USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)
This collection contains Master's theses created by USF St. Petersburg campus graduate students since the University received separate accreditation within the USF System. However, please note that the official copies of theses and dissertations written by USF students who had declared St. Petersburg as their home campus prior to separate accreditation are maintained by Special and Digital Collections in the USF Tampa Library.
Recognizing the valuable contributions of our student scholars, the Poynter Library has created this portal for graduate theses. Some theses may have restricted access for a period of up to one year following graduation if the student requests such an embargo at the time the thesis is submitted to the USF St. Petersburg campus Office of Graduate Studies.
It is the intention of the USF St. Petersburg campus Digital Archive to comply with all U.S. and international copyright restrictions and to respect the intellectual property of all authors whose work is represented in the archive. If any individual or corporate entity has concerns about a specific item, please contact digcol at nelson.usf.edu
Theses/Dissertations from 2020
Evaluating Prevalence and Mortality of External Injuries on Loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and Green (Chelonia mydas) Sea Turtles in Florida, USA, Aleah Marie Ataman
Abundance and Distribution of the Non-native Apple Snail, Pomacea maculata, in a Restored Wetland of an Urban Lake, Lynsee Taylor Crichton
A Framework for Quantifying Diasporic Media Markets: Exploring the Cabo Verdean U.S. Diaspora, Luke Daniel Cross
Dendrogyra cylindrus (Pillar Coral) of the Florida Reef Tract: An Ex Situ Growth Study, and In Situ – Ex Situ Bacterial Assemblage Assessment, Aubrey E. Hetzler
Environmental Variables Influencing Cynipid Gall Distribution in Southwest Florida, Christine R. Leonard
Adult Environmental Education: Active vs. Passive Learning Pedagogy, Kelly McKenna
Determining Methane Uptake in Tropical Agroforestry Soils: A Case for Inclusion in REDD+, Callie L. Mills
Environmental education at Florida zoos, aquariums, and animal-based theme parks in a national context: A comparative analysis, Rachelle Pontes
Determination of Thermal Stratification, Mixing Pattern, Water Quality and Heat Budget of an Urban Florida Lake, Benjamin Stanley
Can Florida Softshell Turtles (Apalone ferox) Use Nest Site Choice to Offset Climate Change Effects on Developing Embryos in Nests?, Sean Sullivan
#Ad: How Influencers Disclose Advertisements on Instagram, Tamiracle A. Williams
Theses/Dissertations from 2019
Assessment of the Impacts of Land-use Change on Streamflow of the Chipola River, Maryam Arif
Seasonal Water Quality Trends in Bayboro Harbor, a Humid Subtropical Urban Estuary in Tampa Bay, Florida, Stephanie Asher-Leonard
Effects of In Situ Incubation Temperatures on Hatchling Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta caretta) Morphology, Health Indices, and Locomotor Performance, Kelsey Alexandra Fleming
A Survey and Comparison of Plant Communities in Crescent Lake Park, an Urban Lake in St. Petersburg, Florida, Hunter Hajaistron
Becoming Lincoln: His Changing Legacy from Savior of the Union to the Great Emancipator, 1865 - 1965, Nicki Hannum
How We Experience Eating Disorders: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, Elise Hummel
Connections Between Female Sexuality and Hell: Misogyny in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Jordan Kohn-Foley
Culpability and Social Commentary in Titus Andronicus and King Lear, Jay S. Looney
A Comparative Behavioral Analysis of Time Budgets of Sea Turtles at The Florida Aquarium through the Application of an Ethogram, Kate Rae Lowry
Effects of DEM Resolution and Fractal Complexity on Slope Characterization and Subsequent Stream Delineation and Flow: A Comprehensive Analysis, Leo Harry Meirose III
Comparing the Fertility of Florida’s Eastern Mosquitofish, Gambusia holbrooki, Based on Differences in Female Traits, Water Quality, and Habitat Type, Jordan David Miller
PAH Exposure in Red Snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) Collected at Natural and Artificial Reef Systems in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico, Tiffany Jane Nicholson
