Creative Assignments for Real-World Course Application

My teaching practice is a series of 4 papers I call Creative Assignments. During the semester, students have to engage with material outside of class and relate it to course topics in 3 pages. They are called creative assignments because students have a wide latitude of what external material they can pull from. For example, students can watch a documentary, listen to a podcast, attend a campus talk, visit a museum, interview someone, or propose their own (roughly 1.5 - 2 hour) alternative. Students cannot do the same option more than twice, so are encouraged to engage with real-world material in a variety of ways. In the assignment, students summarize the ideas in the external material and relate it to two course readings. This idea addresses the need of having students see the relevance of course material and of having students apply what they learn in practical and specific ways.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/btp_expo/1088/thumbnail.jp

Socrative Student and Real Time Assessment

Many graduate K-12 without skills necessary to manage learning (ACT, 2008)https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/btp_expo/1028/thumbnail.jp

The Rhetoric of Spirituality, Gender, and the Environment in The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019)

The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) are horror films that address dominant ideologies including the patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Christianity. Both films have a nature-connected cult that sacrifices for the community and performs rituals informed by pagan eco-spirituality. I perform an ecofeminist rhetorical criticism to analyze how, despite these shared themes, spiritual, gender, and environmental messages differ between the two films. In The Wicker Man, the audience is invited to sympathize with Neil’s character, his Christianity, and his individualistic masculinity as he is sacrificed in the cult’s harvest ritual. Alternatively, the main character in Midsommar, Dani, gets revenge on her abusive, apathetic boyfriend who is sacrificed, as Neil is, in a fire ritual. The cult in Midsommar offers community, connection to nature, gender equality, and shared values against the harsh reality of Dani’s former life, fostering ambiguity regarding the cult’s villainy and the solace they provide Dani. In analyzing these two films, I argue that they reflect changing perspectives on dominant ideologies as institutions to be valued in The Wicker Man and to be questioned in Midsommar. This project aims to prompt reflection regarding the media’s changing messages around nature, spirituality, and gender over time

Out of Anger and Deception: A Feminist Rhetorical Criticism of Toxic Relationships in Steven Universe

Although American children’s animated series, Steven Universe, is often praised for its diverse and queer representation, people often overlook that the show also portrays toxic relationships. This portrayal moves the narrative along and frames the characters as learning and growing from their traumas. In this study, I have evaluated the portrayal of the toxic and abusive relationship of Lapis Lazuli (Lapis) and Jasper in Steven Universe using feminist rhetorical criticism. Informed by rhetorical theories of gender, hierarchies, and power dynamics, my analysis shows there is an issue of consent displayed between the characters, as well as blatant physical and verbal abuse. Additionally, other characters’ comments about the relationship provide explicit acknowledgment that the relationship is harmful and abusive. Power dynamics are also apparent in the simultaneous framing of a relationship between two females and the distinctive presentation of Lapis as feminine and Jasper as masculine, which mirrors but also complicates gender roles. The results indicate that the depiction of abuse through Lapis and Jasper is nuanced and accurate, enabling Steven Universe audiences, likely children and young adults, to recognize toxic relationships that are often missing from children’s media. As children are the primary audience of this show, it is implicated that Lapis and Jasper’s portrayal acts as a lesson for younger generations, introducing them to toxic relationships early on as a way of educating them on what to identify as unhealthy and presenting them in a way that challenges traditional gender roles and power dynamics between men and women.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/durep_podium/1021/thumbnail.jp

Analyzing Warrants and Worldviews in the Rhetoric of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: Burke and Argumentation in the 2016 Presidential Election

Combining a dramatistic analysis with the Toulmin model productively contributes to a rhetorical understanding of the 2016 presidential election and locates Burke as an integral component of political communication criticism. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton\u27s rhetoric differed not only on policy arguments, but also on their rhetorical vision for America. Trump\u27s campaign arguments privileged the agent and thus invoked identification with an idealist worldview, while Clinton\u27s rhetoric privileged agency and thus invoked identification with a pragmatic one. Warrants and worldviews are interconnected parts of campaign rhetoric that contribute to both persuasion and identification

