Digital Commons Network^™

2022-August-01-Etsu's Dr. Cerrone Foster Wins Distinguished Faculty Award In Teaching, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – Dr. Cerrone Foster, a scientist teaching at East Tennessee State University for more than a decade, has won the university’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching.  

It is the highest teaching honor that ETSU presents to a faculty member. 

“I have been nothing but inspired by Cerrone’s passion to contribute to the ETSU community, not only through her teaching but also through a diverse number of activities including research mentorship and community service,” wrote a fellow faculty member and Foster’s nominator.  

Foster earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from The College of New Jersey in 2001 and …

2022-August-01-Final Summer Heritage Day Is Saturday At Etsu's Carter Museum, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – The final summer Heritage Day event at East Tennessee State University’s Carter Railroad Museum will focus on the history of railroads in the American West.  

Visitors will enjoy replicas of specialized equipment that passed through some of America’s most dramatic scenery, including the Grand Canyon, Great Salt Lake, the Redwood forests and Yellowstone.

Event is Aug. 27

The “Way out West” event is Saturday, Aug. 27.

“The impact these railroads had on establishing a cohesive and united nation on our continent is what helped make America a great country,” said Geoff Stunkard, Heritage Day coordinator for the …

2022-August-01-More Students Choosing Etsu, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

East Tennessee State University welcomed more than 2,000 first-year students this week. New student enrollment at ETSU looks to be 9% higher than last year and 23% higher than in 2020, according to early enrollment data released by the university today. The ACT scores and high school GPAs of the entering class also have increased. Preliminary data show that the average ACT score for incoming students is 23, and the average high school GPA is 3.53.

“ETSU is increasingly being recognized as a destination school,” President Brian Noland said. “Students in the region —and well beyond —are coming to ETSU …

2022-August-01-Olive Named To Lcme, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – Dr. Kenneth E. Olive of East Tennessee State University has been selected to serve on the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) for the American Medical Association and Association of American Medical Colleges.

Olive, who will serve a three-year term, is a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and associate dean for accreditation compliance in ETSU’s Quillen College of Medicine.

Dr. Kenneth E. Olive

The LCME is the accrediting body for medical education programs leading to the M.D. degree in the United States and Canada. According to the organization’s website (lcme.org), the LCME is …

2022-August-01-Etsu's Dr. Kate Beatty Wins Distinguished Faculty Award In Research, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – Dr. Kate Beatty, a public health researcher whose work focuses on rural and Appalachian health and advancing health care for rural and low-income women, has won East Tennessee State University’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Research. 

It is the highest research honor that ETSU presents to a faculty member. 

A faculty member who wrote a letter in support of her nomination noted that Beatty’s work “is both practical and policy-relevant – critical attributes for meaningful research in the public health arena.”  

Beatty has been a member of the ETSU College of Public Health since 2014, where she is …

2022-August-01-Partnership Classes Offer Real-World Training At Etsu, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

He plants new shrubs and flowers, ensuring the vegetation gets the appropriate amount of water and sunlight. He cultivates newly planted trees, pruning and assessing the health of the saplings. He helps craft plans for a range of extreme weather events, including droughts and floods.  

 

East Tennessee State University’s Travis Watson is the campus arborist. He’s also a graduate student working toward a certificate in geospatial analysis. 

  

“Community projects are huge for me, and I get a lot of personal enjoyment from that,” said Watson, who recently graduated with a master’s degree in biology. “My graduate training at ETSU gave …

2022-August-01-Researchers Discover Extinct Bone-Crushing Dog At Etsu's Gray Fossil Site, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – Overseen by the Don Sundquist Center of Excellence in Paleontology at East Tennessee State University, researchers have studied the Gray Fossil Site for over 20 years, identifying many extinct animal and plant species. While large herbivores are well known from the site, large predators are relatively uncommon, so far including only alligators and scarce remains of at least one sabertooth cat. 

Now, there’s a new predator on the scene.  

A recent study published in the Journal of Paleontology describes a single right humerus (upper arm bone) of an animal named Borophagus, a member of an extinct …

2022-August-01-Pharmacy Technician Certification Course, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – A course to train pharmacy technicians is offered by East Tennessee State University’s Office of Professional Development from Sept. 6-Dec. 15.

