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Title: “THE UNIVERSITY OF THE VILLAGE” : THE UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA AND THE MAKING OF POST-INDEPENDENCE NIGERIA
Creator: Stevenson , Russell Wade
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN, the first indigenous university in Nigeria and the first land grant university in Africa. This dissertation argues that UNN represented an innovative experiment in African higher education by expanding higher education to the general populace rather than the colonially privileged elite. However, its construction drew upon patronage politics and taxation regimes that expropriated funding at the same time other regions...
Show moreABSTRACT This dissertation examines the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN, the first indigenous university in Nigeria and the first land grant university in Africa. This dissertation argues that UNN represented an innovative experiment in African higher education by expanding higher education to the general populace rather than the colonially privileged elite. However, its construction drew upon patronage politics and taxation regimes that expropriated funding at the same time other regions faced education taxes. Resistance to the University’s construction reflected local sentiments of inequitable distribution of tax resources throughout Nigeria’s Eastern Region. The University also served as a mechanism in post-independence Nigerian geopolitics: as a mechanism for removing the influence of the British-established University College, Ibadan and British educational models more generally. The University of Nigeria, Nsukka would be, as Taiye Selasi and Achille Mbembe have phrased it, an “Afro-politan” institution—porous and all-encompassing of knowledge systems throughout the globe. During the Nigeria-Biafra war, UNN faced sustained wartime damage—damage from it could not easily recover. The Nigeria-Biafra war laid the groundwork for a period of sustained infrastructural decay and internal resistance, even as the Nigerian federal government enjoyed larger access to oil revenue. This dissertation examines what makes African institutions “indigenous” and how UNN represented the halting transformation from coloniality to indigeneity in the post-independence Nigerian nation-state.
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Title: “IMFUNDO” THE STUDENT; THE EVOLUTION ADAPTATION, AND PRACTICE OF African CENTERED EDUCATION AT THE KARA HERITAGE INSTITUTE IN PRETORIA SOUTH AFRICA
Creator: George III, Clarence
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACT“IMFUNDO” THE STUDENT; THE EVOLUTION ADAPTATION, AND PRACTICE OF AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATION AT THE KARA HERITAGE INSTITUTE IN PRETORIA SOUTH AFRICAByClarence George III This dissertation study (Imfundo) seeks to explore, the practice and evolution of African centered education at the Kara Heritage Institute from 2016 to 2019. This project seeks to study African centered education at Kara focusing on how the Heritage Institute instills notions of African consciousness, notions of Pan...
Show moreABSTRACT“IMFUNDO” THE STUDENT; THE EVOLUTION ADAPTATION, AND PRACTICE OF AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATION AT THE KARA HERITAGE INSTITUTE IN PRETORIA SOUTH AFRICAByClarence George III This dissertation study (Imfundo) seeks to explore, the practice and evolution of African centered education at the Kara Heritage Institute from 2016 to 2019. This project seeks to study African centered education at Kara focusing on how the Heritage Institute instills notions of African consciousness, notions of Pan-Africanism, structural pedagogy, and culturally relevant pedagogy. This research project evaluated and observed African-centered education in South Africa at the Kara Heritage institute in Pretoria South Africa. Over 4 years of data collected has yielded a great deal of information about South Africa's unique approach to education, culture, and heritage restoration.
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Title: “I JUST NEED THE PLAYERS” : HOW URBAN SCHOOL LEADERS NAVIGATE RESOURCE CONSTRAINT THROUGH EXTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS.
Creator: Gilzene, Alounso A.
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study examines urban school leaders and their decision-making around external partnership relations in resource-constrained contexts. I employed a case study design guided by sense-making and cultural responsiveness to highlight behaviors that contribute to successful partnership work (Ganon-Shilon & Schecter, 2017; Khalifa, Gooden & Davis, 2016). To do this work, I conducted this research in three predominantly Black schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. Using in...
Show moreThis study examines urban school leaders and their decision-making around external partnership relations in resource-constrained contexts. I employed a case study design guided by sense-making and cultural responsiveness to highlight behaviors that contribute to successful partnership work (Ganon-Shilon & Schecter, 2017; Khalifa, Gooden & Davis, 2016). To do this work, I conducted this research in three predominantly Black schools in the Detroit Public Schools Community District. Using in-depth phenomenological interviewing (Seidman, 2007), I worked with three Black school leaders, and four members of the Volunteer Corps volunteer organization to understand the inner workings of the partnership relationship and how different factors influenced implementation school-wide. Volunteer Corps is an organization that works with urban school districts to provide 10-15 full-time volunteers to work in district-identified schools. The school leaders talked at length about their process of incorporating other external organizations into their schools’ operational framework. The findings from this study suggest that school leaders lean heavily on sensemaking processes when working with external partnership organizations. School leaders have to piece together an understanding based on information they gather from both formal and informal sources. Also, school leaders in the study discussed how their preparation to become principals had some gaps regarding external partnership work. Some findings suggest that when school leaders maintain partnerships with organizations that provide volunteers, the racial makeup of volunteers has a variety of effects on predominantly Black school contexts. For example, the school leaders in the study had to devote additional time to conduct cultural responsiveness training to prepare white volunteers to work with Black students. Last, school leaders named several benefits and costs associated with partnership work. While some benefits seemed obvious (i.e. additional money, additional human capital), there was some complexity and nuance in the benefits and costs. I analyzed these findings through a lens of sensemaking, to understand the process, and Critical Race Theory, to speak to the context of the communities and schools. Principals can learn from this study because it provides examples of the ways school leaders in urban school contexts have navigated the work of external partnership work. Leadership preparation programs could also benefit from understanding the mechanics of external partnership work to better prepare prospective principal candidates for the work of engaging with and maintaining resources from organizations. This study could also inform policymakers, as the findings have implications for the notion of equity, and the conditions that cause the creation of partnerships with external partnership organizations.
