This study--a hybrid project that blends empirical research traditions from the social sciences and composition studies--examines how discourses of Christianity and composition operate in college writing classrooms. Conducted at a large, public, Midwestern university, this qualitative study analyzes surveys and interviews of writing instructors…

This thesis is the first fully developed and published study of Seton Hall University. It specifically examines the organizational structures of Seton Hall University over a forty year period in light of the tumultuous changes in the Catholic Church and Catholic academia post-Vatican II. Of particular importance is change that influenced the…

The purpose of this study is to compare the teacher retention rates in public elementary and middle schools in Georgia that met or did not meet the academic performance component of Adequate Yearly Progress. The teacher retention rates were expected to be higher in schools that met the academic performance component of AYP and lower in the schools…

Concern about school safety has increased in recent years (Sprague et al., 1999), leading to a greater interest in methods such as Positive Behavior Support (PBS), which has been found to be successful at creating safe environments through use of preventive methods and the development of proactive systems for at-risk student populations (Horner,…

The focus of this survey research is on the self-reported instructional strategies of college mathematics professors. Using a modified "Approaches to Teaching Inventory" (ATI-R), the survey employed demographic, Likert scale, rank order, and open-ended items to characterize the instructional strategies of a national sample of college mathematics…

Across the international higher education spectrum access represents a significant issue. The literature is replete with analyses of access in various higher education systems. Low and inequitable patterns of participation in higher education are particularly prominent in developing countries. This dissertation is a case study of the higher…

Selective catalytic reduction or SCR is coming into worldwide use for diesel engine emissions reduction for on- and off-highway vehicles. These applications are characterized by broad operating range as well as rapid and unpredictable changes in operating conditions. Significant nonlinearity, input and output constraints, and stringent performance…

Traditionally, research on student leadership development has been exclusive and focused primarily on the experiences of White, male undergraduate student leaders. Therefore, there is little knowledge about the leadership development of Black female undergraduate students. This exploratory study attempts to fills a gap in the student leadership…

Understanding a narrative situation depends on keeping track of multiple characters that enter and exit dynamically as the plot unfolds. Because there has been no systematic investigation of age differences in the ability to manage multiple characters during narrative comprehension, this project was designed to examine those differences in this…

This dissertation provides a comprehensive critical analysis of six main arguments for religious accommodation, with a specific focus on fundamentalist religious groups and the accommodation of their practices within liberal democratic societies. This analysis reveals that the types of practices that these arguments aim to accommodate primarily…

Current methodologies used for the inference of thin film stresses through curvatures are strictly restricted to stress and curvature states which are assumed to remain uniform over the entire film/substrate system. In this dissertation, we extend these methodologies to non-uniform stress and curvature states for the single layer of thin film or…

By the end of the 20th century, a modern-day clarion call echoed throughout the Christian collegiate community for religious institutions to divert the trend of secularization and to recover their Christian identity. This study, rather than addressing recovery, explores the distinctive, enduring elements of Wheaton College, a midwestern Christian…

This dissertation reports the results of an exploratory data analysis investigation of the relationship between the structures used for information organization and access and the associated storage structures within state government websites. Extending an earlier claim that hierarchical directory structures are both the preeminent information…

The use of Service Oriented Architectures, namely web services, has become a widely adopted method for transfer of data between systems across the Internet as well as the Enterprise. Adopting a similar approach to embedded devices is also starting to emerge as personal devices and sensor networks are becoming more common in the industry. This…

This study attempted to determine whether giving lower-performing tutors preferential treatment over their higher-performing tutees before they engaged in peer tutoring sessions may help increase the reading achievement for these lower-performing tutors. The preferential treatment consisted of giving teacher-delivered instruction in a targeted…