Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

“Implacement”: The Importance Of Place And Community In Schooling, Emily Coady

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three chapters exploring my overarching research question: How does sense of place shape a teacher’s orientation to their profession? My first chapter empirically answers the question: Is there a relationship between place attachment and measured aspects of teacher quality? In an attempt to qualify the strength of bond between a teacher and his or her community, I adapted a place attachment instrument developed by Raymond, Brown, and Weber (2010). Each teacher is given a place attachment score informed by their responses on the 21-item survey. Next, I correlated these scores to other aspects of teacher quality …

The Hard Work Is Worth It: Overcoming Unfavorable Determinants To Pass Pro-Immigrant Education Policy In A Conservative State Legislature, Megan Cardwell Godfrey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Immigrants, English learners (ELs), and culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD)students often lag behind their White, monolingual peers in academic achievement and English language proficiency. While there are policy solutions to improve academic and linguistic opportunities and outcomes for immigrant/EL/CLD students, such as implementing bilingual instructional models and increasing teacher diversity, these pro-immigrant policies can be hard to come by in some legislative contexts due to unfavorable economic, social, or political determinants. This qualitative case study analyzed the multifaceted political work that contributed to the passage of two pro-immigrant education policies in the Arkansas 93rd General Assembly: a bill for bilingual …

Law Enforcement Policy And Personnel Responses To Terrorism: Do Prior Attacks Predict Current Preparedness?, Bryce Kirk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Terrorism has been on the mind of the American people and politicians alike since the 9/11 attacks over two decades ago. In the years since, there has been a massive shift in law enforcement priorities from community-oriented policing (COP) to homeland security-oriented policing. This was especially evident in the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001, which was established to aid law enforcement entities with terrorism preparedness. While prior literature has addressed a variety of factors that have contributed to terrorism preparedness, very little research has …

Economic Experiments On Group Identity And Bias, Nathaniel Christopher Burke

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Experiments in economics have been a valuable tool to understand the behavioral implications of incentives on the decision-making process. Particularly, aspects of decision making that cannot be observed in empirical data can be better isolated in an experimental setting such as bias and identity impacts. This dissertation uses three distinct experiments to further the understanding of individual biases, perceptions, and identity and how they impact the way people defer to these internal traits under incentives. This dissertation looks at how well individuals can make inferences about polling data that was collected from individuals susceptible to socially desirable responding. It also …

Energy Balances, Thermal Performance, And Heat Stress: Disentangling Occupant Behaviour And Weather Influences In A Dutch Net-Zero Energy Neighborhood, Hussain Kazmi, Merel Keijsers, Fahad Mehmood, Clayton Miller

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Decarbonizing the building stock is a central component of global climate change mitigation efforts. In practice, this decarbonization can be achieved by a variety of different measures, including improvements in building energy efficiency, electrification of energy demand to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and installation of distributed (renewable) generation in conjunction with flexible storage. However, these large-scale, often disruptive changes to the built environment also raise a number of concerns, such as loss of occupant comfort exacerbated by climate change, and introduction of additional stressors on the distribution grid. In this paper, we demonstrate several conclusions using detailed sub-hourly data …

Sentiment Analysis Of Weather-Related Tweets From Cities Within Hot Climates, Yuliya Dzyuban, Graces N. Y. Ching, Sin Kang Yik, Adrian J. Tan, Peter J. Crank, Shreya Banerjee, Rachel Xin Yi Pek, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Evidence exists that exposure to weather hazards, particularly in cities subject to heat island and climate change impacts, strongly affects individuals’ physical and mental health. Personal exposure to and sentiments about warm conditions can currently be expressed on social media, and recent research noted that the geotagged, time-stamped, and accessible social media databases can potentially be indicative of the public mood and health for a region. This study attempts to understand the relationships between weather and social media sentiments via Twitter and weather data from 2012 to 2019 for two cities in hot climates: Singapore and Phoenix, Arizona. We first …

Addressing Work-Related Traumatic Stress Nebraska - Needs Assessment Summary, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

Exploration of Needs

The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD) worked with the Nebraska Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to conduct a needs assessment. The team leveraged: (1) administrative data, primarily from the Nebraska Department of Children and Family Services’ Human Resource department (DCFS-HR); (2) formal surveys of child welfare staff and supervisors; (3) QIC-WD team expertise; and (4) subjective perceptions and expertise from the Nebraska Workforce Project Team members.

