The Brother Joseph W. Stander Symposium recognizes and celebrates academic excellence in undergraduate and graduate education. This annual event provides an opportunity for students from all disciplines to showcase their intellectual and artistic accomplishments. The Stander Symposium represents the Marianist tradition of education through community and is the principal campus-wide event in which faculty and students actualize our mission to be a "community of learners."
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Leadership Identity Development of LGBT-Identifying Students
Jennifer M. Rentz
Leadership identity has to do with who students are as leaders, their philosophy and perceptions of leadership, and their confidence in their abilities as leaders (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 2007; Komives, Owen, Longerbeam, Mainella, & Osteen, 2005). There is a scarcity in research literature regarding the intersection of LGBT and leadership identities. This study looked at the ways in which LGBT students develop their identities as leaders by engaging in leadership opportunities. Specifically, the question of what affects LGBT students' leadership identity development was addressed. Themes from past research have correlated LGBT students' leadership identity development with the influence of strong peer and adult mentors, opportunities for self-reflection, and experiences being part of a minority group. Individual interviews gave students who identify as LGBT the opportunity to share their leadership experiences and perspectives on what it means to be a leader. Their insights will help student affairs professionals provide resources, skills training, and guidance for this group of students to engage in leadership opportunities among their peers and to develop a positive view of leadership on campus.
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Learning Outside of the Walls: Extra Curricular Activities and Student learning
Mohrah M. Alshawiyah
Examining the various benefits of integrating curricular and co-curricular experiences for the students on college campuses, this study posed the questions: What was the impact of student engagement in co-curricular activities on cumulative grade point average? What was the impact of student engagement in co-curricular activities on their quality of relations with others and community? Dependent variables included: academic performance, sense of community, and quality of the students' relation with others. Participation in the co-curricular activities was the independent variable. A questionnaire adapted from the campus life involvement survey was used to determine the various impacts of co-curricular activities on college students. The target population for this study was undergraduate students at the University of Dayton in the School of Education. The study targeted 200 participants whose ages were no less than 18 years old. Descriptive statistics were used to report frequencies, distributions, and tendencies. Inferential statistics were used to report the relationship between students' engagement and their level of academic achievement. Findings of this research study provided valuable information that will increase understanding of co-curricular impacts on student achievement, their quality of relations with others and their senses of community. The study provided insights about the undergraduate students' impacts from participation co-curricular activities on college campuses. This study provided significant information for the educators in higher education about the impacts of participating in these activates. Understanding how such activities support students through their college lives, professionals may be urged to encourage students to participate as a way to enhance their academic achievement, their quality of relationships with others, and their community.
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Linguistic Factors Affecting the Social Status of the Hispanic Immigrant Population in Dayton, OH
Alexandra M. VanLoon
Because the recession has struck the city with such vigor, the Dayton government has adopted the Welcome Dayton Plan to inspire immigrants remain in the indebted city in hopes their efforts would augment the economy. Among its many proposals to help assimilation, Welcome Dayton plans to endorse classes that teach English to the immigrants to promote linguistic commonality. My study explores to what extent knowledge of English is a significant factor in the socioeconomic success among Spanish-speaking immigrants in Dayton. Using a sociolinguistic methodology, based on surveys and interviews, I will analyze how the social status of my informants correlates with their levels of English. In the Berry Summer Thesis Institute, I familiarized with the most relevant bibliography for my study, learned about the Hispanic community in Dayton, contacted organizations committed to helping Latinos, and finally, created the survey and interview to be used in the next stages of my investigation. More recently, I have administered my survey and begun synthesizing my information into a formal analysis. My research will benefit the Dayton Hispanic community in that it will identify the dominant linguistic factors that contribute to the definition of their social status. This information will empower the Hispanics with the knowledge of what linguistically hinders them as well as offer the community tools to better integrate them, which is the overall goal of the newly adopted Welcome Dayton Plan.
