Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Contextualizing And Evaluating The Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, Jackman Wilson

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the background of the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, a 250 page water use agreement among irrigators, Indian tribes, fishermen, environmental groups, federal and state agencies in the Klamath Basin. The agreement is contextualized in terms of water rights law, Indian law and the Endangered Species Act. The specific details of the agreement are explored. Finally, this thesis evaluates the agreement's merits and suggests a path forward for the agreement to become law.

A Critical Examination Of Oil Wealth Management Strategies And Their Effects On Economic Growth In The Gulf Cooperation Council Countries, Caroline J. Belmont

CMC Senior Theses

Despite their natural resources, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman) have failed to live up to their economic potential, primarily due to their dependence on a revenue source with volatile prices and political significance in an unstable region. This thesis argues that the best way to convert oil wealth into consistent long term growth is through diversification, both by investing in foreign assets and by growing domestic sectors that are independent from oil and gas prices. The research further investigates the primary tool these countries have used to …

Voting, Politics, And Gender: Has America Paved The Way For A Female President?, Hannah Bower

CMC Senior Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of candidate gender on voting behavior in presidential elections in the United States. By delving into the vice presidential nominations of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and Sarah Palin in 2008, I provided the baseline for the experiences of Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 2016. Ultimately, I present the argument that the United States is ready for a female president, either this year or in the near future.

A Comparative Examination Of International Carbon Trading Mechanisms, Allison Moors

CMC Senior Theses

A Comparative Examination of International Carbon Trading Mechanisms

Forces Of Change: Silicon Valley's Developing Relationship With American Government, Marissa C. Mirbach

CMC Senior Theses

Silicon Valley has increased its political engagement over the past decade, and is becoming an increasingly powerful force in government. It defies traditional affiliation labels, and behaves differently than other industries. It embodies a blend of altruism and self-interest, which guides its interactions with government and its intentions in affecting policy changes. In order to better understand Silicon Valley's political life, this thesis outlines a brief history of its development, and then delves into three policy issues: education reform, immigration reform and encryption and security. This focus allows for an up-close, detailed look at the multi-faceted relationship between Silicon Valley …

Peer Misbehavior Effects In The Classroom, Alex Hwung

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to evaluate the effects of peer misbehavior in the classroom on student learning outcomes--namely, if there is any truth behind the old saying that “one bad apple ruins the bunch”. Using experimental data, I show that there is a strong initial relationship between the level of misbehavior in a given classroom and performance on a mathematics evaluation; however, the inclusion of lagged peer achievement in the model causes most of that relationship to be absorbed away, suggesting that the bulk of peer effects stem more from the academic performance of other students than from their behavior.

A Kantian Revision Of The Doctrine Of Double Effect, Andrew H. Chung

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I will present a Kantian revision of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). In order to do so, I will explain the concept of jus in bello – focusing in particular on the distinction between intent and foresight. I will then argue that we ought to take an agency-inspired look at the DDE. Finally, I will conclude by arguing for my thesis that Boyle’s theory of agency, while good, needs to be revised in order to accommodate concerns stemming from Kant’s Formula of Humanity… namely consent.

Realizing The Right To Education: An Evaluation Of Education Policy In Six States Of India, Isabella Burch

CMC Senior Theses

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act is India’s most recent national-level policy in pursuit of universalizing elementary education. While some states have been successful at increasing the number of students who attend school, reducing dropout rates, and reducing the rates of out of school children, others are still struggling to make progress. The states that are successful are surprising in some instances because they are not particularly wealthy, they have large rural populations, and some face larger socio-political issues. This thesis finds that the states succeeding in meeting RTE goals are not always the states that …

The Relationship Between Self-Regulation And Stress, Sleep, And Behavioral Health, Clayton I. Brock

CMC Senior Theses

The goal of this research was to investigate multiple aspects of self-regulation and their relationship to stress, sleep, and behavioral health. Participants (N=89, 55 females, 29 males, and 5 did not list their sex) were recruited from a high-risk Midwest high school. Participants reported their own self-regulatory ability, sleep, stress, and behavioral problems. Nail samples were also collected from a subset of the participants to assay for cortisol and DHEA. Several measures of self-regulation were found to correlate with sleep quality, behavioral problems, and perceived stress. The natural log of the ratio of cortisol to DHEA was positively correlated with …