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Title: [Delta]2079-tetrahydrocannabinol-mediated suppression of the Interferon-alpha (IFNalpha) response by plasmacytoid dendritic cells and IFNalpha-mediated activation of T cells in healthy and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected human subjects
Creator: Henriquez, Joseph Edgar
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the primary psychoactive cannabinoid congener in Cannabis sativa and is a well characterized modulator of immune activation. In murine models, treatment with THC can exacerbate viral and bacterial infection, in part, by suppression of the inflammatory cytokine response. One of the key classes of cytokines suppressed by THC is type I interferons (IFN), a group of cytokines consisting of IFNα and IFNβ. The primary source of IFNα during acute antiviral immune...
Show moreΔ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the primary psychoactive cannabinoid congener in Cannabis sativa and is a well characterized modulator of immune activation. In murine models, treatment with THC can exacerbate viral and bacterial infection, in part, by suppression of the inflammatory cytokine response. One of the key classes of cytokines suppressed by THC is type I interferons (IFN), a group of cytokines consisting of IFNα and IFNβ. The primary source of IFNα during acute antiviral immune responses is the Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell (pDC), which can secrete 1000-fold more IFNα than other circulating peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Paradoxically, patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a chronic viral infection that causes immunodeficiency via infection and depletion of CD4+ T cells, have fewer circulating pDC with a reduced capacity to secrete IFNα. Furthermore, circulating pDC number has been correlated with CD4+ T cell number and treatment with IFNα can reduce HIV-mediated CD4+ T cell depletion. Conversely, hyperactivation of pDC is associated with T cell exhaustion and is implicated in HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). Interestingly, many HIV patients utilize medicinal cannabinoids to combat the effects of chronic HIV infection. The focus of this project was to determine if IFNα-mediated stimulation of T-cells can be suppressed by THC by testing the following hypothesis: THC will suppress TLR-9-dependent activation of pDC, subsequent efficacy of pDC-mediated T cell activation, and CD8+ T cell-mediated activation of astrocytes. These studies revealed that CpG-ODN-induced IFNα secretion and expression of CD83, a costimulatory molecule, by pDC is suppressed by THC in a concentration dependent manner. Furthermore, key intracellular signaling events required for inflammatory cytokine secretion by pDC were suppressed by treatment with THC and CBR2-specific agonists in pDC from healthy donors. Additionally, pDC from HIV+ donors were more sensitive to THC-mediated suppression than pDC from healthy donors. Treatment with THC also inhibited IFNα-mediated activation of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from healthy and HIV+ donors. Specifically, treatment with THC diminished IFNα-induced IL-7R expression, cognate signaling, and subsequent proliferation. Interestingly, and in contrast to the results in pDC, T cells from HIV+ donors were less sensitive to the suppressive effects of THC. Finally, stimulation by CD3/CD28/IFNα induced the secretion of IFNγ and TNFα by CD8+ T cells from healthy donors. Further, IFNγ and TNFα induced secretion of inflammatory cytokines by U251 astrocytes. Coculture of CD8+ T cells with U251 astrocytes and direct stimulation of U251 astrocytes with recombinant TNFα and IFNγ revealed that treatment with THC reduced both the activation and secretion of cytokines from CD8+ T cells and the subsequent cytokine-mediated stimulation of the U251 astrocytes. Collectively, these studies have provided evidence for the use of cannabinoids in ablating the type of neuroimmune interactions which can lead to HAND by demonstrating that THC can suppress the activation of pDC, and subsequent activation of T cells and astrocytes.
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Title: Youth as Teacher Educators : Supporting Preservice Teachers in Developing Youth-Centered, Equity-Oriented Science Teaching Practices
Creator: Nazar, Christina Restrepo
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this study, I conducted three separate, but interrelated studies that examine the ways preservice teachers (PSTs) generatively developed youth-centered, equity-oriented pedagogical imaginaries in their methods courses and how they enacted these practice(s) in their field experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and in what ways a science methods course can support PSTs in the critical uptake of youth (and community) knowledge(s) and practice(s) and how classroom...