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Low Alloy Steel Susceptibility to Stress Corrosion Cracking in Hydraulic Fracking Environment
Ezechukwu Anyanwu
The pipelines used for the process of hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) process are constantly operating at very high pressure and thus are highly susceptible to Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC). This is primarily due to the process of carrying out fracking at a shale gas site, where the hydraulic fracking fluid is pumped through these pipes at very high pressure in order to initiate fracture in the shale formation. While the fracking fluid is typically more than 99% water, other components are used as well as propping agents to hold the fractures open. Research into the occurrence of SCC reveals that SCC is engendered by a number of factors, of which two main contributors are stress in the pipe steel, and the particular type of corrosive environment that exists around the pipeline in the service setting. This current research is focused on the evaluation of the susceptibility of low alloy steel (C4340) to stress corrosion cracking in different environments as it relates to the hydraulic fracking fluid chemistry and operating conditions. These different environments are achieved by varying solution pH, component concentration and applied stress. Results of standard DC electrochemical measurements using C4340 sample coupons in the various solutions and applied stress conditions will be presented and discussed.
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Mandatory Auditor Rotation: A Review and Analysis of Research from the last Decade
Ben E. Foster
Mandatory Auditory Rotation (MAR) continues to be a highly contested issue within the financial community and since the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's (PCAOB) recent concept release in August of 2011 on MAR there has been an increased level of interest in the issue. If the financial community and general public are to have an informed debate on such an important topic, then the interested parties need to have access to independent information on the matter in order to develop educated opinions on what is best for the markets. Unfortunately, the last true synthesis of such information came in 2004 when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a study on MAR as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). This thesis is intended to be used by others to educate themselves with up-to-date knowledge of research available on MAR. This thesis will review issues such as the impact if any, of audit firm rotation on audit quality, the cost implications of MAR, the effect of MAR on market participant's perceptions of auditor independence, and the experiences of countries adopting mandatory audit firm rotation. I present the arguments and research, use the information to offer my own advice to policymakers and regulators on what will be best for the markets. The work creates a synthesis of the independent information available on MAR which will allow policymakers as well as the public to form a more educated opinion on what is the best path to take.
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Mechanistic studies of inhibitors of DNA replication restart pathways in Neisseria gonorrhea
DRK Chaitanya Aduri
Complete and faithful replication of a cell's genetic information is an essential process. Many enzymes are involved in the successful duplication of genetic information and the integrity of these enzymes can be compromised when they encounter DNA damage. Bacterial cells use a pathway called DNA replication restart to resume DNA replication following a disruptive encounter of the DNA replication enzymes with DNA damage. This pathway is catalyzed by primosome proteins, including PriA, PriB, PriC, DnaT, DnaB, DnaC, and DnaG. The importance of DNA replication restart for bacterial cell survival is demonstrated by the inability of strains that carry mutations in key primosome genes to grow and resist DNA damaging agents. Furthermore, this pathway is specific for bacterial cells: human cells don't use the same replication restart pathway and they don't encode genes for the primosome proteins that function in bacteria. Since DNA replication restart pathways are essential for bacterial cell growth and survival and are notably absent in human cells, we seek to answer the following question: can bacterial DNA replication restart pathways be targeted with novel antibacterial compounds? In order to answer this question, we have developed an enzyme based assay for high-throughput inhibitor screening to identify compounds that block the function of the primosome proteins PriA and PriB. Several interesting lead compounds have already been identified from the preliminary screening. In this study, the lead compounds have been validated as legitimate inhibitors and characterized with respect to their potency and mechanism of action.
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Modeling Complex Distillation Columns for Ternary Mixtures
Joseph A. Terrano
Distillation is one of the most common processes used to separate liquid mixtures of chemical species with differing boiling points. Simple distillation columns are a single column with two product streams; complex columns may have three or more product streams and smaller side columns. It is difficult to simulate a complex column without a good initial estimate of key parameters such as the number of equilibrium stages and the reflux ratio. The goal of this thesis is to develop a software package that models the minimum reflux ratio, minimum number of stages and the column profiles in complex distillation columns with side-stream columns.
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Multi-Scale Local Fourier Phase Based Feature Learning for Single Image Super Resolution
Sai Babu Arigela
Most of the image/video processing and computer vision applications depend on the high quality image frames. Given a low resolution input, the proposed method uses multi-scale local directional Fourier phase features to adaptively learn a regression kernel based on local covariance to estimate the high resolution image. This method uses image features to learn the local covariance from geometric similarity between low resolution image and its high resolution counterpart. For each patch in the neighbourhood, we estimate four directional variances in three different scales to adapt the interpolated pixels. We use a non parametric kernel regression to learn the characteristics of local directional edge features. The Gaussian steering kernel which has the capability to elongate, rotate and scale along the edge regions is used. The parameters of elongation, rotation and scale are estimated automatically from the image local region. We apply these weights to estimate the interpolated pixels to get the high resolution image. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other state of the art techniques especially at higher resolution scales. This can be applied to improve the performance of object classification system on wide area motion imagery.
