Enhancing General Chemistry Labs to Construct Engaging, Colorful Experiments

General Chemistry I (CHEM 121) sets the foundation for the chemistry education of Valparaiso students; therefore, it is critical that the CHEM 121 lecture and laboratory courses provide rich learning experiences that are meaningful, focused and both academically and visually engaging. In this project, two new or significantly revised laboratory experiments were incorporated into the curriculum during the Spring 2018 semester for the first time: 1) The Limiting Reagent in Action: Determining the Formula of a Precipitate and 2) The Analysis of Microplastic Pollution in Local Soil. The common goal of both labs were to increase student understanding of challenging general chemistry concepts by enhancing student engagement. In the case of Experiment 1, this was accomplished by improving the visual appeal of the reactions employed; in the case of Experiment 2, this was accomplished by directly connecting course material to study real-world pollution problems facing NW Indiana. Results of this experimentation and its impact on student learning in CHEM 121 are described

I [Don’t] Belong Here: Narrating Inclusion at the Exclusion of Others

Borrowing from narrative research and Disability Studies in Education, Emily tells the story of her adoptive siblings Maria and Isaac, who were orphaned by AIDS. She explores the paradox of inclusion which is that it sometimes, if not oftentimes, fails and results in exclusion. A chief reason for the failure of inclusion, Emily argues, is that children with real and perceived differences challenge the “grammar” of schooling—that is, they stand out for their differences

Trademarks are “Intellectual Property” Under Bankruptcy Code Section 365(n)

(Excerpt) Under section 365 of title 11 of the United States Code (the “Bankruptcy Code”) a trustee or a debtor-in-possession may reject an executory contract. Rejection has the same effect as a breach outside of bankruptcy; rejection does not rescind the rights that the contract previously granted or terminate the contract. Under section 365(n) of the Bankruptcy Code, a licensee of intellectual property may retain the right to use such intellectual property notwithstanding the rejection of such license provided it is an executory contract. A contract is executory when there is performance due, to some extent, from both parties. A licensing contract is executory because the licensor grants the license and provides associated goods or services during the licensed term, and the licensee, in return, pays continuing royalties or fees. Said otherwise, in a licensing contract, performance is due from both sides until the very end of the contract term, and therefore the contract is considered executory. When an executory contract licenses out trademark rights, there was a question as to whether or not those rights are terminated when the contract is rejected. Circuit Courts consulted previous case law, Congressional intent, and statutory interpretation to decide whether a license to use a trademark in an executory contract remains after rejection. After a circuit split as to this question, the Supreme Court, in Mission Products Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC (“Mission”), finally attempted to create a legal standard to apply to rejected trademark executory contracts, however the holding in this case left some lingering ambiguities. What remains ultimately clear from the holding in Mission is that rejection does not rescind the trademark rights previously granted by an executory contract. This memorandum explores (1) the legal standard and confusion that led to the circuit split prior to Mission, (2) the current law as articulated in Mission, and (3) some of the remaining ambiguities post Mission

The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South

Reviewer Emily Suzanne Clark writes that Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh’s The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South “is one of the most important books in African American religious history of the past decade.” Clark concludes that “By placing women at the center,” Oghoghomeh “shifts the field’s focus away from the pulpit as a means of empowerment.

She's the four-leaf clover in the city Katrina turned over : the historical Sister Gertrude Morgan and her post-Hurricane Katrina specters

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on November 13, 2009).Thesis advisor: Dr. Richard J. Callahan, Jr.M.A. University of Missouri--Columbia 2009.In the 1960s and 1970s, Sister Gertrude Morgan, artist, musician, street preacher and prophet, lived and ministered throughout the city of New Orleans. Through her artwork, music, preaching, and literal interpretation of the apocalyptic books of the Bible, she placed herself and New Orleans within the biblical text, playing a significant role in the coming apocalypse. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has seen the emergence of multiple Sister Gertrude specters. The historical Sister Gertrude is the inspiration for these Sister Gertrude specters, but ambiguous relationships exist between the historical Sister Gertrude and each post-Hurricane Katrina specter. Each of the specters pulls at a specific element of Sister Gertrude's life, work, and/or image. The four specific specters explored in this thesis were created by: Philadelphia DJ King Britt, the New York Times, commemoration efforts, and Preservation Hall owner Benjamin Jaffe. The tensions inherent in each of these specters cannot be understood without their comparison to the historical Sister Gertrude. Despite these tensions, the historical Sister Gertrude and her specters remain connected. Today's specter creators' search for authentic New Orleans by adapting Sister Gertrude runs parallel to Sister Gertrude's efforts to make New Orleans sacred through her religious worldview. The process happening in both cases is similar. In the concluding chapter, the Sister Gertrude specters are examined in light of the New Orleans rebuilding process.Includes bibliographical references