This class, limited to 35 students, will train assistants to help pharmacists in handling medications and serving patients. Those who pass the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB) examination become nationally certified.

The course instructor is Cheryl Ollry, a pharmacy technician with the James H. Quillen Veterans Affairs Medical Center. She has over 15 years of experience in retail and hospital pharmacy.

Students will attend the live class that will meet on the ETSU campus in Sam …

2022-August-01-A Summer At Barter - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

ETSU’s Kailey Kyle recalls many summers when her mother would take her and her brother and sister to see one of the Barter Players shows at Barter Theatre.

“We would always do this before school started, and it became a tradition,” said Kailey, who hails from Coeburn, Virginia.

Kailey remembers the magic the actors created on stage. She could see the relationships and was impressed by the work of the performers. And she dreamed that one day she could be on that same stage.

This summer, Kailey’s journey came full circle as she returned to The Barter Players, but …

2022-August-01-Ix Who Shine - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

East Tennessee State University is home to a number of phenomenal faculty members, one of whom was recently recognized in a nationwide campaign. Last month, Gatorade launched “IX Who Shine” in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, a law passed in 1972 prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. In it, they highlight nine women who have made significant impacts in the world of sport, including ETSU’s Margaret “Meg” Stone, director of the Center of Excellence for Sport Science and Coach Education. 

Stone has held the women’s discus throw record for Great …

2022-August-01-Meet Etsu's Newest Officer - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Officer Samantha Delduca of East Tennessee State University’s Department of Public Safety says these words have been a powerful influence on her drive to prove herself and to serve her community. She wants others to understand the truth of those words as she does herself. Samantha Delduca

Officer Delduca came to ETSU in 2022 after a long and winding road. After graduating high school in 2010, Delduca earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Chaminade University of Honolulu, then a master’s degree in cybersecurity at George …

2022-August-01-Doctor Of Occupational Therapy Program - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

While most students are returning to campus this week for the start of the semester, 19 graduate students have been in class all summer making ETSU history as the inaugural class of the new Doctor of Occupational (OTD) Therapy Program. Savannah Yankee

The new cohort of OTD students arrived in May 2022 and recently completed their first round of classes in their journey to become occupational therapists. “Over the summer, we really came together as a group to navigate the program,” said Savannah Yankee, a member of the first OTD class. “The faculty has been amazing, guiding the way for …

2022-August-01-New Etsu Faculty Part 2 - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Dr. Amanda Slaten Frasier

Assistant Professor

Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Clemmer College 

What are you looking forward to the most about being an ETSU faculty member?

I am most excited to engage in research and develop new collaborations.

Where were you most recently working?

I have actually spent the last two years teaching high school at University School on campus. So I have been a part of the ETSU community for a while, but I am transitioning into a new role. Prior to coming to ETSU, I was an assistant professor in the teacher preparation program at Michigan State …

2022-August-01-Outfitting The Cutestbucs - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

East Tennessee State University and Ballad Health announced a new partnership that aims to create a foundation for the success of all children and their families across the Appalachian Highlands called Buccaneer Building Blocks.

Treasured milestones like a baby’s first steps, a sweet smile, or first words are among the moments families forever cherish as their children quickly grow. ETSU and Ballad Health are helping families mark some of those developmental milestones while providing key resources about early childhood education, lifelong learning, and college access planning.

Beginning this month, families of all newborn babies delivered at Ballad Health facilities in …

2022-August-01-Meet Our New Etsu Faculty -Part 3 - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Dr. Bernita Armstrong

Assistant Professor

Department of Graduate Programs
College of Nursing

What are you looking forward to the most about being an ETSU faculty member?

I have worked for 13 years as an adjunct faculty in College of Nursing. Changing roles from adjunct to full-time faculty, I look forward to working with the graduate faculty and leadership team to continue promoting the latest best practices and provide intense and varied student-experiences, so our students feel confident when they change roles from students to practicing professionals.      

Where were you working most recently?

I worked for the Veterans Health Administration as …

2022-August-01-Restoring The Past - Bucwire, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

For more than 100 years, the Hindman Settlement School in Eastern Kentucky has sought to provide education and service opportunities for the people of its mountainous region. Unfortunately, the recent devastating floods in Kentucky threatened to erase important items that are part of the organization’s rich history.