Show moreIn this study, I conducted three separate, but interrelated studies that examine the ways preservice teachers (PSTs) generatively developed youth-centered, equity-oriented pedagogical imaginaries in their methods courses and how they enacted these practice(s) in their field experiences. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how and in what ways a science methods course can support PSTs in the critical uptake of youth (and community) knowledge(s) and practice(s) and how classroom communities in the field can shift/shape these enactments. In this work, I foreground youth counternarratives of the culture of power in science as a critical part of learning to teach of science for PSTs –this study has never been done before. The first study explores how there is a culture of power in science education, particularly in the ways of knowing, doing and being that are legitimized differently from youth’s in-school and out-of-school experiences. This legitimization affects the ways youth feel recognized/positioned and ultimately supported to take-action in their science education. Using counternarratives of the culture of power in science as a framework, in this study, I worked with youth from an after-school green energy program to co-develop digital multimodal cases of science learning. In the second study, I examined the ways seventeen PSTs, in their elementary science methods course, were supported in developing youth-centered, equity-oriented imaginaries for teaching science to diverse learners. Using the framework imaginaries as practice, I wanted to know 1) in what ways do PSTs take up youth knowledge(s) and practice(s) in science/engineering learning and 2) how this up-take inform the development of youth-centered, equity-oriented teaching practice(s) in ways PSTs imagine enacting their future teaching experiences. In the third study, I followed three preservice elementary science teachers in a six-week engineering teaching experience at Liberty Spanish Immersion School in Great Lakes City, Michigan. Using the framework enactments as practice, I aimed to understand 1) in what ways do preservice elementary science teachers enact youth-centered, equity-oriented teaching practice(s) in an engineering unit focused on teaching engineering design for sustainable communities and 2) how are these enactments shaped by local contentious practice. Implications for this dissertation study include designing a methods course alongside field experiences in support of critically engaging PSTs with cultural/historical/social community underpinnings of youth in equitably consequential ways.
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Title: YOUNG COLLEGE MEN’S BELIEFS ABOUT NONPROFESSIONAL HELP-SEEKING FOR DEPRESSION
Creator: Na, Hana
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Low rates of psychological help seeking among young males with depression havereceived significant research attention. However, most prior studies have focused on why the population seeks or does not seek psychological help from formal/professional sources. The present study examined the beliefs of 193 young male college students to predict their intentions to seek psychological help from friends, the most preferred source of help for this group. The study assessed the constructs of the...
Show moreLow rates of psychological help seeking among young males with depression havereceived significant research attention. However, most prior studies have focused on why the population seeks or does not seek psychological help from formal/professional sources. The present study examined the beliefs of 193 young male college students to predict their intentions to seek psychological help from friends, the most preferred source of help for this group. The study assessed the constructs of the reasoned action approach and their underlying beliefs, taking two possible contributing factors to men’s lower help-seeking into account: masculine ideology and perception of depression as masculine or feminine. Results revealed that intention to seek help from friends for depression was associated only with injunctive and descriptive norms and their underlying beliefs surrounding three referents: friends (injunctive and descriptive), fathers (injunctive only), and other family members (descriptive only). Relevant normative beliefs surrounding those referents were not sensitive to young male college students’ masculine ideology and its interaction with depression perception. These findings, in conjunction with the results of the audience segment analyses indicating the importance of the opinions and behaviors of specific referent groups, suggest that injunctive normative beliefs with father and friend referents and descriptive normative beliefs with friend referents are key beliefs that persuasive health messages should focus more on to promote help-seeking from friends among young male college students with depressive disorders, regardless of their adherence to traditional masculine norms and perception of depression as masculine or feminine.
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Title: Work Satisfaction Through Person-Environment Fit : Integrating Ability, Personality, and Interest
Creator: Walker, Ross Ian
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Person-environment fit research typically examines one domain at a time (e.g., values) which leaves career choosers and counselors uninformed about how to weigh different types of fit. With a national sample of high school students followed several years after graduation, this study pursues two main goals: (1) map the associations between ability, personality, and interest domains, and (2) assess the relative importance of fit across these domains in the prediction of future work satisfaction...
Show morePerson-environment fit research typically examines one domain at a time (e.g., values) which leaves career choosers and counselors uninformed about how to weigh different types of fit. With a national sample of high school students followed several years after graduation, this study pursues two main goals: (1) map the associations between ability, personality, and interest domains, and (2) assess the relative importance of fit across these domains in the prediction of future work satisfaction. Results echo previous findings on the primacy of the environment in PE fit and the utility of Prediger’s (1982) meta-dimensions in an integrative framework for individual differences. While the domains showed differential predictive validity (i.e., abilities > personality > interests), the nature of those fit relationships varied substantially, both within and between domains, with scant evidence of strict congruence effects overall. Implications for theory and practice are discussed with an emphasis on job tasks and complexity.
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Title: Word segmentation for Japanese and English speakers : language-independent and language-dependent cues
Creator: Uehara, Sayako
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Phonotactic knowledge and experience-independent knowledge have both been argued to cue word segmentation in prior studies (e.g. Ettlinger, Finn, & Hudson Kam, 2011; McQueen, 1998). This dissertation attempts to compare the effect of two types of cues, language-independent and language-dependent knowledge, on word segmentation. The specific cues selected for each type were the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) as a language-independent cue and geminates (double consonants) as a language...