QUANTIFYING THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL VARIABILITY OF SUBSURFACE FLOW ACROSS THREE HILLSLOPES IN A SEMI-ARID, ALPINE FOREST

Distinguishing watershed characteristics that influence the spatial and temporal response of shallow subsurface flow within hillslopes is requisite for quantifying streamflow quantity, timing, and quality. I evaluated local and non-local (upslope) topographic influences on shallow water table development, magnitude, and spatial extent across 3 hillslopes (24 shallow groundwater recording wells) of distinct shape and size in the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, MT. I asked the question: at what spatial and temporal scales do characteristics of surface topography (upslope or local) govern shallow groundwater response and runoff contributions to streams? My results corroborate prior findings of the role upslope accumulated area (UAA) and local slope play, but emphasize the importance of considering the two variables independently. Increasing UAA generally resulted in greater duration of saturation across each study hillslope (R2= 0.78; p \u3c .05). Local slope was a significant predictor of mean water table height (R2= -0.86; p \u3c .05). Combined as the topographic wetness index, both local (slope) and non-local drainage area described the propensity for shallow groundwater duration and magnitude (R2= .72; p \u3c .05). We used this relationship to quantify the spatio-temporal variability of hydrologically connected contributing area across the 3 study sites. The spatial extent and timing of hydrologically connected contributing area was synchronized with changes in stream reach discharge adjacent to each hillslope contributing area. These relationships suggest that the organization of hillslope topography is a necessary context and consideration for predicting runoff source contributions to streams in space and time

Iron Gongs and Singing Birds: Paths of Migration and Acoustic Assemblages of Alterity in the Former Dutch Colonial Empire

This dissertation investigates the roles of nonhuman (object and animal) entities in auditory practices that construct selfhood, homeland, and memory for people in migration, in order to draw broader conclusions about the aural formation of subject-object relationships in colonial empires and in present-day Europe and the Caribbean. I focus on two sonic objects that have traveled with colonial and postcolonial migrants in the former Dutch colonial empire: (1) traditional Javanese gamelan (pitched percussion orchestra) instruments that traveled with indentured laborers and their descendants to Suriname and the Netherlands, and (2) Caribbean songbirds raised and trained for singing competitions held by Surinamese men in Suriname and the Netherlands. By attending ethnographically to historical and contemporary human encounters with these objects, I argue that individual sensory perception is shaped by historically formed societal paradigms of difference such as "ethnic plurality" in Suriname and "multiculturalism" in the Netherlands, and that such notions of difference perpetuate a colonial zoopolitics that in turn shapes contemporary relations between different groups of humans and between humans and the nonhuman world. Chapter 1 is concerned with the notion of Javanese ethnicity in Suriname. Through historical inscriptions of colonial listening and ethnographic vignettes of contemporary Javanese performance in Suriname and the Netherlands, I investigate the formation and perpetuation of a sense of Javaneseness with origins in a migration of indentured laborers from the Dutch East Indies to Suriname between 1890 and 1939. Chapter 2 recounts the development of gamelan music and Javanese-Surinamese culture during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by tracing specific sets of gamelan instruments in their circulations between Indonesia, Suriname, and the Netherlands. Chapter 3 provides a contrasting ethnographic exploration, namely of Caribbean songbirds who are bred, raised, and trained to compete in songbird competitions in Suriname and in Surinamese migrant communities in the Netherlands. Chapter 4 develops outwards from these ethnographic studies to pose larger questions about epistemologies of nature and culture that can be traced from Caribbean plantations to contemporary projects of cultural preservation and natural conservation and to discourses of resources, rights, (bio)diversity, sustainability, and environmental justice. Taken together, these chapters interrogate epistemologies and discourses that form culture and nature as separate realms, from the plantation colony to the present, from a perspective informed by aural and multisensory engagements with human and nonhuman difference