Digital Commons Network^™

Communicating With The Public About Vietnam: How Transparent Was Johnson In His Public Statements, Amber Fields

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

The National Security Council is a crucial tool for American presidents when making tough foreign policy decisions that have the potential to affect the entire nation. Since its creation in 1947 under President Harry Truman, the National Security Council has provided presidents with advice on national security and foreign policies. It was used numerous times when presidents had to make decisions about the Vietnam War. However, it must be asked, how transparent were presidents with the public about the information they received from the National Security Council? This thesis examines President Johnson's public statements about the Vietnam War and how …

Demagoguery And Political Rhetoric: A Comparative Analysis Of Father Charles E. Coughlin And Donald J. Trump, Charlotte Moody

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

Many Americans can still recall James Madison’s warning against mob rule in The Federalist Papers. What Madison did not articulate as memorably, however, was that it is not the mob we need to fear, but the demagogue. Who is the one fueling the fire through their use of sensational rhetoric? A term from ancient Greek mythology, a demagogue generally means a persuasive orator and leader of the people. The historical demagogue has many iterations in modern American politics that continue to undermine democracy and justice. However, there has not been a comprehensive study comparing two of the arguably most influential …

Whole Human Pedagogy: A Novel Framework For Education Abroad Praxis, Anna N. Kelly

Dissertation Collection

This dissertation theoretically derives and qualitatively explores a novel framework called whole human pedagogy for education abroad. Drawing on Thompson (2017) and hooks (1994), as well as decolonial theory and critical pedagogy, this dissertation sets forth whole human pedagogy with four tenets—embodiment, emotions, belonging, and becoming—which collectively provide a framework for designing and analyzing education abroad programs. This qualitative study collected data from seventeen practitioners who work with undergraduate, U.S.-based, outbound education abroad programs via semi-structured interviews about their perspectives on theory and practice regarding whole human pedagogy. Findings offer preliminary confirmation of whole human pedagogy’s applicability to education abroad …

Come Let Us Reason Together: Promoting Interdisciplinary Collaboration Between Clergy And Mental Health Professionals Regarding Demonic Oppression And Mental Illness, Juanda Green

Doctor of Ministry

Within the church, congregants who claim to be oppressed by demonic spirits seek prayer to be set free from their influence. In ministries where this type of prayer is available, ministers report that while the prayers provide relief, relief is often temporary. Consequently, these members continue to seek prayer for deliverance. In these situations, do clergy who provide this spiritual intervention realize that the congregate may have an underlying mental health issue?

Research shows the opinions of pastors regarding the etiology of mental illness; on one end demonic spirits are viewed as the culprit for mental disturbance, while the other …

Dare To Serve: The Importance Of Servant Leadership To Christian African American Women Ceos Within The Nonprofit Industry, Sheila Tolbert

Doctor of Ministry

African American Christian women CEOs of smaller nonprofit organizations face multiple challenges in developing the necessary leadership skills to ensure their organization’s success including a deficiency in formal leadership training, difficulties in balancing Christian beliefs with leadership responsibilities, and limitations in interacting with boards of directors. The lack of appropriate leadership skills hinders their ability to effectively lead their nonprofit organizations, improve their organization’s performance, and limits career advancement.

The current options for leadership training do not adequately address the challenges and opportunities faced by these leaders. The lack in leadership development results in a deficiency of African American women …

Trauma Informed Theology: A Framework For Developing A Culturally Competent African American Intimate Partner Violence Curriculum For The Pentecostal Clergy, Bridget P. Robinson

Doctor of Ministry

The objective of this dissertation study is to increase the awareness of intimate partner violence (IPV) among Pentecostal clergy. African American women experience higher rates of intimate partner violence in the United States. There are unique risk factors for IPV in the African American community, considering the social and cultural context of the African American experience during colonization and post-colonization. Throughout these experiences, the Black church has consistently served as a steadfast source of hope for the community. However, considering the concerning prevalence of IPV among the African American community, church leaders may not be aware of the profound effects …