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Music Technology in Secondary Music Education: Reaching the 80%
Natalie N. Erdy
The majority of United States school music programs engage nearly every student in the elementary grades. In the secondary schools, however, they tend to become too overly specialized and exclusive. With band, choir, and orchestra often the only options for music participation in secondary schools, this leads to only a small percentage of the student population involved in music education. Courses in music technology are hands-on and relevant to the current student population. These courses can help increase the percentage of 'non-traditional' music students involved in creating music while fulfilling the National Standards for music education. Music technology is also unique because even students with special needs can be involved. This poster presentation will take a look at the music programs of schools in the Dayton area and what they have to offer for non-traditional music students, as well as examining the benefits of such programs
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Mutation Frequency in Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells After Exposure to Carbon Nanomaterials
Jacqueline L. Severt
Nanomaterials are materials with morphological features of nanoscale dimension, often possessing unique electrochemical properties due to such dimension sizes. Nanomaterials are becoming increasingly valuable, particularly with applications in fields of biomedical, electrical, optical and materials science and technology. While much investigation is still required, current research suggests that nanomaterials could pose a risk to human health. The intention of this research is to investigate mutagenesis and mutation frequency in mouse embryonic stem cells, which are cells derived from an early-stage developing embryo. These cells possess unique properties of self-renewal and pluripotency. This study investigated the mutation frequency of mouse embryonic stem cells following treatment exposure to carbon nanofibers, carbon nanotubes, and multi-walled carbon nanotubes.
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National Science Foundation - Research Education for Teachers and the Experience for Students
Ronald J. Backhaus, Alyssa M. Depaola, David H. Foster, Jessica Messick, Erin L. Patterson, Benjamin M. Schultheis, Christopher V. Wagner, Rachel K. White, Erin M. Yacovoni
The National Science Foundation ' Research Education for Teachers was comprised of nine students, five engineering and four education, and a large number of professional educators and engineers. The program lasted six weeks and allowed for the students and professionals to explore both STEM curriculum development and engineering design challenges. This program was intended to be an educational experience for everyone involved: the education students were presented with a broader knowledge of the different fields of engineering, and the engineering students gained insight into the standards and development of STEM curriculum. The program was a success from the perspective of participating students, as each found it to be a positive experience which affected their personal educations as they move through their college careers.
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Neural Correlates of Human Trust in Automation
Catherine E. Devlin
My thesis was conducted Wright Patterson Air Force Base. This study focuses on the development of trust with a computer system and its neural correlates. This was accomplished looking at EEG data from participants as they perform a task that is automated, AF_MATB.
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Nonlinearly Induced Refractive Index Measurements by Using a Probe Beam.
Ujitha A. Abeywickrema
Self phase modulation is a nonlinear effects that is observed when a laser beam is focused on to a high-absorbing thermal medium. The refractive index of the medium changes due to the heat generated by the focused laser pump beam. In this paper, self phase modulation is investigated in different ways. An Ar-Ion laser of 514 nm is used as the pump beam and a 632 nm He-Ne laser is used as the probe beam. The probe beam is introduced from the opposite side of the pump beam. Ring patterns are observed from the each side of the sample. Regular far field ring patterns are observed from the pump beam, and two sets of rings are observed with the probe beam. The behavior of these inner and outer rings are monitored for different pump powers. A regular tea sample in a plastic cuvette is used as the nonlinear absorbing sample. The steady state heat equation is solved to obtain an exact solution for the radial heat distribution and far field ring patterns are simulated using the Fresnel'Kirchhoff diffraction integral. Ring patterns are theoretically explained using simulations results, and compared with experimental observations. Finally, an interferometric setup using the low power He-Ne laser is also used to determine the induced change in refractive index. Results are compared with those obtained directly from self-phase modulation and from the probe beam method.
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Non-linear regulation of power quality within a microgrid consisting of multiple distributed generators (solar, wind, etc.)
