Stander Symposium Projects

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  Research exercise: Research on the Effect that Teacher Education Standards have on Teacher Formation in the United States and Finland

  Caroline Goodill, Callie Herrmann, Danielle Tout

  Standards for the teaching profession emphasize the importance of awareness, understanding, and integration into practice of current research in education. Our goal of the EDT 110H1 class project is to present syntheses of the effects on teacher professional development based on education standards in Finland and the United States.

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  Research exercise: Retrospective Analysis of a 5-Week Summer Sports Program Indicates Health Improvements in 9-16 Year Olds

  Chanelle Brown

  (N=271). All measures were made at registration (pre) and at camp’s end (post) by trained NYSP staff. Data presented as mean ± s.d. and compared pre and post with paired t-tests. BMI was significantly reduced (23.2 ± 0.4 kg/m2 vs 22.4 ± 0.3 kg/m2; p<0.05) due to increases in height (1.55 ± 0.007 m vs 1.57 ± 0.007 m; p<0.05) and a trend towards decreased body weight (56.1 ± 1.1 kg vs 55.8 ± 1.0 kg; p=0.07). Mean arterial pressure was also significantly reduced (81 ± 0.5 mmHg vs 76 ± 0.4 mmHg; p<0.05) due to lowered systolic blood pressure (107.9 ± 0.7 mmHg vs 103.1 ± 0.6 mmHg; p<0.05). This preliminary analysis supports beneficial health impacts of NYSP. Further studies with standardized and additional health-related measurements would allow for more comprehensive analysis and insight into the underlying mechanisms of improvement or lack thereof.

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  Research exercise: S&P 500 Sector Weights: The Case for Inverse Relative Price Strength

  Nate Huage

  In this study, I used a relative price strength model called the Inverse Relative Price Strength (IRPS) to develop a portfolio of 10 sector exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and then compared their performance to the overall market. I used the IRPS model as a proxy for the return risk optimizing process developed by Markowitz et, al. The hypothesis that I am testing is that sectors with lower relative prices compared to the market will have higher excess returns. The hypothesis is tested over the period 2008-2012. This particular period is highly volatile with large swings in both actual and relative prices. In addition, because this period covers the downswing period in 2008, the subsequent rebound period in 2009, and the continued upswing and trading range in 2010-2012, I will be able to evaluate the IRPS model's effectiveness in different phases of the market cycle for the overall portfolio as well as the individual sector ETFs.

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  Research exercise: Teaching English Learners with the Common Core State Standards

  Jenna M. Griffin

  As the world increasingly becomes more global, teaching English Learners (ELs) has presented a challenge for many educators who are unprepared for this type of diversity within the classroom. The drastic achievement gap between ELs and English-speaking students demand more attention to addressing this issue. However, as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are being adapted in nearly every state, the demand for a focus on academic language development shows progressive improvement. My research focuses on the impact that the implementation of the CCSS is having on ELs in our country, particularly on academic language. I will also examine effective instructional strategies, environmental structures and the learning needs of ELs in relation to their academic accomplishments.

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  Research exercise: The Future of Humanitarian Aid in Afghanistan: An Analysis of United Nations Humanitarian Aid from March, 2002 until March, 2014, and a Projection of Afghanistan's Future Humanitarian Climate

  Jeffrey Aubin

  At the International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan, the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for an injection of 10 billion dollars of aid, over a ten-year period, into Afghanistan. Since March of 2002, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has facilitated the development and coordination of sustainable humanitarian initiatives in the country. This project will explore the extent, type, and effectiveness of international aid in Afghanistan since the arrival of UNAMA. The project intends to use the identified patterns and traits of this 12 year period to project the potential humanitarian landscape of Afghanistan moving forward.

