Civic and Community Engagement Commons^™

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

Significant Life Experiences Of Kentucky Youth Climate Activists, Jeri Katherine Howell

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

The purpose of this study is to better understand Kentucky youth climate activism. The research questions explore how youth define their climate activism in Kentucky, their Significant Life Experiences (SLE) that motivated them to commit to climate activism, and what challenges and sustains their involvement. This qualitative study utilizes a blended framework of social/environmental positionality and political ecology to analyze 7 semi-structured interviews with participants between the ages 18 to 24 years old who are acting to address climate change in Kentucky. New contributions to the existing body of SLE literature are discussed.

Exploring The Relationship Between Place Attachment And Attitudes Toward Tourism Development In Powell County, Lindsay Vance

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

This study explores the relationship between Powell County, Kentucky residents’ place attachment, and the perceived sociocultural, environmental, and financial benefits of the future Warrior’s Path development. A survey consisting primarily of five-point Likert scale questions was shared with several local organizations to distribute to their members. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Chi-square test of independence tests were used to discover any correlation between place attachment and perceived sociocultural, environmental, and financial benefits of tourism development. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r=.465) determined a moderate positive correlation between place attachment and perceived sociocultural benefits of the Warrior’s Path and tourism development. Of …

Integrating Policies, Systems, And Environments (Pse) Work Into Fcs Extension Programming: Lessons Learned From A Multi-State Training, Lisa T. Washburn, Heather Norman-Burgdolf, Karen L. Franck, Lauren E. Kennedy, Christopher T. Sneed

Dietetics and Human Nutrition Faculty Publications

Public health efforts have emphasized changes to policies, systems and environments (PSEs) to improve health behaviors for individuals and communities. Extension has increasingly emphasized these approaches, particularly for work of Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) agents. In part, this emphasis on PSEs in Extension has been driven by SNAP-Ed and other federally funded initiatives, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) High Obesity Programs (HOP). However, broader adoption and implementation of PSEs at the local level has lagged in some states for various reasons. These include limited understanding about PSE interventions and how this work fits with …

Cultivating A Culture Of Food Justice: Impacts Of Community Based Economies On Farmers And Neighborhood Leaders In The Case Of Fresh Stop Markets In Kentucky, Heather Hyden

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

In this thesis, I focus on two tensions within the alternative agro-food movement. First is a question of who/what community is allowed to define food systems problems and then implement solutions. For example, food desert metaphors rely discursively on defining communities as being “without”, which perpetuates needs-based narratives, in which only professional “experts” know how to solve problems of food access. These representations ignore the creativity, agency, and resiliency of everyday food justice mobilizations happening at the grassroots level. Second, what form can solutions take within hegemonic constructions of development? I build a theoretical model based on Black geographies (McKittrick, …

Gender Matters: Masculinities Among African American Men Farming In North Carolina, Marcus K. Bernard

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The residue of racism, institutional discrimination, and class warfare continue to displace constructions of masculinity for African-American men in farming by shifting the drive for success onto the sidewalk of survival. The shifting focus migrates from goals of economic and political gain to simply shielding masculinity through acts of providing for and protecting the family. African-American men’s failure to acknowledge these quandaries in Western society’s social structure entraps their masculine identity by keeping their focus on issues of race and social class which overshadow the broad gender transformations. The deceptive social forces underlying this social structure hurl African conditions are …

Better Engaging Communities: Moving Beyond Cardinal Rules, Anna G. Hoover

Anna G. Hoover

“Cardinal rules” and best practice approaches have guided governmental risk communication efforts at chronic risk sites for more than two decades, playing an important role in how those most affected by contamination make sense of risk. In addition to providing information, however, communication approaches themselves can affect community perceptions indirectly, through stakeholder interpretations of the processes by which risk information is shared. It is increasingly necessary to evaluate not only whether risk communication approaches have been effective for increasing knowledge but if, in fact, the ways in which information is shared has had unintended consequences that change how stakeholders perceive …

Dating Violence On Small Rural College Campuses: Are Administrator And Student Perceptions Similar?, Jean Allen Oldham

Theses and Dissertations--Kinesiology and Health Promotion

In recent years dating violence has become more and more prevalent on college campuses. Reports of the range of dating violence vary widely, with studies reporting from 20% to 85% of college women experiencing dating violence. However, almost all research has been conducted among urban and/or large colleges and universities, with virtually no attention to what is happening on small and/or rural college and university campuses.

When a possible 20% of college women have experienced dating violence on college campuses, there becomes a crucial need for administration at a college to have an accurate assessment of the college’s liability, and …

A Convergence-Building Model Of Superfund Site Communication: Building On Lessons From The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Anna G. Hoover, Lindell Ormsbee

Anna G. Hoover

Best practices approaches have guided governmental risk communication efforts at Superfund and other chronic risk sites for more than two decades, playing an important role in the ways in which those most affected by contamination make sense of risk. Such approaches can affect the information environment in two separate but related ways: 1) directly, through the explicit sharing of information, and 2) indirectly, through ongoing stakeholder interpretations of the processes by which that information is shared. To date, the indirect, process-related effects have not been addressed in assessments of communicative efficacy at Superfund sites. Thus, it increasingly is necessary to …

Emotion, Community Development, And The Physical Environment: An Experimental Investigation Of Measurements, George E. Boone

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

A wide range of research fields have studied how emotions and behavior are affected by the physical environment. This gestalt theorist approach of experimental research as well seeks to measure emotion (using the valence-arousal scale) and micro-scale community development interactions when weighted physical environment factors are adjusted. Community development (CD) interactions at the micro-scale have received but slight attention from scholars in the CD research field and this study aims partially to investigate developing objective measures from social observations. CD interactions from recordings along with self-reported emotion through surveys in four quasi-experimental groups (where the environments were constructed based on …