Thanigasalam Chettiyar
Microgrids are important because of their ability to provide a greener solution to obtain reliable, secure and sustainable electricity from renewable sources of energy. The power quality issues observed in a microgrid are very different as compared to the traditional grid as a microgrid can be islanded i.e. disconnected from the main grid. These issues are of significant importance to researchers dealing with microgrids because the reliability of the grid and all the nodes (households) connected to it depends on it. Currently, the power quality issues - total harmonic content and transient coupling between real and reactive power - have been studied only for a single distributed generation (DG) unit connected to a grid. However, under practical conditions, the microgrid would have more than one DG (Ex: solar, wind, and other renewable or non-renewable generation sources) connected to it. The current proposal seeks to study the power quality issues for a microgrid consisting of multiple DGs. This area of research would contribute to achieving seamless transition between grid connected and islanded modes of microgrid operation. A Newton-Raphson based non-linear feed-forward algorithm used to regulate power flow will be evaluated on a microgrid model consisting of multiple DGs. The proposed microgrid model follows the CERTS architecture for modeling microgrids. The Lyapunov Direct method would be used to evaluate system stability. The expected results - near-zero total harmonic content and transient coupling - would increase the practical implementability of microgrids.
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Not a Family Tradition: First-generation College Student Success
Alicia Adams
According to previous research done, first-generation college students (FGS) are twice as likely to leave four-year institutions as non-FGS's. This population is under-prepared for the struggles they will face throughout the development in a college setting. This study provides insight into some of the risk factors plaguing FGS as well as how they affect their success, gives a voice to an otherwise marginalized population, and supplies beneficial information to higher education professionals. Through focus groups, FGS were able to share their stories and struggles with other students on campus to help the researcher better understand the hurdles that they face throughout their college experience. Through verifying themes, major risk factors were identified and recommendations for ways to support this population were made to higher education professionals.
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Numerical solution of the KdV equation with periodic boundary conditions using the sinc-collocation method
Nicholas D. Haynes
We demonstrate numerically the eventual time-periodicity of the solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries equation with periodic forcing at the boundary using the sinc-collocation method. This method approximates the space dimension of the solution with a cardinal expansion of sinc functions, thus allowing the avoidance of a costly finite difference grid for a third-order boundary value problem. The first-order time derivative is approximated with a weighted finite difference method. The sinc-collocation method was found to be more robust and more efficient than other numerical schemes when applied to this problem.
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Ovary Staging Analysis of the Female Adult Blow Fly, Lucilia sericata
Allissa M. Blystone, Clare A. Kelly, Timothy J. Lee, Connor Ratycz
The green bottle fly, Lucilia sericata, is a forensically important organism for the determination of post-mortem interval (PMI) of deceased individuals. Lucilia sericata plays an important role in the initiation and subsequent pattern of insect colonization, as well as species progression on decomposing organic matter since it is one of the primary colonizers. Adult female L. sericata are attracted to decaying organic material to fulfill a physiological need for a protein meal. Protein is required for completion of sexual development, vitellogenesis (egg production), and production of sex pheromones. Much is known regarding the life cycle of the species, however, the effects of diet quality and timing on ovary and egg development is not well understood. We hypothesize that the production of eggs, and thus ovary development in female Lucilia sericata, occurs four to five days after the initial consumption of a protein meal. Adult flies were separated into two groups: Group #1 included both males and females (1:1 ratio), and Group #2 included only females. Three females from Group #1 and Group #2 were removed at twelve hour intervals each day and preserved for dissection. Ovaries were staged using two methods. The first staged the organs using a more common 0-3 scale where 0=no egg development, and 3=full egg development. The second method staged the ovaries using length and width measurements to calculate the area. Data were averaged for each time point. Preliminary results indicate that ovaries begin to develop between three to five days post-ecclosion with the immediate introduction of a protein source, while full ovarian development occurred in the subsequent 24-36 hours.
