Digital Commons Network^™

Outside The Coffee Belt: A Study On The Suitability And Sustainability Of Coffee Plants In California Due To Climate Change Using Gis, Vanessa Arias Casillas

CGU Theses & Dissertations

California has a unique climate that is suitable for growing a variety of agricultural crops. As stated by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities, and of these, over a third of the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts consumed in the United States are grown in California. Mark Gaskell, Ph.D., a California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor, recently began an experiment to grow coffee plants; he believed that due to changing climatic conditions, California farmers could start to grow coffee plants in their fields. Several farmers also agreed to experiment …

Overdue Credit: Credit Management, Crime, And Immigrants In Early Twentieth Century United States, Enrique Salas-Limon

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This thesis uses the theory of racial capitalism to examine the joined histories of Arab American immigrants and the professionalization of credit management in the early twentieth century. The history of early Arab Americans has previously been told as a clichéd story of upward mobility and financial success without much documented interaction between the Arab immigrant and real economic institutions, such as banks and credit bureaus. This thesis brings to light previously unknown documentations of Arab American and Arab immigrant alleged criminals in the publications of the National Association of Credit Men, or NACM. As the largest credit management and …

Experiences Of Lgbtq Youth Experiencing Homelessness: Implementation Of The Mckinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Jonathan Carter Lee

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The hearts and minds among U.S. legislators need to change about homelessness. While homelessness is certainly a big current issue that many Americans feel that needs to be addressed by our elected leaders, in reality, there are still many debates in Congress about who should be included to receive such funding. Among them, there is bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress for homeless veterans. However, when it comes to LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness, the bills are introduced by the most progressive left and is quickly defeated. A large body of existing literature exist about LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. However, few …

Institutional Researchers And Equitable Outcomes: An Examination Of Factors Driving Their Success, Qiana Nichole Davis

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The state of California has the largest community college system in the United States with 1.8 million students from diverse backgrounds and 64% percent of students who are economically disadvantaged (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, 2022; Felix & Castro, 2018). California community colleges also experience inequitable outcomes for racially minoritized students and students who are economically disadvantaged (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, 2022). McArthur (2016) posits that Offices of Institutional Research (OIR) are also critical in addressing and closing equity gaps. Through interviews with current and former institutional researchers (n=21), this qualitative case study identified environmental influences associated with institutional …

Floodsafehome: Evaluating Financial Benefits And Savings Of Freeboard For Improved Decision-Making In Flood Risk Mitigation, Carol J. Friedland, Yong Cheol Lee, Rubayet Bin Mostafiz, Jiyoung Lee, Shifat P. Mithila, Robert V. Rohli, Md Adilur Rahim, Ehab Gnan, Monica Teets Farris

Faculty Publications

Freeboard—elevation of a structure above the base flood elevation (BFE)—is a critical component in mitigating or avoiding flood losses. However, the unrevealed benefits and savings of freeboard installation have prevented communities from adopting this approach. To improve decision-making for residents, prospective residents, and other stakeholders in flood-vulnerable communities and enhance flood risk mitigation strategies, this study presents the methodology underlying a new webtool, FloodSafeHome, that estimates comprehensively the economic benefits and savings of freeboard installation for new construction of residential buildings. Specifically, the proposed evaluation framework has been designed to calculate monthly savings for individual buildings by assessing freeboard cost, …

The Removal Of Beach Flats Community Garden: A Case Of Environmental Racism (Episode 14), Alexandra De La Cruz Reyes, Melissa Boose, Nizhoni Hawthorne, Palia Vang

OtterPod

No abstract provided.

Israel/Palestine Teach-In (Episode 16), Sara Salazar Hughes, Sriya Shrestha, Dustin Wright

OtterPod

No abstract provided.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium: A State-Wide Collaborative Network For Sustainable, Outreach, Education, And Action, Peter Buck, Shaunna Barnhart, Richard D. Bowden, Ben Culbertson, Josh Hooper, Michael Mumper, Dominic Scicchitano, Ken Shultes, Tom Simpson

Faculty Contributions to Books

This paper explores the organizational theory, programs, and concomitant challenges faced by a state-level higher education consortium for sustainability in the United States, the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC). We provide insights for other institutions of higher education that may want to form consortia or consider changes to existing consortia. PERC members collaborate to advance sustainability on member campuses, in local communities, and across the Commonwealth. PERC envisions thriving, just communities on a healthy planet, and seeks to inspire higher education communities throughout the Commonwealth to lead transformational sustainability efforts through example, expertise, and collaboration. This chapter provides a brief …