DCFS-HR data included metrics and processes related to recruitment, hiring, and retention; culture and climate; and other workforce processes and initiatives, such as onboarding, mentoring, supervision, …

Competition And Third-Party Platform-Integration In Ride-Sourcing Markets, Yaqian Zhou, Hai Yang, Jintao Ke, Hai Wang, Xinwei Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Recently, some third-party integrators attempt to integrate the ride services offered by multiple independent ride-sourcing platforms. Accordingly, passengers can request ride through the integrators and receive ride service from any one of the ride-sourcing platforms. This novel business model, termed as third-party platform-integration in this work, has potentials to alleviate market fragmentation cost resulting from demand splitting among multiple platforms. Although most existing studies focus on operation strategies for one single monopolist platform, much less is known about the competition and platform-integration and their implications on operation strategy and system efficiency. In this work, we propose mathematical models to describe …

Managing The Phaseout Of Coal Power: A Comparison Of Power Decarbonization Pathways In Jilin Province, Weirong Zhang, Zhixu Meng, Jiongjun Yang, Yan Song, Yiou Zhou, Changhong Zhao, Jiahai Yuan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the periodic goals of reaching carbon emission peak before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060 (“dual carbon” goals), China shows its unprecedented determination to coal power phaseout. This research takes Jilin Province to showcase possible pathways of coal power units’ phaseout on provincial level. We set up four different coal power phaseout scenarios, under which their transition cost and effectiveness would be calculated, respectively. In terms of natural resource endowment and electricity demand, Jilin Province would achieve a complete coal power phaseout by 2045 or even by 2040. However, after assessing the effectiveness of power transition under the …

Nonprofits As Socially Responsible Actors: Neoliberalism, Institutional Structures, And Empowerment In The United Nations Global Compact, Alwyn Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations have become prominent participants in a global organizational responsibility movement. This trend of nonprofit responsibility is puzzling because nonprofits are presumably already dedicated to the pursuit of collective well-being objectives. This article examines the nonprofit responsibility movement from a cultural perspective, whereby broader cultural changes at the level of international organizations have constructed nonprofit entities as empowered and socially responsible actors. Using the case of the United Nations Global Compact, a global framework for corporate social responsibility, the author shows how (1) the construction of cultural meanings of autonomy and decentralization in the neoliberal context, (2) …

Memorial Craze: How War Memorials Have Been Changed By War, Jillian Bass

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that memorials constructed after 9/11 were designed specifically in a way that privileged and focused on the dead individually. By taking a look at memorials throughout American history, the study of memorialization sets up the stage for the way the lives of ordinary people have been memorialized throughout history. 9/11 is one of the most memorable days in the history of the world in the 21st century. However, the academic world has generally ignored the study of war memorials throughout American history as a subset of memorials. Chronicling memorials from the Civil War period to present …

The Sanctuary Campus: Establishing Safe Spaces Of Higher Education For Undocumented And Daca-Status Students, Lizbet Martinez-Port

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

The election of President Donald Trump in 2016 brought fear to undocumented and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) status students on campuses across the United States. In his campaign, Trump detailed his desire to get rid of the Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Various institutions of higher education created resources, put in place sanctuary policies, and even declared themselves as sanctuary campuses to fight against the challenges that hindered undocumented and DACA students from achieving a higher education. This paper focuses on the policies at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, two private Catholic …