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  Research exercise: The "Genocide" of Timor-Leste: A Study of Human Suffering and International Ignorance

  Molly Ledwith

  The Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste in 1975 resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 Timorese, which accounted for more than a quarter of the territory’s total population. Unfortunately, this terrible injustice went almost completely unrecognized by the international community. Even more disturbing, there is evidence to suggest that the United States was not only aware of these injustices, but perhaps encouraged the Indonesians’ violent invasion. A mass killing of this magnitude is normally dubbed ”genocide.” However, the situation that occurred in Timor-Leste has never been labeled as an actual “genocide,” most likely due to the involvement of the United States and other Western countries trying to avoid blame. In this presentation, I will explore the “genocide” of Timor-Leste and the level of involvement of other nations, specifically the United States, in this tragedy.

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  Research exercise: Timor-Leste, UN Women Peacekeepers, and the Gender Gap

  Frederick Amankona

  This presentation examines the role of women in United Nations peacekeeping operations, using the example of recent operations in Timor-Leste, and makes the case that there is a need for more female United Nations peacekeepers to partake in post conflict peacekeeping operations, democratization and social and political reconstruction in order to promote gender equality. Women are mostly sidelined or alienated in the participation of various peacebuilding and societal reconstruction. This creates a false conception that women are ignorant in such areas and have nothing to offer to peacekeeping efforts. However, women have played a vital role at the grassroots level in soliciting for peace building, reconciliation and the promotion and protection of their fundamental rights and freedoms. They actually undertake many activities dealing with post war and conflict peacebuilding and socio-economic reconstruction. Women resort to different techniques and strategies than men in undertaking these tasks, focusing on agricultural, cultural and moral sectors. Most countries have taken bold steps towards the adherence and the recognition of these gender inequalities. Some countries have then entrenched and enshrined these political and economic rights of women in their codified constitutions. But these have helped a little but have not been able to solve the entire problem due to cultural misconceptions and financial constraints in governmental affairs. Also, the hierarchical structure of various organizations and institutions does not allow for the true realization or implementation of these policies.

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  Research exercise: UD IET Dayton Most Metro Chef Ten Question Interview

  Gracelyn Key, Sushmitha Rayinadi, Emily Strobach, Daniel Williams

  Dayton Most Metro (DMM) is an online regional magazine which has created a ten question interview with local chefs. Currently 20 chef interviews have been completed and uploaded onto the website. DMM’s goal is to add to the amount of interviews posted online this spring 2014, but has run out of the manpower required to do so. The goal behind incorporating the Dayton IET 323 team is to aid DMM in accomplishing its goal. Our team will be conducting interviews with a minimum of eight Dayton area chefs which will be featured on the Dayton Most Metro site. In the interviews, the intention is to gain insight on the chef’s story and personality, relaying it in the report and sharing it with the people of Dayton. The project is to be completed in a seven phase process which includes; completing preliminary operation requirements for project direction, creating email, phone and in-person contact templates to support and make the effort flow easily, dividing the work into two person teams to equally distribute the work load, contacting chefs (if required, restaurant management for major food chain approval) and scheduling interviews, completing the interviews whether it be by email, phone or in-person, formatting and organizing all information for transfer to DMM.

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  Research exercise: Understanding the Common Core State Standards and their Role in Catholic Education

  Annemarie Fisher

  In 2009, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) revolutionized academic standards, providing a format adopted by states across America that focused on raising Math and English Language Arts standards as preparation for colleges and careers. In conjunction with the adoption and implementation of the CCSS across the United States, Catholic schools have worked towards the strengthening and advancement of their own educational systems. This thesis first examines the background of the CCSS, including implementation and professional development, as well as the opposition regarding the standards. The paper presents an overview of the history of academic standards in Catholic education and then explores the current role of the CCSS in Catholic schools. Through interviews with teachers, principals, and superintendents in Catholic education, the methodology examines how the standards are being understood and implemented in Catholic schools.

