The last few years a struggle of feeling safe has become more of an issue with all the tragedies that have taken place on college campuses throughout the years. Tragedies like Columbine then Virginia Tech and most recently the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Connecticut. This research focuses on student's perception of safety and the issues with violence on campus. The question is how the students, faculty, and staff will react if an incident like this occurs on the University of Central Florida campus. The intent of this thesis was to explore the student body of UCF students and their perception of safety on campus. Students were questioned on previous victimization and campus related crime. Findings suggest that women overall are more fearful on campus compared to men. Sadly, only about 5.6 percent of my sample knew about the Clery Act. This act states all public schools must post all crimes committed on or near campus on a public website. This was questioned with a simple yes or no answer. By conducting this study I hope to find a better understanding on how UCF student's view safety on campus.

In 2004, August Wilson completed Gem of the Ocean, the first play in his Pittsburgh Cycle. Seven years later, the University of Central Florida’s production of Gem of the Ocean went against what most consider traditional staging. With a Russian born director and a mostly white production team, playing to a predominately white audience, what are the challenges of accurately transforming the text to the stage, while still providing a truthful telling of a story? The following is a case study based on the idea of “active dramaturgy” or, more specifically, cultivating an atmosphere within the production that relies on critical thinking and original analytical thought to create an environment where creativity drives the work of the production. This approach is discussed by dramaturg Lenora Inez Brown in her book The Art of Active Dramaturgy. As the first play within the Pittsburgh Cycle, Gem of the Ocean represents the life of African Americans during the first decade of the twentieth century; nine more plays, respectively, represent each of the following decades. Wilson’s work closely followed the prescription adapted by African American W.E.B. Du Bois who called for theatre “by us, for us, near us, and about us” (Herrington 132). The fact that I am a white American troubles the state of the accepted norms for a Wilson theatre production. My ability to perform as a dramaturg is based on my capacity to inform and educate through whatever means necessary, not the color of my skin. Brown posits that an active dramaturg is one that “seeks ways to articulate heady ideas into active language--that is, language that a performer can easily use to shape an acting choice or a designer, a design choice” iii (xii). None of this is based on skin color, race, or religion; therefore, it was my objective as the dramaturg to stress the importance of the shared story within the play that could relate to anyone of any background. Throughout the course of this production, my major challenge as a dramaturg was to maintain the accuracy of African American representation, while working with the nontraditional, multiracial production team, on the race specific work of August Wilson. In this thesis, I explore the application of active dramaturgy on the production process

The Decorruption is a feature-length fiction film directed by María García, made as part of the requirements for earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. The film is a political satire, which tells the story of a country plagued by corruption, where a rebellious government employee discovers that death is the only solution to the problem, so she sets out on a killing spree against the corrupt. The film was produced on a microbudget (under $50,000) level, following the program’s guidelines. It was shot in Ecuador with non-professional actors and a minimalistic production style. This thesis is a record of the film’s progression from development to picture lock, in preparation for distribution.

This thesis will document four phases of my rehearsal process/performance while portraying the role of Helen in Sophie Treadwell's Machinal. The first phase of the project will be researching and analyzing historical material on: Sophie Treadwell (the playwright) Ruth Snyder (the murderess upon whom the character of Helen is based), and the actual murder that occurred in the 1920's. The second phase that will be documented is a character analysis. I will take each episode and divide it into the following sections: given circumstances, what is said about the character by the playwright, by others, or by herself, objectives, tactics, vocal traits, and physical traits. The third phase will include a written journal of my experiences as an actor as they occurred during the rehearsals and performances. The fourth and final phase will include a self-analysis of the performance. I will reflect on my abilities in synthesizing the research and character analysis found in phase one and two into the actual performance. In addition, Committee Chair, Mark Brotherton, and my thesis Committee Members, Kate Ingram and Vanduyn Wood will also give written responses. The performances will be held February 14-17, and 21-24, 2007 in the University of Central Florida's Black Box Theatre. Dr. Julia Listengarten will direct the performance.

A person's level of fear of crime or even their perceived fear of crime can affect how they view the Stand Your Ground Law and whether it is seen as beneficial or harmful to the general public. I begin with a discussion of the Stand Your Ground Law. Next, I report on research that examines the fear of crime and how it may shape opinions on the law as well as an individual’s level of fear. My research explores the relationship of these variables using survey data. I examine the attitudes of college students regarding their fear of crime to explore variables that impact their levels of fear and their opinions regarding the Stand Your Ground Law.

This research will assess religious prejudice among several religious groups (Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Non-Believers) toward one another in addition to assessing underlying attitudes such as openness to contact with diverse others, self- acceptance, empathy, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. It is hypothesized that attitudes such as openness to contact, self-acceptance, and empathy will correlate and have a lower correlation with religious prejudice; while right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation will correlate and have a higher correlation with religious prejudice. In addition, prejudice among all groups is to be expected. The aim of this descriptive study is to reveal a general prejudice level of religious groups, prejudicial attitudes of one's group toward an out-group, and the extent to which a group feels they have experienced prejudice.

