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Browsing by Author "Cross, Jennifer E., advisor"

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    Long term learning outcome of sociology capstone courses at Colorado State University
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Love, Hannah Beth, author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; O'Connor Shelley, Tara, committee member; Lacy, Michael, committee member; Coke, Pamela, committee member
    Institutions of higher education claim to be educating students to think critically, be civically engaged, and prepared to solve global problems. How do we know sociology programs are fulfilling this promise? This research aimed to validate previous claims about the long-term impacts of sociology capstone courses by comparing three capstone courses at Colorado State University (CSU): a Community Based Research (CBR) Capstone course, Traditional Capstone Seminars, and Internship. By conducting a content analysis of existing student reflections, a network analysis of current students, and a survey of all sociology alumni from the last ten years. The results of our study at CSU provided strong evidence that not all capstone courses produced the same long-term learning outcomes. Through peer-to-peer learning CBR taught students to think critically, solve problems, be civically engaged, work as a member of a team, and value scientific research.
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    People, places, and perceptions: complexity in citizen responses to hydraulic fracturing in northern Colorado
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Stephens, Alyssa, author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Shelley, Tara O'Conner, committee member; Davis, Charles, committee member
    Between June of 2012 and November of 2013, five Northern Colorado communities passed citizen-initiated ballot measures limiting hydraulic fracturing. Though overtly this was about protecting health and safety, much of the opposition stemmed from the perception of a broken relationship between communities, governments, and corporations. This research constructs a case study of local opposition to hydraulic fracturing in Northern Colorado using a combination of in-depth interviews, surveys, participant observation, and document review. Through tracing convergences and divergences in organizational responses over time, this research examines how communities experiencing the same threat—hydraulic fracturing—ultimately interpreted both the threat and what was being threatened in new ways based on the discursive resources provided to them through their communities and networks. In contrast to characterizations of negative responses to the threat of extractive industries as one-dimensional "NIMBY-ism", the results of this research emphasize the complexity of responses and the variations in how citizens interpret the circumstances surrounding threats, build relationships, and take action to protect their community.
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    Public colleges for educational access in Colorado
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2014) Wellman, Michelle L., author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Peek, Lori, committee member; Felix, Oscar, committee member
    This thesis explores the frameworks for university-funded educational access programs in Colorado. Through the use of qualitative methods, I conduct a case study of 6 access programs, their practitioners, and their undergraduate student volunteers. I examine the values and social position of access practitioners as well as their ability to work across traditional social and institutional boundaries. Employing a network analytic approach, I examine and conceptualize the structure and connectivity of both federal Trio and university-funded access programs. My research shows that both Trio and access programs are well positioned for mutually beneficial collaborations. This includes access providing services for Trio parents and families and Trio sharing program evaluation metrics with access programs. Additionally, access programs have a unique ability capacity to recruit and retain students because of their position within universities. Finally, recommendations are made for access program transferability and sustainability. Near-peer mentoring and provide culturally-relevant programs are highly exportable aspects of access programs. In order to sustain access programs, practitioners should link their program to university strategic priorities while also involving high-level university officials in program development and assessment.
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    Social networks for collaborative water management: a methodological approach to addressing wicked environmental problems
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2017) Anson, Alison A., author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Goemans, Christopher G., committee member; Taylor, Peter L., committee member
    Lake pollution caused by human activity on nearby land is currently seen as one of the most pressing issues facing fresh bodies of water worldwide and particularly in the Midwestern United States. In Menomonie, a small lake-shore town in Wisconsin, lake pollution from phosphorus eutrophication has become an unhealthy nuisance for the residents that reside there. Eutrophication is the build-up of algae in waterways when there are too many nutrients, such as phosphorus, concentrated in the water. Attempts have been made by government officials, practitioners, researchers, and community members to clean up the lake or tackle the root of its cause with limited success. This research argues that this "wicked" pollution problem, while environmental and scientific in nature, cannot be resolved without a much more thorough analysis of the social aspects involved in decision-making and collaborative knowledge acquisition. I conducted a mixed methods study using interviews, digital surveys, and Social Network Analysis (SNA) of the community in question to reveal how network structure, network interactions, and actor characteristics play a role in this community's collaborative effort to address lake pollution. The following research shows that SNA, alongside qualitative field study, can reveal significant findings about the network and the environmental problem.