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  Research exercise: United Nations Reform: Inefficiencies of the Responsibility to Protect

  Bobby Powell

  The infant nation state of Timor Leste has faced many roadblocks in their short history of sovereignty, and the introduction of higher efficiency wood burning stoves can help reverse these trends. Timorese satisfy 95% of their energy needs by burning wood in personal stoves and generators, a trend that is leading to high rates of air pollution related health conditions and rapid deforestation. High efficiency stoves can reduce family energy costs by 40%, while greatly limiting carbon emissions in the home and dense urban areas. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has taken up the challenge of implementing these stoves in developing countries, but further research and funding is still needed to pull developmentally struggling nations up to a global standard. This study examines the impact of this program and the potential problems and benefits of implementation in Timor-Leste.

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  Revenue Momentum and Stock Price Movements for Flyer Fund Stocks: A Short Run Analysis

  Thomas Campbell, Bryan Thomas

  Many investment managers look for momentum in top line revenue growth to determine if they want to purchase a particular stock or a group of stocks. In this study, we looked at the last eight quarters of revenue data for 30 stocks currently in the Flyer Fund and determine their compound quarterly growth rate (COGR) for 4 quarters and 8 quarters of data. Using Bloomberg's database, our timeline is from August 31, 2011 through August 31,2013. Using cross sectional regression analysis we regressed the 4 quarter and 8 quarter CQGR's on the compound quarterly growth rate on price (CQGP) for each stock. We also took the rate of 4 quarter CQGR to the 8 quarter CQGR and regressed it on the value of the 4 quarter CQGP to the 8 quarter CQGP. The hypotheses to be tested is that stock price movements are directly related to the momentum levels of company revenues.

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  Serial Chains of Spherical Four-Bar Mechanisms to Achieve Design Helices

  Kevin S. Giaier

  This research presents a methodology for designing mechanical chains comprised of a large number of identical spherical four-bar mechanisms. Such a mechanical chain can achieve up to five prescribed helices. A spherical four-bar mechanism is a single degree of freedom device consisting of four revolute (R) joints whose rotational axes intersect at a common point. The mechanical chains are created by connecting the coupler of the prior spherical mechanism to the base link of the subsequent spherical mechanism. An extension on each mechanism will lie along the prescribed helices as the device moves. The methodology introduces a companion helix to each prescribed helix along which the intersection locations of each spherical mechanism's axes must lie. As the mechanisms are connected by rigid links, the distance between the intersection locations along each companion helix is the same. Additionally, an approach to actuating this mechanical chain with a single rotating input is presented.

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  Singularity-Free Synthesis of Coupler-Drivers for Actuating Single Degree-of-Freedom Mechanisms

  Hameed Juma

  The goal of this research is to advance the synthesis methodology for designing coupler-drivers for actuating single degree of freedom mechanisms. A planar coupler-driver is a chain consisting of a fixed revolute joint, an actuated prismatic joint, and a moving revolute joint connected to an ideal location on a previously synthesized planar mechanism. Although such a chain may be connected between any fixed point and any moving point on the mechanism, the synthesis challenge is determining the locations of these points such that the mechanism moves over its desired range of motion without reaching a singularity. A singularity is a configuration of the mechanism at which it ceases to move. A spatial coupler-driver is defined by a chain consisting of a fixed spherical joint, an actuated prismatic joint, and a moving spherical joint connected to an ideal location on a previously synthesized spatial mechanism. This work addresses both planar and spatial coupler-drivers and uncovers challenges unique to each case.

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  Social Justice Club – Miracle Makers

  Jenna Gerstle, Katy Garcia, Emmy Pickerill, Laura Komoroski, Ellie Grandi, Sam Santoro

  As members of the Social Justice Service Club our mission is to support the Building Communities through Social Justice Learning and Living Cohort (BCSJLLC)in order to advance the mission of literacy throughout the Greater Miami Valley Region. We are also charged with fulfilling a voluntary service learning commitment for our organization. This year we worked with the "Miracle Makers." This is an after-school program at the Ruskin Elementary School, one of the participants in the UD-Community School Partnership Program. Our service consisted of mentoring students, assisting them with their homework, and engaging them in group and one-on-one recreational activities. As a service club, we were able to complete 150 hours of service learning. Our presentation will focus on our service work and how it demonstrates and reinforces our commitment to the Marianist ideals of lead, learn, and serve.