How Cutting The Cost Of Using A Bank Affects Household’S Behavior Of Remittance Transfers: Evidence From A Field Experiment In Rural Malawi, Chuyuan Lu

CMC Senior Theses

Using a randomized experiment in rural Malawi, this paper finds that providing information on mobile bank buses’ services leads to a higher probability of adopting savings accounts in the treatment group. Households in the treated villages are 3.06 percentage points more likely to adopt savings accounts than households in the control group. Second, the information treatment leads to an increase of in the probability of households receiving remittances in the treated villages, as well as an increase in the amount of remittances received. In particular, the effect is strongest for households that lived at least three kilometers away from the …

Topic Analysis Of Tweets On The European Refugee Crisis Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Chong Shen

CMC Senior Theses

The ongoing European Refugee Crisis has been one of the most popular trending topics on Twitter for the past 8 months. This paper applies topic modeling on bulks of tweets to discover the hidden patterns within these social media discussions. In particular, we perform topic analysis through solving Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) as an Inexact Alternating Least Squares problem. We accelerate the computation using techniques including tweet sampling and augmented NMF, compare NMF results with different ranks and visualize the outputs through topic representation and frequency plots. We observe that supportive sentiments maintained a strong presence while negative sentiments such …

Think Of The Children: How U.S. Domestic Policy Undermined Good Foreign Policy And Contributed To The 2014 Central American Migration Crisis, Rebekah D. Vermillion

CMC Senior Theses

Why was the United States caught completely unprepared for the Central American refugee crisis during the summer of 2014? Although thousands of unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador streamed across the southwest U.S. border in unprecedented numbers, the systemic problems plaguing the region stem back decades, and recent data clearly shows a trend of increasing yearly migration flows to the United States from these countries. Even in the face of the crisis, the U.S. government’s response was targeted more towards mitigating the symptoms of the crisis while insufficiently addressing its underlying causes.

This is largely due to U.S. …

An Event Study Analysis Of American Bank Holding Company Equity Returns Upon Basel Iii Announcement, Brian R. Delaney

CMC Senior Theses

This study examines the trading activity of a large cross section of American bank holding companies upon various sub-events associated with the introduction of Basel III. An event study methodology was applied to various sub-composite portfolios, as determined by regulatory capitalization and leverage ratios. The results suggest that statically significant abnormal negative returns occurred on the announcement to negotiate due to heightened regulatory uncertainty, especially amongst the least capitalized and highest leveraged banks. However, this effect is complemented by statically significant positive returns upon the release of the initial guidelines. Reactions to subsequent events report to be less significant.

Consumer Neuroscience: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach To Marketing Leveraging Advances In Neuroscience, Psychology And Economics, Bridget E. Blum

CMC Senior Theses

For decades, neuroscience has greatly contributed to our foundational understanding of human behavior. More recently, the findings and methods of neuroscience have been applied to study the process of decision-making in order to offer advanced insights into the neural mechanisms that influence economic and consumer choices. In this thesis, I will address how customized marketing strategies can be enriched through the integration of consumer neuroscience, an integrative field anchored in the biological, cognitive and affective mechanisms of consumer behavior. By recognizing and utilizing these multidisciplinary interdependencies, marketers can enhance their advertising and promotional mix to elicit desired neural and affective …

Decrypting Bitcoin Prices And Adoption Rates Using Google Search, Varun Puri

CMC Senior Theses

In this paper, I analyze Bitcoin price formation and adoption rates at a global and national level. In determining Bitcoin prices, I consider contemporaneous and lagged values of traditional determinants of currencies, such as inflation and industrial production, and digital currency specific factors, primarily public interest. Using monthly time-series data across five years (2011 – 2016), I find that global public interest in Bitcoin, measured by Google searches for the keyword ‘Bitcoin,’ has a positive and significant impact on Bitcoin prices. I extend the analysis to a country level by employing a proxy for adoption rates, represented by the number …

