Digital Commons Network^™

Falling Below The Line: Minimum Subgroup Size And Special Education Enrollment, Sivan Tuchman

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) brought high-stakes accountability testing into every American public school with the goal of 100 percent proficiency for all students. Making annual yearly progress (AYP) toward this proficiency goal for the total student population as well as at-risk subgroups was required in order for schools to avoid possible sanctions, such as school restructuring. In implementing NCLB, states had flexibility to determine the minimum size of these subgroups as to provide statistical reliability and accountability for as many schools as possible. If a school did not meet the state’s minimum subgroup size, the …

2015 Fall Faculty Conference: Cultivating Curiosity: Teaching As A Vocation, Academic Affairs

Fall Faculty Conference

The 2015 Fall Faculty Conference featured teaching showcases by Sarah Bouchard (Biology and Earth Science), Jeff Demas (Communication), John Kengla (Arts & Sciences), Gayle Walker (Music), and Paul Wendel (Education).

There were also breakout sessions hosted by Colin Saunders with Kay Ball and Clare Kilbane and Jackie Haverkamp and Paul Longenecker and T. G. Gerckens and Eric Lloyd, Anna Young, Joan Esson, Paul Wendel Kathryn Plank, Jean Kelly, Carrie Scheckelhoff, Jeff Smith, Erica Womack, Rares Piloiu, Amy Parsons, Jessica Crossfield McIntosh, Beth Daugherty, Andrew Mills, Dee Knoblauch, Kristin Bourdage, Patti Wilson, Kristy Drobney, Nate Parsell, and Deanna Heerman.

Advancements In Treatment For Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Implications For Rehabilitation Professionals, Shawn P. Saladin, Yasar Tasnif, Bianca Cruz, Robert B. Perez

JADARA

Rehabilitation professionals often work with individuals with sensorineural hearing loss. Sometimes the hearing loss is due to ototoxic medications that are prescribed as treatments for other conditions. An understanding of the types of ototoxic medications at the root of the sensorineural hearing loss combined with an understanding of the advancements in treatments will help the rehabilitation professional better serve consumers who fit this description.

Impact Of Standardized Oral Health Assessment On Preventing Ventilator-Associated Events, Juana Ambriz De Williams

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is a common but preventable health-care associated infection that affects up to 20% of mechanically ventilated adult patients, resulting in estimated mortality rates ranging from 13% to 55% (Chahoud, Semaan, Almoosa, 2015; Melsen et al., 2013). In an effort to reduce morbidity, mortality and related costs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), proposed ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention as a national patient safety goal. In 2014, amid growing concerns that the subjectivity of existing definitions had led to inconsistent reporting, thereby impeding efforts to reduce VAP, the CDC refocused surveillance …

Institutionalizing Legal Innovation: The (Re)Emergence Of The Law Lab, Martha F. Davis

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Prevalence Of Inadequate Hydration Levels In Aquatic Safety Personnel: A Pilot Study, William D. Ramos, Austin Robert Anderson, Allison Lee Fletcher

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

Lifeguards play an important role in the security and safety of those they are hired to protect. A performance issue may arise if they succumb to circumstances that cause them to become physically or psychologically compromised. Dehydration is one issue that can result in decreased levels of workplace performance and pose personal health risks. Certified lifeguards 15 years old and older were tested for urine specific gravity (USG) to determine their place within the dehydration spectrum. Participants (N = 55) were recruited from seven test sites offering a variety of designs (indoor/outdoor, traditional/waterpark) and classifications (private, semipublic, public). Testing involved …

School Psychologists’ Training And Knowledge Of Tourette Syndrome, Leticia Cornejo

Educational Studies Dissertations

A web-based survey was conducted that included 97 practicing school psychologists in California. The results from the survey indicated that the majority (88%) of respondents were knowledgeable about Tourette Syndrome. Many respondents (28%) had never worked with a student with Tourette’s, 20% had at least one case, and 52% indicated that they had worked with more than two cases in their careers as school psychologists. The majority of respondents indicated that their school psychology program did not adequately train them to assess or counsel students with Tourette’s. The majority of participants also did not feel confident to work with students …

Ecosystem Services Of Urban Trees And The Impacts Of Urbanization, Jorge E. Cantu

