Children detained in juvenile detention centers in the United States are a unique population. They are neither incarcerated, nor are they free to live in society. Although some popular literature does exist on juvenile detention, such literature is minimal. Further, there are few research studies on this population in any field of inquiry. Indeed the entire subject of juvenile detention has been largely overlooked by research scientists, as well as theologians. The focus of this empirical study is the theology and spirituality of children in a single juvenile detention center in New Jersey, US. Currently, there are no studies on this topic. This study begins to address that void and represents the first theological research of its kind on this population. The methodological approach of the thesis is multi-disciplinary. While the study addresses theology and spirituality as separate categories, it also integrates theology with research in psychology and clinical mental health. The project itself consists of 200 individual, face-to-face interviews with male juvenile residents detained in the Ocean County Juvenile Detention Center, Toms River, New Jersey, US. An original questionnaire has been developed by the author as a research tool. This empirical research adds to the academic literature on children in juvenile detention centers in the United States and recommends ways that staff may communicate with children to begin a theological dialogue. Further, this thesis offers a specific methodology and research tool to be duplicated for use in other juvenile detention centers toward working with children in a concrete, evidence-based, spiritual context. v This study also includes a chapter on the evolution of the author’s spirituality and theology in the course of the project and attempts to locate the self of the researcher within the study. Finally, this thesis presents an outline for a new hermeneutic in working with children in a juvenile detention setting. This new approach represents a practical step toward bridging an existing gap between a stated need for a new hermeneutic for working with children in theological literature and its inception. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D. Th. (Practical Theology)

New Jersey's high school teachers have many responsibilities to their students: they must educate them, work to mold their strength of character, and protect them from harming each other. The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act (ABR), legally fortified these goals by protecting students from harassment, intimidation, and bullying (HIB), at the state level. Previous research has indicated that incident rates for these negative behaviors are growing globally. This reality has driven the need for intervention and prevention programming; however, few instances of successful implementation exist. An important gap remains in the current literature, as there is still a need to understand the teachers' perceptions of their role as the frontline defenders of anti-bullying policies. The primary area of focus for this qualitative study was on the challenges and supports encountered by teachers responsible for implementing their high school's anti-bullying program. Information was gathered using a phenomenological design through semi-structured, one-on-one interviews of 12 high school educators from three unique school districts. Lived experiences were interpreted using Espelage and Swearer's social-ecological system framework and Darley and Latané's bystander theory framework. The findings from this study gave voice to those responsible for implementing the ABR. Significant findings included policies that require reactive interactions with students where proactive measures would have been preferred, a lack of top-down communication, and ineffective prevention and intervention program training materials. An impetus for implementing policy change was established, and the potential for social change was welcomed through a move toward proactive measures in the school setting.

