Support from Above the Glass Ceiling: Narratives of Women as University Student Leaders

Using qualitative methodology. the researcher examined motivations, social support networks, and challenges college women face in student leadership positions. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted at a midsized university in the Midwest with college women in various positions of organizational leadership. The researcher identified motivational factors for women to apply for leadership positions as well as described the social support network that exists for college women in positions of leadership. Challenges college women face in achieving higher leadership positions were also identified. Lastly, recommendations were made for student affairs professionals and women in leadership based on the research findings

Support from Above the Glass Ceiling: Narratives of Women as University Student Leaders

Using qualitative methodology. the researcher examined motivations, social support networks, and challenges college women face in student leadership positions. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted at a midsized university in the Midwest with college women in various positions of organizational leadership. The researcher identified motivational factors for women to apply for leadership positions as well as described the social support network that exists for college women in positions of leadership. Challenges college women face in achieving higher leadership positions were also identified. Lastly, recommendations were made for student affairs professionals and women in leadership based on the research findings

The Awkward, (Un)Desirable, and Enticing Politics of Sexuality and Reproductive Health in HBO\u27s Girls

In 2012, HBO premiered Lena Dunham’s Girls. This thirty-minute dramady focuses on the lives of four, white twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, New York, and has attracted scathing critiques and abundant praise from fans, critics, and academics alike. My thesis aims to bridge the polarized discourse surrounding Girls by critically examining the representations of sexuality and reproductive health. I first explore Home Box Office (HBO) as a premium network that provides Dunham with certain freedoms as the author of Girls. Drawing on theories of television and film authorship, I argue Dunham occupies a unique position on HBO where she can display her unique feminist voice and artistic vision. I then offer a brief overview of first, second, third, and fourth-wave feminism and argue Dunham strategically integrates ideology of the different waves into her series in attempt to dismantle patriarchy. Using Munford and Waters’ theory on the “post-feminist mystique,” I examine how Girls appropriates tactics typically used to perpetuate misogyny in popular culture for its own political aims, thus moving beyond the “retrograde.” Girls offers a fresh representation feminism and femininity on television while making sharp critiques about our current cultural climate. I suggest that despite the limitations of Girls, this series presents a fresh and new representation of female identity, sexuality, and reproductive health that transcends the current television landscape

A Sign Of The Times: Contemporary American Post-Holocaust Imagery And Post-Jewish Identity

The construction of American Jewish identity has historically balanced efforts to reconcile acceptance into majority culture with maintaining traditional Jewish heritage. Expression of Jewish identity in a diasporic community has often been anchored in communal rituals and sociopolitical events, especially the Holocaust, uniting an increasingly diverse community. Beginning in the late twentieth century, the figure of the post-Jew and post-Jewish identity emerged alongside pluralist multiculturalism as an alternate identity framework recognizing the hybrid character of Jewish American identity as a combination of inherited and selected elements. This thesis examines the manifestation of post-Jewish identity in artistic responses to the Holocaust as reflections of a distinctly American perspective and discusses the iconographic language of the Holocaust as a living identity constantly re-formed and informed by individual experience and cultural surroundings. Third and fourth-generation Jewish American artists engage the visual language of the Holocaust by applying emotionally charged imagery in new ways. In so doing, they contemplate their own connection to the images that ground their understanding of the Holocaust. Stylistic and thematic shifts in post-Jewish works thus constitute efforts to navigate inherent tension between historical and experiential identity as well as the broader cultural transference of collective memory within contemporary society

Historical Ecology of the San Diego Sport Fishery: Catch Composition, Species Trends, and Fishing Effort from 1959 to 2011

Like ocean systems around the world, species targeted by the San Diego sportfishery are subject to myriad threats from human activity, with several species already showing documented decline. However, long-term fisheries datasets are often lacking, limiting natural resource managers’ ability to appropriately manage these ecologically and economically important species. Therefore, this study used daily reports published in two Southern California newspapers to examine changes in catch composition, effort, and catch per unit effort (CPUE) from 1959-2011 for the San Diego commercial passenger fishing vessel (CPFV) sportfishery. This study then tested the relationship between those patterns and three large scale oceanographic conditions to provide insights into potential drivers of change. During the study period, composition of landings changed from being dominated by relatively few species in the 1960s and 1970s to a richer, and different, composition in the 1990s through 2010s. No species displayed a trend of increasing CPUE, while CPUE for several species (Bonito, Barracuda, and Mackerel) decreased across the study period and changes in large-scale oceanographic conditions alone did not explain the change. Despite the popularity of California Halibut in the sportfishing community, its CPUE appears to have stabilized at low levels, potentially making it an example of a shifting baseline. Meanwhile, Sebastes spp were strongly associated with cold water, suggesting it may be prudent to model expected responses of species within this genus to changing ocean temperatures associated with global climate change. The State of California has and will continue to invest in the management of its coastal marine resources. These actions will be both more effective and more cost-efficient when based on the best available information regarding the populations and habitats it seeks to protect. As this study has shown, analysis of CPFV landings, combined with oceanographic data and information on management and angler preferences, can provide an important tool to help understand what is happening in the populations of popular sportfishing species