Recalcitrance: The Foreclosure Of News About Violence In Mexico, Meghan Donnelly

Anthropology: Faculty Scholarship

Since President Felipe Calderón declared his so-called “war on organized crime” in December 2006, the dominant discourse about violence in Mexico has created the idea of a battle against or disputes between organized crime groups, and it has framed victims of murders and disappearances as themselves criminals. Recent scholarship highlights the role that journalists and news outlets have played in bolstering this narrative; however, ethnographic fieldwork with Mexican journalists complicates the notion that they and others unknowingly or uncritically reaffirm dominant interpretations about violence. This article introduces the concept of recalcitrance to elucidate how, even when reporters actively work to …

An Analysis Of U.S. Multi-Family Housing, Eco-Certifications, & Walkability, Jeremy Gabe, Karen Mcgrath, Spenser Robinson, Andrew Sanderford

School of Business: Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the persistence of differentiated pricing in the multi-family housing related to eco-certification. In examining a sample of market rents for non-specialty, multi-family properties both across the U.S., as well as those areas that enjoy the highest concentrations of LEED certified apartments, we find rental premiums of 10.2% and 14.7%, respectively for those properties with LEED certification. The addition of the continuous Walk Score, to control for variations in urban form, results in premiums of 7.4% and 9.6%, respectively. These findings are directionally consistent with those found in earlier studies, and demonstrate a persistence in rental premiums for …

Implementation Of A Tobacco Cessation Clinical Intervention Program, Foley Davis Graham

DNP Projects

Tobacco use and the detrimental effects of tobacco use is a leading public health crisis worldwide. There is not a harmless tobacco product on the market, but cigarette smoking has the highest rates of morbidity and mortality being one of the leading causes of preventable death, disease, and disability in the United States accounting for 480,000 deaths per year and over $300 billion in healthcare expenditure and productivity losses per year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). Comprehensive tobacco control efforts are essential to addressing this public health crisis. Literature reviewed identified that most healthcare providers assess patients for …

2022-2023 Annual Security And Fire Report - Weatherford Campus, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

ANNUAL SECURITY & FIRE REPORTS

This is the 2022-2023 Annual Security and Fire Report of the Weatherford Campus by Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

Situational Analysis And Urban Theory, Mark Davidson

Geography

Urban geographers have been pursuing divergent theoretical projects. Some have pushed urban theory to become ageographical, the goal being to search out and explain of a globally omnipotent urbanization process. Others have moved in a different direction, seeking to detail how singular constellations of processes produce only particular urban places. This theoretical divergence has led some to question whether middle-range urban theories continue to have purchase today. This paper seeks to contribute to this attempt to rekindle an interest in middle-range urban theory by examining the relevance of Karl Popper’s situational analysis to how we understand contemporary urbanization. © The …

Ten New Insights In Climate Science 2023/2024, Mercedes Bustamante, Joyashree Roy, Daniel Ospina, Ploy Achakulwisut, Anubha Aggarwal, Ana Bastos, Wendy Broadgate, Josep G. Canadell, Edward Carr, Deliang Chen, Helen A. Cleugh, Kristie L. Ebi

Geography

Non-technical summary: We identify a set of essential recent advances in climate change research with high policy relevance, across natural and social sciences: (1) looming inevitability and implications of overshooting the 1.5°C warming limit, (2) urgent need for a rapid and managed fossil fuel phase-out, (3) challenges for scaling carbon dioxide removal, (4) uncertainties regarding the future contribution of natural carbon sinks, (5) intertwinedness of the crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, (6) compound events, (7) mountain glacier loss, (8) human immobility in the face of climate risks, (9) adaptation justice, and (10) just transitions in food systems. Technical …

Climate Services And Transformational Adaptation, Edward Carr

Sustainability and Social Justice

The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report states that effective adaptation to the changing climate will require transformational changes in how people live. This article explores the potential for climate services to catalyze and foster transformational adaptation. I argue that weather and climate information are not, in and of themselves, tools for transformation. When designed and delivered without careful identification of the intended users of the service and the needs that service addresses, they can fail to catalyze change amongst the users of that information. At worst, they can reinforce the status quo and drive maladaptive …