State Emotion Regulation as a Mediator of the Relationship between State Attachment Security and State Mindfulness, Jamie Onufrak
Phillis Wheatley and Carolina Maria de Jesus: Unexpected Voices of Revolutionary Times, Tami L. Toms
Marriage and Community in New Spain, 1550-1580: The Bigamy Cases of Gabriel Carrasco, Francisco González, and Luisa de Abrego, Hannah Tweet
Theses/Dissertations from 2018
Free Speech and Defamation in Kuwait and U.S. Law: Historical Dimension of Jurisdictions and Law in a Social Context, Ahmad Shehab Alshehab
Soil Accumulation, Accretion, and Organic Carbon Burial Rates in Mangrove Soils of the Lower Florida Keys: A Temporal and Spatial Analysis, Amanda R. Chappel
Organic Carbon Burial in a Freshwater Marsh to Mangrove Transitional Area in Everglades National Park, Kailey R. Comparetto
Mangrove Encroachment into Ecologically Restored Salt Marshes: Quantifying Vegetative and Soil Carbon in Tampa Bay, Florida, Emma E. Dontis
Do Spoilers Change a Person's Enjoyment of a Television Show?, Olivia M. Leal
MoS2 Doped TiO2 Nanomaterial and the Enhancement of Photocatalytic Properties for Solar Disinfection, Timothy McColgan
Spatial and Temporal Levels of Microplastics in Tampa Bay Surface Waters, Laurinda Kinsley McEachern
Elusive or Illusive Truth? The Role of Sensors and Sampling Strategies in Data Collection and its Implication for Scientific Knowledge and the Pursuit of Truth, Christopher R. McHan
Factors Affecting HIV Testing Among Youth in Kenya, Allison Nall
The Effects of Binaural Beats on Emotion and Cognition, Olivera Petrovich
Theses/Dissertations from 2017
Historical Black Press Newspapers and Technology Adoption: The Weekly Challenger, Daytona Times, and Florida Courier, Indhira Suero Acosta
Who Should Manage Red Snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) in the Gulf of Mexico?A Study of the Social Dynamics of the Red Snapper Fishery, Sydney A. Alhale
Between Two Empires: Life in Mid-Eighteenth Century St. Augustine on the Eve of Evacuation, T.E. Bryant
The role that the quantity of sampling wells has on the groundwater quality analysis at the Savannah River Site (SRS), Jerry J. Cantrell
Informant Discrepancies in Transactive Memory System scoring, Lovia Feliscar
Integration of Terrestrial Source, Landuse, and Watershed Hydrogeology in Coastal MPA Management, Kyle Flanagan
The Polarization and Civility of Hong Kong Political Discourse on Facebook News Pages, Leung Kiu Fok
Historical sediment record and levels of PCBs in sedimentsand mangroves of Jobos Bay, Puerto Rico, Lindsey Hanson
Florida Entanglements: The 1791 William Augustus Bowles Rebellion, Clinton Hough
Representations of Transgender Murder Victims in Digital U.S. News Media: A framing analysis, Karlynd June
Local and Diverse Economies as a Driver of Sustainability: A Perspective from US Cities, Alita M. Kane
Sadomasochistic Fantasy in Dickens’s Great Expectations, Daniel G. Lauby
Task-Dependent Fluency and Devaluation of Gender-Ambiguous Faces: The Effects of Categorization Disfluency on Hireability, Ilona Nemeth
Neural Activation in Bilinguals and Monolinguals during a Word-Recognition Task, Rebecca Porzig
Theses/Dissertations from 2016
Slacker Joyce: James Joyce, Richard Linklater, and the Silent Re-Canonization of the Masterpiece, Layne M. Farmen
Forest Community Integration and Collective Agency in Korup National Park,Cameroon: Interactions with Forest Policies and the REDD+ Mechanism, Adam E. Flanery
Elusive Truths: Baltasar del Castillo, Royal Subsidies, and the 1576 Residencia of Florida, Katherine Godfry
Analyzing Factors that Influence Success and Failure of Conservation Practice: A Multi-Scale Study, Jessica Gruber
The Effect of Value Learning on Attentional ResourcesDuring Top-Down Processing: An ERP Study, Carlene Ann Horner
Theses/Dissertations from 2015
Enhanced Photocatalytic Inactivation of E. coli in Water Using Nanocomposite Graphene-Titanium dioxide, Hazel Decina Anderson
Valuing Illusion: A Comparative Analysis of Jean Baudrillard and Eihei Dogen, Nicholas Boynton
Emerging Adulthood : Internal Markers of Adulthood and Alcohol Use, Kristen L. Hannum
Some Moral Judgments May Be Immune to Hindsight Bias, Marielle G. Machacek
Examining the Effects of LACE Training on Cognitive Function in Older Adults : An ERP Study, Brandon D. Peacock
