Other English Language and Literature Commons^™

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

Evaluating The Influence Of Some Factors On Capability Maturity Model Integration For Development (Cmmi-Dev) Maturity Level, Sakawa Ogega

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Capability Maturity Model Integration for Development (CMMI-DEV) is a collection of characteristics of effective processes that guide improving an organization's operations and ability to manage software projects' development. The CMMI-DEV maturity levels range from 1 to 5 for the staged model; however, there are no certifications for maturity level 1. Organizations appraised may seek higher CMMI-DEV maturity levels. Most clients will seek to do business with organizations with at least CMMI Maturity Level 3 certification. This research aimed to find if software development methodology (SDM), CMMI training, and other process improvement (OPI) standards affect CMMI maturity level rating. The dependent …

A Holistic Approach To Creating Cultures Of Quality Excellence Within Higher Education Institutions In North Carolina, Natalie Aman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper first seeks to identify cultural factors of faculty, staff, and students within Higher Education Intuitions (HEI) and then understand how those factors affect the individual as well as the overall larger population of all studied groups to create cultures of quality excellence. Secondary data collected from government databases was used for the research. The independent variables included cultural factors for each stakeholder and the dependent variables included satisfaction levels of each stakeholder. Faculty and staff independent cultural variables included Performance Management, Supervisor/Department Chair Effectiveness, Communication & Collaboration, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging, and Mission and Pride. The dependent variable …

Adopting Open-Source Methodology For Improving Business Processes And Public Trust, Lawrence Bosek

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Technology and the Internet have given rise to the availability of information at our fingertips. While the public, particularly consumers, are more commonly described as being the leading users and beneficiaries of electronic information services, businesses and governments are also players in the same information technology resource arena. Technology is also being integrated more in our everyday lives. Important information can now be easily stored on Internet websites for the public, businesses, and other governmental offices to search and peruse when needed. The Internet has also allowed for electronic devices to connect and communicate with each other in ways that …

The Relationship Between Principal Perceptions On Leadership And Inclusive Education With Growth Model Outcomes For Students With Disabilities, Jason Bletzinger

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Now more than ever, school principals play a critical role in effective implementation of inclusive education programs in their schools, as inclusive practices are becoming tightly embedded in a school’s culture (Sailor, 2016; Shogren et al., 2015). The success of inclusive education programs has been primarily supported by school principals’ positive attitudes toward inclusion (Romanuck Murphy, 2018; Urton et al., 2014). With increasing pressure to provide legally compliant and quality inclusive special education services in schools, it has become more critical than ever that school principals not only recognize the roles and responsibilities they play in leading inclusive education programs …

Exploring Multiliteracies And Other Approaches To Second Language Teaching, Saralee Dunster

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This teaching portfolio offers a selection from the author’s graduate coursework, teaching experience, and research undertaken while enrolled in the Utah State University Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program. The documents included are a reflection of her pedagogical approach and teaching practice, developed through varying contexts of professional experiences, including teaching English and French as a second language. This portfolio includes: reflections on the author’s teaching environment, a teaching philosophy statement, a professional development peer observation, a reflection paper that demonstrates the author’s experiences teaching with stories within the context of the multiliteracies framework, specifically multimodal fairy tales with …

Leveraging Data Analytics To Study The Impacts Of State Budget Cuts On Public Higher Education Institutions In The United States, Praveen Kumar Guraja

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public higher education in the United States (US) is funded through two primary forms: one is through state higher education appropriation funds, and the other is student financial aid that is directly given to students. Increasing postsecondary full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment and graduation rate are becoming a crucial economic priority in the US. However, only a limited study is available about whether state investment in higher education and increasing tuition charges can impact FTE student enrollment (FTEE) and graduation rate (GR) at 4-year public universities in the US. A systematic literature review was conducted for the present research to comprehend …

Women’S Acts Of Childbirth And Conquest In English Historical Writing, Emma O. Bérat