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    Students with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic: how an inverted disaster impacted educational access, student outcomes, and family strain
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Bendeck, Shawna Lee, author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Malin, Stephanie A., committee member; Hastings, Orestes P., committee member; Hausermann, Heidi, committee member
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, school buildings were closed, and education took place through a variety of at-home, virtual, and hybrid learning models. These alternative teaching modalities were especially challenging for students with disabilities. As a socially vulnerable population, children with disabilities and their families are at greater risk of poor outcomes during disasters and disruptions in schooling. The pandemic was also a different type of disaster. In this dissertation, I propose the COVID-19 pandemic was an inverted disaster, defined by the following characteristics: it was temporally and spatially unbounded; it posed a physical yet invisible threat to all human lives; and its ubiquity and invisibility led to the breakdown of institutional and social support systems. As schools were closed, educators were left unprepared for continued learning during such an event. Students with disabilities rely on the consistency of educational and therapeutic services, accommodations, and modifications for their continued learning and growth. The pandemic presents an urgent need to examine the delivery and consequences of education for these students, and to discover best practices for moving forward. This dissertation is guided by the following research questions: 1) How was education altered during the pandemic? 2) How did shifts in education differentially impact students with disabilities and their parents? and, 3) How did parents mitigate the impacts of school closures during the pandemic, despite the unique challenges posed by the disaster? To answer these questions, I conducted a mixed-methods study that included: 1) surveys with 125 parents and caregivers of children in K-8 grades; 2) qualitative in-depth interviews with a subsample of 39 parents in Northern Colorado; and 3) social network analysis with 29 of these parents. Fifty percent of parents who participated had at least one child with a disability. This study represents a total of 248 children, 83 of which were identified as having a disability qualifying them for special education services. First, findings from this dissertation revealed that due to a lack of preparation and planning for an inverted disaster, schools were unable to provide consistent, equitable educational services to students with disabilities throughout waves of the pandemic. These students faced structural barriers to education that limited their access to general and special education, therapeutic services, and their peers and educational support systems. Second, due to these barriers, students with disabilities experienced greater setbacks in their academics, physical and mental health, and their socio-emotional development. Third, parents experienced strain on their roles, their homes, and their relationships. Role conflict was greater for parents who had a child with a disability. Fourth, parents of children with disabilities reported more stress, worry, and lower wellbeing than their peers. The intersectionality of disability with single parenthood, race, socioeconomic status, and work location impacted various aspects of mental health in disproportionate ways. Fifth, parents mitigated the impacts of the pandemic and school closures by altering forms of connection with their social networks and by developing new networks to meet the unique demands of the pandemic. Parents with stronger social support networks (i.e. larger, denser, more diverse, etc.) experienced less mental health strain than parents who had weaker networks. Social networks provided a buffer to the negative impacts of the pandemic and school closures on parents. This dissertation contributes to scholarly literature by introducing the concept of the inverted disaster as a new way to define the pandemic and understand its impacts on educational equity, children with disabilities, and their parents. This research outlines how the characteristics of the inverted disaster led to a breakdown of institutional and support systems and to the exclusion of children with disabilities from vital educational and therapeutic services. It also examines the disproportionate impacts on parents, linking patterns of disadvantage with mental health outcomes. Methodologically, I explore how the strength of social networks can be measured and analyzed as mitigating factors on parental mental health. Based on the findings from this research, I recommend strategies for improved disaster management and educational policies for continued special education during disaster that prioritize children with disabilities. I also propose strategies for community building and strengthening social networks among at-risk families.
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    The social process of knowledge creation in science
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Love, Hannah Beth, author; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Fosdick, Bailey K., committee member; Nowacki, Jeffrey, committee member; Carolan, Michael, committee member
    The Science of Team Science (SciTS) emerged as a field of study because 21st Century scientists are increasingly charged with solving complex societal and environmental challenges. This shift in the complexity of questions requires a shift in how knowledge is created. To solve the complex societal health and environmental challenges, scientific disciplines will have to work together, innovate new knowledge, and create new solutions. It is impossible for one person or one discipline to have the quantity of knowledge needed to solve these types of problems. Tackling these problems requires a team. My dissertation articles report on how knowledge is built and created on a spectrum of scientific teams from university students to long-standing teams. Collectively they answer: how is knowledge creation a social process? To answer this question, my dissertation used a mixed-methods approach that included: social network analysis, social surveys, participant observation, interviews, document analysis, and student reflections. The most important finding from my dissertation was that social relations and processes are key to knowledge creation. Historically, knowledge acquisition and creation have been thought of as individual tasks, but a growing body of literature has framed knowledge creation as a social product. This is a fundamental shift in how knowledge is created to solve complex problems. To work with scientists from other disciplines, individuals must develop personal mastery and build the necessary capacities for collaboration, collective cognitive responsibility, and knowledge building. Complex problems are solved when scientists co-evolve with teams, and individual knowledge and capacity grows alongside the ability for "team learning" Knowledge, then, is a collective product; it is not isolated or individual, but constructed and co-constructed through patterns of interactions.
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    Transformational change in conservation
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Toombs, Theodore Patrick, author; Knight, Richard L., advisor; Cross, Jennifer E., advisor; Teel, Tara L., committee member; Neimeic, Rebecca, committee member
    This dissertation explores a fundamental question for the conservation profession and society at large: How can we more effectively create the transformational change necessary to solve complex conservation problems? To do so, it's important to understand processes of transformational change and how they can be strategically utilized to address conservation problems. The lack of inclusion of social and systemic sciences into conservation science and practice hinders the profession's understanding of transformational change. Socio-ecological systems theory and social science have many insights to offer, but these insights have not been systematically incorporated into science and practice or coalesced into an integrated theory despite repeated appeals from social scientists. Each chapter of this dissertation takes a unique perspective on change. Chapter 2 explores the value orientations of Illinois farmers as important knowledge in the process of creating changes in individual behavior. Chapter 3 is a case study of conservation program that failed to materialize in part due to lack of attention to broader social issues. Chapter 4 is a synthesis of critiques of the current conservation paradigm that illustrate its bias toward individualistic, agentic theories of change that result from mainstream adoption of individual, neoliberal ideology. Many conservation problems are social and systemic in nature, yet the professions dominant theory of change is based on a theoretical perspective of these problems as individualistic, behavior problems. To address this, a more integrative set of theoretical perspectives is needed. Chapter 5 articulates a new, integrative theory of change (TTC) composed of four interdependent sets of mechanisms that can be enacted through strategic, conservation action in collaborative, place-based settings: (a) building communities of practice; (b) empowering individual catalysts; (c) reconfiguring the system; and (d) connecting across dimensions. I propose a set of testable propositions related to each of these components. The aim of the TTC is to integrate existing social and systems science insights into conservation science and practice, expand the set of potential interventions available, and improve the profession's ability to create the change necessary to address the world's most pressing conservation issues.