Browsing by Subject "Military"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Enslavement at Fort Snelling: Challenging Colonialism at One of Minnesota's Most Celebrated Historic Sites
    (2024) Minor, Sophie
    Following nearly 20 years of archaeological excavation, Historic Fort Snelling, a tourist destination located near St. Paul Minnesota, was finally opened to the public in the Fall of 1970. Although the archaeological project was exhaustive and the reconstruction of the buildings was meticulous, the historical narrative presented at the site was inaccurate and incomplete. Hiding behind the façade of scholarly objectivity, the Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) presented a Euro-American fantasy as fact and participated in the continued colonization of American Indians, African Americans, and other marginalized communities. The current study challenges the historic and contemporary interpretation at the site through the use of Black Feminist Thought and African Diaspora Archaeology. This dissertation details the ways in which the artifacts retrieved from earlier archaeological projects might be reinterpreted to challenge current and past interpretation at the site.
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    Examining the association between tobacco use and binge drinking and the effects of tobacco interventions on binge drinking behaviors
    (2012-03) Stahre, Mandy Adele
    Background: Binge drinking is a significant public health problem. Although effective alcohol control policies exist, many have eroded over time or face strong political opposition to their implementation. Other mechanisms to reduce binge drinking need to be found. Tobacco and alcohol use share similar biological, personal, and environmental characteristics and research has shown that among alcohol dependent population reducing smoking can lead to decreases in alcohol use. Objectives: The purpose of this dissertation was to assess: (1) the extent that binge drinking and smoking are associated in a non-alcohol dependent population, (2) how this observed association may be modified by individual- and environmental-level factors, and (3) the effect of tobacco interventions on binge drinking. Methods: The first study examined the association between binge drinking and smoking behaviors using a representative sample of active duty military personnel. Additionally, multivariate logistic regression tested whether frequency of deployment and the perception of an alcohol promoting environment moderated the association between binge drinking and smoking. The second study assessed the effect of an individual-level tobacco intervention (health education versus motivational interviewing counseling) on binge drinking and average daily alcohol use in a group of African American light smokers over a six-month period. Generalized linear models assessed the mediation effect of smoking cessation on the relationship between counseling intervention and drinking. The third study used pooled-time-series analyses to assess the effects of two state-level tobacco control policies (tobacco taxes and smoking bans in bars) on state-level binge drinking behaviors from 1998 to 2010. Results: In the first study, binge drinking was found to be significantly higher among current smokers than former and nonsmokers. The frequency of deployment (but not the perception of an alcohol-promoting environment) moderated this relationship although effects varied by branch of service. In the second study, individuals randomly assigned to receive health education counseling decreased their binge drinking at week 8 of the study, but these results diminished within six months. Smoking cessation did not appear to mediate the relationship between counseling type and binge drinking; however, individuals who quit smoking (regardless of counseling type) also decreased their binge drinking at week 8 of the study; these results were not significant at the end of the study. For the third study, neither tobacco taxes nor smoking bans in bars was associated with a decrease in binge drinking outcomes at the state level. Conclusions: Smoking and binge drinking are strongly associated in non-alcohol dependent populations and some evidence suggests that decreasing smoking leads to initial reductions in binge drinking; however, the evidence presented is not strong enough to advocate for a reliance on smoking interventions as a way to reduce and prevent binge drinking. Alcohol advocates need to continue to support and educate lawmakers about the effectiveness of alcohol control policies in order to reduce binge drinking.
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    The impact of computer decision support on military team decision making.
    (2010-08) Larson, Adam Donavon
    This dissertation work highlights extremely valuable results regarding significant costs and benefits of using a computer decision aid by analyzing the impact of such a decision support tool on military team decision making. Decision support systems (DSS) are becoming increasingly popular as an approach to aid decision makers in making better decisions in a more efficient and effective manner. However, DSSs have both costs and benefits in their utilization, and there is no guarantee that a DSS will actually improve decision making or problem solving performance. This work shows that although a DSS has many advantages and can facilitate user problem solving, brittle DSS behavior can significantly degrade user decision making. The primary goals of this work are to improve scientific understanding of situations in which DSSs may improve decision making performance and those where the use of a DSS may actually degrade performance. Specifically, the heart of this work focuses on understanding and measuring the performance benefits and costs of a solution generating DSS on individuals versus teams, and on situations in which the DSS produces "brittle," or questionable solutions. Understanding the impact of brittle behavior is especially important given the domains in which DSSs are often utilized, including military, medical, and business operations. The results of decisions in these areas greatly impact dollars and most importantly, human lives, that may be saved or lost. The decisions teams make in military situations play a vital role in determining the success or failure of operations. Decision support in this study was provided by a component of a DSS tool called Weasel. A previous study in 2004 analyzed Weasel with respect to individual decision makers' performance and behavior [9]. This study analyzed team behavior and performance in a military context with military personnel working together in three person teams. The primary questions addressed by this work are: What is Weasel's overall impact on team versus individual performance and what is the effect on user performance when Weasel exhibits brittle behavior? Brittle behavior refers to the automated decision tool offering questionable, low quality courses of action for a given situation. As all DSSs will at sometime or another exhibit some degree of brittle behavior, the impact of such behavior on user decision making is vitally important. The results showed brittle behavior does indeed negatively impact user decision making behavior, and that individuals and teams demonstrated the same levels of performance with the use of the automated decision tool. The results of this experiment will help researchers and military personnel to better understand when it is appropriate to use decision support and to better understand both the benefits and the costs in team decision making by assessing when the DSS tool facilitated improved decision making and when performance was hindered by the tool. Additionally, information may be gained regarding situations where computer support and automation use may degrade performance.
