When You Can’t “Phone Home”: Subversive Politics Of The Foreign Other In E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial And District 9

This thesis takes a close look at the ways in which alien representations, especially in films, mirror the ways in which transnational and migrant individuals are viewed and treated. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is viewed as an unintentional allegory for undocumented immigrants in the United States, while District 9 and the fictional work of Jorge Luis Borges are conflated in order to analyze the statements being made in the film on the historical occurrences of post-apartheid Johannesburg

Fraud & Internal Controls In Nonprofit Organizations

This thesis examines several cases of fraud that has occurred in nonprofit organizations across the United States. It also looks at what fraud is and how it affects nonprofit organizations. As well as what can lead loyal volunteers and community members to commit fraud in their local nonprofit organization, thereby reducing the amount of resources the nonprofit has to work towards its mission in the community. Finally, it looks at what internal controls can be put in place by nonprofit organizations to reduce their fraud risk

Influence of personality on learning and related processes among nonclinical panickers

This study examined hypothesized personality-related individual differences in learning and related processes among four groups of participants who differed in presence vs. absence of nonclinical panic attacks and in high vs. low self-reported agoraphobic avoidance. Variables of interest were (a) level of audible stimuli tolerated, (b) magnitude of skin resistance (SR) responding to audible stimuli, (c) rate of habituation to an audible stimulus, and (d) evidence of conditioning of a neutral stimulus to an aversive audible stimulus. The four groups in this study were found to occupy different locations in Eysenckian two dimensional personality space as predicted. Nonclinical panickers high on agoraphobic avoidance were highest on neuroticism and trait anxiety while nonpanickers low on agoraphobic avoidance were lowest on neuroticism and trait anxiety. The former group was lower than the latter on extroversion. Nonclinical panickers low on avoidance and nonpanickers high on avoidance were intermediate on these three measures

The effect of class size on retention in the primary grades : implications for educators and policy makers

This post hoc study analyzed data collected through the STAR Project in Tennessee. This project followed students in early primary (k-3) from 1985 through 1989 in order to study the effects of class size on achievement. Lasting benefits studies are on-going. The current study focused on class size as it affected the achievement scores of students retained in kindergarten and first grade and those not retained in those grades. Demographics for both groups were compared and a portrait of the retained kindergartner and retained first grader was drawn. A literature review of retention and class size was conducted and presented. The sample of retained students in kindergarten and grade one was taken from the STAR database. Demographic and achievement data were obtained for the sample and analyzed using an analysis of variance

Disability is Beautiful, Disability is my Culture

The stories of advocates in the disability rights movement remain largely undocumented, especially in the area of the arts. This research uses ethnographic fieldwork to document such stories in the interviewee's own words. The resulting portrait of disability, advocacy, and the arts also details the story of interviewee and interviewer, and of the fieldworking process as a whole. This thesis focuses on the life history and life story of musician Jim Whalen and his contributions to the disability rights and arts movement. The fieldstudy explores the stories, creations, beliefs, motives, feelings, philosophies, thoughts, and life histories, of not only Whalen but also of the researcher and others intersecting with Whalen's life and work, including writer Steve Kuusisto. An ethnographic methodology, including both in-depth interviews and participant observation, comprise the research design. The researcher uses the interdisciplinary-research tools of fieldwork in order to document and represent his findings. In this study, advocacy and art are understood as vehicles to reframe current notions about disability. In addition to insight into the disability rights movement at this point in time, the stories included provide an arsenal of techniques, concepts, and tools to help disability advocates understand, reframe, and renegotiate life experiences, in particular through art. In conjunction with reframing ideas such as "This is normal for me" and renegotiating experiences such as "Always stops right now," other advocacy tools discovered include "Summoning the dragon," "Not if, but how," and "Everyone has a why." The final product is part word portrait, part life history, part snapshot, part auto-ethnography, part biography, part oral history, part cultural history, part narrative, part ethnography --it is both an explanation and an ode to the two central themes from which the title is born: "Disability is my culture" and "Disability is beautiful.