When documents and photos from Hindman were damaged, faculty from ETSU who have connections with the Kentucky school reached out to the Archives of Appalachia to see if there was anything the center could do to assist with restoring and preserving these items.

So, a dedicated team of staff and volunteers came to …

Data-Driven Distributed Modeling, Operation, And Control Of Electric Power Distribution Systems, Hasala Dharmawardena

All Dissertations

The power distribution system is disorderly in design and implementation, chaotic in operation, large in scale, and complex in every way possible. Therefore, modeling, operating, and controlling the distribution system is incredibly challenging. It is required to find solutions to the multitude of challenges facing the distribution grid to transition towards a just and sustainable energy future for our society. The key to addressing distribution system challenges lies in unlocking the full potential of the distribution grid. The work in this dissertation is focused on finding methods to operate the distribution system in a reliable, cost-effective, and just manner.

In …

Association Of Psychosocial Adversity And Social Information Processing In Children Raised In A Low-Resource Setting: An Fnirs Study, Laura Pirazzoli, Eileen Sullivan, Wanze Xie, John E. Richards, Chiara Bulgarelli, Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Talat Shama, Shahria H. Kakon, Rashidul Haque, William A. Petri Jr., Charles A. Nelson Iii

Faculty Publications

Social cognition skills and socioemotional development are compromised in children growing up in low SES contexts, however, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unknown. Exposure to psychosocial risk factors early in life alters the child’s social milieu and in turn, could lead to atypical processing of social stimuli. In this study, we used functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure cortical responses to a social discrimination task in children raised in a low-resource setting at 6, 24, and 36 months. In addition, we assessed the relation between cortical responses to social and non-social information with psychosocial risk factors assessed using …

Association Of Caregiver Attitudes With Adolescent Hpv Vaccination In 13 Southern Us States, Lavanya Vasudevan, Jan Ostermann Ph.D., Yunfei Wang, Sayward Harrison, Valerie Yelverton, Laura J. Fish, Charnetta Williams, Emmanuel B. Walter

Faculty Publications

Background and objectives: HPV vaccination coverage is lower than that of other adolescent vaccines in the southern US. This study sought to characterize caregiver attitudes associated with adolescent HPV vaccination in the southern US and to inform interventions to promote HPV vaccination. Methods: From December 2019 – January 2020, caregivers of adolescents (ages 9–17 years) living in thir- teen southern US states were recruited from a nationally-representative online survey panel. Caregivers (N = 1,105) completed a cross-sectional survey that assessed general adolescent vaccine attitudes as well as those associated with the HPV vaccine and HPV vaccination decision-making. The primary study …

2022 Visiting Scholar Reflection: Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada

Marian Fellowships and Other Sponsored Research in the Marian Library

Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, an assistant professor of religion at Kalamazoo College and editor of the journal Material Religion, received the Marian Library Visiting Scholar Fellowship for the project “Reinventing the Rosary: Innovation and Catholic Prayer.”

The rosary has been a fixture of Catholic prayer life for centuries, Maldonado-Estrada says. Its most familiar form — a string of grouped beads with a separate strand ending in a crucifix, is familiar to the point of being iconic. But according to Maldonado-Estrada, the design of the rosary isn’t locked in. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the rosary has undergone marked transformations that appeal …

Intrapersonal And Interpersonal Predictors Of Hope In Adolescents, Megan M. B. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Hope is a variable that is defined in research as a positive outlook on one's future and a plan to achieve that future. Hope has been found to be positively correlated with self-esteem, optimism, and life satisfaction, and negatively correlated with suicide ideation and suicidality. However, there is a lack of research on predictors of hope in adolescents. Adolescents compose the age group that could arguably use the goal-oriented and positive outlook that hope provides the most. This study identified predictors of hope (i.e., depression, maternal and paternal support) in adolescents so as to know how society can give adolescents …

Vector-Valued Mock Theta Functions, Clayton Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Ramanujan introduced his now celebrated mock theta functions in 1920, grouping them into families parameterized by an integer called the order. In 2010 Bringmann and Ono discovered generalizations of Ramanujan's mock theta functions for any order relatively prime to 6; this result was later strengthened by Garvan in 2016. It was also shown that by adding suitable nonholomorphic completion terms to the mock theta functions the family of mock theta functions corresponding to a given order constitute a complex vector space which is closed under the action of the modular group. We strengthen the Bringmann, Ono, and Garvan result by …