“I’M Especially Sorry To Those Impacted”: Conventional Visions Of Leadership In The 2022/2023 Tech Layoffs, Jared J. Watkins

Student Theses and Dissertations

In 2022 and 2023, over 400,000 employees in the technology sector were laid off. This study conducted a thematic analysis using coding on memos announcing layoffs sent by leaders at Meta, Google, and Microsoft in late 2022 and early 2023. This study also conducted an analysis of layoff memos sent by leaders of Google and Microsoft in 2009 for comparison. Key findings include that writing to multiple stakeholders in the 2022/2023 memos produced novel contradictions and paradoxes that may impede employee sensemaking, that 2022/2023 memos used more passive and distancing language that disconnected the leader from the layoff decision and …

Paths To Belonging: How Chinese Parachute Kids Construct Identity Across Borders, Huiying Chen

Pitzer Senior Theses

Chinese parachute kids, defined as unaccompanied minor who study in foreign countries alone while their parents remain in China, represent a unique segment of international students.This research specifically focusing on Chinese parachute kids studying in the U.S. Grounded in interviews with nineteen individuals who were once parachute kids, this study challenges the popular view that all international students have monolithic experiences especially within the assimilationist framework.

I propose a typology of three orientations (the heritage, the instrumental, and the global) and argue that Chinese parachute kids’ orientation determines their sense of belonging and their approaches to embeddedness in American educational …

How Does The Transition From A Subject-Based Allocation Fund Structure To A One-Pot Allocation Fund Structure Impact Librarian Spending And Attitudes Toward Spending?: One Libraries' Experience With A One-Pot Allocation Approach For One-Time Acquisitions Spending, Anne Larrivee

University Libraries Faculty Publications

Every fiscal year, academic libraries must decide how to fairly allocate funds for their collection of one-time materials. A common approach is to divide these one-time funds between subject areas based on historic, quantitative, or expressed needs. A less mainstream approach is to combine all these funds into a single source of funds for one-time purchases. This article examines librarian response after transitioning from a subject-based allocation to a one-pot allocation approach for its one-time acquisitions. Methods of expenditure analysis and semi-structured interviews were used to assess the approach's effectiveness and librarian attitudes. The results of this study provide a …

An Overview Of Udl Theory And Scholarship In Higher Education, Rachel Mcmullin, Danielle Skaggs

University Libraries Faculty Publications

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework for improving and optimizing teaching and learning. It’s focused on intentionally designing for the needs and abilities of all learners—putting accessibility into the planning stages instead of as an accommodation after the fact—and providing flexibility in the ways students access and engage with materials and learning objectives.

Improving Inclusion With Universal Design In The Academic Library Hiring Process, Katelyn Quirin Manwiller, Heather Crozier, Samantha Peter

University Libraries Faculty Publications

To improve inclusion in academic library hiring practices, we must evaluate and prioritize addressing the barriers that currently exist in the process for LIS workers with marginalized identities. With the prevalence of disability in America, lack of representation in librarianship, and inherently intersectional nature of disability inclusion, it is essential that academic librarianship work to recruit and retain disabled librarians. Disability affects people in a variety of ways. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. As a result, broader disability inclusion techniques based on the principles of Universal Design are needed to remove barriers for disabled librarians during the hiring process.

Enhancing College Student Retention And Success: An Idea Book, Grace Liu

University Libraries Faculty Books

Enhancing College Student Retention and Success: An Idea Book is based on an evidence synthesis that screened over 600 ideas, projects, and programs and identified 120 practices and strategies across colleges and universities that are proven effective in improving student retention and success. Different from other news articles or reports that you may read, the book is based on the Value, Rarity, Imitability, and Organization (VRIO) framework for strategic planning and intends to understand how higher education institutions have organized their resources and capabilities to capture value and how they gained sustainable competitive advantage in student retention and success measured …

Armed Conflict And Household Water Sources, George Naufal, Michael A. Malcolm, Vidya Diwakar

