A Comprehensive Analysis of the Accounting Environment and Procedures Through a Series of Case Studies

The following thesis is a culmination of twelve case studies completed throughout the academic year of 2018-2019 under the direction of Dr. Victoria Dickinson, as a requirement of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College and completion of the ACCY 420 course. Each case study is independent of the next, and is an in-depth response to questions and theories that are found outside of this document. Each analysis is accomplished by myself alone and through the studies of Financial, Managerial, and Cost accounting courses in my career at the University of Mississippi. The thesis is intended to analyze accounting procedures and the current general accounting environment and topics. Accountants’ play a crucial role in the global economy, establishing trust and assurance through analytical and conceptual research and procedures. This thesis below illuminates several accounting problems, procedures, and questions posed by entities such as WorldCom, Starbucks, BP, and others. Besides the technical cases, other such as Case Study 1 and Case Study 5 are personal accounts of the accounting space and its impact on daily life and the economy. Rapid change in technology, corporations, and industries equate to an equally drastic adaption of public accountants. Computer software importance is quickly increasing and becoming more necessary as a basic skill for accountants. Overall, this thesis is intended to educate the reader on the ever-changing accounting world and how accountants are solving problems as quickly as the appear. This thesis, completed during coursework for ACCY 420, created multiple skills necessary for an accountant in either Audit, Tax, or Management Consulting. Research, critical thinking, public speaking, and professional writing/communication are just a few skills that were improved and acquired through the creation of this thesis

Beyond Nationalism: James and Grace Lee Boggs and the Black Radical Tradition in 1980s Detroit

This paper explores the Black Radical Tradition in the 1980s through the lens of James and Grace Lee Boggs and their dedication to grassroots, community organizing and evolving revolutionary rhetoric. Existing scholarship on the decade is largely dedicated to the dialectic fluctuation of Black Power ideology and liberal reform that created a more conservative political agenda centered around partisan politics. Alternatively, the activism of James and Grace Lee Boggs in the immediate aftermath of the Black Power Era presents a complex view of the decade, providing space for black radicalism. The adaptation of the couple’s theories and mobilization strategies serve as a case study of the Black Radical tradition from the 1950s through the mid-1970s. Simultaneously, their continued activism and wholesale rejection of partisan politics in the late 1970s and 1980s charts a new path of study for black radicalism and black solidarity after the State sanctioned decimation of the Black Power Movement and the unofficial death of radicalism. James and Grace Lee’s grassroots organizing demonstrates a continuation of the Black Radical Tradition, evolved to fit contemporary circumstances. Their preservation of radical rhetoric in the 1980s disputes the consensus that black radicalism was wholly replaced by electoral mobilization. The couple’s extra-political radicalism adds nuance to the African-American experience of the 1980s, demonstrating the variety of African-American resistance to the rise of American conservatism

Examining and Expanding the Impact of Practice-Based Teacher Education at National Louis University Faculty Research Residency Final Report 2017-18

This study investigated the perceptions about literacy preparation of recent graduates from NLU’s multiple teacher preparation programs. Specifically, the researchers surveyed NLU students who graduated between 2014-17 to determine which literacy concepts/practices they felt were most important in their first year of teaching and how well prepared they were to teach those concepts/practices. In addition, graduates were asked to consider the instructional practices they encountered during their NLU coursework and whether these practices were helpful in learning to teach literacy. Graduates were also asked to consider how well prepared they were to teach literacy in general. Initial analysis of data led the researchers to conclude the following: 1) Perception of preparedness varies by programs, with students in programs that implement more practice-based literacy learning reporting far better preparedness than students in the other programs; 2) Across programs, students find practice-based classroom experiences to be more helpful than more traditional experiences; 3) In several programs, high numbers of respondents did not appear to have opportunities to teach literacy with actual P-12 students; 4) Though there are some literacy practices that graduates seemed relatively well-prepared to teach, there are gaps between perception of importance of literacy practices and how well prepared our graduates felt to teach them. In particular, in the areas of writing, classroom discussion, and comprehension, survey respondents felt unprepared during their first year of teaching

Rewriting Disciplines: STEM Students’ Longitudinal Approaches to Writing in (and across) the Disciplines

Drawing on three cases from a larger (N=169) longitudinal study of student writing development, this article shows how STEM students “rewrote” disciplines to suit their writerly purposes as they moved through their undergraduate years. Students made it clear that the institutional dimensions of disciplines, visible in administrative units or departments that control resources and records, remained visible in their mental landscapes, but they had a much more flexible view of the epistemological dimensions of disciplines. Rather than entering a field as novices aiming to emulate the writing of its experts, they drew on the intellectual resources of multiple disciplines in order to carry out their own projects. The goals and choices of these students suggest that the term new disciplinarity has implications for the ways WID is conceptualized. As theorized by Markovitch and Shinn (2011, 2012), new disciplinarity posits elasticity as a central feature of disciplines, calls the spaces between disciplines borderlands, and affirms the dynamic nature of projects and borderlands with the term temporality. As such, new disciplinarity offers terms and a theoretical framework that conceptualize the intellectual negotiations of students

Classical Electromagnetic Fields from Quantum Sources in Heavy-Ion Collisions

Electromagnetic fields are generated in high energy nuclear collisions by spectator valence protons. These fields are traditionally computed by integrating the Maxwell equations with point sources. One might expect that such an approach is valid at distances much larger than the proton size and thus such a classical approach should work well for almost the entire interaction region in the case of heavy nuclei. We argue that, in fact, the contrary is true: due to the quantum diffusion of the proton wave function, the classical approximation breaks down at distances of the order of the system size. We compute the electromagnetic field created by a charged particle described initially as a Gaussian wave packet of width 1 fm and evolving in vacuum according to the Klein-Gordon equation. We completely neglect the medium effects. We show that the dynamics, magnitude and even sign of the electromagnetic field created by classical and quantum sources are different.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. V2: a numerical error corrected, figures improved, other minor improvement

An Adaptable Device for Scalable Electrospinning of Low- and High-Viscosity Solutions

This paper summarizes the design and construction of an adaptable electrospinner capable of spinning fluids over a large range of viscosities. The design accommodates needless electrospinning technologies and enables researchers to explore a large range of testing parameters. Modular parts can be exchanged for alternative versions that adapt to the research question at hand. A rotating drum electrode immersed halfway into a solution bath provides the liquid film surface from which electrospinning occurs. We tested and assessed several electrode designs and their electrospinning performance at higher (< 500 poise) viscosities. Relative humidity was found to affect the onset of electrospinning of highly viscous solutions. We demonstrate robust device performance at applied voltage up to 90 kV between the electrospinning electrode and the collector. Design and fabrication aspects are discussed in practical terms, with the intent of making this device reproducible in an academic student machine shop