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay explores how female characters in historical literature written in high to late medieval England shape land claims, political history, and genealogy through their acts of childbirth. Recent scholarship has shown how medieval writers frequently imagined virginal female bodies – religious and secular – in relation to land claim, but less work exists on how they also used the non-virginal bodies of mothers and vivid descriptions of childbirth to assert rights to land and lineage. This essay examines three birth stories associated with conquest or claims to contested lands from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, William of …

A Static Code Analysis And Pattern Recognition Algorithm-Driven, Quantitative, Mathematical Model-Oriented Risk Assessment Framework Of Cloud-Based Health Information Applications, Dennis B. Park

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to a survey, the healthcare industry is one of the least cloud-adopting industries. The low adoption reflects the healthcare industry's ongoing concerns about the security of the cloud. Business applications, according to another survey, are among the most vulnerable components of business information systems. Many risk assessment frameworks available today, particularly for health information applications, require significant customization before they can be used. This study created a new framework to assess cloud risks specifically for their health information applications, utilizing data-driven risk assessment methodologies to avoid surveys, interviews, and meetings for data collection. For the feasibility study, the open-source …

Critical Success Factors For Implementing Blockchain In The Supply Chain For Product Traceability, Gary Lee

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Satashi Nakamoto’s introduction of blockchain in 2008 initially directed the technology for the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (Nakamoto, 2008). In recent years the technology has been identified for other use cases. Businesses are currently developing this technology to reduce or eliminate transactional costs. Along with this anticipated use, businesses are using this technology to include traceability across the supply chain. This research looks at implementing blockchain technology in supply chain traceability. Clohessy (2019) identified critical success factors for implementing blockchain, but what is not existing in the literature are the relative importance of each factor for implementation of …

Setting The Stage: The Phantom Of The Opera And Gothic Space, Zitaanne Reno

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

First published from 1909 to 1910, Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of Erik, the titular deformed composer, and his dark love for a beautiful soprano. Similar to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, another French story involving a deformed man in love with a beautiful woman, the setting is a crucial aspect of the novel. Examining the Palais Garnier, a labyrinthine building composed of staircases, passageways, trapdoors, and a subterranean lake, in conjunction with Notre Dame, a cathedral utilizing traditionally gothic architecture, reveals how the opera house functions as a gothic space. Rather …

An Experiential Analysis Of Job Site Safety: Delineating Between Positive Safety Culture And Excessive Safety, Steven Tighe

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In general industry and in construction many safety requirements are mandated on job sites and in facilities. Many requirements move past simple compliance and enter the realm of cultural safety. This high level of cultural safety is what is typically the level most safety professionals strive for in any company. The balance is tipped to excessive when we move past the cultural safety into redundant or multi layers of requirements that affect production rates and have no actual value to safety but have the appearance of safety. This research looked into a large construction project that had multiple layers of …

A Quantitative Study Of Transformational Leadership And Safety Incidence In A Unionized Public Utility, Ronald D. Schoff

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Worker Safety is an area of high focus. Costs and impacts associated with incidents of workplace injury or fatality can have powerful effects on the organization. Workplace leadership style studies have shown statistically significant relationships between leadership style and rates of OSHA incidence and severity. One such example is transformational leadership. Studies have been completed in various industries, including high hazard industries that confirm this positive relationship. Organized labor offers many benefits of value to the employment sector. Such benefits as higher wages and better workplace safety practices contribute to society in economic and health related ways, among others. Transformational …

Technology Attributes, Organizational Learning Attributes, Service Attributes, And Electronic Health Record Implementation Success, Anuradha Rangarajan

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a technology innovation which has the potential to offer valuable benefits to the healthcare industry such as improved quality of patient care and safety, optimization of healthcare workflow processes and availability of electronic data for clinical research. The implementation success of EHR is therefore significant to the healthcare industry in the United States and around the world. Prior studies in research literature have considered the impact of technology attributes, organizational learning attributes, and service attributes on information technology implementations in various other domains based on theories such as Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), Theory of …

Managing The Wear Of Heavy Construction Equipment Steel Track Undercarriage By Soil Sand Content, Frederick Ashburn Rich