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The University of Texas- Pan American has conducted a complete survey of campus trees in partial fulfillment of the requirements for membership in the International Society of Arboriculture Designation of Tree Campus USA. This tree inventory was accomplished with the help of students whom were trained by faculty and foresters. Other than the completion of the tree inventory, this thesis had two main goals; 1) valuate the ecosystem services provided by campus trees 2) create a unique service learning project that other institutions can model. According to our calculations, the trees on campus have sequestered 568,652 kg of CO2, avoided …

Leadership For Sustainability And Peace: Responding To The Wicked Challenges Of The Future, Rian Satterwhite, Whitney Mcintyre Miller, Kate Sheridan

Education Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"In the past century our understanding of leadership has changed as the contexts in which leadership occurs evolve. Today, constructs of leadership that do not incorporate emergent concepts such as systems thinking no longer match the realities of the world in which it is exercised and the challenges it seeks to address. The challenges we face as a global community have increased in complexity, size, scope, and consequence. As a result of this contextual evolution, our definition of effective leadership is evolving as well."

Adjudicating Cases Involving Adolescents In Suffolk County Criminal Courts, Honorable Fernando Camacho

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Indigenous Epistemological Approach To Promote Health Through Effective Knowledge Translation, Selvi Roy, Barbara Campbell

Journal of Indigenous Research

Through indigenous epistemologies a holistic health framework is promoted and indigenous concepts like two-eyed seeing offer critical decolonizing conduits for knowledge translation and enhanced health outcomes. Yet, in health care settings dominance of scientific research-based evidence downplays tacit knowledge. For enhanced health outcomes in indigenous community settings, effective knowledge translation is essential through synthesis of research-based explicit knowledge and tacit know-how adapted to local needs. This paper discusses essential characteristics of effective knowledge translation practices, and presents two examples of best practices of knowledge translation in indigenous contexts.

Differentiation Revealed: A Multiple-Methods Qualitative Study On The Implementation Of Differentiated Instruction In A Mixed-Ability Elementary Classroom, Curtis James Cunningham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Differentiated instruction as a philosophical approach to teaching has been around for decades. In recent weeks differentiation has come under fire as being an approach to teaching that is simply too difficult for teachers to implement. While teachers may attend a workshop or take a graduate class on the topic of differentiation and choose not to embrace the philosophy, there are also teachers who have successfully implemented differentiation. The argument against differentiation is based on the amount of effort required to simultaneously implement all components of differentiation.

To address these concerns the following question provided guidance for the present multi-method …

Effects Of Food Label Education On Consumers' Sensory Perception And Awareness In Chicken Meat, Shilpa Samant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recently, sustainability and process-related label claims have gained immense popularity especially for meat products like chicken. Apart from providing consumers with required product information, these labels have an impact on consumer perception and purchase behavior. The objective of this study was to determine whether providing label information affects consumers’ awareness and attitude toward the claims found on chicken products. Additionally, it was analyzed if enhanced label understanding affects consumers’ sensory and quality perceptions along with purchase intent. A total of 110 participants were randomly distributed into 1 of 3 types of education sessions: (1) reading a flyer (passive learning), (2) …

Educating Scientists With Plymouth University, Victoria Sleight

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Guest editorial: Victoria Sleight from the British Antarctic Survey.

Educating Future Nursing Scientists: Recommendations For Integrating Omics Content In Phd Programs, Margaret M. Heitkemper, Donna O. Mccarthy, Cindy M. Anderson, Elizabeth J. Corwin, Sandra Daack-Hirsch, Susan G. Dorsey, Katherine E. Gregory, Maureen W. Groer, Susan J. Henly, Timothy Landers, Debra E. Lyon, Jacquelyn Y. Taylor, Joachim Voss

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Preparing the next generation of nursing scientists to conduct high-impact, competitive, sustainable, innovative, and interdisciplinary programs of research requires that the curricula for PhD programs keep pace with emerging areas of knowledge and health care/biomedical science. A field of inquiry that holds great potential to influence our understanding of the underlying biology and mechanisms of health and disease is omics. For the purpose of this article, omics refers to genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics, exposomics, microbiomics, and metabolomics. Traditionally, most PhD programs in schools of nursing do not incorporate this content into their core curricula. As part of the Council for …