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  Statistically Equivalent Serial Chain Modeling with Kinect and Wii Balance Board

  Ali Almandeel

  Identifying the center of mass location provides a significant aid in controlling the balance of humanoid robots. Additionally, in humans this location is an essential parameter in postural control and is critical in assessing rehabilitation. Anthropometric tables have been complied for this identification but their accuracy is readily questioned. This research presents an estimation technique that uses the statically equivalent serial chain (SESC), a representation of any multilink branched chain whose end-effector locates the center of mass. In order to construct the SESC for center of mass prediction, a Kinect and Wii balance board are used. The Kinect provides joint location information while the Wii balance board provides the center of pressure. The utility of the presented method as compared to other common methods is that the center of pressure, and hence, the Wii balance board, is no longer needed after the SESC is constructed.

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  Students Who Serve: A Study of Undergraduate Students' Experiences in Community Services

  Lindsay Elrod, Elizabeth Fogle-Young, Savio Franco, Edel Jesse, Brent Kondritz, Heidi McGrew, Cody McMillen, Dan Trunk

  Undergraduate students who participated in sustained community service through the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community were volunteer informants in a qualitative exploration of the meaning they make from being engaged in the Dayton community. The research team (five women and four men who were professor and eight doctoral students in educational leadership) were generously granted access to students associated with the Fitz Center. We were drawn to study “students who serve” because of our interest in student sub-cultures as well as the center’s model of sustained community engagement. Fourteen students were interviewed on or near campus. Unstructured open-ended interviews (Spradley, 1979) were approximately 30-45 minutes in length. The team adopted what Saldana (2009) calls structural coding from the work of MacQueen, McLellan-Lemal, Bartholow, & Milstein (2008). Based on the purpose of the study, a three-part structure to coding was designed: the background of students who serve, students’ experiences in service, and the meaning they constructed. “Meaning” was our goal, i.e., how students made meaning from community engagement and the nature of that meaning. Preliminary findings suggest that the students had background experiences with service, many of which derived from their Catholic high schools. They experienced service at diverse sites in the Dayton community, playing multiple roles (from tutor, to explorer, to leader, to fundraiser). Their experiences challenged their schedules, and their attempts to achieve a sense of balance in managing time. In their voices we heard the centrality of relationships as the core meaning of their experiences. Their community engagement expanded not only their knowledge and thinking, but also their struggles with understanding diversity and the roots of social injustice. Sustained engagement in the city deeply influenced what many students envisioned as their potential life’s work.

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  Supporting a Local Thrift Shop to Help the Tenants of Good Shepherd Ministries

  David Bowen, Christian Melson

  The Good Shepard Ministries is a Miami Valley organization that assists in the recovery of former drug addicts and their successful re-entry into society. The ministry is funded by community donations of gently-used items and food. As members of the Social Justice Service Club, our service project is organizing a UD community donation drive to assist this ministry. Our plan is to set up donation bins in the Kettering Union, the RecPlex, and the freshman and sophomore dorms. Donated items will be collected and sorted through on a weekly basis and then transported to The Good Shepard Ministries for distribution or resale. Suggested donations include gently-used clothes, electronics, furniture, and food. Our strategic marketing plan includes: creating flyers that identify our club mission and goals; the donation mission and goals; identifying the donation drop-off points; and, informing the community of the types of donations we are seeking. We are recruiting UD Resident Coordinators and Resident Assistants to make sure that UD residents are aware of the ministry’s program and our campaign. We plan on creating a Facebook page and a Twitter account to maximize the social media for our group cause and to widen our donation base. Strategically, the best time for donations and collections is when students leave the UD campus for summer break. That is when our work will begin. Our goal is multi-faceted: we want to raise awareness of the mission of The Good Shepard Ministries; we want to promote social justice for the former addicts not only on the UD campus but throughout the Greater Miami Valley Region; and, to attract potential Social Justice Club members. We designed this service project to reflect the Marianist ideals of lead, learn, and serve.