An Analysis Of Education Reform In Sub-Saharan Africa, Katharine Eger

CMC Senior Theses

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to fall behind other developing regions regarding educational attainment, despite recent progress in enrollment. This thesis examines a variety of external conditional factors that could contribute to a country’s relative success, in terms of years spent in school using a prediction model that compares years enrolled in secondary education as a foundation to determine over- and under-performing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

By exploring various educational policies, historical patterns, and projects executed in Rwanda, South Africa, Ghana, and Botswana, this thesis sheds light on four main challenges that can impact educational attainment: ethnic and racial tensions, an acute …

Burning Bridges: American Security Assistance And Human Rights In Mauritania, Isabel Wade

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the intersection between human rights and security assistance in Mauritania. In American security assistance broadly, and within the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership specifically, there has been an over-securitization of “whole of government” counterterrorism policy. While the United States recognizes the need to address the social, economic, and political roots of extremism, it has failed to do so in practice. If the United States continues to support Mauritania with conventional security assistance but does not tackle the root causes of extremism, it will ultimately fail in fighting terrorism in the Sahel. In order to succeed, the U.S. government must …

Assessing Equity In Artisanal Mines In The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Maya Kale

CMC Senior Theses

As a result of the continued violence and poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), artisanal mining serves as an opportunity for livelihood construction for the population in the Eastern DRC. Though the dominant discourse of “conflict minerals” has deemed natural resources as the cause or consequence of violence in the Eastern DRC, minerals in fact only serve as a funding tool for various foreign and local armed groups in the region. This thesis consequently explores the ways in which artisanal miners can reap the benefits of the minerals they work tirelessly to extract, using and adapting policies from …

Escaping The Poverty Trap: Formal Savings And Asset Accumulation In Rural Malawi, Audrey Breitwieser

CMC Senior Theses

Formal savings accounts can be an effective device for households to accumulate assets over time and thus have more funds available to better afford an expensive one-time payment, in the form of either addressing an economic shock or paying for an important life event. I explore this relationship using a field experiment in rural Malawi conducted from 2008-2010, and find that adoption of a formal savings account has no effect on the frequency of economic shocks that a household experiences, nor does it affect how households respond to shocks. However, I find that account adoption does significantly increase the frequency …

Evolution Of The Gulf, U.S.-Gulf Relations, And Prospects For The Future, Matthew D. Scott

CMC Senior Theses

The focus of this thesis is the establishment and evolution of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Furthermore, analyzing the U.S. relations with the GCC multilaterally and the Gulf States bilaterally. The final phase is to analyze the prospects of future relations between the U.S. and GCC collectively and individually.

A Conflict-Sensitive Approach To Conditional Cash Transfers In Indonesia: Can Ccts Reduce Conflict?, Glenys Kirana

CMC Senior Theses

Given that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) can be a very effective social welfare program to reduce poverty and improve education and health outcomes, but may exacerbate conflict, this thesis addresses strategies for conflict-sensitive formulation and implementation of CCTs in Indonesia. This thesis raises the immediate need to address poverty in Indonesia and seeks to learn from the successes and challenges of other CCTs, such as those enacted in Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, and the Philippines. This thesis also looks into existing literature comparing the effectiveness of CCTs to other social protection programs (SPPs) and finds that CCT is one of the …

The Hammer Or The Anvil: Developing Operational Adaptability Through Simulations At The Tactical Level, Michael Mccarthy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Operational Adaptability is a vital characteristic identified by senior Army leaders in today's military force. The U.S. Army is struggling with the definition and training of operational adaptability at the tactical level. In order to be a critical enhancement to the operational mission, operational adaptability needs to be trained through a training model that supports current U.S. Army doctrine. To develop a base foundation of operational adaptability, Soldiers must train as a collective unit in a simulated operational environment in order to apply characteristics of operational adaptability.