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

Access to safe drinking water is among the most important determinants of public health outcomes. We pair household-level data from Iraq together with data on armed conflict and adopt a generalized difference-in-differences approach to study the relationship between household drinking water sources and armed conflict intensity. We find that households located in conflict-affected areas are more likely to use piped water accessed at their homes or bottled water as their primary source of drinking water, but are less likely to use public water sources or tanked water delivered on trucks and carts. We explore the temporal dynamics of these adjustments …

Student Engagement In The Communication Classroom: An Intervention To Encourage Student Success, Jay Baglia, Elissa Foster, Kendra Knight, Stephanie Grau

Journal of the Association for Communication Administration

Universities implement a variety of interventions to address student engagement and retention. This is especially true post-pandemic as faculty attempt to return to a pre-pandemic structure. Emerging adulthood aligns with the personal responsibility demanded of college students as well as changes in personal growth. In the current climate, stress has been shown to negatively impact executive functioning, the cognitive processes necessary for academic success. This essay describes an intervention encouraging student self-reflexivity around processes for engagement, academic success, and retention. Communication Fundamentals for College Success—a 5-week, two-credit workshop—was developed and delivered by the authors. Curriculum focused on time management, study …

Mapping The Ferment: Mediated Communication Research In Cios-Indexed Journals From 1970-2020, David J. Atkin, Kenneth A. Lachlan, Timothy D. Stephen, Carolyn Lagoe

Journal of the Association for Communication Administration

This study profiles scholarly publishing in the domain of mediated communication, based on an analysis of media-themed communication journals—as indexed in the CIOS’s ComAbstracts database—from 1970–2020. Analysis of 22,300 articles from media-themed scholarly journals paints a portrait of scholarly publishing configurations across the domains of Journalism and Communication. Criterion articles were subjected to cluster analysis that yielded a comprehensive unified field portrait of interlinkages among topical pairings encompassing 58 topical categories. Results suggest that just 7 of our 37 criterion journal outlets date to the 1970s, 6 additional titles were launched in the 1980s, 10 more in the 1990s, and …

Terminological (In)Justice: Terminology And Reality In A Coordinated Community Response To Intimate Partner Violence, Julio Montanez Ma, Amy Donley Phd

Institute for Social and Behavioral Science (ISBS)

Definitions and terminologies are paramount for operationalizing the community-wide effort against intimate partner violence (IPV). However, definitions and terms that do not reflect reality are of little use. This is particularly true in IPV coordinated community responses that attempt to harmonize data collection and legal apparatuses at the federal, state, and local levels. Using qualitative (e.g., focus group and interview data from survivors, interviews with system actors) and quantitative data (e.g., Uniform Crime Reports) from a year-long study in a large southeastern county, the current study aims to answer the following research question: Do IPV-related terms (in data collection and …

Environment And Belief: Investigating The Dakota Archeological Record, Anna Kay Wiitanen-Eggen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The oral traditions and histories of a people’s belief systems are one means by which the relationships between a people and their environment are embodied. Environmental aspects of a people’s belief system are reflected in their use of their habited space(s) because beliefs help structure actions. Ergo, an examination of a people’s oral traditions and histories has the potential to provide valuable insight to the archeological record of the places potentially occupied by their ancestors or close relatives. Investigation of this aspect of archeology is a relatively new pursuit and is almost completely unexplored in Minnesota. The relationship between the …

Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Dialogical Demands Of Florida's 10th Grade B.E.S.T. English Language Arts Standards, Amanda Nb Kaplowitz

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

This study investigates the extent to which the Florida B.E.S.T (Benchmark for Excellent Student Thinking) English Language Arts (ELA) standards demand that students participate in dialogic interactions within the 10th grade ELA classroom. Dialogic demands, characterized by active discourse and collaborative sense-making, are the opportunities students interact with one another or with a text. The dialogic elements of classroom pedagogy are an increasingly recognized critical component of effective literacy instruction in contrast with the monologic classroom where teachers are the primary source of information. A Critical Discourse Analysis through the lens of Fairclough is used as this research aims to …