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  The Acute Effect of a Sensory Integration Therapy Intervention on Postural Stability and Gaze Patterns of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Feasibility Trial

  Senia Smoot

  The research of objective of this feasibility study is to determine whether posturography and gaze tracking could be used to measure the effect of a common SI intervention. The hypothesis tested is that subjects will demonstrate changes in postural stability and socially relevant gaze fixations post-intervention.

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  The Acute Effects of Aerobic and Resistance Exercise on Cardiovascular Function and Arterial Stiffness

  Hayleigh Raiff

  This study investigated how long the cardiovascular effects of aerobic and resistance exercise propagate after completion of exercise in healthy males. Cardiovascular function was closely monitored to observe changes in arterial stiffness before exercise and during recovery. Parameters used to monitor vascular function include central and peripheral blood pressure, heart rate, velocity of blood flow, and blood biomarkers of vascular function. The study required participants to complete an aerobic, resistance and control exposure. Measures of the parameters were taken at rest and at specified intervals after completion of each protocol. These measurements were analyzed to determine the acute effects of each exposure on the blood vessels’ functioning, how long these effects last and how the vascular responses differed between the exercise modalities. This experiment served as a pilot study in developing exercise protocol for patients with Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD).

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  The Community Service Self-Efficacy Scale: A Further Examination of Validity and the Application to Service-Learning and Engaged Scholarship

  Gail Susdorf

  As a University Psychology student shaped by the University of Dayton’s mission to “link learning and scholarship with leadership and service” the critical link among these components must be explored in order to move forward as a civically responsible graduate. The purpose of this project is to provide a necessary reflection upon graduation about the effectiveness a University education could potentially have within the greater community context. In doing so this study will examine the validity of the Community Service Self-Efficacy Scale, a psychometric instrument used to measure the theoretical construct of self-efficacy, in a University of Dayton Psychology course centered on service-learning in a local homeless shelter. The results will then be discussed in relation to the importance of service-learning, engaged scholarship and the purpose of universities to foster the development of civic minded graduates.

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  The Effect of Input Parameters on Detrended Fluctuation Analysis of Postural Control Data

  Melissa Taylor

  Biological variability is critical for healthy function and is present in all types of physiological movements. Variability exists on a spectrum in which the optimal amount falls between two extremes: a lack of variability indicating rigidity and limited adaptability and excessive variability indicating instability and random, uncontrolled motion. It is believed that nonlinear analyses provide insight into variability that can help predict future movements based on current movements. Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is a widely used nonlinear analysis tool for postural control research. A limitation of DFA is that the results are heavily dependent on input parameters (data length, window size, and scaling region) used to determine the scaling exponent α; however, the input parameters are selected by the researcher and little published guidance exists to aid in their selection. The aim of this research is to examine the effects of changing input parameters on DFA of postural control data and to determine best practices for their selection in order to improve the consistency of the analysis and ensure that important effects in postural control data are not lost or skewed. MATLAB will be used to create theoretical chaotic and white noise time series with random initial conditions and known α values, and center of pressure sway measures will be taken for healthy adults using a balance plate. The theoretical and experimental data will be subjected to DFA where data length, window size, and scaling region will be varied independently. The value of α will be determined for all combinations of input parameters and the effects of varying these parameters will be explored. Statistical significance (p<0.05) of any of the main effects or interactions will indicate the extent to which α is dependent on the input parameters, allowing suggested guidelines for future researchers to be determined.