Within the last few decades, the prevalence of cigarette smoking has decreased because of the vast amount of research which indicates that smoking leads to health problems many of which are potentially fatal. Also, smoking harms not only those whom choose to smoke but non-smokers in the area are affected by even low levels of cigarette smoke. Thus, cigarette smoking has become a public health concern. Around the globe, countries are passing smoke-free laws in public areas such as businesses, restaurants, and bars. In the United States, many universities have enacted smoke-free campus policies to ensure the health of all their students in all places on campus. The purpose of this research is to identify the support or opposition for a smoke-free campus policy at the University of Central Florida by UCF students. A survey was distributed to undergraduate students at UCF which asks whether they would support such a policy along with characterizing questions about their smoking habits, lifestyle, history, and opinion. The analysis of the data shows that the majority of UCF student would support a smoke-free campus policy.

The most important aspect of an encounter between a patient and his or her provider is the patient's ability to understand and implement the treatment plan and self-care instructions conferred by the provider. However, the literature in the field of patient-provider communication reveals that there is a noticeable gap in health literacy in certain patient populations that impairs their ability to understand pre-, during, and post-encounter paperwork, terminology, treatment plan, and critical self-care instructions. This has been shown to have detrimental consequences on patient health outcomes. The teach-back method, in which providers request patients to repeat key information discussed during the encounter in their own words, has been shown to successfully improve patient satisfaction, self-efficacy, and knowledge post-encounter. This paper seeks to investigate the impact of health literacy and teach-back on patient satisfaction, self-efficacy, and knowledge, and to determine the effect of a teach-back training intervention on the usage of teach-back during a patient-provider encounter. A total of 88 patients and 11 providers participated in this study over the course of two semesters. A pre- and post-encounter questionnaire was provided to patients and a post-encounter questionnaire to providers. Data regarding teach-back instances during the encounter were obtained via transcripts of encounter audio recordings. Training was given to 17 providers between semesters, 11 of whom were participating in a larger study data collection, and pre- and post-training teach-back instances were compared. The data were coded and statistically analyzed. The results were that there was a statistically significant relationship between health literacy and patient satisfaction as well as patient self-efficacy. Additionally, there was a significant relationship between teach-back and patient self-efficacy with an upward trend observed on the knowledge measures post-teach-back. Teach-back interventional training was also seen to have a statistically significant impact on provider use of teach-back during the patient encounter. Additional research in this field observing fidelity of teach-back practice and observing impacts of teach-back on a separate non-student population could be beneficial in improving patient encounters.

Practitioners have proposed that Digital Natives prefer graphics while Digital Immigrants prefer text. While Instructional Design has been extensively studied and researched, the impact of the graphical emphasis in instructional designs as it relates to digital propensity has not been widely explored. Specifically, this study examined the performance of students when presented with text-only and graphic-only instructional formats. The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between Digital Propensity Index scores of individuals and their performance when interpreting online instruction. A sample of students from the population of a large metropolitan university received the Digital Propensity Index questionnaire, which is a measure of an individual's time spent interacting with digital media. Each student was randomly assigned varying formats of a computer-based instructional unit via a public survey. The instructional unit consisted of the DPI questionnaire and six tasks related to the Central Florida commuter rail system. Participants were asked to answer the DPI questionnaire on a website by clicking on a link in an emailed invitation. Following the DPI questionnaire, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Group One saw three instructional tasks shown in text and shuffled in random order. Each task was displayed on its own webpage. By submitting an answer to the task, the group progressed through the website to the next task. Group Two saw graphic tasks first, again, shuffled in random order. After the first three tasks, the groups swapped instructional formats to view the opposing group's initial questions. Participants were timed on how many seconds they spent reviewing each task. Each task had an assessment question to evaluate the learning outcomes of the instructional unit. Finally, the DPI score of the participant was matched with the time spent viewing each presentation format. The findings indicate that DPI score had a statistically significant prediction of time spent navigating each type of instruction. Though the link between DPI score and time spent navigating instruction was statistically significant, the actual measurable time difference between navigating text and graphic formats was only a fraction of a second for each increment in DPI score. Limitations and potential future research related to the study are discussed as well.