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heavy construction equipment owners and managers have few predictive tools that can estimate wear rate of undercarriage track propulsion systems working in various soil types and changing operational conditions. Managing the timely maintenance of these track systems is critical for they represent over half of the non-fuel operating cost of the equipment fleet. Understanding the major influencing factors that impact undercarriage system wear rate can help determine the most economical time to stop a machine for track maintenance thus positively impacting the equipment’s return on investment (ROI). This research analyzed the population of track type dozers in the eastern half …

A Qualitative Study Of Information Technology Project Portfolio Management In Higher Education, L. Andy Miller

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was conducted to understand the variables, processes, organizational structures, and governance structures that are important and/or that support higher education decision makers in their selection and prioritization of information technology (IT) projects into their universities’ portfolios. IT project portfolio management (PPM) is comprised of many different activities, and the selection and prioritization of projects are just two interconnected activities amongst many. Research has suggested that these PPM activities are both important and beneficial; but there is a dearth of research on the subject specifically within higher education IT environments, and some higher education organizations struggle in this area. …

A Socioeconomic Analysis Of Francophone And Anglophone West Africa, Jackson Gagne

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project seeks to examine and analyze the socioeconomic performances of four West-African countries; two from Francophone (French-speaking) West Africa and two from Anglophone (English-speaking) West Africa. It will tackle questions such as:

• What is the current socioeconomic condition of countries in this region?
• Which country is most suitable for investment?
• Is there a marked difference between the Francophone and Anglophone countries of West Africa?

And many more.

The Scientific Romances Of Jules Verne And H.G. Wells: Imperialism Disguised As Progress In The Early Days Of Science Fiction, Timothy Ferris

Theses and Dissertations

Frequently in their respective oeuvres, Verne and Wells write in a rhetoric of conquest that almost always translates to discovering a more efficient means of taming wild, non-European environments. These goals extend not only to the lands that their protagonists explore, but also to human beings and other life that may populate them. Indeed, the underlying focus—the one that is masked behind the thrill and adventure of both Wells and Verne—is none other than the march of progress as understood by middle-class Europeans in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Progress can produce positivistic optimism, and it can also …

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

An Analysis Of Operator Eye Behavior When Monitoring Simulated, Petrochemical Manufacturing, Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition Alerts And Warnings With Background Noise, Angela Huenerfauth

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are a number of potential distractions for operators when viewing plant status-monitoring information in a petrochemical plant: background noises of other employees speaking, sounds of manufacturing equipment and processes and other ambient noises like HVAC and building operation noise. When the monitoring equipment for a chemical or petrochemical plant is not designed to take into account that operators can be distracted by this noise, there is a potential safety hazard for the people in that work environment. Alarms can be missed and fundamental information can be overlooked. SCADA is “a type of control system that collects and displays data …

The Implementation Of A Systematic Method For Identifying The Root Causes Of Manufacturing Negative Process Yield In A North American Fastener Manufacturing Facility, Bradley J. Venable

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Negative process yield is an unexplained expense that does have a significant impact on profits. As like most other manufacturing processes, there are multiple processing operations that a finished good can be exposed to during the course of the entire process. Negative process yield can occur during these known operations but without accurate reporting and data collection, it becomes a moot point. In order to investigate this unexplainable phenomena properly, understanding of what could possibly cause this from occurring must be achieved. In the case of the North American fastener manufacturing plant, missing pieces that are not accounted for through …

Why Study Language? Discussing Language And Its Influence On Gender Discrimination, Katelyn Eisenmann

Honors Projects

An applied research project, with the culminating piece being a panel discussion that focused on the ways in which language use and structure contribute to attitudes and perceptions of gender within our society, and the politics that surround concepts of gender.

