Over the past decade, the explosion of social media has secured the Internet as a venue for political discussions of all sorts; as well as a realm of consumption and commodification. One population of women that has utilized social media in this way is the plus-sized fashion ("fatshion") community on...
This thesis is a report of a phenomenological-informed study of public university student spiritual development. The research was based primarily upon semi-structured personal interviews and a focus group with undergraduate students at a large, public research institution on the west coast. Since the introduction of scientific objectivity into the academy...
Global climate change is expected to exaggerate the severity of floods and droughts and increase the frequency of extreme streamflow events in the Midwestern United States. Managing these projected impacts poses a major challenge for water resources, conservation, and land use management. Wetlands have been considered as a conservation strategy...
Although a significant amount of research has investigated the effect of sexualization on women's body esteem and cognitive performance, few researchers have examined the effect of sexualization on girls. Additionally, research that has been conducted regarding girls' experiences of sexualization has primarily focused on media influences. The effect of dolls...
With the reauthorization of the 2013 Violence Against Women Act all Title IV higher education institutions will now be required to provide "primary prevention and awareness programs for all incoming students." Yet, more research is needed to find prevention programs that are effective (White House Task Force to Protect Students...
Scholars promote the ability of visual imagery to have a number of political campaigning benefits such as influencing opinions and attitudes and encouraging vibrant, striving democracy while improving the quality of public knowledge and opinion. However, previous research on this subject has failed to identify how presidential candidates display their...
This thesis explores the artistic imperatives and internal struggles of women painters in two novels, Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899) and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927). I identify Chopin's Edna Pontellier and Woolf’s Lily Briscoe as painters who exhibit Impressionist strains, both in how they paint and how they...
In this work, we provide a detailed analysis of a discrete time regime switching financial market model with jumps. We consider the model under two different scenarios: known and unknown initial regime. For each scenario we investigated conditions that guarantee the model's completeness. We find that the model under consideration...
Formula SAE is a collegiate engineering competition that has participants from around the globe. Of the 1000 points available throughout the event, 100 (10%) are dedicated to the fuel efficiency of the student built race cars. Competition rules allow either gasoline or E85, a mix of 85% ethanol and 15%...
This thesis seeks to analyze the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality, in this case measured by forest cover, and analyzes whether this relationship is consistent with an Environmental Kuznets Curve. Additionally the relationship between population density and forest cover was analyzed. A simple theoretical model is derived that...