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Alumni and Friends
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) (EPA, 2018) shows that the amount of MSW generated by Americans increased from 88.1 million tons in 1960 to 262.4 million tons in 2015. Out of the 262.4 million tons, 137.7 million was the estimated amount disposed into landfills. Only 67.8 million tons or about 26% of the total waste generated was recycled. It is clear from the numbers above that the success of existing recycling programs is limited. Increasing populations will continue to put pressure on our existing resources, compelling governments at all levels to take additional action to increase recycling efforts to transition from a linear model of make, use, and dispose to a closed-loop circular economy system, emphasizing reduce, reuse and recycle.
Within this context, my research evaluates recycling programs in the state of North Carolina, using counties as the unit of analysis. The first part explores county level factors that affect recycling rates. Factors span across the economic, demographic, social, geographic, technical, and programmatic aspects of recycling programs. The second part of my study focusses on exploring the economic and environmental merits of recycling. Specifically, this section explores the GHG emissions and wage creation from recycling certain materials as compared to landfilling them, and the causal mechanism between recycling, and GHG emissions and employment generation. Qualitative interviews with stakeholders in the recycling community inform the findings of my quantitative analysis.
I found that recycling is moving away from being a behavior based in individual taste and preferences to a mainstream behavior—part of everyday life. We must view recycling not only as an individual altruistic action but also as a means to decrease the cost of goods, lower landfill costs, combat climate change, and reduce resource and energy use while engaging the community. Most important is the need for standardized measures for recycling, new ways to measure recycling performance, and greater consistency in solid waste management policies so that scholars and program analysts can conduct more comparative studies. My study provides a unique, yet comprehensive look at recycling in the state of North Carolina, and provides recommendations to decision-makers, leaders, and scholars on how to improve existing recycling programs to achieve the goals of environmental and economic sustainability.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) provides a novel context in which to examine the effects of U.S. taxation of foreign earnings on the behavior of multi-national corporations (MNCs). Prior to the TCJA, the U.S. levied taxes on an MNC’s worldwide earnings, deferred until firms repatriated the funds to U.S. The worldwide taxation and deferral until repatriation led to firms holding significant amounts of cash offshore. By 2017, there was an estimated $2.8 trillion of repatriatable funds “trapped” offshore. Prior legislation intended to encourage repatriation offered temporary “tax holiday” measures. The TCJA lowered corporate tax rates for all firms and eliminated future U.S. tax on repatriated earnings after payment of a one-time transition tax, creating a “permanent tax holiday” for foreign earnings. I examine the relationship between pre-TCJA foreign cash holdings disclosed by MNCs and their shareholder payout and investment behavior in the two years immediately following enactment of the TCJA. Similar to research into the effects of the temporary tax holidays in prior legislation, I find share repurchases in the post-TCJA period are associated with pre-TCJA foreign cash holdings. I further find that MNCs disclosing pre-TCJA foreign cash holdings increased research and development and capital expenditures in the second year following the TCJA. These findings indicate that the foreign earnings provisions of the TCJA may have had some longer-term effects in line with its legislative intent. This contrasts in some ways with the findings of prior research and should be of interest to policymakers, particularly as the current U.S. administration considers changes to the corporate tax regime, while also providing a basis for future research.
As colleges work to meet performance standards, staff have been placed in key service areas to help students be successful. With the majority of the seven million community college students attending part-time, needing developmental education, and not graduating on time, it is vital that students take advantage of services such as academic advising, financial aid advising, tutoring, career counseling, student organizations, disability services, and military/veteran’s services (American Association of Community Colleges, 2019a; McClenny, 2016; Tippett & Kahn, 2018a). Students who utilize some of these services have been retained and had higher grade point averages (GPA) than students who did not use these services (Bremer et al., 2013; Drake, 2011; Habley et al., 2010; Hatch & Garcia, 2017; McClenney & Dare, 2013; Nakajima et al., 2012; Smith & Allen, 2014). By making use of the provided services, students were more successful, but the frequency of visits to these services has not been analyzed in-depth. Using data from one institution’s Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), this study set out to determine if there was an association between the frequency of use of a service and the student’s GPA or intent to return to that college for future semesters. The research questions that guided this study ask if there is a relationship between the frequency of service utilization and student success. By using an analysis of variance to examine the data, it was determined that the reported frequency of using financial aid advising showed a statistically significant difference in the student’s GPA. The research did not find any statistically significant differences in a student’s GPA for the use of multiple services nor a statistically significant difference in a student’s intent to return based on the use of services. Based on this study, community colleges will want to determine the individual services offered by financial aid advising and how to best adapt a financial aid advising program to assist those students who are visiting more often and not seeing academic success.