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    The NROTC Experience and College Student Persistence
    (2016-08) Altman, Charles
    Abstract This paper explores three scholarly perspectives of college student persistence and discusses the relevance of these perspectives in analysis of the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) experience on campus. The three perspectives vary in significance, but each has applicability informing on the issue of NROTC student persistence. Tinto (1973) provided theories and models that examine the college student experience in relation to persistence; whereas, others inform on pre-college attributes and student aid as they relate to persistence. There is much existing scholarly research on the topic of persistence with respect to traditional college students, but very little that applies these theories and perspectives to NROTC students. This paper presents analysis of each of these three perspectives as they inform on NROTC student persistence, and provides NROTC stakeholders a means of assessing influences on NROTC student persistence decisions within the college environment.
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    The Paradoxical Twenty-Fifth: Performance, Race, and Conditional Belonging on the American Imperial Frontier, 1882-1918
    (2024) Dollison, Natalie
    The Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regimental Band was part of only four segregated Black Army regiments assembled from the Union’s Black volunteer units in the aftermath of the Civil War. Through nearly eight decades of public entertainment, the Band’s performances were both carefully circumscribed as well as spontaneous, choreographed but with room for improvisation. The Band not only acted as military public relations. It was instrumental in the production of a historical consciousness that bound the expanding settler citizenry of new U.S. territories to the idea of nationhood and to the places to which these settlers felt newly entitled. Through extensive archival and ethnographic research, I examine performance as both discourse and ritual mediated by the standards of the Department of War, making the Band’s performances a valuable tool of the ideological state apparatus. The Band’s performances were in support of the ideology of the United States but were also a site of struggle over its terms. That struggle took place in the medium of performance. This dissertation analyzes these performances and how the Band adapted to the changing boundaries of American geography and cultural memory through a variety of frameworks focusing on the visual, aural, and kinesthetic qualities of each type of performance. The musicians’ performative dynamic with a given audience was necessarily reconfigured each time the regiment was assigned to a new location. With each move, the Band contended with novel intersections of the U.S. settler and imperial project and the myriad social relations—interethnic, interracial, and international—that undergirded them.
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    The Role of Engagement in a Parenting Intervention for Military Families
    (2018-05) Chesmore, Ashley
    Children of recently deployed parents tend to have higher rates of psychosocial difficulties than children of non-deployed parents. Fortunately, evidence-based parenting programs have shown positive child outcomes through improved parenting. The effectiveness of preventive interventions on parenting, however, may vary by military parents’ program engagement. Study 1 examined whether baseline levels of parenting, child adjustment, and other family demographics were associated with mother (n = 190) and father (n = 180) program engagement among parents who participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a parenting intervention designed for military families known as After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT). Important predictors of different forms of mother and father engagement are discussed. Study 2 used complier average causal effects (CACE) analysis to test whether mother (n = 314) and father (n = 294) program engagement (defined as attending 4 or more parenting sessions) was associated with changes in mother and father parental locus of control and observed parenting practices at 12-month follow-up. Findings indicated that mothers and fathers who engaged in the parenting intervention improved in parental locus of control at 12-month follow-up. Mothers, but not fathers, who engaged in the parenting intervention significantly improved in observed parenting at 12-month follow-up. Post-hoc analyses revealed that fathers needed to attend at least 11 session to evince significant improvements in observed parenting practices. Results from these studies will help identify under what conditions military parents benefit from a parenting intervention and may lead to more effectively tailored programs for military families.
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    Sheridan Veterans Memorial
    (2008) Larson, Andrew
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    Understanding U.S. civil-military cooperation in the U.S. provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) in Afghanistan
    (2012-09) Fritsch, Jocelyn
    The purpose of this study was to determine how the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) organizational structure promotes cooperation within U.S. PRTs in Regional Command East (RC/E) in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2010. A case study approach, incorporating qualitative methods, was used. Twenty candidates were selected using purposeful sampling. These candidates participated in semi-structured, individual interviews. Interviewees included civilians and military personnel working with the PRTs in Afghanistan. Definitions of cooperation, cooperative behaviors, and non-cooperative behaviors were generated. These findings, in combination with social network analysis, were utilized to further identify and explain specific conditions and relationships required for effective civil-military cooperation in the PRTs. Using social networking sociographs, organizational structures that best promoted or not promoted civilian-military cooperation were mapped and compared. The study's results may serve as a useful guide for U.S. civilian and military leaders when considering the establishment of PRTs in other post-conflict countries.