The residents of Union City, NJ— a 1.2 square mile metropolis across the Hudson from Manhattan—are fond of taking to the task of adorning their city streets on their own. In the business sector of the city (that is to say, most of it) the business owners garnish their windows with red, white, and blue, and more often than not their decoration is accompanied by the uncomfortably warm smile of a middle-aged bespectacled Irish man. The man, so comically out of place in the majority Spanish-speaking, 82.3% Latino city, is referred to interchangeably as Mayor and State Senator Brian P. Stack. On the city’s border is official proof of his status on the “Welcome to Union City” sign, mirrored by its North Bergen, NJ counterpart and the name Nicholas Sacco: mayor, state senator, assistant superintendent of North Bergen schools, and principal of Horace Mann Elementary. For decades, New Jersey politicians have viewed multiple office holding as an integral part of the urban power structure. To rise up in the totem pole, one must collect public office jobs until rising to one high enough to stand on its own. While not particularly common in the less populated areas of the state, urban centers like the aforementioned Hudson County, Newark, and Camden have a tradition of sending their leaders off to Trenton without making them relinquish their jobs at home. And yet it was these very state legislators that passed a ban on the practice into law in February 2008. Supported by senator-turned-governor Jon Corzine, the ban passed with the support of political leaders like Stack and Sacco. On paper and in the pages of the New York Times it read like a rare and barely believable victory for political morality in what longtime NJ political journalists Bob Ingle and Sandy McClure call “The Soprano State”. If it sounded barely believable, it is probably because in practice it was not. A grandfather clause in the law keeps those currently in two positions of power safe from the wrath of the law. And since elections were held in between the passing of the law and the enacting of it, there are actually more dual office holders in the Legislature today than there were when the law was passed according to state newspaper the Star Ledger. This study intends answer several questions regarding the phenomenon of multiple office holding and its sudden “extinction” in New Jersey. I hypothesize that the introduction of such a law was merely cashing in on a long-standing bit of political credit that, due to the highly salient role of the practice in building machines, could not be touched. As the number of political bosses engaging in this practice diminished, and as the need to hold various offices lessened because of an increase in income and power from other sources, dual office holding became an obsolete relic of the 1990s political machine structures. Thus it became feasible to ban the practice with a grandfather clause for those that had established themselves through this old system, with much credit in the field of ethics to be gained by all involved—every dual office holder, legislator, and the governor himself. On a micro level, it aspires to investigate why early 2008 was an opportune time for such a law and where this grandfather clause arouse from and why. Although the tradition has existed previously in less populated areas of New Jersey, especially in the 1940s, at some point (peaking in the 1990s) dual office holding became an essential component in the structure of an urban political machine. On a macro level, this study seeks to explain the place of such a practice in the creation and maintenance of the traditional urban political machine, a structure with a lush history in New Jersey that is still alive and kicking today. It attempts to begin a dialogue with existing literature on urban politics centered around the practice of dual office holding. To do this, the study needs to paint as vivid a portrait as possible of the modern urban political machine, its bosses, and every gear that moves its structure. For this it will heavily rely on literature describing the initial development of political machines of Tammany Hall and similar structures around the country, paying especial attention to the impact of immigration, given that preliminary research is showing a pronounced impact on the system from the wave of Latino immigrants beginning with the rise of the Cuban Revolution in 1958. This new wave of immigrants appears to have jump-started the machines and replenished them with an entire new wave of fodder ready to be introduced to the patronage system post-naturalization (a matter of five years’ time). Of particular note in this body of urban political research is Steven Erie’s Rainbow’s End, which I have discovered to be the definitive work in the field of immigration and its impact on urban political machines. Working with this broad field of urban politics in mind, I also intend on illustrating in detail the specific political machine structures of the three largest urban communities in New Jersey: Newark, Camden, and the general Hudson County area (as the cities of Hudson County tend to be about 1-2 square miles in area excepting Jersey City, there is little that distinguishes one from another culturally and politically). In order to do this, I must work with data specific to the state, beginning with a database of multiple office holders over time. I have constructed this database over the course of several decades and am currently developing it in the 1930s using biographical sketches in the New Jersey Legislative Manuals published yearly in the New Jersey State Archives of Trenton. Unfortunately, this means that my research is limited to multiple office holders who have one job in the state legislature, but as all signs point to most dual office holders preferring to have a state and local job rather than two of either, I do not believe this will seriously hinder my research. Supplementary research will also come from personal stories, which I plan on gathering from interviews with those deeply involved in urban politics. The study will include interviews with multiple office holders from these regions themselves, as well as those close to them—journalists, chiefs of staff, and those receiving patronage and practicing loyalty to the leaders. The goal of this study is to shed some light on the dark, backroom world of urban politics through the lens of this one common practice among the machine leaders. This one practice, currently a topic of much controversy due to this recent law, could very well be the key to understanding the development of machines, their power over citizens and their ability to maintain themselves over such extended periods of time.