Evaluation Of Left Shoulder As Part-Time Travel Lane Design Alternatives And Transportation Management Center Staff Training Module Development, Zhuohang Deng, Zhiliang Luo, Neil Hockaday, Ahmed Farid, Anurag Pande

Mineta Transportation Institute

Permanent capacity expansion, such as adding new lanes, is no longer a viable strategy to address traffic congestion in California; hence, ITS (Intelligent Transportation System) strategies, such as part-time use of the shoulder as a travel lane, need to be explored. The use of the shoulder as a travel lane during peak traffic hours has limited applications in the US, and most use the right shoulder as a part-time travel lane even though either the right or left shoulder (but not both) may be used. Caltrans District 5 is exploring the use of Left Shoulder as a Part-time Travel Lane …

Contact-Tracing Apps As Boundary Objects Of Pandemic Governance: The State-By-State Approach To Contain The Spread Of Covid-19 In The United States, Eugene Jang, Jeeyun (Sophia) Baik, Katrin Fischer

Communication: Faculty Scholarship

Digital contact tracing has been claimed as imperative to controlling the spread of COVID19. However, the state-by-state approach in the United States led to divergences in contact tracing. This study analyzed contact-tracing apps as “boundary objects” through which each state worked toward the governance of the pandemic without having a formal consensus. Through media coverage and walkthrough analyses of three digital contacttracing apps in Alabama, California, and New York, we closely investigated both convergences and divergences of the apps. In the process, we located the implications of Google/Apple’s Bluetooth-based exposure notification system for digital contact tracing within and beyond state …

Delegitimizing Rural Public Health Departments: How Decaying Local News Ecologies, Misinformation, And Radicalization Undermine Community Storytelling Networks, Nik Usher

Communication: Faculty Scholarship

This article considers the public communication challenges that health officials in rural America faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. I analyze the role that public health officials played in communicating news and information about the pandemic in 29 rural counties in Illinois. These officials were challenged by a diminished reporting capacity among local media outlets, and by a political radicalization of local Republicans, who no longer regarded local media as trusted nodes in local storytelling networks. I find that while public health officials can help fill a community’s critical information needs about risk and emergency, the public’s take-up of this information …

Reform Challenges In School Education, Geoff N. Masters

School and system improvement

The central thesis of this paper has been that the challenges now confronting schools globally will require fundamental reforms of the external frameworks within which schools work. Today’s challenges to better prepare young people for the future and to ensure that every student learns successfully will not be met by simply expecting teachers to change what they do or by making minor adjustments to current curricula, assessment, examination, reporting and credentialling arrangements. Today’s challenges require deep reforms and a willingness to reimagine—in other words, to ‘transform’ existing learning systems. This is essential because the external frameworks within which teachers and …

Three Chapters On The Economics Of Land Conservation, Jarron Vanceylon

Open Access Dissertations

In this dissertation, I investigate the distributional impacts of land conservation on households of varying race and ethnicity, tenure, and income as well as household decisions to locate near conserved lands based on characteristics such as partisan affiliation. While land conservation is considered a public good by most, answering who benefits from conservation, and who chooses to live near conservation are valuable insights for policy makers looking to both provide adequate conservation and ensure that conservation policy is equitable and achievable.

In Manuscript 1, I quantify the benefits from newly conserved lands to homeowners in Massachusetts using a hedonic pricing …

Community Drawing And Storytelling To Understand The Place Experience Of Walking And Cycling In Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Carl A. Smith

Landscape Architecture Faculty Publications and Presentations

Transit infrastructure is a critical determinant of the layout and sustainability performance of residential landscapes and neighborhoods. Though the spatial aspects of transit design and their associated impact on health, congestion, air pollution, accident rates, and emissions of greenhouse gases are well understood, the experiential-qualitative aspects of mobility have often been ignored in the travel and transport literature. This paper presents the place-understandings of pedestrians and cyclists concerning neighborhood safety in Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan. Community perspectives were captured through drawing and storytelling workshops as a method of public engagement through creative experience. While reporting on the veracity …

Rebuilding The Appalachian Economy From The Ground Up: Towards A Holistic Organizational Framework For Community And Economic Development In Rural Extractive Areas, Brandon M. Dennison