Marriage in San Agustín de la Florida, 1784-1803 : Practical Application of the Real Pragmática de Casamientos, Karen Packard Rhodes
Stabilizing de facto Conflicts in the Post-Soviet Space : The Role of the European Union in Conflict Resolution in Moldova, Marissa Wyant
Theses/Dissertations from 2014
“…A Bolshevik, a Negro and a Gun”, Nadine Allan-Vaught
Winter-Dominated Little Ice Age Cooling in the Northern Gulf of Mexico Determined from Mg/Ca in Planktonic Foraminifera, Rita Marie Crouch
The Victorian Man: Re-defining and Re-negotiating Masculinity in Brontë and Gaskell, Sylvia Crowhurst
An Analysis of Wetland Mitigation Success in Hillsborough County, Florida 2000-2007, Leigh Ann Elgin
Assessing the Impact of Untreated Sewage on the Coral Reef System off the Coast of Caye Caulker, Belize: Applying the Foram Index, Kristen Lynn Emrich
The Use of Artificial Neural Networks to Describe and Predict the Presence of Harmful Algae in the Indian River Lagoon, Florida, Erin L. Faltin
Scientific Novels and ‘Lady Novelists’: Nature and Nurture In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, Ashlie Flanigan
"I Do Not Know How to Fulfill Those Demands": Rethinking Jesuit Missionary Efforts in La Florida, 1566-1572, Saber Gray
Sterilization and the Mass Media: Representations of Women in the California State Prison System (2006-2010), Ashley Barbara Jasper
We Women: From the Age of Aquarius to the Coming of Age: An Intimate Look at the Challenges of Aging in America through the Eyes of Pinellas County Women, Christine S. Melecci
The Endless Pier: A Study of Iconic Architecture via the St. Petersburg Pier, Kyle W. Pierson
Theses/Dissertations from 2013
The Impact of War and Service on Veterans Attending College, Ashley Abene
Consuming Places: A Bioregional Comparison of Voluntary Simplicity Lifestyles, Lauren Drakopulos
Constitutional Collision Course: Governor Rick Scott and the Refusal of High Speed Rail Stimulus Funds, Francis Henry Kurtz
A Comparison of Avian Abundance and Species Richness in Palustrine Emergent Wetlands in Southwest Florida, Matthew P. Miller
The Big Watermelon: A Cultural History of Florida's Brooksville Ridge, Douglas E. Ponticos
Assessing Atmospheric Levels of PCBs and PBDEs in Tampa Bay and Studies on Remediation of these compounds, Lukasz Talalaj
Theses/Dissertations from 2012
A Textual Analysis of Media Frames: The Coverage of the Shooting of Trayvon Martin, Andrea K. Andrus
“What do you think of Bleak House?”: Dickens’s Serial Novels and Victorian Literary Fandom, Susan Jane Ballinger
Bat Species and Distribution in a Gulf Coast System at Fort DeSoto Park, Florida, Jennifer Beltran
Framing Terrorism: How the Tampa Tribune and Tampa Bay Times Portrayed Sami Al‐Arian in 2001, Wendy Biddlecombe
Organic Carbon Burial Rates in Mangrove Soils: Global Context and A preliminary Investigation of the Coastal Everglades, Joshua L. Breithaupt
George Snow Hill: A WPA Artist and His Contributions to Florida and Tampa Bay, Diane M. Craig
A Multi-scale Approach for Characterizing Habitat Selection of Tidal Creek Fish in Charlotte Harbor, Florida, Renee M. Duffey
The Good, the Bad, and the Garbage : The Making of Modern Florida Solid Waste Policy, Andrew David Fairbanks
The Rhetoric of the American Dream: Freedom, Democracy and American Exceptionalism, Donna Knudsen
Effects of Hydrologic Changes and Precipitation on Tree Island Fire Frequency in the Everglades, Florida, Katie Laux
The Robles Family during the Civil War in Tampa, Karen E. Lucibello
Trends in Linear Extension Rates for over 100-Year Period in Three Coral Species from Dry Tortugas, Florida, Adis Muslic
Websites vs. Mobile Apps : A Content Analysis of Tampa Bay's News, Brittany Danielle Padley
Historical Analysis of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon, Pesticide, and Metal Contamination in Clam Bayou, Florida, Renee A. Price
Finding Florida : The Guide to the Southernmost State, Revised, Cathy Salustri
Rivers of Truth, Shores of Myth and the Land Between: The Dawning of Silvia Sunshine upon Florida’s Frontier, An Annotated Diary, Dara R. Vance
Theses/Dissertations from 2011
Using Bivalves to Assess Levels of Persistent Organic Pollutants in Tampa Bay, Jonelle Tamara Basso
Understanding Environmental Deficit Phenomenon: Influences Affecting Children's Connectedness to Nature, Lauren Bates
