Phase II archaeological testing of the Wesley Chapel Gulf area was conducted in June and July 2004 by six Ball State Anthropology students, including the author, for the Hoosier National Forest. This fieldwork was aimed at assessing the significance of two sites, 120r382 and 120r384, located by the previous surveys. These two sites were considered potentially eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places because of the data they may provide.The purpose of the research is to determine how this unique natural feature was utilized by prehistoric cultures and to assess its role within the regional archaeological context. The research builds upon data recovered during the previous archaeological surveys of the land immediately surrounding the gulf and tests the conclusions of those investigations with recent data from two archaeological sites, 120r382 and 12Or384. Analysis of the cultural material recovered during the 2004 fieldwork illuminates the prehistory of the Wesley Chapel Gulf area and enhances the interpretation of its role in prehistoric settlement patterns within the Hoosier National Forest region. / Department of Anthropology

Foreclosures have increased in the US since the 1970’s. The increase in foreclosures has caused concern among some researchers on their affect on crime. Social disorganization theory measures the effect various structural characteristics, such as poverty, residential instability/mobility, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, and family disruption have on crime. This study, though, is concerned with residential instability/mobility, or the presence of foreclosed houses in neighborhoods. Although most studies using this theory look at low-income neighborhoods, the following research looks at middle- and upper-income neighborhoods, which have been greatly affected by foreclosures. The theory also argues that the level of collective efficacy can reduce crime even in neighborhoods that are otherwise considered to be socially disorganized. Using ArcGIS mapping, the following research investigated 30 neighborhoods in Orange County, Florida that have high foreclosures in neighborhoods for the years of 2005-2009. Canvasses were conducted in all 30 neighborhoods to measure the level of collective efficacy within the neighborhoods to help explain the presence of high or low residential burglary. Thirteen neighborhoods stood out as noteworthy because they fell at the far end of the spectrum – high foreclosures and high crime, and high foreclosures and low crime. Some of the neighborhoods with high residential burglary did have strong indicators of low collective efficacy, while neighborhoods with low residential burglary had indicators of high collective efficacy. The majority of the indicators found in this research support previous research on various indicators of collective efficacy

Governments often used the promise of land as a means to implement policy. Whether the land was in the form of a large grant to a successful explorer, or in the offer of a homestead on the frontier, the motive for such grants was seldom entirely altruistic. Most grants contained stipulations for settlement and cultivation because a growing population was necessary for economic development. Rulers of Florida also offered land grants to encourage a particular religion, to protect shipping, or to establish protection against Indian attacks. When Florida became part of the United States, large sections of the territory were already claimed under various land grants made by Spain or Great Britain. Succeeding United States governments continued to grant land to individuals or companies to stimulate internal improvements or to increase population. In the hands of developers, land grants usually had the desired effect, but in the hands of speculators they tended to decrease population growth. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of land grants on population growth in Orange County, Florida.

The bankruptcy of the government of Orange County, California in 1994 is treated as a case study depicting a potentially critical problem emerging for democracies. The analysis links finan-cial and fiduciary perspectives by re-examining the actions of Orange County officials and citi-zens through three separate analytical frames: the dynamics of economic globalization; citizen engagement through the channel of civil society; and the theory of risk--both its nature generally and its financial aspect specifically. The conclusion reached is that globalization has made con-tingency and uncertainty ubiquitous and this indicates that the practice of governance in its pub-lic administration dimension should include a return to pragmatic, process approaches to policy and implementation. / Ph. D.

Food insecurity is on the rise throughout the United States. Today more than 11.6% of American household’s face food insecurity. Many of these food insecure households reside in the suburbs. Despite these rising rates of food insecurity, the issue of suburban food insecurity has largely gone unnoticed. In this paper, I use Orange County as a case study to investigate how the rise of poverty in the suburbs relates to the issue of suburban food insecurity. Some questions this paper addresses are: What are the driving forces of poverty in the suburbs? What barriers to food security do suburban residents face and how are they different from urban areas? And lastly, what are the next steps to solving suburban food insecurity?

No description available.

No description available.

Discussions of the Deep South often ignore Florida and neglect to note the complexities of race relations throughout the state's history. Central Florida particularly has been overlooked and historians have yet to establish firmly the history of mid-twentieth century race relations in the region. Since there are few existing written accounts of the civil rights movement in Central Florida, this study attempts to contribute to the scholarly discourse about race in the region by investigating the desegregation of Orange County public schools. The bulk of this study is devoted to the 1962 case Ellis v. Board of Public Instruction of Orange County, Florida and how the case eventually desegregated the county's schools. The desegregation process was a long and arduous effort, but progress continued steadily and ten years after the suit was initiated, the county's school system bore little resemblance to the rigidly operated dual system of just one decade prior. This thesis sheds light on a previously overlooked segment of Central Florida's history and demonstrates why the untold story of Orange County's school desegregation effort is an important part of America's nationwide civil rights movement.

Between 1955 and 1984, the Reverend Robert Schuller’s Garden Grove Community Church in Orange County, California, blossomed into a ten-thousand-member congregation of regional and national prominence. Straddling the line between evangelical and mainline Protestantism, the church was emblematic of conservative American Christianity in the second half of the 20th century. Likewise, Orange County was the quintessential sprawling, decentralized, postindustrial suburban region. Garden Grove Community Church and Orange County grew together at an exponential rate in the postwar era. Through participation in the devotional, social, and organizational activities of the church, Schuller’s congregation actively constructed their personal and collective identities. They made meaning out of their suburban lives in ways that had long-term political and economic implications for the county, the region, and the country. The church offered cultural, spiritual, and ideological coherence to a community of corporate, white-collar transplants with few social roots. The substance of that coherence was a theology conflating Christianity with meritocracy and entrepreneurial individualism. The message resonated with “Sun Belt” suburbanites who benefited from systemic class- and race-based metropolitan inequality. Schuller’s message of self-reliance and personal achievement dovetailed with a national conservative repudiation of the public sector and collective responsibility that originated in the suburbs. This drive to eviscerate the American New Deal political order state was nearly unstoppable by the early 1980s, and it received theological aid from institutions like Garden Grove Community Church.

Several alternate systems for use in implementing the 911 emergency system in Orange County, Florida were investigated. The proposed systems were compared with the already existing systems on the basis of reliability, response time, and cost. System reliability was the prime consideration of the study. Flow charts of each system were formulated in order to determine the functions required of equipment and humans. The reliability was then determined by examining the difficulty of the tasks that each was required to perform. Reliability models of the present and proposed systems were constructed. By examining these models and comparing the reliabilities, response times, and costs, the most advantageous system configurations were determined. Two systems, Emergency Operator Call Transfer and Emergency Operator Call Relay, were selected as the most desirable; there were no appreciable differences in their reliability, response time, and cost.