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Parental Support and Anxiety among College Students: Differences by Sex-Specific Dyads
Hanna M. Burke, Jeannette M. Iskander
The present study investigated the possibility that sons and daughters are differentially responsive to the effects of maternal versus paternal support on anxiety. Previous research suggests that parental support reduces a child's susceptibility to developing anxiety outcomes, and that, generally, differences exist among parent-child dyads (father-daughter; mother-daughter; father-son; and mother-son) such that both sons and daughters prefer mothers, but sons also look to fathers for support. However, it is unclear whether maternal and paternal support is differentially associated with offspring adjustment. Based on previous findings regarding differences in sons' and daughters' preferences for maternal versus paternal social support, it was hypothesized that maternal support would be negatively associated with offspring anxiety, regardless of offspring sex, and that paternal support would be more strongly negatively associated with anxiety for male than for female offspring. Data from 216 college students who completed the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment and the Penn State Worry Questionnaire were analyzed. Moderating effects of participant sex on the association between parental support and anxiety levels were examined using path analysis. Results revealed an interaction of participant sex with paternal support, but not with maternal support. Specifically, a significant negative association between paternal communication and anxiety outcomes was found for males (Beta = -0.37, p < .0001), but not females (Beta = -0.03, p = .82). In contrast, a significant positive association was found between maternal communication and anxiety outcomes, regardless of participant sex (males, Beta = 0.23, p = 0.01; females, Beta = 0.24, p = 0.008). The current findings suggest that male and female offspring may vary in their responsiveness to paternal versus maternal support. However, longitudinal research is needed to determine the directionality of the association between parental support and offspring anxiety.
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Partnering for Success: The Effects of Formal Mentoring on Graduation and Transfer Rates Among African American Students in an Urban Community College
Ann B. Swartz
Community colleges have become the gateway into college for many students due to their open access and reduced tuition rates. It has been estimated by Provasnik and Planty (2008) that in 2006, 35% of all post-secondary students were enrolled at community colleges and furthermore, community colleges serve a higher percentage of minority students and women. Graduation rates at community colleges are notoriously low at a time in Ohio's history when only 36% of adults have an associate degree or higher. Students who are underrepresented in post-secondary education are at greater risk of leaving school before earning a degree or certificate. In an effort to address the needs of African American students attending Sinclair Community College (SCC), the Urban African American Mentor Program (UAAMP) was started in 2009 with a core group of 32 students. The intent of this research was to engage in causal comparative research in comparing graduation and transfer rates among the UAAMP group with graduation and transfer rates among a randomly chosen group of SCC students with similar characteristics. Variables of gender and age were also examined to see if there were statistically significant differences among students. Through data analysis, an effect between participating in the formal mentoring group and graduation/transfer rates was established. An evaluation of the effectiveness of this formal mentoring program helps provide accountability for SCC and continue UAAMP's funding in the future.
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Perception of Non-physical Abuse in Intimate Partner Relationships
Jessica Peatee, Ellen I. Snyder
The present studies will examine how college-aged students perceive non-physical abuse in intimate partner relationships. The Tip of the Iceberg theory hypothesizes that non-physical abuse varies by increasing degree of severity'verbal, emotional, and psychological'with psychological abuse being the most severe form of non-physical abuse. Study 1 will test for evidence that three degrees of severity are perceived by laypeople to exist within non-physical abuse, and that psychological abuse is perceived as the most severe degree. Participants will read vignettes illustrating non-physically abusive situations between dating couples, and then rate how abusive these situations seem on a Likert-type scale. It is predicted that severity of abusiveness ratings will vary based on the type of non-physical abuse (verbal, emotional, psychological). Study 2 will then use the vignettes from study 1 that were found to have differed in severity to examine if the relationship between the hypothesized degrees of severity and perceived severity ratings of abusiveness is moderated by the target of the non-physical abuse (one's self or an individual in another couple), and if this relationship is then further influenced by the individual's past experience with non-physical abuse. Study 1 data is currently being collected and results from all available data will be presented.
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Peremptory Challenges: The History and its Effect on Legal Professionals in Montgomery County, Ohio
Whitney M. Crim
The jury system has been the center of our judicial system since the Bill of Rights guaranteed the right to a jury in 1791. An essential component of the jury system is the selection process of jurors. During jury selection, attorneys for each side can use both peremptory challenges and challenges for cause to remove jurors from the pool. Challenges for cause allow for jurors to be removed upon the establishment of a reason for the removal, such as inability to analyze the information due to mental defect. However, the peremptory challenge requires no stated legal reasoning for the removal. As times have changed it has become necessary for laws to be enacted to regulate the peremptory challenge. This prevents jurors from being removed solely for discriminatory or problematic reasons. This thesis project will explore those changes as well as explain how those changes affect attorneys and judges in Montgomery County, Ohio.
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Perfectionism: Good, Bad, or Growth?