Pleistocene New Jersey shelf sedimentology is strongly influenced by glacially driven sea level changes. A combination of regressive shoreline processes, subaerial exposure, fluvial downcutting, and deposition and reworking during transgression has influenced the NJ shelf sediment composition. Sediment provenance and transport history may be determined on a shelf environment through analysis of grain size distribution, heavy mineral content, magnetic mineral concentrations, and isotopic dating methods. A combination of surface grab and stratigraphic samples were analyzed within the study area. Relatively high percentages of heavy minerals were found in the 2 phi and 3 phi size fractions and hornblende grains provided K-Ar age values indicating two groups of sediment sources. The first source is Grenville with apparent ages above 900 Ma deposited during marine OIS 1. The second source is a mixed assemblage of Grenvillian and Paleozoic sources deposited during marine OIS 3, with apparent ages of approximately 850 ± 20 Ma.

This study investigates the complex issues surrounding the preservation of historic, single-lane, metal truss bridges. Essentially functionally obsolete, these structures are targeted for replacement due to current government transportation policies, funding requirements, and safety concerns. After these issues are discussed, a series of case studies from Hunterdon County, New Jersey, will highlight multiple bridge rehabilitation projects in which designs and plans were modified to suit the unique situations and conditions of each of these structures, without compromising historic integrity and improving safety. These bridges have important cultural value, and although in some cases the original structure may be lost or wholly reconstructed, the historic character of the bridge and area is retained. This thesis illuminates the difficulties that need to be overcome in attempting to successfully preserve historic, single-lane bridges and their rural context (while maintaining transportation functionality), and illustrates the important role of community involvement in the preservation process. / Department of Architecture

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript. Sponsor: Ernest Harris. Dissertation Committee: Gladys Tipton, Margaret Lindsey. Type A project. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 206-211).

Thesis (Ph. D.). / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 375-393).

Missing pages 28, 32. Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University

This thesis explores how the advent of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 caused Native American identities to become hyper-politicized and manipulated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) Federal Acknowledgment Process (FAP). I use the Ramapough Lenape Nation of New York and New Jersey's 1990's attempt at federal recognition as an example of gaming's pervasiveness in identity debates. I demonstrate that despite the consistent understanding of the Ramapough's Lenni-Lenape ancestry through direct and indirect references since the eighteenth century, the risk of Ramapough gaming in New Jersey caused proponents of Atlantic City, New Jersey's gaming economy to secure an unjust denial of Ramapough sovereignty through interference in FAP proceedings.

abstract: Childhood obesity has been on the rise for the past decade, and it has been hypothesized that students' food choices may be influenced by easy access to food outlets near their schools that provide unhealthful options. But the results of recent studies on the relationship between the food environment around schools and student weight status are mixed and often contradictory. Most studies have used measures of weight and height that were self-reported by students, or have relied on data from a relatively small sample of students. I examine the association between weight status among school students and the food environment surrounding their schools using professionally-measured, student-level data across the full school-age spectrum. De-identified data were obtained for over 30,000 K-12 students in 79 public schools located in four New Jersey cities. Locations of alternative food-outlets (specifically, supermarkets, convenience stores, small grocery stores, and limited-service restaurants) were obtained from commercial sources and geocoded to develop proximity measures. A simplified social-ecological framework was used to conceptualize the multi-level the association between students' BMI and school proximity to food outlets and multivariate analyses were used to estimate this relationship controlling for student- and school-level factors. Over twenty percent of the students were obese, compared to the national average at 17% (Ogden, Carroll, Kit, & Flegal, 2012). On average, students had 2.6 convenience stores, 2.9 limited-service restaurants, and 0.1 supermarkets within a quarter mile of their school. This study suggests that easy access to small grocery stores (which this study uniquely examines as a separate food outlet category) that offer healthy choices including five types of fresh vegetable, five types of fresh fruits, low-fat dairy, and lean meats is associated with lower BMI z score and lower probability of being obese for middle and high school students. This suggests that improving access to such small food outlets may be a promising area for future investigation in obesity mitigation research. Also, this study separates students of pre-schools, kindergartens and elementary schools (neighborhood schools) from that of the middle and high schools (non-neighborhood) schools because the two groups of schools have different neighborhood characteristics, as well as open-school and bussing policies that result in different levels of exposure that students have to the food outlets around the schools. The result of this study suggests that the relationship between students' weight outcomes and food environment around schools is different in the two groups of schools. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Sustainability 2013