Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-168).

Thesis supervisor: Witold F. Krajewski. Includes bibliographic references (p. 187-202).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-168).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 2009. / Includes bibliographic references (leaves 141-144).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Iowa, 2004. / Supervisor: Audrey L. Qualls, Timothy N. Ansley. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-175).

This dissertation examines the activism of African-American club women in Iowa during the early twentieth century. As early as 1891, prior to the founding of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW) in 1896 and Iowa Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (IACW) in 1902, black women met in various cities throughout the state to discuss the need for education within the black community, proper etiquette for young women, current events, arts and culture, while planning community service activities. In the upper Midwest, clubs and early community activism served as a conduit for black women, providing a venue for them to hone their organizational skills, create networks, recruit members and develop programs to aid in racial uplift, increasing their authority and power as women in their communities. Through education, health, and welfare reform, club women created new forms of citizenship as they tried to make the needs of black Iowans a legitimate political concern for the state. Significantly, this occurred prior to and laid the ground work for the organization of regional branches of the Afro-American Council and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). My dissertation will show that the independent activism and organizing of black Iowa club women gave them the ability to influence other national organizations where women’s leadership was suppressed. In 1917, the United States War Department named Fort Des Moines, located on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa, as the first World War I training camp for black officers in the country. Working with 1200 black servicemen and their migrant families, local African-American women harnessed both club and organizational capabilities to perform some of the most hands on war work in the United States, creating black “Company Mother’s” groups and Red Cross auxiliaries. My research shows that African-American women in Iowa had greater access to state NAACP leadership positions than their sisters in larger urban areas throughout the country. From 1915-1920, black women injected local goals and objectives into the agendas of NAACP branches throughout the state. Exploring the impact of race, class, gender and migration on African-Americans in the Midwest, my dissertation will challenge historians to rethink how they frame their approach to black women’s activism by demonstrating the centrality of region to the history of African-American women’s leadership and race work. This dissertation is a social cultural history that draws upon the activism of individuals and organizational histories. A great challenge was piecing together the history of the eight clubs that existed 1891-1902, prior to the IACW. These clubs do not have any archived sources. I layered information found in issues of the Iowa Bystander from 1896 to 1902 with extensive research in national and state census data to better understand the lives of these women, who were also wives, mothers, and migrants. After the founding of the IACW in 1902, published primary material (annual meeting minutes, newspapers, bulletins, speeches) allowed me to recreate the conversations within African-American communities, as well as the dialogue between whites and blacks. I used the papers and national records of the IACW, NACW, and NAACP to identify club members as well as agendas, goals, outreach and fundraising efforts of various organizations, offering national and regional perspectives of the challenges faced by club women, while providing insight to conversations and concerns from the national to state level.

Insulating the exterior wall of an historic property can have the benefits of increasing thermal comfort for occupants as well as reducing energy use for heating and cooling. Concerns expressed by preservationists that insulation can lead to the degradation of the building structure or its historic fabric. Using the Park Inn Hotel, an early twentieth century commercial property designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the application, feasibility, ramifications and potential benefits of applying insulation to the exterior wall was studied. Analysis for insulation includes evaluation of the historic characteristics, construction of the exterior wall, heat loss calculations, and how moisture will be transported through the wall. It was found that the key to determining if the exterior wall of a historic building can be insulated successfully without damage to the historic characteristics of the building or to the building itself, is in understanding how the building was designed and how it deals with moisture. With a thorough understanding of these elements, one can ascertain if insulating the exterior wall of his/her historic building is appropriate. / Department of Architecture

The purpose of this study was to examine the utility of an ethnic Spanish translation of portions of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, Level 7, Form 5, with second-grade Mexican-American children to measure growth in the fundamental skills of listening, vocabulary, word analysis, reading, and mathematics.

Real life decision-making depends on a complex interplay between cognitive and emotion-based processes. Damasio (1994) developed the Somatic Marker Hypothesis (SMH) arguing that emotion-based processes guide decision-making by directing individuals towards alternatives that have been previously ‘marked’ as positive or guide them away from the negative options. The primarily used test-bed of the emotion-based learning is Iowa Gambling Task (IGT, Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994). The SMH makes three assumptions about the IGT behaviour: (a) somatic markers have a negative connotation and bias decision-making covertly in the absence of explicit knowledge, (b) there is a limited role for cognitive procesesing during IGT performance, especially during the initial stages of the task, and (c) anticipatory somatic markers guide decision-choices away from the bad options as participants are able to anticipate the good and the bad options. This thesis tested the SMH using a combination of psychophysiological methods (Eye-tracking, Pupillometry, Heart Rate and Blood Pressure measurements), behavioural measurements and psychometric measures of individual differences in combination with the IGT. The systematic review, meta-analyses and the experiments described in this Thesis explored the validity of these assumptions and found that they are not accurately manifested in behaviour during IGT performance. A novel methodology not previously employed was used to capture somatic markers through pupillary responses. Explicit learning was also assessed by the eye-tracking methodology in testing IGT performance in normal conditions and under stress. The results from the first two experiments indicated that explicit processing and knowledge about the task are more critical factors during the early stages of the game than previously suggested. Although there were some indicators of the existence of somatic markers, it was found that cognitive reflection, conscious awareness and increased cognitive processing occurred early in the game and guided behaviour on IGT. The results from the final experiment revealed that IGT performance in healthy individuals is not always optimal; stress levels impaired performance whereby a lack of, or insufficient cognitive processing early in the game may create a somatic signal that interferes with IGT performance. Furthermore, attentional processing, cognitive reflection and conscious awareness can be disrupted by stress resulting in non-optimal decision-making strategies that consequently interfere with performance on the IGT. Taken together, these results challenge the basic premises of the SMH and could be best explained within the dual-process framework (e.g., Brevers, Bechara, Cleeremans, & Noel, 2013). If somatic markers do not play a significant role in learning IGT than the task needs to be re-evaluated and caution is warranted when the IGT is used as a diagnostic tool to measure decision-making deficits in clinical populations.

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