THE 2013 CSGS/PROQUEST DISTINGUISHED MASTER'S THESIS AWARD WINNER IN THE CATEGORY OF HUMANITIES and SOCIAL SCIENCES:

Natalie Nations, Mississippi State University

Under the direction of Dr. Ted Atkinson

Defining Freedom: A Historical Exploration of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Alice Walker's Meridian, and Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Richard Wright's Black Boy, Alice Walker's Meridian, and Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman depict the African American struggle for rights and freedom both before, during, and after the recognized Civil Rights Era. By exploring the novels' definitions of freedom, I examine how these definitions inform the characters' search for freedom. My research situates the novels along the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement in order to identify the historical implications of the characters' search for and definitions of freedom. Using Wright, Walker, and Gaines to follow the freedom struggle from slavery to the post-civil rights era provides a comprehensive, historical framework for understanding the evolving rhetoric of freedom. To locate the novels' definitions of freedom, I examine the novels' relationship to often dichotomized concepts such as flight and stasis, individual and communal freedom, personal and political freedom, and nonviolent and militant strategies of gaining and sustaining freedom. Reflecting a "long," complicated history of the Civil Rights Movement, these novels obscure a simplified, dichotomous understanding of the movement and provide a multivalent definition of freedom that encompasses both the political and psychological self. Ultimately, I analyze how these authors respond to each other and the racial and political climate of their time, and through this analysis, examine how the search for freedom changes over time.

THE 2013 CSGS/PROQUEST DISTINGUISHED MASTER'S THESIS AWARD WINNER IN THE CATEGORY OF MATHEMATICS, PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING:

Sarah Suda, North Carolina State University

Under the direction of Dr. Markus Petters

Hygroscopicity Frequency Distributions of Secondary Organic Aerosols

Atmospheric aerosol particles contribute to climate by changing the reflectivity and lifetime of clouds. An appreciable fraction of global ambient aerosol is secondary organic aerosol (SOA), which forms in the troposphere as a product of organic vapor oxidation. This study investigates the hygroscopicity of SOA as part of an ongoing effort to reduce uncertainty in the mechanisms and magnitude of the climatic effect of aerosol-cloud interaction. SOA was generated in an environmental chamber by the reaction of 24 different combinations of organic precursors and atmospheric oxidants. Cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) properties were measured for SOA generated inside a smog chamber. Filter samples from each experiment were chemically separated by high precision liquid chromatography, and CCN properties were measured for eluting compounds using a fast scanning method implemented for this study. The hygroscopicity parameter, k, was calculated for each scan of the eluting material. Measured k-values were matched with the quantity of simultaneously eluting material to show the underlying volume-weighted k distribution for each sample. The k-values of the constituent compounds in the SOA mixture varied more than the k-values found for the samples measured online with the chamber reactions, showing that the overall k-value is less sensitive to precursor composition than are the individual k-values constituting the mixture. The volume-weighted average -values compared favorably to the online measurements. A number of targeted experiments were designed to examine the change in the hygroscopicity distribution with the chemical reaction mechanisms. Observed shifts in the distribution were attributable to changes in the expected chemistry of aerosol formation, demonstrating the method's utility for studying chemical mechanisms.

 

THE 2013 CSGS/PROQUEST DISTINGUISHED THESIS AWARD WINNER IN THE CATEGORY OF ELECTRONIC DISSERTATIONS AND THESES (EDT):

Gregory C. Mitchell, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Under the direction of Prof. Mitzi R. Vernon

The Rocnciliation of Art + Science

In current higher education paradigms, art and science are often siloed fields rather than subjects that inform each other. This dichotomy or hyper-specialization of art and science in higher education is a result of the industrial revolution with production as the telos. The product of this educational paradigm divorces art and science from each other. But how should we educate students for jobs that don't exist today? What learning environments are most conducive to creativity and innovation? What are the potential benefits of teaching art and science as one? What disciplines would work best together? Are their patterns in ones perception of the relationship between art and science? Are trans-disciplinary learning environments a possibility or an ideal?

This thesis investigates the hypothesis that the walls between art and science exist only in our minds.

This research consists of 27 one-on-one interviews conducted with students, professors and other higher education affiliates, who visualize the relationship between art and science.) The interviews use everyday objects as prompts to build a baseline to the investigation. The instrument consisted of seven questions that investigated if the use of quotidian, everyday, objects as prompts expose the false dichotomy between art and science. Additionally, the research tries to uncover the possible patterns that exist in how disciplines visualize/diagram the relationship between art and science. Each participant was asked to draw how they view the relationship between art and science. The researcher used these drawings as data points to lead the analysis.

The researcher developed a series of field notes (thinking sketches) as interpretations of the themes of the participant's drawings. These thinking sketches were then translated into four thinking prototypes (three-dimensional models) which later inform the development of four simple yet profound findings called quotidian proverbs.