Show more"Phonotactic knowledge and experience-independent knowledge have both been argued to cue word segmentation in prior studies (e.g. Ettlinger, Finn, & Hudson Kam, 2011; McQueen, 1998). This dissertation attempts to compare the effect of two types of cues, language-independent and language-dependent knowledge, on word segmentation. The specific cues selected for each type were the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) as a language-independent cue and geminates (double consonants) as a language-dependent cue. The effectiveness of the cues was determined by two groups of speakers with different language background, native Japanese and native American English speakers. The two languages were chosen particularly because they contrast in two aspects relevant to these specific cues: (1) Japanese has a simple syllable structure, no consonant clusters (except for consonant-glide sequences), while English has an extensive set of bi-consonantal clusters and limited tri-consonantal clusters. (2) Japanese has a phonemic consonant length contrast (singletons vs. geminates), while English lacks such a contrast. Details of (1) are relevant for testing the SSP, and those of (2) for testing geminates as a cue to word segmentation. The results from three artificial language learning experiments (Experiment 1, 2, and 3) consistently indicate, contrary to prior claims, that the (language-independent) SSP is not a reliable cue to segment speech strings for both language groups, regardless of the difference in syllable structure. On the other hand, knowledge about language-dependent geminates seems to be a good predictor as to how speakers segment words from a string with word-internal geminates (Experiment 4 and 5). Japanese speakers, whose language has a phonemic contrast between geminates and singleton consonants, consistently segmented the speech string so that geminates were retained within words, whereas English speakers without such a contrast in their native language tended to break up the string at geminates. Moreover, the results indicate that listeners are able to rely heavily on the transitional probability (TP) of the syllables to segment the string, primarily when the structure of the stimulus words in the target speech string is simple. From the results of this study, language-dependent knowledge seems to be more effective than language-independent knowledge in word segmentation."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: Women writing men : genre, narrative authority, and "mind writing" 1752-1817
Creator: Kane, Jessica
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "I argue that women writers of the long eighteenth century used readers' expectations about genre to reimagine their forms through expanding the socially- and narratively-limited roles of female characters. My chapters demonstrate how the female protagonists in four different texts---Charlotte Lennox's Female Quixote, Frances Burney's Evelina, Elizabeth Inchbald's Animal Magnetism, and Jane Austen's Persuasion---take on the attributes of a narrator and author by creating both their male love...
Show more"I argue that women writers of the long eighteenth century used readers' expectations about genre to reimagine their forms through expanding the socially- and narratively-limited roles of female characters. My chapters demonstrate how the female protagonists in four different texts---Charlotte Lennox's Female Quixote, Frances Burney's Evelina, Elizabeth Inchbald's Animal Magnetism, and Jane Austen's Persuasion---take on the attributes of a narrator and author by creating both their male love interests and their stories through what I call "mind writing." "Mind writing" takes the "mind reading" of cognitive literary studies back to textuality, exploring the ways that one character asserts the thoughts, feelings, actions, or intentions of another in ways analogous to a narrator. "Mind writing" another character in these texts allows the protagonist to control where the story is going and what it is doing, ultimately allowing her to parallel the work of an author. The effect is both social and narratological, as these women characters transcend the usual definitions and limitations of both "woman" and "character." Since all four of my texts work within established genre logics and patterns, breaking these expectations via "mind writing" also means that readers must re-evaluate their own positions in relation to the text. Readers of genre fiction believe they know what they are getting when they pick up a text within that field, whether in the eighteenth century or today. By flipping the script on their readers Lennox, Burney, Inchbald, and Austen rewrite their audiences just as their female characters rewrite their stories. And because generic conventions often put the reader in a position of power, either because they can pass judgement on the characters or because they know something the characters do not, refashioning the genres puts readers in a subordinate position, re-evaluating our assumptions about the stories, ourselves, and the world on which the story comments."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: Wishi stories : rhetorical strategies of survivance and continuance in Oklahoma Cherokee foodways
Creator: Shade-Johnson, Jaquetta
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The author employs a description of the Cherokee practices of foraging and cooking wishi (hen-of-the-woods mushrooms), a Cherokee delicacy, to argue that American Indians use foodways to survive and resist the ongoing project of settler colonialism, and to carry culture forward for future generations. Using a cultural rhetorics methodology of story, she gathered the oral histories of three tradition-bearers from her own tribal community who shared with her their experiences of foraging and...
Show moreThe author employs a description of the Cherokee practices of foraging and cooking wishi (hen-of-the-woods mushrooms), a Cherokee delicacy, to argue that American Indians use foodways to survive and resist the ongoing project of settler colonialism, and to carry culture forward for future generations. Using a cultural rhetorics methodology of story, she gathered the oral histories of three tradition-bearers from her own tribal community who shared with her their experiences of foraging and cooking wishi.
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Title: Wireless sensors for enhancing food supply chain visibility
Creator: Karuppuswami, Saranraj
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "The demand for providing safe and quality food from the farm to the plate had led to the development of sensor technologies for quality control and real-time end-to-end monitoring of food along the supply chain. These advanced sensors serve as the first line of defense against food-borne outbreaks, economically motivated adulteration, and food contamination preventing illness, deaths, huge economic losses and promotes global health and well-being. The key goal is to ensure that the food...