Economic Literacy: Measuring The Economic Human Capital Of Arkansas K-12 Teachers, June Marie Freund

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Economic literacy is recognized as a deficit quality in the United States, no more prevalent than during the last great recession. It is paramount the K-12 educational system lead the movement to educate the public on economic content and issues, as it is the one institution that has direct contact with all citizens. The question then must be asked, how economic literate are teachers entrusted with the responsibility of imparting economic knowledge to his/her K-12 grade level student. A sample of Arkansas teachers at each grade level K – 12 were tested using national normed economic literacy tests designed to …

The Impact Of Herbicide-Resistant Rice And Hybrid Rice Technology On Weedy Rice Evolution, Vijay Singh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Weedy rice (Oryza sativa L.) competes aggressively with rice, reducing yields and grain quality. ClearfieldTM rice, is nontransgenic herbicide-resistant (HR) rice introduced in 2002 to control weedy rice, has resulted in ALS-resistant weedy rice due to gene flow. Volunteers of ClearfieldTM rice (F2) accelerate the HR weedy rice evolution by acting as agents of gene flow. Weedy rice (89) collected from 11 counties in Arkansas were screened for resistance in a field experiment in Stuttgart (2011). Seventy-nine percent of accessions were resistant to imazethapyr and harbored S653N mutation. These HR weedy accessions were outcrosses of ClearfieldTM rice and weedy rice. …

Prevalence Of School Nurses In Kentucky And Student Outcomes, Teena Darnell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify whether the presence of a nurse in the public high school setting was associated student outcomes. Data gleaned from the study will be used to enact a new legislative policy mandating the presence of a nurse in all public schools in the state of Kentucky.

Background: Nurses employed in the school setting support both the educational mission of the institution, as well as the health and well-being of students. Studies have explored the relationships between school nurse presence and student health. It has been suggested that when children experience poor …

Museum Activism And Social Responsibility: Building Museum Education Programs For Juvenile Offenders, Elizabeth E. Sirhall

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Museums are important to their communities and serve many significant purposes to society. The traditional viewpoint of a museum’s function is that they are there to preserve and interpret collections for the sake of facilitating deeper understanding and education for museum audiences. However, museums are also viewed as institutions that can bring people in the community together, promote social activism, and develop programs aimed towards creating positive changes within communities. In today’s world, museums are finding this task increasingly difficult due to financial challenges and struggling to stay socially relevant for diversified audiences. In facing this challenge, it is imperative …

Cindy Hanson, Phd Student Received An Education Scholarship From Spie | Biological Engineering | Biological Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Cindy Hanson PhD Student has been awarded an SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA – 15 May 2015 – Cindy Hanson has been awarded a 2015 Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics for her potential contributions to the field of optics, photonics or related field.

2015 Great Expectations Spring Faculty Conference: General Education, Academic Affairs

Spring Great Expectation Faculty Conference

The 2015 Great Expectations Spring Faculty Conference features a keynote speech by Kathleen Blake Yancey. Kathleen Blake Yancey is Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English and Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University. A (past) president of several scholarly organizations--among them the National Council of Teachers of English and the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA)--she co-founded and co-edited Assessing Writing for seven years, and she just stepped down from her five-year term as Editor of College Composition and Communication. She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and twelve books—including Portfolios in the Writing Classroom; Delivering College Composition: …

Garden Pedagogy: Forming Gender And Sexuality In Romantic Literature, Chantelle Messier

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

The Nature And Etiology Of Religious Certitude: Implications Of The Ei Framework And Beliefs, Events, And Values Inventory, Timothy W. Brearly

Dissertations, 2014-2019

Religious certitude is often associated with conflict between individuals and groups, though the nature of this relationship is still not clear. To further clarify these dynamics, the historical psychology of religion is reviewed and contrasted with current perspectives from social psychology and neuroscience, with an eye towards better understanding the variance within religious expressions and their associated relationships with intergroup conflict. It is hypothesized that religious certainty is related to a difficulty in engaging with contradictory religious perspectives, and that the pull towards certainty is tied to an individual’s unique psychological structure, much of which is developed through the interaction …

Diabetes Type 2 Self-Management Education Program: Short Messaging From Patient Portal To Web-Enabled Device, Lynn S. Holcomb