2015-2016 I&Rs By The Numbers, Information And Research Services Department, Florida International University Libraries

IR&S reports

Annual report from May 1, 2015 - May 1, 2016. Includes statistics at a glance and departmental highlights

Creating Green Open Access To Institutional Scholarship Using Digital Commons, Deborah L. White, Yumi Ohira

Criss Library Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

The digital repository serves as a Green Open Access solution to globally share scholarship produced by the university community. Both Pittsburg State University (PSU) and Fort Hays State University (FHSU) previously used CONTENTdm (CDM) as their primary digital repository. In 2015, both PSU and FHSU purchased and launched Bepress Digital Commons (DC), a more robust repository. Considering global discoverability, unlimited storage, efficient technical support, and the ability to share a wide range of file formats in one interface, Digital Commons by Bepress is the most reliable for small institutions.

This paper is based on the presentation delivered by PSU and …

Changing The Scholarly Sources Landscape With Geomorphology Undergraduate Students, Heidi Blackburn, Ashlee L.D. Dere

Criss Library Faculty Publications

Science is a core discipline in academia yet the focus of most undergraduate technical writing is generally on the data and results, not the literature review. The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) librarian and a new geology professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) collaborated to develop an information literacy session for students in a geomorphology class. Here we outline the background of the campus STEM initiatives and the assignment as well as the library instruction activity, learning outcomes, and assessment components. The activity improved student use of scholarly sources and we provide suggested activity modifications for …

Librarian Hacks: Introducing The Virtual Theological Library Project, Seth Allen

The Christian Librarian

Acquiring a low-cost library catalog is problematic, but there are a number of tools to ‘hack’ a library catalog. While no free product rivals the usability and searching sophistication of proprietary ILS systems, I believe that the Virtual Theological Library Project presents a solution is that is affordable and easy to implement. Using tools freely available on the web, librarians in churches and small academic libraries can created a cloud-based library catalog that is searchable to the public and supplement their local holdings with millions of theological texts on the web. Using Google Site and Google Sheets to create a …

Why The Acrl Framework For Information Literacy For Higher Education Enhances Information Literacy Instruction, Kathy Kempa

The Christian Librarian

This article attempts to clarify what the ACRL Framework is designed to do for teaching librarians. The article looks briefly at the need for change from the Competency Standards based on librarian concerns about their own teaching effectiveness. The short description of two of the foundational books, on which the Framework was based, are introduced so that instruction librarians can do their own research into the foundational concepts of the Framework for a deeper understanding of the value of this new approach to library teaching. Links to teaching resources are included.

Utter's "The Religious Right: A Reference Handbook" (Book Review), Armand T. Ternak

The Christian Librarian

A review of Utter, G.H., Storey, J.W. (2007). The Religious Right: A reference handbook. 3rd edition. Millerton, NY: Grey House Publishing. 503 pp. ISBN 9781592371136

To The Mountain!, Leah M. Mccurdy, Sylvia Batty, Rebecca Friedel

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications

Fajina Archaeology Outreach produced and published a trilingual (English, Spanish, Maya) children’s book called To the Mountain! to promote archaeological and cultural heritage among children in Belize.

To the Mountain! follows two ancient Maya kids, Little Moon and Running Jaguar, on an adventure! There is a big construction project going on at the temple of the Clay Mountain Capital. They’ve got to see how it’s coming along! Join the kids as they trek through the jungle, over the river, and up the big white road to reach the capital!

To the Mountain! incorporates significant Maya plants, animals, and locations with …

A Model Beyond Generic Quality Models For Academic Libraries, Chaminda Jayasundara Dr.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

A compelling argument raised by Bolton and Oliver, states that only customers’ assessment of continuously provided services, which may depend on performance-only evaluation, deserves attention. As libraries are services provided continuously and considered in general to be a public service, it is important to research this issue. Thus this paper discusses four research problems based on quality domains, overall customer satisfaction, quality paradigm and the causality in the area of academic libraries in Sri Lanka. The paper concludes that the overall customer satisfaction is related to both satisfaction ratings in the form of gap scores and performance-only scores of quality …