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  The Effect of Temperature on Self-Reported Isolation

  Mary Holtzhauser

  Embodied cognition is the idea that the human body influences thoughts and vice versa; physical heat should cause a decrease in loneliness (“social coldness”) reports while physical coolness should cause an increase. Answering questions on an impersonal computer should increase loneliness reports relative to answering questions on paper. So far, 67 of a planned 150 undergraduate students have participated, completing the UCLA loneliness scale and evaluation questionnaire after holding a heated or cooled therapeutic pack. Preliminary results revealed a main effect of questionnaire type, no main effect of pack temperature and no interaction of questionnaire and pack temperature. If embodied cognition correctly identifies the relationship between physical and social warmth, then people who are more depressed (feel socially cold) may exhibit more physical warmth-seeking behaviors than those who are less depressed. Undergraduate students scoring either higher or lower on a standardized measure of depression will be invited to complete a questionnaire identifying heat-seeking behaviors. Data is still being collected at this time.

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  The Glass Walls Project: Sharing Science and Engineering in 3D

  William Sember

  The Glass Walls Project is the brainchild of Dr. Peter Powers. It is a computer application for visualizing scientific and engineering laboratories, logging experiments, and networking the process. This presentation is a demo program focused on the 3-dimensional visualization and exploration of laboratories.

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  The Impact of Exogenous Macro Economic Events on Flyer Fund Stock and Sector Returns

  Eric Flanigan

  A number of academic studies have shown that markets can be "shocked" by macro economic events. A sudden rise in inflation, interest rates, oil prices, just to name a few, can have a material effect on stock prices. In the study we use Bloomberg's Market Factor Model to determine the impact on stock and sector returns for the U.D. Flyer Fund. The Market Factor Model can identify response functions i.e. Betas between S&P 500 stocks and an exogenous variable like interest rates. We will study the impact of rising market volatility (VIX), rising interest rates (10 Yr T-Note) and oil prices on Flyer Fund stocks and S&P 500 sectors. Since the Flyer Fund sector weights are usually different from the S&P 500 sector weights, we can determine if the Flyer Fund sector allocation strategy creates alpha. Moreover because the impact on individual stocks can be compared to the sector impacts, we can also determine whether our stock selection strategy creates alpha. It is hoped the study will help to improve the weightings of sectors and the selection of stocks in the UD Flyer Fund.

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  The Impact of Social Awareness, Empathy, and Confidence on Blindness to Change in Facial Emotions

  Joseph R. Pauszek, Alyx Ballenger, Kaitlin H. Gallup, Mark R. Brown, Peter A. Oduwole, Jeremy Schwob, Zac Vidic, Michael Wright

  Change blindness (CB) is an inability to detect changes in a visual stimulus. For example, Simons & Chabris (1999) used videotaped scenes depicting a gorilla walking across the screen, typically unnoticed by observers. The present research investigated blindness to changes in facial indications of emotion. Previous studies have shown that gradual changes of facial emotion produce substantive levels of CB when assessed by verbal report (David et al., 2006). It has also been noted that observers express high levels of confidence in their ability and accuracy to detect a change in a stimulus if it were to take place, even though they consistently fail to detect changes (Blackmore et al., 1995). The present research replicates these results and examines the relationship between empathy (sensitivity to others’ emotions), social awareness (cognizance of what is needed by others in a social situation), and CB. Experiment 1, using subjective reports of change detection, verified the three hypotheses of interest in this research: first, gradual changes in the facial emotion of an actor in a video were detected more frequently than gradual changes in a neutral stimulus (e.g., the color of a shirt), and more often by participants who were more socially aware and empathic; and, second, more overconfidence in their ability to detect change was expressed, a priori, by participants who were least accurate in detecting changes in emotion. The use of eye-tracking equipment in a second experiment is expected to provide physiological verification for these results. Specifically, it is expected that gradual changes in the facial emotion of an actor in a video will attract more gaze and fixation, and be detected more frequently, than gradual changes in a neutral stimulus (e.g., the color of a shirt).