Show more"The demand for providing safe and quality food from the farm to the plate had led to the development of sensor technologies for quality control and real-time end-to-end monitoring of food along the supply chain. These advanced sensors serve as the first line of defense against food-borne outbreaks, economically motivated adulteration, and food contamination preventing illness, deaths, huge economic losses and promotes global health and well-being. The key goal is to ensure that the food reaching the fork meets the highest safety standards by promoting tamper-free sustainable practices along the food supply chain. Real-time food monitoring also prevents unnecessary wastage due to spoilage or good food being thrown out due to misconception of the labeled expiration date. In this dissertation, a number of RF passive wireless sensing approaches are presented that allows simultaneous tracking and quality monitoring of packaged food products as it moves along the supply chain. The end goal is to develop a low cost, long range, battery-free, and real time sensor tag which can detect multiple parameters of the packaged food simultaneously and at the same time provide the identification information. In order to realize a multi-functional sensor tag, a number of sensing approaches are developed targeting four different types of food related quality control challenges; Adulteration, Contamination, Wastage, and Spoilage. To identify and eliminate food adulteration, magnetoelastic based dielectric and viscosity sensors are developed. These hybrid sensors are shorter range sensors and a number of liquid food items such as milk and oil are characterized. A sensing approach that utilizes 3D printed RF sensors coupled to a microfludic channel for liquid profling by monitoring the dielectric constant is developed for food quality detection. Next, to prevent contamination, capacitance based short range inductor-capacitor (LC) tanks are developed. An interdisciplinary approach which is a confluence of carbohydrate coated nano particles capturing bacteria in liquid food with RF detection is developed. A common method to prevent wastage or spoilage is to detect and profile aroma emitted from food. Adsorption, absorption, and capillary condensation based short range as well as long range sensors that monitor the dielectric constant or the conductivity of the target food are developed. First, a short range capillary condensation based sensor is demonstrated for volatile profiling using a porous substrate and an LC tank. This is followed by demonstrating sensitivity and specificity of different thin-film coated short range sensors that detect vapors that are directly related to the spoilage index of the food. Finally, a long range passive sensor integrated with ID is demonstrated for detecting Ammonia in packaged food. The developed sensor is compatible with existing RFID infrastructure and is capable of digitizing the sensor information along with the identification information for transmission. Overall, the work demonstrates that a passive multi-modal sensor provides additional information about products moving across the supply chain transforming the tracebility-centric supply chain into a value-centric one with increased visibility and empowers the different stake holders with the quality information as the product moves along the supply chain."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: Wiener-chaos analysis on Bayesian models with applications in agriculture and climatology
Creator: Wang, Han
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Understanding the challenges to increasing maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa has important implications for policies to reduce national and global food insecurity. There is insufficient research on the key agronomic and environmental factors that influence maize yield in a smallholder-farm environment. We implement a Bayesian analysis with longitudinal household survey data covering 1,197 plots among 320 farms in central Malawi. The results reveal a high positive association between a...
Show moreUnderstanding the challenges to increasing maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa has important implications for policies to reduce national and global food insecurity. There is insufficient research on the key agronomic and environmental factors that influence maize yield in a smallholder-farm environment. We implement a Bayesian analysis with longitudinal household survey data covering 1,197 plots among 320 farms in central Malawi. The results reveal a high positive association between a leaf chlorophyll indicator and yield, with significance levels exceeding 95% Bayesian credibility at all sites, and the posterior mean of the regression coefficient ranging from 28% to 42% on a relative scale. A parasitic weed, Striga asiatica, is the variable that negatively associated with yield of high intensity. The impact of rainfall varies by site and season, either directly or indirectly. We conclude that the determinants preventing striga infestation and enhancing nitrogen fertility will lead to higher maize yield in Malawi. To improve plant nitrogen status, fertilizer is effective at higher-productivity sites, whereas soil carbon and organic inputs are important at marginal sites. Uniquely, the Bayesian approach allows differentiation of response by site for a modest-sample-size study. Considering the biophysical constraints, our findings highlight area-specific recommendations as well as management strategies for crop yield.Quantifying the sensitivity of climate forcing factors such as greenhouse gas concentration and solar irradiation, is critical in comprehending the evolution of the Earth's climate. There exists a variety of statistical methods to reconstruct temperature in the past, but the same is not true for projecting future temperatures. We produce a multi-level stochastic model to systematically reconstruct and project the northern-hemisphere average temperature anomalies, for the past millennium (1000-1999) and the next century (2019-2100), by coordinating with climatic forcings and natural proxies from diverse data sources. Additive noises are applied to the model to capture the unaccounted variability. Model parameters are estimated using Bayesian-inference techniques, resulting in complete distributional information. Reconstructions with memory features (no, short, long) are evaluated through selected validation metrics, and the results constitute evidence in favor of using a moderate-memory length. For the purpose of temperature projections, we incorporate realistic climate forcing uncertainties to Year 2100. Similarly, we include an uncertainty component on top of using representative carbon pathway scenarios for global greenhouse gases. Our projections' posterior means show a great level of agreement with the 95% confidence interval provided by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, while featuring differences in most cases.The models described above are both implemented via Gibbs sampler with 10,000 iterations. In order to avoid its potential computational heft, we combine the use of maximum likelihood estimators for regression elements with properties of Wiener chaos, to approximate the predictive samples with specific chaos distributions that do not require sampling via numerics. Some of the approximations' statistics, such as error variances are also explicitly provided. The precision are relatively high (nearly 0.1% and 0.5%) depending on dimension circumstances. This allows practitioners to estimate approximation accuracy and convergence rates in practice, with no resort to heavy computational demands.