On The Same Page: Student Government And The University Administrative Agenda Alignment, James Michael Diloreto-Hill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within institutions of higher education, shared governance is an essential component to a healthy functionality. Among the many stakeholders at these institutions, students are the largest in number and hold primacy. Participation in student governance establishes a sense of shared ownership over their communities while also providing a unique avenue for students to gain wisdom and develop critical skill sets. Senior administrators at these institutions have many inherent challenges due to an organization that is largely decentralized and autonomous (Duderstadt, 2007). Regarding agenda setting, the Garbage Can Model (Cohen et al., 1972) was utilized as a theoretical framework. The purpose …

Helping Our Heroes: An Evaluation Of Mental Health And Organizational Policies Surrounding Suicide Prevention And Postvention Strategies For Nebraska First Responders, Maria S. Mickles

Capstone Experience: Master of Public Health

Suicide is ranked as one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Over 40,000 individuals die by suicide each year (Stanley, Hom, & Joiner, 2016; Vigil et al, 2021), and, in 2020, it was ranked in the top 9 causes of death for all ages (10-64), and second for those 10-14 and 25-34 years of age (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). These statistics disproportionately reflect first responders (i.e., firefighters, dispatchers, law enforcement, EMS, paramedics, etc.), as they die by suicide more than the general public (National EMS Management Association, 2016). Within their line of work …

Child Exit Types And Permanency Outcomes In Foster Care As Correlated To Casa Involvement, Grace Elizabeth Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study sought to identify correlations between Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) activities and exit outcomes for children in foster care. Previous research on the impact of CASA has been inconclusive and offered mixed findings, so this study sought to build off of previous research while also exploring new areas of research that have not yet been investigated. Big Country CASA’s database, Optima, was utilized to retrieve data on cases that closed during the 2021 fiscal year (September 1, 2020, to August 31, 2021). This yielded a sample size of 75 cases. Through an analysis of these cases to test …

Nurses Leading In Bridging The Culture Gap: Communicating With The Deaf Community, Veronica C. Leftridge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nurses provide patient care in clinics, hospitals, homes, churches, schools, communities, and military, as well as on emergency medical helicopters. When a nurse is assigned to care for a patient, the patient expects the nurse to be culturally competent, communicate effectively, and provide safe quality care. However, cultural incompetence is observed when nurses provide care for Deaf patients, but they are unfamiliar with Deaf culture. In addition, communication is a fundamental skill nurses learn in nursing school, but course content in nursing programs rarely touches on how to communicate effectively with Deaf patients. Of the approximately 325 million people in …

Limitations Of Machine Learning For Building Energy Prediction: Ashrae Great Energy Predictor Iii Kaggle Competition Error Analysis, Clayton Miller, Bianca Picchetti, Chun Fu, Jovan Pantelic

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Research is needed to explore the limitations and potential for improvement of machine learning for building energy prediction. With this aim, the ASHRAE Great Energy Predictor III (GEPIII) Kaggle competition was launched in 2019. This effort was the largest building energy meter machine learning competition of its kind, with 4370 participants who submitted 39,403 predictions. The test dataset included two years of hourly whole building readings from 2380 meters in 1448 buildings at 16 locations. This paper analyzes the various sources and types of residual model error from an aggregation of the competition’s top 50 solutions. This analysis reveals the …

Characterization Of Folic Acid, 5-Methyltetrahydrofolate And Synthetic Folinic Acid In The High-Affinity Folate Transporters: Impact On Pregnancy And Development, Ana M. Palacios, Rachel A. Feiner, Robert M. Cabrera

Health Policy & Community Health: Faculty Publications

Objectives:

Folates are B vitamins that are essential for several molecular, cellular, and biological processes, including nucleotide synthesis, methylation, and methionine cycling. The physiological impacts of these processes on health also extend to cell proliferation, folate deficiency anemia, and reduction of the risk of birth defects during pregnancy. The primary objective of this study was to characterize the binding affinities of different folate forms, folic acid (FA), 5-methyltetrahydrofolate (5MTHF), and folinic acid, to the folate receptors α and β, and to the bovine milk folate binding protein. These three dietary forms of folate are found in enriched grains (FA), various …