The Impact Of Well-Designed Graphics And Multimedia On Student Engagement And Learning In Online Classes, Joseph E. Lloyd

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

The purpose of this research study was to examine the graphical redesign of an online Psychology course and determine the impact of that redesign on student engagement in the course, and students’ perceptions of the course, and the impact of the redesign elements on their learning. It also examined whether this redesign impacted students’ performance in the course. The results from this study could provide insights for instructors, instructional designers, and graphic designers on how the inclusion of such graphics affects student engagement and learning. In addition, how the students view their own engagement and learning with the addition of …

Pattern Creation To Communicate The Identity Of Art In The Early Rattanakosin Period For Hotel Uniforms In Rattanakosin Island, Bangkok, Chamaiporn Mitinunwong, Patcha Utiswannakul

Journal of Urban Culture Research

For tourism in Rattanakosin Island, Bangkok, tourists can recognize the prominent identity of arts and cultural arts in the area and communities through received experiences. Hotel uniforms in Rattanakosin Island, Bangkok, were created from the prominent artistic patterns for identity recognition which directly affected the aesthetic image of Bangkok. This article aimed to find Rattanakosin's artistic styles and patterns that promote the Thai identity of hotel uniforms in Bangkok. Both qualitative and quantitative research was used. The three significant temples as the prototypes of artistic architecture in the Early Rattanakosin Period were studied. The results revealed that styles and patterns …

Shaping Minds Through Art : A Systematic Review Of Aesthetic And Cognitive Interactions, Khanobbhorn Sangvanich, Theeraphab Phetmalaikul

Journal of Urban Culture Research

This study explores the implication and application of art education to enhance cognition through aesthetic development via a systematic literature review. Articles published from 2018 to 2023 were gathered from Scopus, Academic Search Ultimate, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink. Initial keywords inquiries, “aesthetic” and “cognition” were 2,553 articles. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 12 articles remained for review. Findings indicate aesthetic is a form of cognition, that combines emotions and senses. Aesthetic and cognition can arise and develop at any age. A person’s level of personal aesthetic development increases with age and experience, varying among individuals. Some research found that …

Systematic Review And Tools Appraisal Of Prognostic Factors Of Return To Work In Workers On Sick Leave Due To Musculoskeletal And Common Mental Disorders, Patrizia Villotti, Ann-Christin Kordsmeyer, Jean-Sébastien Roy, Marc Corbière, Alessia Negrini, Christian Larivière

Revues de littérature, synthèses de connaissances

With the overall objective of providing implication for clinical and research practices regarding the identification and measurement of modifiable predicting factors for return to work (RTW) in people with musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and common mental disorders (CMDs), this study 1) systematically examined and synthetized the research evidence available in the literature on the topic, and 2) critically evaluated the tools used to measure each identified factor. A systematic search of prognostic studies was conducted, considering four groups of Keywords: 1) population (i.e., MSDs or CMDs), 2) study design (prospective), 3) modifiable factors, 4) outcomes of interest (i.e., RTW). Studies showing …

Trunk Postural Control During Unstable Sitting Among Individuals With And Without Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review With An Individual Participant Data Meta-Analysis, Mansour Abdullah Alshehri, Hosam Alzahrani, Wolbert Van Den Hoorn, David M. Klyne, Albert H. Vette, Brad D. Hendershot, Brad W.R. Roberts, Christian Larivière, David Barbado, Francisco J. Vera-Garcia, Jaap H. Van Dieen, Jacek Cholewicki, Maury A. Nussbaum, Michael L. Madigan, Norman Peter Reeves, Sheri P. Silfies, Stephen H.M. Brown, Paul W. Hodges

Revues de littérature, synthèses de connaissances

Introduction Sitting on an unstable surface is a common paradigm to investigate trunk postural control among individuals with low back pain (LBP), by minimizing the influence lower extremities on balance control. Outcomes of many small studies are inconsistent (e.g., some find differences between groups while others do not), potentially due to confounding factors such as age, sex, body mass index [BMI], or clinical presentations. We conducted a systematic review with an individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis to investigate whether trunk postural control differs between those with and without LBP, and whether the difference between groups is impacted by vision and …

