An evaluation of the freshman seminar at Appalachian State University

Institutions of higher education are placing an increasing emphasis on student retention programs for administrative, economic, and humanistic reasons. Decline in college enrollments is a major concern of these institutions. In attempting to explain attrition, Vincent Tinto (1975, 1987) developed a theory of student departure which stated that leaving college can be viewed as a process of interactions between the individual student and the academic and social environment of the college and that, other things being equal, the greater the extent of academic and social integration of the student into the college community, the more likely the student is to persist to graduation

Commuting, gender, and military service: three essays in applied microeconomics

This dissertation uses applied microeconometrics to examine the economics of time allocation and human capital. To do so, these essays bring together data from a variety of sources, build theoretical economic models, and apply econometric methods to deal with empirical issues. In Chapter II, a new measure of commuting time for U.S. households is constructed by applying a previously developed methodology to a novel data source, the American Time Use Survey (ATUS). To assess the suitability of this new measure for empirical analysis, commuting times and patterns within the ATUS measure are then compared to those for commuting measures that have been constructed from other commonly used data sources. Chapter III takes advantage of this novel measure and associated ATUS data to investigate why women tend have shorter commutes than men. Previous studies have examined this “gender commuting gap,” but have yet to provide a satisfying explanation. A theoretical economic model is developed here that generates predictions complementary to those in the literature. The empirical analysis that follows establishes that the measured gender gap is reduced when stops are included in the calculation of commuting times, but that the remaining gender difference in commuting time is related to gender differences in wages and the types of jobs held. Chapter IV applies econometric methods to a different empirical issue: the impact of military service in WWII and the Korean War on the educational attainment of children. Using U.S. Census data, this chapter constructs linked family data to find that a father's military service is associated with greater educational progress for his children. Applying multiple methods to account for endogenous effects, the analysis is unable to reject the hypothesis that the observed relationship is due to endogeneity

The incidence of separation events of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in a flow displacement chamber: examining shear forces overcoming Flo11p mediated adhesion to an inert substrate

Biofilms are present on surfaces that are exposed to a consistently aqueous environment and can be deleterious to human health. Fungal biofilm infections are a common problem in medical in-dwellings, specifically urinary catheters that need to remain in the patient for significant periods of time. I designed and built a flow-chamber that can be visualized with brightfield microscopy to confirm adhesion of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to an inert substrate. I then used a peristaltic pump to propagate an up-stepping flow-rate and counted the number of separation events for three strains of S. cerevisiae, one of which is a Flo11p, flo11?, knockout. Using this flow chamber, I created adhesion profiles of S. cerevisiae and determined what shear forces would impede the continued adherence of S. cerevisiae to an inert surface. By analyzing the processes involved in the initial step in biofilm formation, deposition and adhesion, we can make advances in designing surfaces to prevent and inhibit biofilm growth in medical in-dwellings and catheters. [This abstract has been edited to remove characters that will not display in this system. Please see the PDF for the full abstract.]]]> 2018 Saccharomyces cerevisiae Microorganisms $x Adhesion Biofilms$x Prevention English http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Smith_uncg_0154M_12596.pdf oai:libres.uncg.edu/25202 2019-02-25T16:54:25Z UNCG How principals of highly impacted schools are getting it done: practices for building teacher capacity in highly impacted schools NC DOCKS at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Smith, Chelsea Sadé <![CDATA[Highly impacted schools face challenges such as high teacher turnover, low academic performance, and high percentages of minoritized students who qualify for free or reduced lunch. Principals who lead highly impacted schools must not only perform the various duties given to all school principals no matter their settings, but they must also confront additional challenges characteristic of highly impacted settings. One major responsibility of all school principals is to build the professional capacity of teachers in an effort to raise student achievement, since teachers are the most important contributing factor to student success (Darling-Hammond, 2000). So how are principals in highly impacted schools getting the job done in terms of supporting teachers, especially considering the many other challenges they combat each and every day? This basic qualitative research study serves as a contribution to existing scholarship regarding the practices and strategies that principals of highly impacted schools utilize to build teacher professional capacity. In conducting a basic qualitative research study, I was interested in (a) how people interpret their experiences, (b) how they construct their worlds, and (c) what meaning they attribute to their experiences (Merriam &amp; Tisdell, 2016). My data collection included recorded interviews and observations. I first conducted interviews with a total of 11 principals. Subsequently, I chose three of the principals to observe as a follow up to our initial interview. I also conducted final interviews with the three principals whom I observed. The type of interview questions I used for this study included grand tour, concrete example, and compare and contrast questions. After completing my data collection, I engaged in analysis by coding the transcribed interviews. This process revealed five themes that represented the most common practices and strategies that principals of highly impacted schools used to build teacher capacity. These themes included: teachers support teachers (shared leadership); teachers of highly impacted schools must know their leader cares (emotional support); walkthroughs help principals determine the levels of instructional support needed; instructional supports vary in form (instructional support); and, environmental supports help teachers thrive in a highly impacted setting. To demonstrate how these themes played out in principal practice, in my findings chapter I also provide detailed descriptions of what I witnessed during my observations of three of the principals. One implication of my study is that teachers serving in highly impacted schools require not just instructional support but also emotional and environmental support in hopes of experiencing success (Kraft et al., 2015). Instructional leadership, in other words, is not the only type of leadership that principals in highly impacted schools must practice. In my research study, in fact, emotional support was the type of support that principals used most often. Another implication of this study is that principals serving in highly impacted schools must be vigilant in determining the specific needs of teachers in order to purposefully serve teachers and grow them professionally

Case studies of three teachers: a description and analysis of their planned adaptations in response to the results of an informal reading inventory.