The impact of campus constituencies on the institutional goals and values of a small, private liberal arts college

The purpose of this study was to identify areas of conflict and congruency among various institutional constituencies relating to the stated goals and mission of a college. The study was conducted at a small, private liberal arts college with 1300 students and 100 faculty members. Other constituencies identified in the study included professional staff, support staff, and trustees. A questionnaire adapted from Gross and Grambsch was distributed to all constituencies for them to rate all stated institutional goals on "is" and "should be" continuums of importance. Also included in the questionnaire were the Rokeach value sets. The participants were to rank two sets of eighteen values in order of personal importance

Holding tight to the tail of a shooting star: an autoethnography of unschooling as just education

Unschooling in general, and in particular in North Carolina, remains an undocumented educational homeschooling experience. The absence of homeschool and unschooling stories may close off the possibility of choosing those options to those who might otherwise seek an educational alternative to public or private schooling, especially for those families with children who experience disability. I seek to articulate one experience of unschooling, so that the concept and available options can be better known and understood not only by parents seeking an alternative homeschool path, but by medical, educational, and service practitioners, and policy makers who might better serve families by knowing alternative schooling practices outside the context of compulsory public schools. Adding stories of unschooling adds a theoretical tool to the schooling experience that could be used to teach pre-service teachers, educate administrators and policy makers, and inspire families to realize that there are alternatives to public and private schooling, and that there are alternatives under the often monolith term of homeschooling. In addition, I focus on unschooling as an alternative space for both the typical student and the student who experience disability. In this dissertation I explore the unschooling experience by creating an autoethnography based on me and my immediate family’s experience over the past nine years doing homeschooling as unschooling. This example of autoethnography explores life on the margins of schooling practices, the tensions between inclusion and exclusion, access and equity, and the possibilities of unschooling as new space of liberation. The work uses critical theory and disability theory frameworks to inform its methodology and analysis

Introduction, technical information, catalogue, and reproductions

The thesis presentation is comprised of an introduction, technical information, and a numerical cataloguing of fourteen polymer acrylic paintings. Transparent slides of all fourteen and photographic reproductions of seven of the paintings are included. The paintings have been exhibited publicly in fulfillment of the degree requirement

The development and implementation of a rhythmic ability test designed for four-year-old preschool children

The purpose of this study was to develop a test designed to measure the rhythmic ability of four-year-old preschool children and to study the effects of training on posttest scores of the age-group. The forty-item test has four ten-item subtests which measure the following: the ability to differentiate whether or not two tempi are the same, the ability to accurately produce a given tempo, the ability to accurately reproduce a given rhythm pattern, and the ability to determine if two rhythms are alike. The preliminary form of the test was revised to improve the item discrimination and item difficulty. The new test form was given to a total of 46 four-year-olds. The split-half test reliabilities ranged from .86 to .89 for these subjects. The Pearson product-moment formula in conjunction with the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula was used to compute the correlation. The test-retest reliability for the scores of 36 of these subjects who took the test twice was .45; however, there was an intervening variable for 24 of the subjects and the correlation yielded through the Pearson product-moment formula was not significant at .05

Essential excerpts for tuba from original works written for wind ensemble

"The need for a standard course of study to assist in preparing students for military band auditions is apparent due to the current number of tuba positions in premier military service band organizations. This examination of Essential Excerpts for Tuba from Original Works Written for Wind Ensemble is intended to be an important document in the field of tuba performance and teaching for practice, preparation, and study of the original wind symphony literature written for tuba. The excerpts included in this text are selected based on a general survey created by the author. The Tuba Excerpt Survey, completed by retired and current premier military service band tuba players and select college and university tuba professors, generated a standard list of excerpts that produced the desired information that finalized the specified essential tuba excerpts to be included and reviewed in this document. By setting performance boundaries, inspecting the musical details of the excerpts, and separating an undergraduate curriculum into appropriate levels of study, a classification and distribution of the found scores and excerpts among different levels is established in this text. Upon examination of these excerpts, additional methodologies and corollary studies have been integrated into the paper to further facilitate student practice and preparation of these essential excerpts for tuba among original compositions written for the wind ensemble medium."--Abstract from author supplied metadata