community college system. Four primary themes and two sub-themes were identified through this study. The primary themes were (a) pedagogical connections to previous school experiences and …

Dewey's Pragmatism And The Great Community, Philip Schuyler Bishop

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In investigating Dewey’s theory of the Great community, it is important to first examine closely Dewey’s theory of scientific inquiry and show how it evades the spectator theory of knowledge common to all modern epistemologies as closed systems. Dewey maintained that through controlled experimentalism we engage, and can solve, existential issues facing us for the purpose of expanding human freedom, promoting the democratic way of life and cultivating the institutions which foster these activities. The usage of inquiry to overcome problematic situations therefore stands as one of the first conditions needed to attain the great community.

Since Dewey did not …

Adolescent Geographies In The Classroom: Interactions With Place- And Community-Based Education, Anna Gahl Cole

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this study was to examine three phenomena, 1.) the classroom struggles and successes of students and teachers participating in a place- and community-based curriculum; 2). students personal geographies: their experiences, perspectives and interpretations of their homes, school, community and city; and 3.) interactions between community-based curriculum and students' geographies. This study goes to the intersection of place-based curriculum and students' geographies to explore the interactions that exist between these phenomena. Grounded in critical spatial, feminist standpoint, and constructivist theories, this study draws upon scholarship in Children's Geographies, place- and community-based education, and critical spatial studies. The Second …

Education And Girls' Development In Malawi: Promotion Of Girls' Education In Relation To Sustainable Development, Helen Momoko Wilson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Girls' education plays a key role in the development of a nation. There are various barriers to girls' education that prevent them from being given an equal opportunity as their male counterparts. As a result they are not enabled with the skills or knowledge that they require to further themselves, their families, their communities and their nation. Several approaches have been made to strive to improve the situation of girls' education in Malawi. This study takes an in depth look at the factors that make girls' education so critical to development and how the various approaches taken have or have …

What Would Saint Vincent De Paul Do About Today's Global Poverty? Personalism Vs. Paternalism: Social Work's Role Within A Vincentian Institution, Troy Harden

Vincentian Studies

DePaul University’s mission and values statement and the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics are compared with the goal of forming lasting community/university partnerships for poverty eradication. In particular, DePaul’s social work program is examined. The university’s relationship to Chicago communities is explored. The article emphasizes importance of listening and responding to the needs of community organizations, rather than performing service based on our perceptions of those needs. The true value of service lies in transforming the outlook of those who serve and their resulting commitment to justice. Learning from the communities being served is just as essential …

Mercury In The Environment: Field Studies From Tampa, Bolivia, And Guyana, Joniqua A'Ja Howard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tampa (US), Guyana (SA), and Bolivia (SA), are geographically, socially, economically, and politically unique which make them ideal sites to study issues of mercury and sustainability. Mercury’s innate ability to bioaccumulate and biomagnify in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems poses a severe threat to both human and environmental health. The most vulnerable populations affected by mercury consumption include coastal communities, children, women of child-bearing age, the indigenous poor and persons with high environmental/occupational exposure factors. Communities in the regions of Florida, Bolivia, and Guyana whose diets are high in fish and are environmentally/occupationally exposed to mercury may be at a higher …