Feasibility Study Of Regional Air Mobility Services For High Priority Transportation In The San Joaquin Valley, Julia Roa, Joseph Oldham

Mineta Transportation Institute

Regional Air Mobility (RAM) focuses on building upon existing airport infrastructure to transport people and goods using innovative aircraft that offer a huge improvement in efficiency, affordability, and community-friendly integration over existing regional transportation options. These aircraft, which typically carry less than 20 passengers or an equivalent weight in cargo, are flexible in terms of where they can take off and land, even using existing runways and infrastructure to maximize compatibility with today’s airports. This project examines the feasibility of RAM supporting high-speed transportation for high-priority passenger and cargo movement within Fresno County and connection to coastal urban centers. Some …

Protecting Our Community From The Hidden Vulnerabilities Of Today’S Intelligent Transportation Systems, Shahab Tayeb

Mineta Transportation Institute

The ever-evolving technology interwoven into the transportation industry leaves it frequently at risk for cyber-attacks. This study analyzes the security of a common in-vehicle network, the Controller Area Network (CAN), standard in most vehicles being manufactured today. Like many other networks, CAN comes with inherent vulnerabilities that leave CAN implementations at risk of being targeted by cybercriminals. Such vulnerabilities range from eavesdropping, where the attacker can read the raw data traversing the vehicle, to spoofing, where the attacker can place fabricated traffic on the network. The research team initially performed a simulation of CAN traffic generation followed by hardware implementation …

Investigating The Resilience Of Accessibility To Emergency And Lifesaving Facilities Under Natural Hazards, Chih-Hao Wang, Na Chen

Mineta Transportation Institute

Studying accessibility, including the resilience of city transportation networks, is critical to understand how these networks influence individuals’ mobility and lives. This study developed an analytical research framework to examine the resilience of accessibility to emergency and lifesaving facilities under the threats of natural hazards such as earthquakes and wildfires. With a cumulative-opportunity approach, the authors measured accessibility by counting emergency and lifesaving facilities (including parks, schools, hospitals, roads, and fire stations) that can be reached by driving at the census tract level in San Fernando Valley, CA. With the calculated accessibility, the authors run simulations to collect data showing …

Three Essays On Clean Water State Revolving Funds: Determinants Of State Leveraging And Measurement Of Debt Affordability, Lien T. Nguyen

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Leveraging is a popular option among Clean Water State Revolving Funds (CWSRFs). Most states choose to issue bonds to meet the requirement of the state match contribution, and to provide additional funding into the pool of funds available for community loan assistance. Leveraging offers short-term remedies to fill a financial resources gap; however, this raises concern about any costs associated with leveraging that might negatively influence the sustainability of CWSRFs in the long run. This dissertation comprises three essays that examine the different factors that motivate CWSRFs to leverage, and it offers a look at how they measure their affordability …

Hierarchical Value Decomposition For Effective On-Demand Ride Pooling, Hao Jiang, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On-demand ride-pooling (e.g., UberPool, GrabShare) services focus on serving multiple different customer requests using each vehicle, i.e., an empty or partially filled vehicle can be assigned requests from different passengers with different origins and destinations. On the other hand, in Taxi on Demand (ToD) services (e.g., UberX), one vehicle is assigned to only one request at a time. On-demand ride pooling is not only beneficial to customers (lower cost), drivers (higher revenue per trip) and aggregation companies (higher revenue), but is also of crucial importance to the environment as it reduces the number of vehicles required on the roads. Since …

Undiscounted Recursive Path Choice Models: Convergence Properties And Algorithms, Tien Mai, Emma Frejinger