Identifying Problems And Solutions In Changing State Legislation Regarding Licensed Clinical Social Workers Providing Private Independent Mental Health Services, Dianna Cooper-Bolinskey

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

State regulated social work practice began in the 1960s; by the mid-1990s, all of the states within the United States regulated the profession through licensure. The purpose of licensure was ostensibly to protect the public and the profession; however, legislation defining social work practice varied vastly from state to state. The variation existed not only between states, but also within licensure categories with regard to the scope of practice of the social work profession. Licensed clinical social workers in some states could practice relatively independently, as they had the ability to diagnose, provide psychotherapy, and bill Medicaid, Medicare, and third …

Operationalizing Humility: A Model Of Situational Humility For Christian College Student Leaders, Scott T. Barrett

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research study explored how college student leaders operationalize humility in their actions and what leads individuals to act with situational humility. There is a rise in narcissistic tendencies in college students (Twenge, Konrath, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008a, 2008b) and a decline in overall character traits (Burns, 2012; Hunter, 2000; Liddell & Cooper, 2012). Opposite the vice of narcissism sits the virtue of humility (Emmons, 2000; Exline & Geyer, 2004; Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Tangney, 2000). Using a grounded theory approach, the researcher looked to discover the process of humility development. Twenty six in depth interviews were conducted at three …

Adult Learning And The Effect Of Education And Gender Interaction On Type 2 Diabetics, Abdi H. Nur

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed methods research study was to investigate whether the relationships between education and medication and healthy exercise adherence were the same among female and male Type 2 diabetic adult learners. The purpose included also exploring whether registered nurses would alter their approach to diabetic adult learners’ education on medication and healthy exercise adherence considering patients’ gender and education levels. The study also investigated the correlation between diabetes duration and medication and healthy exercise adherence. The research investigation employed mixed methods sequential explanatory design using qualitative data to help explain the quantitative findings. The quantitative study was …

A Study Of The Material Inspection Record And Quality Systems: A Case In The United States Department Of The Navy, Larry W. Brown Jr.

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Defective products and services are a part of every industry, sector, and organization. Minimization of those defects is essential for business success. The later those defects are found, the more they cost the business and consumer. This study investigated the impact having an accredited Quality Management System (QMS) had on the acceptance of delivered product. The study focused on the products delivered to the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) organizations. This study investigated the statistical significance between the means of the groups within size and number of accreditation. The dependent variables were Material Inspection …

I Am Commanded To Love You: The Journey Of Three Women College Presidents, Carey Monroe

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This was a phenomenological study of the lived experiences of women who serve as college presidents. Three women, who serve as current college presidents, participated in this study. The first was a president at a two-year community college in the upper Midwest for twelve years and served as president in another Midwestern community college for nine years prior. The second woman was a first-time president who had served for three years at a Catholic four-year college established to provide nurses for a health system. The third was a first-time president who served at a Research I institution in the upper …

Teacher Evaluations: Do Classroom Observations And Evaluator Training Really Matter?, Sarah J. Pies

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine if the minimum number of observations stated in a district’s teacher evaluation plan, observation characteristics described in a district’s evaluation plan, and the characteristic of those evaluating teachers had an impact on whether a school would receive a bonus or penalty point for Indiana’s A-F accountability model. This study analyzed both math and English/language arts bonus and penalty points for all schools whose district has been implementing the new mandated teacher evaluation plan since the 2012-2013 school year. This included 3,997 schools within 215 districts in Indiana. Overall, when predicting whether a …

Trends In Naep Scores Among 17-Year-Old Students In The Era Of Accountability, Katherine Kyler

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Education has undergone a sweeping renovation throughout the last several decades as part of the school accountability movement aimed to increase student success. High school graduation rates are the highest they have been in decades. School accountability measures continue to be implemented and modified with a goal of increasing student success and closing the achievement gap (Maleyko & Gawlik, 2011). Accountability measures are in place that require data analysis and reporting of information such as graduation rates and standardized test scores (No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB], 2008). While it is important to hold schools accountable, many of the currently …

An Exploration Of Job Satisfaction Levels, Pathways Into Education, And Recruiting Behaviors Of Teachers In Indiana, Tricia Johnson

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Teacher retention and recruitment has been studied from many different perspectives, but there is limited research on the issue from the perspectives of current teachers. The purpose of this quantitative study was to gather data to fill a gap in the research concerning teacher recruiting behaviors by asking teachers if they were likely to encourage different categories of people (friend or relative, community member, current student, other students, recent high school graduate, and their own child) to enter the field of education as a profession. Analysis of the data from 2,083 current Indiana teachers found multiple statistically significant differences in …