Thesis (M.F.A.), Design--University of Central Oklahoma, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-68).

Charon's Garden Wilderness Area within the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma is a landscape that is granted federal protection through the Wilderness Act of 1964. The discourse of wilderness management is influenced by governmental policies and practice which organize knowledge surrounding the natural landscape, like with the formation and semantics of the Wilderness Act. The Wilderness Act establishes characteristics that are designed to monitor and control the landscape and serve as a baseline and criterion for further wilderness preservation. These characteristics render the wilderness space as governable. Conservation management alternatives are identified which bypass the duality of nature from western society suggested by the discourse of environmental policy. These alternatives are understood under two notions of behaviors and perceptions. The project's goal is to uncover wilderness users' recreation behaviors and perceptions of wilderness as a designated space. Through understanding and assessing user's behaviors and perception of wilderness, alternative policies and practices that offer sustainable management practices and recreation opportunities can be developed.

This study has been made for the purpose of determining what relationships exist between 4-H Club membership and Future Farmers of America Club membership and the grades, extra-curricular activities, and the future education, which includes specifically college training and post-graduate work done in high schools.

The purpose of this study was to examine the life of William Harold Fletcher (b. 1923) and his contributions to music education. The study is divided into a prologue, six chapters, and an epilogue: Early Life (1923-1941), College Studies and Military Service (1941-1948), Central Christian College: The Formative Years (1948-1960), Oklahoma Christian College: The Department of Music (1960-1980), The Department of Music (1980-2012), and Discussion and Conclusion. Fletcher, the first faculty member at Central Christian College (1950), dedicated his career to creating a strong music program for the college (now named Oklahoma Christian University). For the first thirteen years of its existence, Fletcher was the music department's sole full-time faculty member. He conducted, taught, and produced musical productions that were well received by the community. His contributions to music education include teacher, composer, conductor, and philosopher. Though not maintaining a highly politicized career, Fletcher's contribution to the field of music education remains substantial. His teaching methods and passion for music have inspired students for more than sixty years. Fletcher has received multiple honors for his teaching including the dedication of the Oklahoma Christian University music department as "The Harold and Mary Helon Fletcher Center for Music." This dissertation presents a glimpse of William Harold Fletcher the teacher, musician, composer, and free-spirited individual.

Gentrification applies not only to the largest and oldest cities; it is a multi-scalar phenomenon playing out in smaller and less prominent settings as well. This study examines temporal changes in property values, demographic characteristics, and types of businesses in the central Oklahoma City area. A major urban revitalization project which began in 1993 created strong gentrification characteristics near the renewal's epicenter, the Bricktown entertainment district. Data suggest that several specific neighborhoods in the surrounding area exhibited rising property values, improving educational attainment rates, decreasing household sizes, and a shift toward cosmopolitan retail activity. While it is evident that Bricktown has been transformed, the socio-economic traits of surrounding neighborhoods have been altered by the ripple effects of urban renewal.

The problem of this study is the identification of differences in reading interests and preferences of Indian, Black, and white adolescents of both sexes and from different high school grade levels as they are related to (a) educational background of the parents, (b) availability of reading materials, (c) community size, and (d) the extent to which these preferences are represented in the standard selection aids for secondary school reading materials. A reading interest inventory was administered in the fall term, 1972, through English classes in twenty integrated schools in Oklahoma, representing three levels of population concentration. Community resources in reading materials available through school libraries, public libraries, and bookstores were evaluated. The reading inventories of 3,581 students were chosen to be evaluated to determine if there were significant differences at the .05 level. Earlier studies have indicated that sex and age are major factors in determining what teenagers read about and that adolescents' reading interests tended to be unique, personal, and very unpredictable.- Few studies have been reported that involved ethnic origin or family levels of education.

Instrumental music classes in the public schools of Tulsa, Oklahoma, have experienced a phenomenal growth during the past twenty years. Prior to this period, opportunity for instrumental music expression was limited to the high school band and orchestra,which rehearsed outside of school hours. No instruction other than this was provided and the student who wished to play in the school band or orchestra studied first from private instructors. In this study the investigator has examined a great many devices for measuring capacities and aptitudes which are known to the profession. He has attempted to evaluate these procedures in the light of sound educational philosophy. He has set forth a plan which he believes will materially improve the instrumental program through discovering unsuspected musical capacity and through sound guidance in the selection of suitable instruments.

