Visualizing the Cherokee Homeland through Indigenous Historical GIS: An Interactive Map of James Mooney's Ethnographic Fieldwork and Cherokee Collective Memory

In 1887, the Bureau of American Ethnology appointed James Mooney to work among the Eastern Band of Cherokee. From 1887 to 1916, Mooney documented the sites and stories of the Cherokee homeland as shared with him by members of the community. Mooney's working maps and field notes were recently discovered at the archive of the Smithsonian Institution. For this thesis, I combine Mooney's work with Cherokee collective memory to re-interpret the stories of the Cherokee homeland according to Duyuktv, a Cherokee theoretical framework and paradigm. Asking the question, "How can the Mooney archive be transformed into a digital map that will engage and inspire Cherokee youth to learn and explore the stories of their homeland?" I demonstrate what is possible when Cherokee perspective is synthesized with geospatial technologies to present the ancient stories of the Cherokee homeland in a way that weaves traditional and modern culture into its components

School-to-career curriculum

The mission of this project is to develop a school-to-career curriculum that can be utilized by all middle school students. It is designed to help educate these students in the skills they will need to become successful in their future careers

Writing themselves in: a national report on the sexuality, health and well-being of same-sex attracted young people

This 1998 report is about young people who are attracted to their own sex. The need for accurate baseline figures about young people of non-heterosexual orientation has developed as part of a general concern about the spread of the HIV virus into the adolescent population and a specific concern around these young people’s emotional well-being. In the past three years, Australian adolescent research conducted by the National Centre in HIV Social Research, La Trobe University, has revealed that a significant minority of young people are not unequivocally heterosexual, with numbers ranging between 8 and 11% in recent research. Research which specifically targets this population has, until now, been conducted retrospectively and/or with people who identify as gay or lesbian recruited through gay and lesbian youth groups or the gay press. As researchers we know little about young people at pre-identity or pre-disclosure stages because their need for anonymity means they cannot be contacted through the usual channels. The young people represented in this project were accessed through an advertising campaign in National magazines, via radio and the Internet. A survey was available on a website and from the Centre for the Study of Sexually Transmissible Diseases. Surveys were also inserted in the gay and street press. These surveys sought information regarding sexual feelings and experiences as well as sexual and drug-taking practices in regard to STDs (including HIV) and related diseases. The source and adequacy of sexual health information for this group and their levels of support and experiences of abuse and discrimination were also elicited. The survey also charted young people’s perceptions of their quality of life and emotional well-being. In addition, participants were also asked to write stories about their experiences, including when they first knew about their sexual feelings, their relationships with family and friends, and their hopes for the future. &nbsp

Who Cared for the Carers? A Study of the Occupational Health of General and Mental Health Nurses 1890 to 1948

This thesis set out to explore the neglected field of nurses’ occupational health. Evidence from the three case study hospitals confirms that attitudes toward nurses’ health changed between 1888 and 1948. The health of nurses was an issue that was always taken seriously but each institution approached the problem differently and responses showed much variation over time. There were good reasons for this but the failure to adopt a coherent and consistent policy worked to the detriment of nurse health. This difficulty helps explain the ambiguous treatment of occupational health within wider histories of nursing. This can lead to the erroneous conclusion that occupational health was somehow neglected by contemporary actors, thereby facilitating the omission of the subject from historical studies concentrating on professional projects and the wider politics of nursing. This study takes a different approach showing that occupational health issues were inexorably connected to these nursing debates. Occupational health cannot be understood without reference to professional projects. This is as true in debates where occupational health was obscured as it was in cases of overt concern. The history of the occupational health of nurses is also important because it offers a new perspective on two other themes central to nursing history, particularly class and gender. This focus helps understand why attitudes towards the care of sick nurses changed over time and varied between different types of institutions. By concentrating on individual nurses’ experiences we reveal something new about the way national conversations affected ordinary nurses’ lives. Recognition that nursing presents a serious occupational health risk is a relatively recent phenomenon; it was not until the 1990s that most nurses had access to occupational health units. This study not only sheds light on why nurses’ health attracted little attention before the Second World War but also explains why this situation began to change from the 1940s.Wellcome Trus

Leadership theories and practices to strengthen student activities: A case study of the University of Northern Iowa English Club

