The purpose of this study is four-fold: (1) to present through an analysis of life needs the nature and source of a curriculum best adapted to democracy; (2) to present fairly some of the reasons why a curriculum must be founded on democracy if democracy survives the dangerous forces that threaten to obliterate its very existence; (3) to make an unprejudiced analysis of the regular situation now existing in Oklahoma schools at the present time to find whether her schools are meeting this challenge to democracy; and (4) to offer from the comparison of the summaries of these data recommendations whereby all schools may have a curriculum "rooted in the life of its people"--a program that contributes to democracy and permanent national defense.

The purpose of this study is to present the basic facts and principles involved in the organization and administration of the cooperative part-time training program in the public schools of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This thesis studies the style of Native American portrait photographs of William S. Soule (1836-1908), John K. Hillers (1834-1925), and William E. Irwin (1871-1935), who worked in Oklahoma from 1869 to 1904. The examination of the three men's work revealed that each artist had different motivations for creating Native American portrait photographs, and a result, used a distinct style. However, despite the individual artistic styles, each artist conformed to Native American stereotypes common during the nineteenth-century. The thesis includes a discussion of the history of the area, photographer biographies, a stylistic analysis of the photographs, and how the images fit into American Indian stereotypes.

This study elucidates the underlying relationships for the distribution of oak landcover on bedrock and soil orders in two counties in Texas and one in Oklahoma. ESRI's ArcGis and ArcMap was used to create surface maps for Denton and Coke Counties, Texas and Choctaw County, Oklahoma. Attribute tables generated in GIS were exported into a spreadsheet software program and frequency tables were created for every formation and soil order in the tri-county research area. The results were both a visual and numeric distribution of oaks in the transition area between the eastern hardwood forests and the Great Plains. Oak distributions are changing on this transition area of the South Central Plains. The sandy Woodbine and Antlers formations traditionally associated with the largest oak distribution are carrying oak coverage of approximately 31-32% in Choctaw and Denton Counties. The calcareous Blackland and Grand Prairies are traditionally associated with treeless grasslands, but are now carrying oak and other tree landcover up to 18.9%. Human intervention, including the establishment of artificial, political and social boundaries, urbanization, farming and fire control have altered the natural distribution of oaks and other landcover of this unique georegion.

A case study was conducted to document the changes in the attitudes of academic administrators at Langston University with regards to the use of various types of information sources for strategic planning. Environmental scanning of external factors was accomplished for six months by the use of a selective dissemination of information (SDI) service. Pre- and post-assessments of the perceived reliance on, satisfaction with and adequacy of personal and library-type information sources were conducted. Findings indicated the continued reliance on personal sources. No statistically significant changes were found in perceived adequacy levels in the use of library-type materials. The overall satisfaction level for the use of library-type information sources and retrieval methods showed a significant increase. Further study is recommended that will utilize additional information technology and other academic institutions.

