2022 UMKC Theses - Freely Available Online
Permanent URI for this collection
Items in MOspace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Assessment of Dental Students' Attitudes and Awareness of Climate Change in a Midwestern Dental School(2023) Linstadt, Sara; Simmer-Beck, MelanieThe purpose of this project was to investigate the knowledge and attitudes of dental students toward climate change, and whether certain demographic characteristics were associated with high or low knowledge as well as attitude toward climate change. An IRB-approved 20-item survey was constructed and administered to 432 UMKC dental students spanning all four years to test if demographics including school year, gender, geographic region of upbringing, socioeconomic status during childhood, previous climate change-related education, and use of environmentally-friendly behaviors at home are associated with climate knowledge and attitude. The survey was introduced to students via an IRB-approved verbal script during a class, and the students anonymously completed the surveys. The survey questions were divided into 4 domains; demographic characteristics, knowledge of climate change, attitude toward climate change, and perceived barriers seen by the student which may prevent the use of environmentally-sustainable office practices. Student demographics were then used to evaluate whether there was an effect on students’ climate change-related knowledge and attitude toward climate change. The survey results show a significant association between dental students’ gender and previous climate change-related education and both their knowledge of and attitude toward climate change. However, utilization of environmentally-friendly behaviors at home and year in dental school were significantly associated with attitude toward climate change only. There was no correlation found between overall knowledge of climate change and attitude.Item The Pompeii of Kansas: Race, Environment, and Memory in Quindaro, 1982-1991(2022) Sprague, Michael R.; Frehner, BrianIn January 1981, Browning-Ferris Industries entered into a lease agreement with the Kansas City Commission of Kansas City, Kansas to construct a landfill in the historic neighborhood of Quindaro. This agreement resulted in significant protests by the Black community of Quindaro, which challenged the municipal government in court and built a coalition of activists who protested the landfill. The township of Quindaro has a complex history of interracial cooperation between the Wyandot people, white Free Staters, and Black freedmen. The landfill threatened to destroy the physical remains of this history. The contest over the Quindaro landfill should be understood beyond the limitations of a localized phenomenon. Prior scholarship in the field of environmental justice (EJ) demonstrates that African American communities throughout the United States are exposed to disproportionate levels of toxic exposure, whether it be in the form of PCBs, lead, particulate matter from coal-fired power plants, or other forms of toxins. EJ scholars have examined the social power dynamics that led to discriminatory exposure, finding that it is a phenomenon rooted in colonialism, racism, and capitalism. This article utilizes government documents, newspaper articles, letters of correspondence among protesters, and oral histories of residents to demonstrate that government officials in Kansas City purposefully neglected the health and well-being of the predominantly Black population in the Northeast, while simultaneously dismissing the historical value of the archaeological site. This article ultimately seeks to demonstrate that the siting of the Quindaro landfill fits into broader patterns of behavior by the government officials to exploit communities of color.Item A Court of Public Opinion: American Sex Work in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era(2022) Henkel, Sarah; Burke, Diane MuttiLate nineteenth-century sex workers in the United States left behind few written records. In contrast, men and women not involved in the sex work trade made their opinions well known. To peacefully exist in the public sphere of society, Gilded Age women relied on being perceived as good, moral, and pure. From the dawn of the Gilded Age through the Progressive Era, from approximately 1870 through 1920, the American public perceived a lack of goodness and morality within sex workers, making their visible presence in society unacceptable. This conclusion by the American public that sex workers lacked morality was based in part on religion but also on the legality of the profession and generally held notions of respectability. This perceived lack of morality and respectability led to sex workers growing more socially ostracized than ever before as the Gilded Age ended at the turn of the twentieth century. Using legal proceedings, widely circulated publications, private correspondence, and other forms of communication, sex workers were exploited by many individuals as tools for their personal political agendas and without sincere concern for sex workers’ well-being. During the Progressive Era, the crusade against sex work intensified as the solution to the problem of prostitution evolved from regulating the profession to seeking its extermination. Scholars can draw more nuanced conclusions concerning these discourses related to sex work by recognizing the lack of female-authored manuscripts in archives and by analyzing the male-authored sources that are available. Historians, including but not limited to Barbara Hobson, LeeAnn Whites, Judith Walkowitz, and Sharon Wood, have published landmark texts reflecting on nineteenth-century politics, prostitution, and social reform that closely relate to the topic of this thesis. The State Historical Society of Missouri, Missouri Valley Special Collections, and the Kansas Historical Society possess several collections containing materials reflecting on the American sex work industry during the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras. These materials include newspapers, ledgers, essays, correspondence, census records, pamphlets, and photographs. Though these materials were not the only primary sources consulted, they are the sources that most shaped the analysis of this topic. The purpose of this thesis is to identify how public opinion shaped the legal and social treatment of sex workers over an approximate fifty-year span, and whether early twentieth-century efforts at reform could ultimately be considered successful. After analyzing available primary sources and secondary literature related to this topic, this thesis concludes that sex workers in the United States were depicted by specific groups of individuals as sinful and inherently corrupt in an aggressive attempt to advance extensive social reforms, though in the end, these attempts at reform failed.Item 3D Printing of Microneedles via Embedded 3D Printing using an Associative Surfactant System(2022) Dyke, Romario; Niroobakhsh, ZahraMicroneedles are drug-delivery devices specially adapted to penetrate the outer-most layer of the epidermis (stratum corneum). These devices have gained popularity over the last decades because they provide non-invasive drug delivery options. There are many types of microneedles to suit a wide variety of applications. This work is focused on using new lipid-hydrogel materials to fabricate microneedles using a liquid-in-liquid 3D printing process combining embedding and associative liquid-in-liquid 3D printing approaches. Although liquid-in-liquid 3D printing was successfully applied in previous research, printing at the microscale introduces additional complexities. To successfully fabricate microneedles at the microscale with good shape fidelity and appropriate mechanical properties, it is crucial to study the print parameters (printing process), the material properties, and how they work together. Through experiments, we investigated the effects of various print parameters, print materials, and suspension baths on the quality of the 3D printed microneedles.Item Daughters of Shanghai(2022) Miniace, Giana; Pritchett, Michael, 1961-Daughters of Shanghai is an historical fiction novel set in China between 1937 and 2014. It is centered around resilient Lucy Lau who struggles to survive war, natural disaster, betrayal, and grief while raising four generations of daughters. She believes that honor comes before duty, and family before all. She waits for the day that one daughter will understand an inheritance she’s kept secret for seventy-five years, a Ming tea set that’s worth more than money. It’s a family heirloom that for three hundred years has been passed down from mother to daughter. After the communists won the civil war, it became a bourgeois relic and a crime to own. Its motif depicts a snowy scene, the Tao plum tree, Confucian bamboo, and Buddhist evergreen—the three friends of winter, China’s three religions. All of her history painted on porcelain whose strength and beauty has never been surpassed. Lucy keeps the tea set safe as a symbol that her family and their nation will endure even the harshest conditions. From the Japanese invasion, World War II, the Chinese Civil War, the rise of Mao, the Cultural Revolution, the revival of capitalism, and new communism under Xi Jinping, Lucy Lau’s story is the story of modern China through the eyes of an ordinary citizen.