Variational And Covariational Reasoning Of Students With Disabilities, Lauren Rigby

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematics education reform has led to more conceptually focused instruction in the classroom. Yet, students with disabilities are receiving fewer chances than other students to engage in meaningful mathematics. Furthermore, a research divide between mathematics education and special education in mathematics has led to significant gaps in research on the individual and conceptual understanding of students with disabilities. Through task-based interviews and classroom observations, this study begins the process of closing this research gap through an examination of students' understanding of variational and covariational reasoning. Data suggest that the participants, two students with disabilities, increased their conceptual understanding in a …

How A Racial Minority Status Impacts The Feeling Of Safety In Therapy, Bayleigh Serage

Theses and Dissertations

With the lack of adequate mental health care in racial minority communities (NAMI, 2021), more research is needed for clinicians to understand the racial minority client experience. This study aimed to explore the racial minority client's perception of safety during therapy. The MFT- PRN was utilized in order to assess safety for racial minority clients at the start of therapy and later on as the alliance changes. The study hypothesized that racial minority clients would initially report a lower feeling of safety in therapy and would show lower feelings of safety after four sessions of therapy when compared to demographic …

Using Machine Learning To Classify Volleyball Jumps, Miki Jauhiainen

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, inertial measurement units (IMUs) were used to train a random forest classifier to correctly classify different jump types in volleyball. Athlete motion data were collected in a controlled setting using three IMUs, one on the waist and one on each ankle. There were 11 participants who at the time played volleyball at the collegiate level in the United States, seven male and four female. Each performed the same number of jumps across the eight jump types--five BASIC jumps and three each of the other seven--resulting in 26 jumps per subject for a total of 286. The data …

Impact Of Spray Coating On The Performance Of Hydrophobic Membranes, Dominick J. Maiorano, Hamid Fattahijuybari, David Warsinger

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

Membrane distillation (MD) is a rapidly emerging water treatment technology used to combat the global water crisis. Membrane pore wetting is a primary barrier to widespread industrial use of MD. The primary causes of membrane wetting are membrane fouling and an exceedance of liquid entry pressure. The development of different types of polymer membranes and the use of pretreatment have led to significant movement towards the prevention of wetting in MD. We sought to take a new approach to combat membrane wetting that involves coating these membranes with hydrophilic chemical compounds, which consequently would decrease their air permeability. Pulling data …

Uhsp Staff Handbook August 2022

Handbooks

No abstract provided.

Age-Based Comparison Of The Motivations, Self-Efficacy, And Quality Of Life In Bariatric Surgery Candidates, Sheena K. Bling

Master's Theses

Overweight and obesity is a worldwide epidemic that is negatively impacting individuals’ health and quality of life. Much research has been conducted regarding the effects of diet and exercise for weight loss, with current research providing evidence in favor of bariatric surgery for severely obese adults and children. The purpose of this project is to understand participants motivating factors, anticipated post-surgery success and anticipated changes in physical, social and mental health. The objectives were to describe participants’ motivations for pursuing bariatric surgery, describe participants level of confidence with postsurgical diet implementation, and compare participants anticipated post-surgery changes in quality of …

Evaluating The Performance And External Validity Of Machine Learning-Based Prediction Models In Liver Transplantation: An International Study, Tommy Ivanics, D. So, M. Claasen, D. Wallace, M. Patel, A. Gravely, K. Walker, T. Cowling, L. Erdman, G. Sapisochin

Surgery Meeting Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Forest Carbon Incentive Programs For Non-Industrial Private Forests In Oregon (Usa): Impacts Of Program Design On Willingness To Enroll And Landscape-Scale Program Outcomes, Rose A. Graves, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Ryan D. Haugo, Andres Holz

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Privately-owned forests in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) are important potential carbon sinks and play a large role in carbon sequestration and storage. Non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners constitute a substantial portion of overall forest landownership in productive regions of the PNW; however, little is known about their preferences for non-market incentive programs aimed at increased carbon storage and sequestration, specifically by limiting timber harvest, and how those preferences might impact the outcome of forest carbon programs. We simulated landscape-scale outcomes of hypothetical forest carbon incentive programs in western Oregon (USA) by combining empirical models of NIPF owners' participation with spatially …