The purpose of this study was to identify the planned adaptations of three upper-grades elementary teachers after participating in professional development on how to administer and analyze an Informal Reading Inventory (IRI). The rationale behind this study is that lower grade teachers throughout the state use formative assessments to identify their students' strengths and weaknesses in reading. However, upper-grades teachers are neither required and are rarely offered professional development on how to use such assessments to inform instruction. Little research has explored how upper-grades elementary teachers adapt their instruction after receiving professional development on administering and analyzing a formative assessment. The research question that guided this study was: After administering and analyzing an Informal Reading Inventory, what instructional adaptations, which are stimulated by IRI results, are made by three upper-elementary teachers? During this study teachers administered an IRI in September and December. The participants' literacy instruction was observed for two consecutive days each month. Following these observations, teachers were interviewed to identify how they had adapted their instruction after analyzing their students' IRI results. Participants reported more adaptations during the first month of the study, September, immediately following the first administration of the IRI. Participants' adaptations also increased after the second administration in January. However, during the two months between the IRI administrations, participants reported that their planned adaptations were increasingly based on their everyday observations of their students' reading

Public school curriculum : legislative and judicial mandates

The purpose of this historical study was to examine the legal issues associated with public school curriculum. A major portion of the study is a summary and an analysis of the statutory mandates of the fifty states

Mexico in senior high school American history textbooks : a content analysis

Statement of the Problem. The problem of the study was to analyze the content materials in selected senior high school American history textbooks which pertained directly to Mexico. Scope of the Problem. The study was delimited in four major ways: (1) to the content material within the textbooks that directly pertained to Mexico; (2) to senior high school American history textbooks; (3) to a selected number of textbooks; and (4) to a content analysis of the textbooks. In many ways the delimitations of the study corroborated findings made in previous studies. Decided differences also appeared. The most obvious difference between this study and previous ones, is that it is concerned only with the content material within the textbooks that directly pertained to Mexico. By concentrating on one subject within the textbooks it was possible to make a more thorough, detailed, and accurate investigation

The effect of list two length on context information in list-method directed forgetting

The current study investigated the claim that in list-method directed forgetting, List 2 must be as long as List 1 in order to obtain directed forgetting (Pastötter &amp; Bäuml, 2010). Participants studied two lists of words for a later memory test, and were instructed to forget or remember List 1 following its presentation. The length of List 1 was fixed (18 items), whereas the length of List 2 varied across conditions. In the equivalent condition, the objective number of items on List 2 was equivalent to the number of items on List 1. In other conditions, the objective number of items on List 2 was fewer than on List 1 (nine items), but the items on List 2 were repeated within the list so that the total number of trials was identical across the two lists. In the spaced condition, List 2 items were repeated in a spaced fashion, with a lag of eight items between the repetitions, whereas in the massed condition, List 2 items were repeated back to back with a lag of zero. Finally, in the short condition, List 2 was half the length of List 1 items (nine items), and the items were presented only once. The spaced group did not show directed forgetting impairment, whereas the massed and the equivalent groups showed impairment of identical magnitude. The short group showed numerical impairment, and the magnitude of the effect was similar to the massed and the equivalent groups, although the results were trending toward significance. The results are discussed in terms of the theoretical mechanisms underlying directed forgetting

Effects of positive reinforcement on an assessment measure of visual perception behavior

The purpose of this study was threefold: (a) to investigate the effects of presenting various reinforcement procedures contingent on correct responses to a test of visual perception, (b) to determine if there is a difference in performance between boys and girls as a possible differential effect of a male examiner, and (c) to determine if a difference exists in responsiveness to the various types of reinforcers as a function of social class

A thesis written to avoid writing about my own work

This paper, as the title indicates, is an essay written to avoid writing a philosophical discussion of the author's own work. It constitutes a chronological surrey of the most outstanding characteristics of German printing arts from the late fourteenth century to the early twentieth, with a discussion of the relationships discovered between these German prints and contemporary Occidental prints. Emphasis has been placed on the woodcut, engraving, etching, and lithograph, their physical characteristics and emotional quality, as they evolved from their Germanic heritage. Where it was believed pertinent, the background from which these arts developed and the atmosphere in which they were created has been briefly indicated

What remains

This thesis is a collection of poems written during two years of study at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro M.F.A. writing program. This collection of poems explores the creation (and destruction) of identity by locations, trauma and circumstance