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Title: Why not academia?---The streamlined career choice process of Black African women engineers : a grounded theory study
Creator: Mlambo, Yeukai Angela
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Black African women are grossly underrepresented as academic staff in engineering programs at South African universities. The problem is exacerbated at historically White institutions (HWI) where Black women are simply absent as engineering research and teaching staff. The absence of Black African women in the academy occurs despite Black African women enrolling and graduating with engineering postgraduate degrees making them eligible for academic jobs. Furthermore, despite Black African...
Show moreBlack African women are grossly underrepresented as academic staff in engineering programs at South African universities. The problem is exacerbated at historically White institutions (HWI) where Black women are simply absent as engineering research and teaching staff. The absence of Black African women in the academy occurs despite Black African women enrolling and graduating with engineering postgraduate degrees making them eligible for academic jobs. Furthermore, despite Black African women representing the largest population in South Africa at 41% of the population overall, and affirmative action policies in place, engineering academic spaces remain predominantly White and male, not representative of the country's population. In fact White women are overrepresented in engineering academe and in some cases White women are the only female presence in engineering higher education employment. If Black African women are graduating with engineering degrees why are they not equally represented in engineering academe as their White female counterparts? How can the absence of Black African women engineering academics be explained? I use Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory (CGT) to understand the career choice processes of Black African engineering alumni women in South Africa to explain why their career choices thus far have not included the academy. Approaching the research from a social constructivist paradigm, loosely guided by a conceptual framework of African feminism(s) and CGT, and borrowing from life history interview methods this study addresses the underrepresentation of Black African women in engineering academe. Findings indicate Black African women's career choices in engineering are driven by prospects of socio-economic mobility and family/community responsibilities, a product of historical circumstances during apartheid that created social inequalities with Black families relegated to lower socio-economic statuses. In this study career choices were heavily influenced by teachers in pre-tertiary schooling, student academic competencies in mathematics and science, and industry practices that included providing bursary funds to only support engineering higher education endeavors, thereby dictating to students from low income households which careers to pursue especially in cases where the absence of such funding meant one would not be able to afford university costs. The academy was not viewed as a place of work seen instead as a transitory space. The image of the academy as made up of older White males also created the perception that it was not a place for Black women. The combination of the factors influencing career choices in school and the image of the academy as an unwelcoming space for Black women explains Black women's absence in South African engineering academia. Postsecondary institutional leaders should work on changing the image of the academy and marketing it as a career option for students in pre-tertiary and postsecondary education. Institutional culture and representation needs to reflect the diverse student population while actively working to ensure all students, academic and administrative staff feels welcome and valued. More importantly financial resources need to be made available and leveraged to support Black African women's education in a bursary-style format to encourage more Black women to follow academic career pathways.
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Title: Where the rivers come together : reclaiming and re-imagining indigenous history, identity, and language in the city
Creator: Haviland, Adam
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The movement and migration of Native Americans to urban areas is usually traced to the urbanization programs of the 1950s and 1960s. However, the recent scholarship of Coll Thrush (2007) and John Low (2016) highlight the long history of urban spaces as Indigenous spaces and the role Indigenous people and communities have played in their growth and development. Similarly, the discourse of language loss and revitalization, urban spaces, and Indigenous urban communities are seen as places or...
Show moreThe movement and migration of Native Americans to urban areas is usually traced to the urbanization programs of the 1950s and 1960s. However, the recent scholarship of Coll Thrush (2007) and John Low (2016) highlight the long history of urban spaces as Indigenous spaces and the role Indigenous people and communities have played in their growth and development. Similarly, the discourse of language loss and revitalization, urban spaces, and Indigenous urban communities are seen as places or endpoints of assimilation. Thus, language revitalization efforts and programs often focus on reservations as the primary domains where Indigenous languages and their speakers persist and thrive. Yet, despite settler colonial narratives of vanishing that erase Indigenous people and Indigenous languages from urban areas, cities have, and continue to be, important intersections of movement and migration and with deep historical roots where Indigenous languages persist and thrive as ideological markers of identity, belonging, and as spoken languages.This Research shows how Lansing, Michigan, Nkwejong (the place where the rivers come together) has a long history as an Indigenous intersection and space that challenges the local settler-colonial narratives of removal and erasure. Lansing has remained an Indigenous space through traditions of movement and migration that were driven by the auto industry and educational opportunities. Through these movements, Anishinabek from reservations in and around Manitoulin Island came here in the 1960s and 1970s who were fluent speakers ofAnishinaabemowin. Anishinabek from Canada and local Anishinabek, who had lost the language, created community and belonging through educational programs. These spaces have become focal points where community comes together and, for many individuals, are the primary spaces where language, culture, and identity are reclaimed and passed on. However, these are also spaces of tension where gender roles, language ideologies, and linguistic practices concerning language as an ideological marker of identity and its role as a communicative system are challenged and reimagined.Through interviews with community members and participant observation, I explore relationships to urban and reservation “homelands,” the importance of education as places where individuals develop relationships to their identities and culture, and the role that language, as both an ideological marker of identity and belonging and as a communicative system, play in their everyday lives and experiences. While most participants agreed that language was important to preserving identity and traditional knowledge, their relationships with their identities as urban and Indigenous, and their relationships to Indigenous language, highlight: (1) the need to reexamine language ideologies that link Language to “traditional culture and Knowledge” and the impacts these ideologies have on language revitalization. (2) The importance of urban areas as Indigenous homelands and places where Indigenous languages persist, and (3) the role of education as intersections and places of tension where multiple ideologies, identities, and ways of being Indigenous are expressed and reimagined.