For decades, district level administrators and policy makers have been searching for ways to combat the ever growing issue of teacher attrition. Each year teachers leave the profession prior to retirement age. This problem is even more prevalent in schools who serve low-income, high-minority students.
The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study was to determine the lived experiences that keep elementary school teachers teaching in low-income, high-minority schools, when so many of their peers choose to leave. For this study, six elementary level teachers, who have taught in the same low-income, high-minority school for five years or more, participated in one hour long semi-structured interviews. These interviews helped see through the lens of the participants, providing rich, real world experiences they used to sustain their positions when so many of their peers leave.
The results revealed that both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators played a role in the teacher’s decision to remain in low-income, high-minority schools. These motivators ranged from their professional work environments to past experiences as teachers and students. The information discovered during this study may help administrators and policy makers find ways to increase teacher attrition especially in low-income, high-minority schools
With the introduction of job embeddedness theory, turnover research shifted away from the precursors of why people leave and focused on why people stay. Distinct from similar constructs, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, job embeddedness includes community-related issues in addition to job-related issues. While existing literature has evaluated alternate ways to measure the job embeddedness construct, variable-centered approaches continue to be utilized. This approach implicitly assumes that being high or low on job embeddedness perceptions in the form of an overall composite indicates that individuals perceive each aspect and their attachment ties similarly. Thus, this study advances the job embeddedness theoretical framework by engaging in a person-centered approach. This study found that the presumed underlying factors used to measure job embeddedness were best represented by a six-factor model through confirmatory factor analysis. In addition, this study conducted a latent profile analysis to examine patterns in response indicators within the sample data and found that distinct job embeddedness profiles emerged. These profiles showed unique patterns of job-based and non-job-based experiences that relate to staying on the job. Lastly, this study examined each job embeddedness profile and compared them with respect to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions.
Childhood obesity has been on the rise for decades with negative impact on health, psychology of the people and with significant economic cost to the society. Some risk factors attributed to obesity are quality and quantity of food, sugary drinks, and sedentary lifestyle. This project evaluates the effect of an educational intervention to improve parents’ nutrition label literacy as parents make healthy food choices for their children.
The literature review discussed the causes and consequences of childhood obesity, and importance of nutrition label literacy in prevention of childhood obesity. This quantitative descriptive study was conducted at an outpatient pediatric clinic among parents. One of the aims of the project was to identify the participants’ nutrition label illiteracy by administering a Food Label Literacy for Applied Nutrition Knowledge (FLLANK) pretest. Thirty participants completed the pre and post intervention questionnaire. 73.3% of the participants had a least a 2-year college degree and 60% made more than $45,000/ year. The results showed that irrespective of socioeconomic status, the participants improved in their nutrition label literacy after the educational intervention. It is important for healthcare providers to initiate early intervention in nutrition literacy in prevention of childhood obesity.
Childhood obesity has been on the rise for decades with negative impact on health, psychology of the people and with significant economic cost to the society. Some risk factors attributed to obesity are quality and quantity of food, sugary drinks, and sedentary lifestyle. This project evaluates the effect of an educational intervention to improve parents’ nutrition label literacy as parents make healthy food choices for their children.