Legalization, Medical Exemptions, And Decriminalization Of Marijuana Laws. An Exploratory Study Of Campus Police Officers’ Perceptions And Policing Practices In Response To New Marijuana Laws, Eric Kulberg

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is an exploratory study of how campus police officers perceive and respond to the changes in marijuana laws. It focuses on campus police departments in states that have passed marijuana laws that fit into one of three categories of laws: – the legalization of marijuana, a medical exception to the use of marijuana, and the decriminalization of marijuana for possession of small amounts. Because of its exploratory nature, this research focuses on campus police departments at each state’s flagship institutions that have passed legislation that fits into one of the three categories of laws. Lipsky’s theory of street-level …

An Exploration Of The Depictions Of Queerness In Yuri!!! On Ice, Kenneth Broughton

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the show Yuri!!! On Ice, specifically its portrayal of gay men. It 1) explores the themes present in the work, with a focus on the depiction of queerness as a transformative force, 2) examines the audience’s opinion of the work via content analysis, and 3) discusses the representation of queer people within the work. The representation of gay men in the show is discussed within the larger framework of Western media, and I also provide context from histories of queer representation in both America and Japan, review common trope usage (both within the story and in Western …

Extending The Prediction Of Fear Of Crime, Doreen Boateng

Theses

This study aims to expand what we know about fear of crime to reveal the different levels of fear among genders. Although there exists extensive research on the subject matter, the current work examines how different each gender perceives crime given the predictors as vulnerability, disorder and social integration. This study therefore addresses these gaps by assessing gender differences in crime fear and how these models separately influence each gender. To do that, crosstabulations and logistic regression analysis was used in analyzing the relationship between gender, perceptions of neighborhood disorder (street graffiti/litter), social integration (family ties), to determine the relationship …

Fetishized Portraits In Victorian Literature, Rachel Smith

Theses

No abstract provided.

Evidence Synthesis Methodology: Promoting Reproducible Methodology Through Modified Assignments, Laura Lipke, Neyda Gilman

Library Created Resources

Initially, systematic reviews in healthcare served to synthesize findings from clinical studies, aiding comprehensive access to the most effective treatments within evidence-based practice. Over time, their scope has broadened beyond treatment effectiveness, leading to a surge in publication. Consequently, many health science faculty now assign systematic reviews in classrooms without a full grasp of the standardized process, leaving students ill-equipped due to insufficient guidance and resources.

While mastering systematic review techniques is crucial for evidence-based practice, faculty can opt for modified assignments to foster a deeper understanding of the review process. These modified tasks, can be completed within a semester, …

Critical Reading Pedagogical Approaches To College Literature In A Post-Pandemic, Mckenzie London

Theses

This project uses a mixed methods approach to study the impact of COVID-19 on faculty and students in the English college classroom. Research indicates that COVID-19 correlates with changes in students’ academic performance, but there is a need for research concerning how to approach these changes in the English classroom through critical reading practices. “Critical reading” is complex to define and even more challenging to exemplify or illustrate. Critical reading practices are often the center of the college English classroom, but with changing technology and a cultural shift from COVID-19, students now approach critical reading differently. The purpose of this …

Cybersecurity Awareness And Risks Among Students, Staff & Faculty At The University Of North Alabama, Jerry Lwamba

Theses

As individuals and organizations become significantly connected to the internet, cybercriminals find an increasing number of ways to exploit their targets (Broadhurst, 2018). This study explores the world of cybersecurity awareness of risks associated with online activities within the University of North Alabama (UNA). This research aims to assess the level of cybersecurity awareness of risks university stakeholders face, and to also understand behaviors that expose them to cybercrime and emphasize the urge for comprehensive cybersecurity best practices. When cybercriminals employ tactics such as spam, phishing, or spear phishing in their attempts to break into network systems, distribute malware, or …