Music and Theatre have always captivated me. As a child, my parents would take me to live performances and cinematic shows and I would sit rapt, watching the theatrical events and emotional moments unfold before my eyes. Movie musicals and live shows that combined music and theatre were my favorite, especially theatrical banter and improvisation or sketch comedy. Some of my favorite youthful memories were my annual family summer trips to Las Vegas to visit my grandparents for six weeks. As a youngster, I got to experience the "old school" Las Vegas, replete with extravaganza, spectacle, cabaret, circus, lounge and nightclub acts, stand-up comedy, intimate revues, and all things marketed under the guise of entertainment, art, or both. Those summers, while not overtly planned as academic or educational in nature, proved, in retrospect, to be the training ground for what was to become my passion: the art of the cabaret genre. As a person who has always loved theatrical diversity, I am drawn to cabaret as an art form. Anything that fuses other forms interests me, and cabaret amalgamates many of the artistic forms I have grown to love. I come from a unique background of classical, jazz, musical theatre and pop styles, and have studied these styles in both the piano and vocal arena. The cabaret genre allows me to realize fully the stylistic variety of performance techniques with which I excel. My mother is a classical singer and my father a jazz pianist; during my youth they would perform at the piano, "meeting in the middle" so to speak in the world of Musical Theatre, through the fusion of cabaret, classical, jazz, and pop. Growing up hearing a song like "Summertime," from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, equally artistically rendered as both a classical aria and a jazz tune in my home was rich fodder for the vital informal education I received by being the offspring of musicians. It is due to this musical legacy that was passed on to me through my parents that I learned to explore the myriad of possibilities one can achieve through artistic musical and theatrical interpretation. Beyond the freedom of stylistic variety, cabaret performance also allows conventions such as direct interaction in the form of the proverbial "lowered fourth wall," allowing me to use my improvisational acting and interactive skill set as well as my musical skills. Cabaret is generally more intimate and personal in nature and I enjoy the camaraderie cabaret affords. Cabaret is interactive and intellectual and I am drawn to those aspects; I like the fusion of interactive banter and intellectual artistry. Also appealing to me is the "insider" sense cabaret not only allows but also encourages. Recalling my youthful memories of the Vegas shows in which the performer spoke directly to audience members, I remember the sense of belonging I felt at the recognition of some of the inside jokes. I knew I wanted to be involved with any aspect of music and theatre that would allow me the freedom to go with the moment, to reach people differently on any given day, to change with the times, and adapt to my audience and to the shifting world around me. I knew I had found a home in this intimate, insular, interactive, and intellectual art form known as cabaret. For these reasons and more I have chosen the genre of cabaret to be my intended thesis research project. I will produce, direct, and perform in a cabaret show, which will be the thesis performance. For the performance aspect of my thesis, in collaboration with my thesis partner, Josephine Leffner, I will perform a one-act chronological, historical, and stylistically varied cabaret show. The show will include material garnered from historical research of the cabaret genre, specifically settling on some of the famous women, songs, stories, lives, and important contributions. The cabaret will cover information, music, and spoken-word art from cabaret's inception in the Paris Montmartre district in 1881 to its height in Germany during the Weimar Republic. The show will culminate with cabaret's insurgence into American culture up to and including the state of American cabaret today. While my performance will focus mainly on American cabaret, a portion of the show will explore cabaret's European roots. Creating and performing this show will educate me further on the genre itself, as well as expand my performing skills through the varied styles in which I will perform within the realm of a single evening's entertainment. Creating and performing the show will also challenge me as a producer, director, promotional and administrative coordinator, music director, arranger, vocal director, collaborator, vocalist, pianist, actor, and writer. The show is intended as a kind of "Cabaret 101," in that the intended audience is treated to a night of variety entertainment with some historical background on the genre of cabaret. The audience is not expected to have any prior academic or experiential knowledge of cabaret in order to understand or enjoy the show. The cabaret intellectual will also be able to enjoy the show, as the songs, poems, skits, and sketches are intended to amuse and delight both the novice and the experienced cabaretist. For the research and analysis portion of my thesis monograph document I will provide information on cabaret's roots in France and Germany, as well as include informative research on American cabaret, its history and its current trends. I will have several chapters dedicated to the historical research and to other items such as the formatted libretto, documentation of a performance report from my thesis committee head, and a list of references used throughout the research and libretto chapters. I will include a structural and role analysis of the show itself and my contributions to it as outlined by the parameters of my graduate studies program. Several chapters of appendices will be included as information pertinent to the show such as costume, props, lighting lists as well as band and technical needs for the show itself. An introduction and conclusion will be created to bookend my document solidly and reveal myself as a person as well as a performer. This section will include reflective information on my intentions, triumphs, and tribulations, and will be codified through the opening and concluding perspectives. Through the process of writing the thesis monograph document I will create a public and personal record of the process, research, performance challenges, and decisions made throughout this journey. This document will be used as historical help to me should I need to refer to my thesis for later personal or professional use. The document will also be on record for the UCF theatre department, as I apply not only my performance training (as exhibited through the show itself) but also the research and critical thinking skills required of a masters degree candidate at a conservatory training program such as this one. Beyond its use for myself or for the department, I write this monograph document for others whose love and interest in studying the genre of cabaret match my own.