The literature review discussed the causes and consequences of childhood obesity, and importance of nutrition label literacy in prevention of childhood obesity. This quantitative descriptive study was conducted at an outpatient pediatric clinic among parents. One of the aims of the project was to identify the participants’ nutrition label illiteracy by administering a Food Label Literacy for Applied Nutrition Knowledge (FLLANK) pretest. Thirty participants completed the pre and post intervention questionnaire. 73.3% of the participants had a least a 2-year college degree and 60% made more than $45,000/ year. The results showed that irrespective of socioeconomic status, the participants improved in their nutrition label literacy after the educational intervention. It is important for healthcare providers to initiate early intervention in nutrition literacy in prevention of childhood obesity.
Many people are affected by chronic pain. The use of opioids for pain has resulted in an increase in the number of opioid-related overdose deaths. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) created opioid prescribing guidelines to help providers safely prescribe opioids for chronic pain. The purpose of this project was to create an electronic medical record (EMR) template and urine drug test (UDT) alert to increase the providers’ adherence to the CDC opioid guidelines in a small, hospital-owned, family practice clinic. A pre/post implementation chart review tool was used to evaluate the medical records of 60 patients prescribed chronic opioids. The tool was used to determine if providers were adhering to the guidelines. Measures included the number of patients who completed an annual UDT, signed control substance agreement (CSA), documented pain diagnosis, quarterly office visits, and if providers reviewed the prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) every 3 months. Adherence improved in the post-implementation data compared to pre-implementation. There were statistically significant increases in CSA (p=.000), PDMP reviewed (p=.000), annual UDT (p=.005), and quarterly appointments (p=.006). Although not statistically significant, there was an increase in documented pain diagnosis (p=.492). Implementation of an EMR template and UDT alert led to an increase in provider adherence to opioid prescribing guidelines.
Food insecurity (FI) has negative health effects throughout the lifespan, yet there is a disconnect between national recognition of FI as a health issue and FI screening in the clinical setting. The purpose of this project was to determine if an educational intervention increased knowledge of FI’s role on health, the screening and referral process, and using ICD-10 coding to document FI. A pretest-posttest design was used, sampling clinicians across five clinical sites. Participants received virtual education and completed a pre-, post-, and 3-month follow-up survey to measure knowledge, attitudes, and willingness to address FI issues. A retrospective ICD-10 coding report for FI was obtained to measure frequency of use per clinic site. Thirty-one clinicians completed the pre- and post-survey, and twelve clinicians completed all three time points. Participants’ knowledge of FI and knowledge of referral resources was significantly improved from the pre- to post-survey (p <0.001, p < 0.000 respectively). Clinicians showed a significant change in their intent to ask patients about FI (p < 0.000) and to refer patients to community food resources (p < 0.000); this remained at the 3-month follow-up (p < 0.001). There was not a significant change in the use of the ICD-10 code for FI throughout the measurement period. The results of this project support findings in the literature that a point-in-time educational training on FI could improvement clinicians’ knowledge, as well as their willingness to screen patients for FI and connect them to food resources.
Bacteria play a major role in our health and wellbeing. The microbe-host interaction is often mediated by sugar polymers at the cell surface. An incredibly diverse amount of glycan variation exists throughout these structures, which makes identification of surface components difficult. The composition of the surface is unique to bacteria and acts as molecular fingerprint which can distinguish even subspecies apart. Better methods to decipher what those glycan identities are or how to reproduce them may help develop future advancements towards exploiting them as therapeutic targets. The major challenge addressed herein is to simplify the tools used to track the formation of these natural materials. To do this, we expand on the chemoenzymatic preparation of a tagged lipid substrate central to early stages of biosynthesis for many surface polysaccharides. Further, we identify conditions in which these unnatural substrates can be used in vitro. Lastly, we develop methodologies to detect BP and polysaccharide intermediates in live cells. These tools have facilitated robust detection and reconstruction of glycan assembly building blocks. This research may lay the ground work for future applications technologies towards novel therapeutics, such as glycoconjugates vaccines.