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Central Appalachia specifically and rural extractive areas more generally face some of the most challenging socio-economic realities in North America. Community-based organizations (CBOs) are an important tool for addressing these challenges. As governments intensify efforts to mitigate climate change, and as fossil-fuel industries contract, extracted communities are experiencing economic, cultural, and environmental upheaval. Many leaders call for a “just transition” away from fossil-fuels, which would make local extraction communities whole. However, achieving a truly just transition away from fossil fuels is extraordinarily challenging, and many extracted communities were never whole to begin with. I argue CBOs are the crucial vehicle …

Understanding Emerging Travel Behavior In New York City, Md Amdad Hossen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Many large cities face significant challenges in providing safe, economical, equitable, reliable, and efficient mobility services. Moreover, mobility service options have been changing unprecedentedly due to the advent of emerging mobility services. Understanding the impacts of emerging mobility services (e.g., for-hire vehicles, bike sharing) on other travel modes (e.g., transit, non-motorized modes, personal car) and evolving travel behavior is critical to promote sustainable modes for urban residents and reduce auto-dependency. New York City (NYC) has been conducting annual mobility survey since 2017 to understand the emerging travel behavior and mode choice characteristics. This dataset presents a unique opportunity for conducting …

Postcolonial Museums And National Identity In Vietnam, Reese W. Hollister

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Following the Vietnam Wars, the nation of Vietnam used museums to construct its identity for both national and international audiences. This paper first investigates the colonial origins of Vietnam's museum landscape, stemming from French ethnographic museums in colonial Indochina. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism then serves as the theoretical framework to understand Vietnamese nation's collective, historical memory of the French and American Wars. This paper concludes that the Vietnamese national identity is based on the shared trauma and socialist solidarity that arise from anti-colonial resistance. Museums both construct and preserve this national identity, …

To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance: Jews In The American Revolutionary Period, Ziv R. Carmi

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

While Jews were a small minority in the American colonies, they nonetheless participated in the American Revolution on both sides. This paper aims to evaluate the role of Jewish people in the conflict, contextualizing the experiences of this small minority within the larger narrative of the American Revolution and establishing their importance in the development of religious freedom in the United States. Through the examination of these topics, this paper aims to explore the Revolutionary period from the perspective of the Jewish-American, discussing their often-overlooked experiences in this watershed period within U.S. history.

Access To Higher Education: A Comparative Law Analysis Of The Institutional & Societal Barriers Refugees Must Overcome, Irene Rizzolatti

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

City Of Berlin, Nh, Annual Report, Fiscal Year July 1, 2021 To June 30, 2022., Berlin Town Representatives

Berlin, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire.

Unlikely Partners In A Media Literacy Initative, Elizabeth Ramsey, Valeryn Shepherd

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

Academic librarians are the ultimate interdisciplinarians, and would seem to be natural research collaborators, but many struggle to be seen as peers by other faculty or called on to fully partner in research projects even when key information literacy objectives are involved. This changed for an associate professor/librarian at Boise State’s Albertsons Library when they were invited to join a team which was eventually awarded a Department of Homeland Security grant. This article examines the grant program, the grant awarded, and a librarian’s contributions to achieving the project’s objectives. It makes the case for libraries’ essential role in strengthening our …

Wine About It: Why Croatia's Historic Wine Prosek Should Be Granted A Protected Designation Of Origin By The European Union, Sydney Kiefert

American University International Law Review

Land has been one of the most important resources for as long as history tells us. Land is one of the main causes of war, with leaders of countries wanting to conquer new territory for various reasons, such as the natural resources that exist there, or for the history associated with it. In another context, land is often associated with the idea of home, and the heritage that comes along with that. In Europe, specifically within the European Union, many countries and their constituents are proud of their unique foods and beverages.

Understanding Social Care, Teresa Brown, Kevin Lalor

Books/Book chapters

As the English writer L. P. Hartley noted in opening his 1953 novel The Go-Between, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. The previous edition of this book was published in 2013, and indeed Ireland then was in many ways a substantially different place. It was a country that had suffered the ignominy of being ‘bailed out’ by our European partners after the trauma of the financial crash that had commenced in 2008. Hard to believe now, but commentators bemoaned the excessive level of construction of houses and hotels, marriage equality for LGBTQ+ people was still …