Master of Science / Department of Geology / Matthew E. Brueseke / The Southern Oklahoma rift zone (SOA), which stretches from southern Oklahoma through the Texas panhandle and into Colorado and New Mexico, contains extensive bimodal mafic-silicic magmatism related to the opening of the Iapetus Ocean during the late Precambrian and early Cambrian. Within the SOA, the subsurface in and adjacent to the Arbuckle Mountains in southern Oklahoma contains thick packages of mafic to intermediate lava flows interlayered with thick, extensive rhyolite lava flows and lesser silicic intrusive bodies, which were first described during a 1982 drill test (Hamilton Brothers Turner Falls well) in the region. Well cuttings of these units were collected from that well and three others (Pan-Am Williams D-2, Pan-Am Jarman, Pan-Am Newberry). This study is focused on these mafic-intermediate lava flows, which represent an important stage in the evolution of the SOA and provide insights into the formation and tectonomagmatic evolution of the rift zone. The estimated 210,000 km[superscript]3 of mafic rocks in the SOA were extruded as a result of the break-up of Pannotia and the formation of the failed arm of a three-armed radial rift system. Samples analyzed from the wells plot as basalts to andesites on the TAS diagram of Le Bas et al (1986) and as subalkaline-alkaline basalts to andesite-trachyandesites on the Zr/TiO[subscript]2 vs. Nb/Y diagram of Winchester and Floyd (1977). They are dominantly tholeiitic on multiple discrimination diagrams including those of Miyashiro (1974) and Irvine and Baragar (1971). The lava flows contain traits common with EMI OIB coupled with upper crustal contamination, such as Zr/Nb values ranging from 8 to 10, Ba/Nb values ranging from 10 to 20, and K/Nb values ranging from 300 to 600. Chemostratigraphic comparisons between each well reveal up to five lava flow packages within the larger mafic-intermediate sequence, at least in the vicinity of the sampled wells. When compared with intrusive mafic rocks outcropped in the Wichita Mountains, the SOA lava flows display geochemical traits most similar to those of the Roosevelt Gabbros, suggesting a possible co-genetic relationship. Overall, the whole rock chemical characteristics coupled with comparisons with other large igneous provinces (Columbia River and Oregon Plateaus, East African Rift System) indicate that the SOA lava flows are the result of flood basalt volcanism.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between selected cognitive domain criteria represented by college gradepoint average and ACT scores, selected affective domain criteria represented by scores on the MTAI and the EPPS, and success in student teaching as measured by a rating performed by the student teachers' college coordinators and the public school supervising teachers. After the examination of the findings, the following conclusions were drawn concerning the study: Grade-point averages of secondary teachers can be effectively used to predict success in student teaching; however, it did not prove to be an effective predictor of student teaching success in elementary student teachers. The ACT sub-tests of English Usage and Natural Sciences Reading proved to be a good predictor of success in student teaching among secondary teachers, but not among elementary teachers.

This research represents the first systematic collection of the woody plants throughout the Cross Timbers. It provides the first keys to these plants in their vegetative condition, plant descriptions, distribution maps, and some quantitative measurements used for descriptive purposes. Descriptions of the woody plants were constructed as an aid in verification after a specimen has been identified by use of the keys. The measurements given pertain only to the woody plants as they occur in the Cross Timbers. Distributional maps are provided for all the taxa considered in this research. With the exception of those species which have the ecological amplitude to grow throughout the Cross Timbers, the distribution of the majority of the remaining species seems to be most strongly influenced by average annual precipitation. In a few instances, conditions associated with latitude appear to govern the distribution of species or varieties within the Cross Timbers. Throughout the Cross Timbers, post oak (Quercus stelta), blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica), and hickory (Caraa texan) dominate the upland forests. The streamside forests are dominated by willow (alix nigra), cottonwood (Populus deltoides), and hackberry (Celtis laevi ata). The variation in the vegetation of the Cross Timbers is not due to any change in dominant species, but rather to the distribution of the associated species which occur in the two prominent community types.