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Only one in eight adults with diabetes reaches target goals for disease management, which can lead to clinical complications, costly both economically and in quality and duration of human life. The standard of care is a quarterly 15-minute face-to-face visit-- arguably inadequate to impart self-care knowledge. The purpose of this EBP project was to deliver a 30-day diabetes self-management education program (DSMEP) utilizing widely accessible web-based technology to facilitate adults with diabetes to reach targeted goals. Using the Chronic Care Model as a framework, the DSMEP design was based on an extensive literature review of the delivery of DSMEP in …

Telescopes And Spyglasses: Using Literary Theories In High School Classrooms, Danielle M. Rains

Honors Projects

This project, “Telescopes and Spyglasses: Using Literary Theories in High School Classrooms,” is a pedagogy book that provides information about literary theories in a way that can be applied directly to a classroom. Each chapter includes background information on the theory, instructions on how to read following the theory’s guidelines, how to teach and introduce the theory to students, and how to begin writing an analysis of a work using the theory as a guiding framework.

This project is important because students are being demanded more and more to be able to analyze texts for deeper understanding of the work, …

Differentiation In The Classroom Using Chromebooks And Google Applications, Allison Carney

Honors Projects

The purpose of this research was to differentiate using Chromebook and Google technology to improve engagement and grades in the classroom. Chromebooks have been implemented into classrooms all over the country, but the use of Google applications in order to differentiate instruction and assessment is not as prominent in schools. I created four assignments on the Chromebooks that differentiated instruction and assessment based on interest and ability levels. I used a total of six applications and differentiated for forty-four students in a sixth grade math and science classroom. I found that differentiating using Chromebooks and Google applications boosted student engagement, …

Evaluating The Impact Of A Snap Challenge On University Participant Attitudes Toward Poverty, Susan Tyler Wallace Harding

Graduate Theses

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a week-long SNAP Challenge completed by university participants influenced perceptions about poverty. Design: Pretest and posttest questionnaires measured changes in attitudes toward poverty after the SNAP Challenge using the Attitude Toward Poverty Short Form scale comprised of three factors: Personal Deficiency, Stigma, and Structural Perspective. Dispositional empathy was measured with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and analyzed as a potential mediating variable of attitude change. Subjects: Student and non-student subjects were recruited from Winthrop University. Four hundred forty-six pretest questionnaires were initiated, 363 were completed, and 363 were eligible for …

Library And Information Science Education And Escience: The Current State Of Ala Accredited Mls/Mlis Programs In Preparing Librarians And Information Professionals For Escience Needs, Hanna Schmillen

Library and Information Science: Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study is multifaceted: 1) to describe eScience research in acomprehensive way; 2) to help library and information specialists understand the realm of eScience research and the information needs of the community and demonstrate the importance of LIS professionals within the eScience domain; 3) and to explore the current state of curricular content of ALA accredited MLS/MLIS programs to understand the extent to which they prepare new professionals within eScience librarianship. The literature review focuses heavily on eScientists and other data-driven researchers’ information service needs in addition to demonstrating how and why librarians and information specialists can …

Exit Tickets' Effect On Engagement And Concept Attainment In High School Science, Amy Mastromonaco

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Many high school students struggle to stay engaged in their science class. As a result, student learning often suffers. The purpose of this study was to implement one additional strategy (Exit Tickets) to the teacher’s pedagogy in order to help better engage students and promote student learning. The teacher then evaluated the efficacy of the strategy by: comparing both participant behavioral engagement and assessment results prior to and during/after the implementation of the Exit Tickets. The data was disaggregated to compare students who were typically behaviorally disengaged to those who were consistently behaviorally engaged so as to better determine the …

Trials, Tribulations, And Transitions: Investigating Adolescents’ Perceptions Of Academic-Related Problems, Elyssa C. Eisenberg

Honors Scholar Theses

The majority of our pre-adulthood lives are spent in school; education is a salient part of a child's life. The current study aims to investigate adolescents’ perceptions of the academic challenges they face, and to determine if responses differ according to their age and gender. Adolescents ages 12 through 18 (N = 297) were asked to self-report a problem that they are currently facing. These problems were coded as academic or non-academic. This open-ended prompt resulted in 25% of participants reporting an academic problem, which alludes to the importance of academics in these participants' lives overall. The academic problems …