Internalizing symptoms and friendships in adolescence: considering the role of interpersonal behavior in rejection and contagion effects

The present research considered associations among internalizing symptoms, interpersonal behaviors, and friendship adjustment in a sample of 642 seventh and tenth graders. Effects of youths’ internalizing symptoms on rejection were tested, as were contagion effects of internalizing symptoms within friendships. It was hypothesized that certain interpersonal behaviors would mediate both of these effects. Results indicated that depressed youth, especially girls, tended to report greater rejection by friends over nine months. Support was found for the depression contagion effect but not for the anxiety contagion effect. Little support was found for the hypothesis that interpersonal behaviors mediated these effects. Future research should explore whether some interpersonal behaviors are more likely to be exhibited in clinical samples and how these behaviors may have overlapping, additive, and/or interactive effects on socioemotional adjustment. Applied contributions of this research for the development of interpersonal interventions for youth with internalizing symptoms are discussed

The antibody loci of the domestic goat (Capra hircus)

The domestic goat (Capra hircus) is an important ruminant species both as a source of antibody-based reagents for research and biomedical applications and as an economically important animal for agriculture, particularly for developing nations that maintain most of the global goat population. Characterization of the loci encoding the goat immune repertoire would be highly beneficial for both vaccine and immune reagent development. However, in goat and other species whose reference genomes were generated using short-read sequencing technologies, the immune loci are poorly assembled as a result of their repetitive nature. Our recent construction of a long-read goat genome assembly (ARS1) has facilitated characterization of all three antibody loci with high confidence and comparative analysis to cattle. We observed broad similarity of goat and cattle antibody-encoding loci but with notable differences that likely influence formation of the functional antibody repertoire. The goat heavy-chain locus is restricted to only four functional and nearly identical IGHV genes, in contrast to the ten observed in cattle. Repertoire analysis indicates that light-chain usage is more balanced in goats, with greater representation of kappa light chains (~ 20-30%) compared to that in cattle (~ 5%). The present study represents the first characterization of the goat antibody loci and will help inform future investigations of their antibody responses to disease and vaccination

Learning to Disclose: A Post Colonial Autoethnography of Transracial Adoption

This autoethnographic research project examines the transformational learning of a transracial adoptive adult mother and daughter through the lens of postcolonialism. As collaborative researchers, adult adoptee and adoptive mother, examine this lifelong learning experience through critical self-reflection, qualitative meta-analysis, and autoethnographic research methods within the overarching historical and sociopolitical context of Haiti. The findings address the lived complexities of increasingly hybrid families, particularly around the contentious boundaries of race, nationality, and colonial history, as they impact transformational learning. Color blindness and racial identity development for both mother and daughter within their relationship are explored. Implications for adult educators around the use of autoethnography to engage the social imagination and employ disclosure toward transformative learning are discussed

Land use affects the timing and magnitude of material delivery to headwater streams in coastal North Carolina

Headwater streams are both the transport vectors and receiving waters for landscape-derived materials. This high level of connectivity to their surrounding watershed imparts headwater streams with the ability to act as sentinels of impacts that may occur due to changing land uses. Determining the impacts of land use and precipitation patterns on material delivery by streams is requisite for quantifying and mitigating degradation resulting from watershed development. Headwater streams in the New River Estuary, NC, USA were monitored for one year, during which water samples were collected during base- and throughout storm-flow. Samples were analyzed for nutrient and total suspended solid (TSS) concentrations, and flow was measured continuously. This research determined that in developed watersheds, loading of some constituents (nitrate, ammonium, TSS) and stream discharge increased, as did the relative importance of storm flow delivery, when compared to reference watersheds. Flow measurement method and data analysis approach, both affected results