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Title: What it do? : Houston hip hop, ciphers, migration, and borderlands
Creator: Del Hierro, Victor
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this dissertation, I migrate through Houston Hip Hop culture from 1991-2000 to understand the history and legacy of DJ Screw, Screw Tapes, and Screw and Chopped style. The purpose of this project is to understand the relationship between local communities and the Global Hip Hop Nation (GHHN) by migrating through the borderland spaces that exists both physically and metaphorically. Using Hip Hop practices and knowledges, this dissertation understands Hip Hop as a culture made up of multiple...
Show moreIn this dissertation, I migrate through Houston Hip Hop culture from 1991-2000 to understand the history and legacy of DJ Screw, Screw Tapes, and Screw and Chopped style. The purpose of this project is to understand the relationship between local communities and the Global Hip Hop Nation (GHHN) by migrating through the borderland spaces that exists both physically and metaphorically. Using Hip Hop practices and knowledges, this dissertation understands Hip Hop as a culture made up of multiple Hip Hop Ciphers. Locating borderlands between ciphers by purposefully migrating between them, this study combines the analysis of mixtapes, archival material, and interviews, this project works to create an emic view of Hip Hop as a culture that has always, and continues to create, re-imagine, and sustain knowledge and history through technological innovation, writing, and community building. This dissertation focuses on Houston because of DJ Screw and his development of a style (Screwed and Chopped) and mixtape series (Screw Tapes) that continues to impact and define a community’s identity. Through Screw Tapes, DJ Screw and the Houston Hip Hop community negotiation the relationship between Hip Hop and local styles in the production of diverse forms of communication.
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Title: What does it mean to be literate? Designing and implementing a framework of inclusive literacy practices in a rural context
Creator: Mehta, Rohit
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Written as two interconnected articles, this dissertation study is about identifying literacy practices that are inclusive of multiple ways of being, knowing, and doing. Using these, the purpose of this study is to create a framework of inclusive literacy practices that teachers and researchers can use--implement and refine--based on their contextual needs and expectations. Driven by the rhetorical question of 'What does it means to be literate?' I use three lenses of culturally sustaining...
Show more"Written as two interconnected articles, this dissertation study is about identifying literacy practices that are inclusive of multiple ways of being, knowing, and doing. Using these, the purpose of this study is to create a framework of inclusive literacy practices that teachers and researchers can use--implement and refine--based on their contextual needs and expectations. Driven by the rhetorical question of 'What does it means to be literate?' I use three lenses of culturally sustaining pedagogy, transdisciplinary thinking, and multiliteracies to challenge normative practices that dominate acceptable ways of being, knowing, and doing in the world. To achieve this, I conducted a two-part study. In this first part, I reviewed 170 highly cited articles to compile a framework of ten literacy practices--five for learners and five for teachers--that I call Culturally sustaining, Transdisciplinary, Multiliteracies (CTM) Practices. Using this preliminary framework, I offered a set of guidelines for teachers to implement it in their classrooms. In the second part, to test the feasibility of the framework, I situated myself in an underrepresented context in multicultural education--a predominantly white rural school, and studied the affordances and constraints of the framework. I designed an embedded case study and used ethnographic methods and critical discourse analysis to analyze the framework. I found that CTM Practices framework faced four major challenges: forms of marginalization disguised in practices of social networking, distancing from experiences of other people and places, conflict between discourses of school and self, and siloed practices and definitions of literacies. I offered resolutions for each of the challenges, and found the framework to be adaptable to the rural contexts. I call for further implementation of this framework across new contexts to test its feasibility"--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: What counts and why? : assessment in teacher education
Creator: Ellis, Rebecca
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In this dissertation I consider the ways that pre-service teachers are assessed in the middle of their program. I conducted my research at Galaxy University, a large, Midwestern university that had just completed its CAEP accreditation. Here, I collected syllabi, core assignment task descriptions and rubrics, and de-identified pre-service data submissions, as well as interviewed course instructors. I then analyzed my data to look for trends and themes, as well as with the goal to better...
Show moreIn this dissertation I consider the ways that pre-service teachers are assessed in the middle of their program. I conducted my research at Galaxy University, a large, Midwestern university that had just completed its CAEP accreditation. Here, I collected syllabi, core assignment task descriptions and rubrics, and de-identified pre-service data submissions, as well as interviewed course instructors. I then analyzed my data to look for trends and themes, as well as with the goal to better understand the choices made around assessment decisions. Throughout my research, I paid special attention to issues of fairness and how this led to tensions in the decision making process.
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Title: Weighting in multilevel models
Creator: Tong, Bing
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Large-scale survey programs usually use complex sampling designs such as unequal probabilities of selection, stratifications, and/or clustering to collect data to save time and money. This leads to the necessity to incorporate sampling weights into multilevel models in order to obtain accurate estimates and valid inferences. However, the weighted multilevel estimators have been lately developed and minimal guidance is left on how to use sampling weights in multilevel models and which...