As a senior at the University of Northern Iowa ( UNI), my project to fulfill a segment of my Presidential Scholarship is to plan and propose a structure change for leadership within the UNI English Club. Currently, I am acting as an intern for the English Department. For my internship, I act as the student contact for the four student organizations/activities within the department: English Club, Inner Weather, Sigma Tau Delta, and The Student As Critic Conference (an annual, state wide essay competition held on campus). The written components of my project consist of a paper dealing with a proposal for a new leadership structure for the English Club and two manuals, one for the English Club and the other an organizational guide for editors of Inner Weather, UNI·s student creative writing journal. My project stems from my experiences not only as an English major but as a member of the English Club, executive editor of Inner Weather (a project supported by the English Club), and a member of Sigma Tau Delta (National English Honor Society)

A comparative study of upper limb mechanical stress in the Pre-Colombian Tennessee River Valley

This investigation establishes the presence of rotator cuff disease (RCD) within human skeletal samples from a prehistoric North American context and evaluates the subsistence based (hunter-gatherer an agricultural) differences of the pathological and non-pathological osseous reactive change. The skeletal sample as recovered as a part of an archaeological salvage project from the western Tennessee River Valley prior to the 1944 completion of the Kentucky Lake Dam. The sites consist of three Middle and Late Archaic (4500-1000 BCCE) period hunter-gatherers and one Mississippian (1050-1450 CE) period agriculturalist sample. These sites are now submerged in the Kentucky Late Reservoir. The bone elements of the rotator cuff which were examined were the humeral head, the lateral clavicle, and the acromion process of the scapula. Aspects of RCD evident on dry bone (enthesopathies, degenerative joint disease) and skeletal and entheseal robusticity were examined to provide an image of mechanical stress as possible behavior correlates within the region and between subsistence strategies. RCD was found to be ubiquitous in both the hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist samples. Examination between the subsistence strategies indicates that the Mississippian sample was subject to higher overall mechanical stress. Furthermore, the Mississippian sample had greater skeletal robusticity than the Archaic sample. Although both subsistence economies are labor intensive, there is more shoulder stressing behavior evident in the food-producers

Nest site characteristics of the Western Pond Turtle, Clemmys marmorata, at Fern Ridge Reservoir, in West Central Oregon

A census of Western Pond Turtle nest sites was conducted in five nesting areas at Fern Ridge Reservoir, in West Central Oregon. Baseline data about soils, vegetation, landform structure, and hydrological environment were collected through measurement of slope, aspect, straight-line distance from water, soil compaction, overstory cover, percent vegetative ground cover, vegetation height, and period of inundation between June, 1995 and August, 1997. Nest chamber temperature was recorded at 10 nest sites during 1996. Measurements of slope, aspect, and straight-line distance from water of Fern Ridge nest sites had been collected during 1993 and 1994, and were combined with data from this study. Climatological data were collected during all 5 years. Anecdotal information was collected on nest success, clutch size, hatchling emergence dates and post-emergence movements, nesting frequency, and nest site philopatry. Nest sites were typified by low slopes, southern aspects, and wide ranges of straight-line distance from water. Nest area soils were very compact and dry during the nesting season and period of incubation, but were often saturated or inundated between November and April, when hatchlings overwinter in the nest. Vegetation was relatively dense; dominated by various low forbs and grasses. None of the nest sites had overstory cover. Successful nest sites tended to have more vegetative ground cover, and were exposed to less precipitation and more growing degree days during the period of incubation than unsuccessful nest sites. Successful nest sites were also inundated for shorter periods of time during the winter

Epidemiologic Findings and Management Response During a Bighorn Sheep Die-Off in the Elkhorn Mountains of West-Central Montana

Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) were introduced into the Elkhorn Mountains of west-central Montana in the mid 1990s. The population increased in number to approximately 250 animals until the winter of 2007-2008 when about 84 percent of the population died from a pneumonia related epizootic. Management actions during the die-off were geared toward removing as many sick animals as possible in efforts to reduce overall mortality. Due to the stage of the epizootic removal of sick sheep was not effective in interrupting the die-off. Samples were collected from bighorn sheep, domestic sheep, mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), elk (Cervus elaphus) and domestic goats utilizing the same winter range. Pasteurella spp, Moraxella ovis and Mycoplasma ovipneumonia were isolated from lung tissue of dead bighorns and pharyngeal swabs collected from domestic sheep occupying similar range during the epizootic. Both the bighorn sheep and domestic sheep also shared similar gastro-intestinal parasites including Nematodirus spp and Eimeria spp. Testing tissues and fecal samples from sympatric mule deer suggested no shared bacterial pathogens and limited shared gastrointestinal parasites. Evaluation of fecal samples from domestic goats and elk also occupying bighorn sheep range identified few shared parasites that may have contributed to the epizootic