Working Groups as Classroom Management Style

There is a need at UNLV to improve student retention across disciplines, which can be done by improving students’ confidence in their performance, improving their satisfaction with classes and their major selections, and providing welcoming and open spaces for participation and inclusion.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/btp_expo/1001/thumbnail.jp

Topical Analysis of Nuclear Experts\u27 Perceptions of Publics, Nuclear Energy, and Sustainable Futures

Nuclear energy experts consider commercial power from fission to be a strong contender to help mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, in part due to its low-to-no carbon emissions. Nevertheless, nuclear energy’s history, including meltdowns such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and dumping in sacred Indigenous land such as Yucca Mountain, raises important concerns in public deliberation over nuclear power. These communicative dynamics are crucial to study because they inform larger conversations in communication scholarship about the role of experts in scientific controversies and the complicated nature of public trust in and engagement with science. Thus, this study explores the perspectives of experts and how they make sense of their own communicative practices through a topical analysis of semi-structured interviews with 12 nuclear scientists and engineers in the United States and Canada. Our analysis revealed four major topoi: (1) risk and safety, (2) government and policy, and (3) public education and engagement, and (4) cost, along which nuclear experts make sense of science-public boundaries and their role as scientists and scientist citizens. This paper extends our understanding and how scientists view themselves as communicative actors and the barriers and opportunities for how we can foster productive technical-public relationships around climate change solutions

Air Quality Health Benefits of the Nevada Renewable Portfolio Standard

In recent years, renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which require a certain percentage of electricity sold to consumers to come from renewable resources, have been established by many state governments to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in the United States. Nevada’s RPS set a target of 50% of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030. By coupling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AVoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) and CO–Benefits Risk Assessment (COBRA) model, this study assesses potential emission reductions from fossil fuels owing to this requirement and regional health benefits via improved air quality, as well as how these benefits vary spatially under high and low projected electricity demands in 2030. Successful implementation of the RPS could produce health benefits equivalent to USD 3–8 million per year for Nevada residents and up to USD 164 million per year for the entire U.S. Nevada is ranked only 6th among states benefiting from the policy, while California and Washington obtain the most health benefits. There is also inequity among Nevada counties, partly caused by the county population and proximity to major fossil fuel power plants. Lowering electricity demands by 5% in Nevada would lead to a ~10% increase in health benefits. These findings should empower public support of RPS policies and energy conservation to reduce air pollution and public health inequity for the region

Geological controls of discharge variability in the Thames Basin, UK from cross-spectral analyses: observations versus modelling

Geological factors controlling daily- to multi-year discharge variability in 48 sub-catchments spanning 10–1000 km2 in the Thames Basin were investigated using cross-spectral analysis. The analyses represent a ‘transfer function approach’ applied to daily observed streamflow (output) versus catchment-wide precipitation (input) for data spanning 1990–2014. Catchments dominated by high-permeability bedrock have significant attenuation of high-frequency precipitation variability and large delays at all frequencies with streamflow dominated by baseflow (high lag1 autocorrelation and high Base Flow Index, BFI). Catchments dominated by low-permeability rocks have little high-frequency attenuation and small delays and consequently ‘flashy’ behaviour. For all sub-catchments >300 km2 in the Thames Basin, attenuation of the highest frequency precipitation variability caused by mixing of flow from upstream plus groundwater flow (representing ‘older’ variability) with direct surface flow (‘younger’ variability) constitutes real-world moving averaging as indicated by a roll-off in power at the highest frequencies. The success of the JULES land surface model in simulating discharge (i.e. surface and sub-surface runoff routed between grid boxes) is also linked to the underlying geology. Larger catchments (>300 km2) are modelled well because routing between numerous grid boxes leads to moving averaging that is a good analogue for the observations. Modelling was least successful (e.g. lowest Kling-Gupta Efficiency) for small catchments (<300 km2) dominated by high-permeability bedrock - with far too little attenuation of high-frequency precipitation variability and insufficient delays at all frequencies. Experimentally switching the soil saturated hydraulic conductivity to that of the underlying bedrock for grid boxes dominated by aquifers significantly improves modelled discharge variability in small sub-catchments - confirming the importance of bedrock permeability in modelling. For small catchments in data-sparse regions, knowledge of the relative proportions of different hydrogeological units (aquifers, aquitards) potentially could be used to predict and model discharge variability as characterised by BFI and lag1 autocorrelation