Show moreLarge-scale survey programs usually use complex sampling designs such as unequal probabilities of selection, stratifications, and/or clustering to collect data to save time and money. This leads to the necessity to incorporate sampling weights into multilevel models in order to obtain accurate estimates and valid inferences. However, the weighted multilevel estimators have been lately developed and minimal guidance is left on how to use sampling weights in multilevel models and which estimator is most appropriate.The goal of this study is to examine the performance of multilevel pseudo maximum likelihood (MPML) estimation methods using different scaling techniques under the informative and non-informative condition in the context of a two-stage sampling design with unequal probabilities of selection. Monte Carlo simulation methods are used to evaluate the impact of three factors, including informativeness of the sampling design, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and estimation methods. Simulation results indicate that including sampling weights in the model still produce biased estimates for the school-level variance. In general, the weighted methods outperform the unweighted method in estimating intercept and student-level variance while the unweighted method outperforms the weighted methods for school-level variance estimation in the informative condition. In general, the cluster scaling estimation method is recommended in the informative sampling design. Under the non-informative condition, the unweighted method can be considered a better choice than the weighted methods for all the parameter estimates. Besides, the ICC has obvious effects on school-level variance estimates in the informative condition, but in the noninformative condition, it also affects intercept estimates. An empirical study is included to illustrate the model.
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Title: Volumes, determinants, and meridian lengths of hyperbolic links
Creator: Burton, Stephan D., 1987-
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: We study relationships between link diagrams and link invariants arising from hyperbolic geometry. The volume density of a hyperbolic link K is defined to be the ratio of the hyperbolic volume of K to the crossing number of K. We show that there are sequences of non-alternating links with volume density approaching v_8, where v_8 is the volume of the regular ideal hyperbolic octahedron. We show that the set of volume densities is dense in [0,v_8]. The determinant density of a link K is 2 pi...
Show moreWe study relationships between link diagrams and link invariants arising from hyperbolic geometry. The volume density of a hyperbolic link K is defined to be the ratio of the hyperbolic volume of K to the crossing number of K. We show that there are sequences of non-alternating links with volume density approaching v_8, where v_8 is the volume of the regular ideal hyperbolic octahedron. We show that the set of volume densities is dense in [0,v_8]. The determinant density of a link K is 2 pi log det(K)/c(K). We prove that the closure of the set of determinant densities contains the set [0, v_8]. We examine the conjecture, due to Champanerkar, Kofman, and Purcell that vol(K) < 2 pi log det (K) for alternating hyperbolic links, where vol(K) = vol(S^3\ K) is the hyperbolic volume and det(K) is the determinant of K. We prove that the conjecture holds for 2-bridge links, alternating 3-braids, and various other infinite families. We show the conjecture holds for highly twisted links and quantify this by showing the conjecture holds when the crossing number of K exceeds some function of the twist number of K.We derive bounds on the length of the meridian and the cusp volumeof hyperbolic knots in terms of the topology of essential surfaces spanned by the knot.We provide an algorithmically checkable criterion that guarantees that the meridian length of a hyperbolic knot is below a given bound.As applications we find knot diagrammatic upper bounds on the meridian length and the cusp volume of hyperbolic adequate knots and we obtain new large families of knots withmeridian lengths bounded above by four. We also discuss applications of our results to Dehn surgery.
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Title: Voices of Mayan Women in Plaza Comunitaria : poetica y educacion desde Yucatan
Creator: Ceballos Zapata, Abraham
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This study took place in a village in Yucatan, Mexico in the context of two adult education programs in Yucatan [Plaza Comunitaria and Preparatoria Abierta]. I interacted in convivencia with bilingual (Mayan-Spanish) Yucatec Mayan women who took on the challenge of completing their formal schooling through those adult education programs. Over 3 summers (2013, 2014, 2015) I immersed myself in the community and witnessed their educational efforts. Ethnographic and convivencia methodologies ...
Show moreThis study took place in a village in Yucatan, Mexico in the context of two adult education programs in Yucatan [Plaza Comunitaria and Preparatoria Abierta]. I interacted in convivencia with bilingual (Mayan-Spanish) Yucatec Mayan women who took on the challenge of completing their formal schooling through those adult education programs. Over 3 summers (2013, 2014, 2015) I immersed myself in the community and witnessed their educational efforts. Ethnographic and convivencia methodologies (Galvan, 2015) helped generate data. I analyzed data with methodologies stemming from the humanities, in narrative (Clandinin & Connelly, 2004) and poetic analysis (Görlich, 2016; Prendergast, Leggo, & Sameshima, 2009). Through my discussion, I explore how the efforts of Yucatec Mayan women prompt educators imagine possibilities for decolonial education and inform our pedagogical practices across multiple educational settings. By focusing on the voices of rural women as poetry, I evoke the rhythms and memories of their lives in indigenous communities and in educational settings. This emerging research has taught me life and professional lessons of education on the margins. I witnessed their ethos of familia, and solidaridad as they studied together. Most importantly, they showed me how studying and being in community are inseparable. -- Abstract.
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