Master of Science / Department of Geology / Matthew Brueseke / The Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen (SOA) produced more than 250,000 km[superscript]3 of Cambrian mafic to silicic magmatism, associated with the opening of the Iapetus Ocean. In the Arbuckle Mountains, oil and gas exploration showed mafic to intermediate volcanic rock interbedded with rhyolite lavas. The first description of these lavas was a result of the 1982 drilling of the Hamilton Brothers Turner Falls well. Cuttings have been collected from this well and five others, and whole rock major and trace element analysis, Sr and Nd isotope analysis, and rare earth element analysis has been completed on these samples. These samples plot primarily as tholeiitic to transitional basalts to andesites. Trace element ratios show Zr/Nb values ranging from 8-10, K/Nb values ranging from 300-600, and Ba/Nb values ranging from 10-20, which overlap with known EM1 OIB values. Applying a conservative age of 535 Ma for these rocks yields [superscript]87Sr/[superscript]86Sr[subscript]i values of 0.703970 to 0.706403 and epsilon Nd values of 1.67 to 3.22, which also fall within the accepted range of EMI values. [superscript]87Sr/[superscript]86Sr[subscript]i increases with wt. % SiO[subscript]2 and K/P, consistent with the generation of evolved compositions via open-system processes. The sample with the least radiogenic Sr isotope ratio, combined with its trace element ratios is most consistent with an EM1-type source. These results, coupled with existing isotope and trace element constraints from regionally exposed dikes and plutonic rocks that crop out in the Wichita Mts., give better insight into understanding what tectonic model (lower-mantle derived hotspot or extension of the lithosphere) drove the magmatic production of the SOA. The results are more consistent with a lower-mantle origin for SOA mafic-intermediate magmatism, and indicate the potential for flood basalt volcanism.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Geography / Bimal Kanti Paul / Farm-to-school (FTS) programs are promoted as direct-marketing opportunities for farmers. As such, they are regarded by advocates and state and federal agencies as a pathway to rural economic development. The implementation of FTS food procurement poses significant challenges, however. Farmers make decisions regarding whether or not to market products to schools after learning about the program and considering an array of signals from multiscalar policies and governance structures. Research to date has left a gap in understanding farmers’ agency as it relates to governance structures and policy signals. This research on farmers’ engagement with the Oklahoma FTS Program contributes evidence to bridge this gap by examining the experiences not only of producers who participated in a FTS program but also of those who ceased participation or who chose not to participate. Employing a phronetic approach to social science, this explanatory, sequential, mixed-methods case study obtained quantitative and textual data from a mail survey, as well as data from two stints of qualitative fieldwork, in fall 2011 and fall 2012, which involved semistructured interviews and participant observation. Archival research completed the study methods used to gain a deeper understanding of farmers’ perspectives, practices, values, and experiences that informed their decisions to participate or not in a top-down-administered FTS program. Data collection was driven by the concept of farmers’ engagement. As such, eight categories of farmers’ engagement with the Oklahoma Farm to School Program emerged. This research answers these value-rational questions (Flyvbjerg, 2001): (1) Which farmers gain, and which farmers lose, by which mechanisms of power? (2) Is this desirable? (3) What should be done? Results provide evidence of geographically uneven development of a FTS program and incompatibilities between small- to midscale farming and the structure and governance of federal child-nutrition programs.

Lynn Riggs was an early to mid-20th century Native American playwright who wrote twenty-four full length plays, his sole enduring success being Green Grow the Lilacs, the play upon which the musical Oklahoma! is based. For much of the early part of Riggs’s career, he was considered a uniquely pioneering and promising playwright, cited in competition with Eugene O’Neill as vying for the position of best playwright of their age. But while O’Neill has gone on to be considered America’s Greatest Playwright, the life and works of Lynn Riggs, save for his contribution to Rodgers and Hammerstein, have gone largely forgotten and unexamined. It is the purpose of my paper to 1) provide a biographical sketch of the man, 2) give an overview of several major themes that run through his work, and 3) provide some theory and analysis as to why the promise of this young and distinctly Native American voice was never adequately fulfilled in his lifetime. I will attempt to argue that a combination of circumstances including Riggs’s poor home life, his at times misogynistic and racist points of view, America’s inability to see Native Americans as other than caricatures and, quite simply, bad luck put much of Riggs’s writing on a fast track to failure and contemporary obscurity.

This study examines the history and culture of the Odawa people from their prehistory until the present time. This paper looks at a creation story of the Odawa to see how they perceived their own beginnings. Following this, there is an examination of the prehistory, protohistory and history of this people. The section on the history of this people is broken up into three major periods---French, British and American. In the course of this examination, it is discovered that they were originally part of the loosely structured Anishnaabeg (People), or the Ojibwa, Odawa and Potawatomi, which were made up of separate bands. They then coalesced into the Odawa, primarily under the influences of European contact. Finally, in the American period, they split into two main groupings---the Great Lakes and Oklahoma. This paper explores why the Oklahoma group ended up acculturated while the Great Lakes bands retained their culture. / Department of Anthropology

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