Elissa A. Lauber
Perfectionism has been predominantly studied from a clinical perspective, and has only more recently been studied from a normative perspective. Luyckx et al. (2008) studied how personality differences in two facets of perfectionism'adaptive (striving for improvement) and maladaptive (striving for perfect performance)'relate to identity formation and well-being. However, no research has tested adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism experimentally to show how these two facets of perfectionism effect task performance, task motivation, and the subjective experience of the task. In the current study, 150 University of Dayton participants were surveyed for personality characteristics relating to perfectionism and motivation and were then randomly assigned to two creativity-task conditions, one eliciting a motivation for adaptive perfectionism and another for maladaptive perfectionism. Results show how adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism influence performance, motivation, and experience'and then relative to personality differences in perfectionism and related forms of motivation.
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Portfolio Investment and Weighting Strategies for High Quality Stocks 2008 to 2011: A Study in Portfolio Management
Mary H. Viertel
In highly volatile market periods, many investors tend to reduce their risk by purchasing higher quality stocks. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the returns of different portfolio weighting strategies on portfolios of high quality stocks over an observed volatile market period. In this study, I examine two overall investment strategies: (1) size: defined as market capitalization, and (2) growth vs. value: defined as price to book ratio during the period of 2008 to 2011. This time period includes the year 2008 as the model for a downswing period, 2009 for a rebound period, 2010 for an upswing period, and 2011 for a trading range period. I use mock portfolios of one million dollars to evaluate the performance of the portfolios over time. Within the two investment strategies, I weight the portfolios by several weighting mechanisms including size (market capitalization), valuation (price to book ratio), profitability (return on assets), and operating efficiency (operating margin). In essence, I want to determine which overall investment strategy has the best returns for the overall period, the downswing period, the rebound period, the upswing period, and the trading range period. Within those strategies, I want to see which portfolio weighting mechanism works best.
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Pose Invariant Face Recognition and Tracking for Human Identification
Chen Cui, Yakov Diskin, Binu M. Nair
Real-time tracking and recognition of people in complex environments has been a widely researched area in computer vision as it has a huge potential in efficient security automation and surveillance. We propose a real time system for detection and recognition of individuals in a scene by detecting, recognizing and tracking faces. The system integrates the multi-view face detection algorithm, the multi-pose face recognition algorithm and the extended multi-pose Kalman face tracker. The multi-view face detection algorithm contains the frontal face and profile face detectors which extract the Haar-like features and detect faces at any pose by a cascade of boosted classifiers. The pose of the face is inherently determined from the face detection algorithm and is used in the multi-pose face recognition module where depending on the pose, the detected face is compared with a particular set of trained faces having the same pose range. The pose range of the trained faces is divided into bins onto which the faces are sorted and each bin is trained separately to have its own Eigenspace. The human faces are recognized by projecting them onto a suitable Eigenspace corresponding to the determined pose using Weighted Modular Principal Component Analysis (WMPCA) technique and then, are tracked using the proposed multiple face tracker. This tracker is implemented by extracting suitable face features which are represented by a variant of WMPCA and then tracking these features across the scene using the Kalman filter. This low-level system is created using the same face database of twenty unrelated people trained using WMPCA and classification is performed using a feature correlation metric. This system has the advantage of recognizing and tracking an individual in a cluttered environment with varying pose variations.
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Preparing Pre-Service Teachers to work with English Language Learners
Alexandra N. Hill
English Language Learners (ELLs) can be mis-identified as students with special needs. Teachers often watch these students struggle in school and assume they have a cognitive delay, when in reality; they may just be struggling with their language delay. To be identified as needing special education services, these students undergo assessments to test their abilities. These assessments were created for students who speak English. Studies have shown that 'Familiarity with Standard English accounts for more than 50% of the total test variance on IQ and achievement test measures for fourth graders and 60% to 90% of the variance for seventh graders' (Abedi, 2002). Therefore, ELLs are put at a further disadvantage during the testing period. If placed in a special education program, the student rarely receives the language instruction needed. The current structure creates an environment where ELLs can easily be misplaced into special education programs where they will continue to fall further behind in their education. To prevent this problem, pre-service teachers need to gain experience with ELLs so that they can give them the instruction and support they need. Not all pre-service teachers have access to classroom with ELLs. In order to try to replicate this experience, instructors turn to video case studies that show pre-service teachers authentic footage, assessments, and class work of an ELL. The goal of this research is to determine the effects of video case studies on pre-service teachers, and what questions were generated as a result of the in class clinical experience. References: Abedi, J. (2002). Measuring instructional quality in accountability systems: Classroom assignments and student achievement. Educational Assessment, 8(3), 231-257.
