Oral Presentations - Session 2A: UC 326

Schedule

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2012
Friday, April 13th
1:40 PM

Living Learning Communities: Increasing Student Retention through the Integration of Academics and Residence Life

John N. Loomis

UC 326

1:40 PM - 2:00 PM

The University of Montana class of 2007 had a four-year graduation rate of 23.1%; the class of 2005 had a six-year graduation rate of 47.8%. In addition, 28.2% of the 2010 freshmen class withdrew from The University of Montana before the end of their first year. In an effort to increase student retention, this project focuses on the development and implementation of a Living Learning Community (LLC) in a freshman residence hall. Research indicates that LLC programs result in improvement both in academic performance of the students involved and the students' perception of their first year experience. This combination of effects has resulted in increased retention rates for the universities that have integrated LLC programs into their residence halls. This LLC program focuses on a first year chemistry course for students in pre-health sciences, some biology degree options, and all chemistry options. The students chosen to be members of the LLC were Craig Hall residents that had placed into the course through the Chemistry Placement Exam. The course workshop experience, a two hour block of peer-led instructional time focused on concept development, student interaction, and development of problem solving skills, was transferred into the residence hall. In addition, hall programs were offered that focused on supporting the students of the LLC. The data analysis from the first semester indicates that the LLC students had a higher retention rate and a better average grade than the non-LLC students. This project will provide important lessons on implementation of future LLC programs in the residence halls by the Residence Life Office, which will begin in the fall of 2012.

2:00 PM

Re-Imagining International Law Enforcement

Gabriel H. Heyl

UC 326

2:00 PM - 2:20 PM

In a world that has become highly interdependent through globalization, where many borders often effectively only exist on political maps, transnational organized crime has become a significant, systemic threat to human, national, and international security.

In “Re-Imagining International Law Enforcement” the clear focus is on the efforts of international law enforcement, which is the cooperation between states to engage and combat the problem of organized crime across borders.

Often believed to be an international police force, INTERPOL facilitates exchange of information but does not, in fact, act upon information. Similar to this model, other organizations try to foster cooperation between national police forces but leave eventual enforcement to national agencies.

The research focuses on establishing the current status quo, the level of cooperation throughout the last 200 years, and the current efforts put forth to build international cooperation. This is done through several case studies, which are evaluated from a political science perspective to provide the political reality in which possible solutions have to work. From that platform recommendations are produced that might improve the problems long-term, to limit a possible run-away prevalence of organized crime in the next decades. More specifically, national law enforcement models and theories are identified that might be useful on an international scale to approach the issue that is clearly beyond the scope of any single nation.

2:20 PM

Projectile point analysis of the Sarpy Bison kill

Andrew J. McElroy

UC 326

2:20 PM - 2:40 PM

In 2010 and 2011 archaeological excavations were conducted at the Sarpy Bison Kill site located in southeastern Montana or better known as site 24BH3078. The site is a bison communal hunting site located in a drainage that leads to sandstone wall outcropping, where the bison were killed and processed for meat, hides, and bone marrow. The site is dated to 1980+/ 40BP or roughly 50 BC to 90 AD. The excavations at the site were conducted as a cultural resource management project for the excavation of the underlying coal by a local coal company. A preliminary analysis was performed on the projectile points found at the Sarpy Bison Kill in 2010 field season to determine the use-life of a projectile point used in such a hunting process. The projectile points found at this site indicate in some detail the use-life of a projectile point from accruing material from both local and far off sources, manufacturing, use, recycle/rejuvenation, and finally disposal. This analysis gives a great glimpse into communal bison hunting and from these tools provides insight on how these types of tools and hunts both worked and played into the role of stone tools in plains bison hunting strategy.

2:40 PM

Macro-Siouan: The View from Fort Berthold

Erika M. Grantier

UC 326

2:40 PM - 3:00 PM

As people come into contact, they share various aspects of their cultures with one another: scientific and literary ideas, research and performance methods, and language. Language can be shared in many different ways, most of which are traceable and so can serve to further our understanding of the historic interactions between groups of people. When attempting to establish genetic links and understand the relationships among the over 300 Native languages of North America, we must differentiate between lexical and grammatical elements that are truly related, and those that have merely been borrowed or adapted from a neighboring tongue. This project aims to expand the current scholarship on the controversy over whether Macro-Siouan is an overarching language family containing the Siouan, Iroquoian, and Caddoan families, or if the similarities among the languages in these families is due to borrowing and diffusion. For this research, vocabulary lists, grammars, and previous linguistic scholarship of two Siouan languages, Hidatsa and Mandan, and one Caddoan language, Arikara, were used. These three languages were chosen because they, and the tribes who speak them, have been in close geographical and cultural proximity since they were all placed on the Fort Berthold reservation outside of Bismarck, North Dakota in 1845. While I do not claim to resolve this long-standing controversy, I contribute to the debate by adding another dimension of comparative data and by illuminating the difficulties posed by extensive borrowing for linguists attempting to reconstruct genetic relationships.