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traffic flow predictions are central to a wealth of problems in transportation. Path choice models can be used for this purpose, and in state-of-the-art models—so-called recursive path choice (RPC) models—the choice of a path is formulated as a sequential arc choice process using undiscounted Markov decision process (MDP) with an absorbing state. The MDP has a utility maximization objective with unknown parameters that are estimated based on data. The estimation and prediction using RPC models require repeatedly solving value functions that are solutions to the Bellman equation. Although there are several examples of successful applications of RPC models in the …

Neighborhood Cooperative Multiagent Reinforcement Learning For Adaptive Traffic Signal Control In Epidemic Regions, Chengwei Zhang, Yu Tian, Zhibin Zhang, Wanli Xue, Xiaofei Xie, Tianpei Yang, Xin Ge, Rong Chen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nowadays, multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) have shared significant advances in the adaptive traffic signal control (ATSC) problems. For most of the researches, agents are all isomorphic, which disregards the situation in which isomerous intersections cooperative together in a real ATSC scenario, especially in epidemic regions where different intersections have quite different levels of importance. To this end, this paper models the ATSC problem as a networked Markov game (NMG), in which agents take into account information, including traffic conditions of it and its connected neighbors. A cooperative MARL framework named neighborhood cooperative hysteretic DQN (NC-HDQN) is proposed. Specifically, for each …

Other Transaction Authorities: Evaluating Innovation Policy Impact Of Alternative Contract Vehicles In The Department Of Defense, Dolores Kuchina-Musina

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Since 1958, government agencies have used Other Transactions (OT) to encourage innovation and the development of new technology. OTs' purpose is to help government agencies acquire leading-edge technology from private sector sources in a flexible, goal-oriented manner. This dissertation is a pilot study assessing whether innovation policies, specifically 10 USC 2371b (Pub. L. No. 114-92, 2015) that authorizes DoD prototype OTs, influence the Department of Defense (DoD) alternative contracting activities to promote the development of innovative technologies and products. Using existing literature and interrupted time series analysis, this dissertation examines publicly available contract data to answer the following research question: …

The Covid-19 Pandemic And Material Hardships: A Qualitative Study Of Undocumented Immigrants In The United States, Erika Chavez-Marroquin

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The study aimed to recognize the financial impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on the undocumented immigrants living in southern California. Utilizing an exploratory method with a qualitative approach. The research interviewed English and Spanish-speaking participants who are a part of the undocumented population and have employee history. The study utilized a purposive and snowball sampling method and explored the financial impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on participants’ personal finances, resources they were able to access, and gaps in programs or additional resources through federal and state aid. Through the data analysis, the research identified the following themes: limitations on accessible …

The Employment Situation Of Veterans: April 2022, Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Veteran employment trends and statistics among various demographics during April 2022

Promoting Health Equity Among Racial And Ethnic Minorities During And After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Alexandra Viramontes, Deserry Salgado

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Racial and ethnic minorities experience disproportionate health outcomes during a pandemic, yet preparedness plans have failed to address the social determinants of health that produce the most severe impact. By examining social workers’ perspectives on the health disparities faced by racial and ethnic minorities during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study provides insight into the ways in which services can be improved in a future health crisis. In this exploratory study, a qualitative approach was utilized where social workers were asked to participate in interviews consisting of open-ended questions. The qualitative data was obtained in the form of interview transcripts, which …

Built Environment, Land Use, And Crime: A Las Vegas Study, Stacey Lynn Clouse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined land use and crime against persons and crime against property in Las Vegas, Nevada at varying spatial levels of analysis. Using crime data provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Clark County Assessor’s office, results at the macro-level of analysis reveal that property crime rates concentrated on commercial, transportation, communication and utilities, and industrial land use, whereas violent crime concentrated at commercial, multi-residential, and civic, institutional, and recreational land use. Upon examining the subtypes of land use that generate or radiate more crime, property crime concentrated on transportation land use, class 1 resorts, and …