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The current study explored the perceptions and perceived preparedness of general education teachers in educating ELL students in Ohio general education settings. Years of experience teaching, years of experience teaching ELL students, professional development, and TESOL endorsement were explored as factors of educators' self-reported preparedness. Scales from The Surveys of Enacted Curriculum: Survey Of Instructional Practices for ESL/ELD Teachers Grades K-12 (The Council of Chief State School Officers & Wisconsin Center for Education Research, 2008) were used with permission. Surveys were available via Qualtrics and sent through email to a random sample of 500 educators obtained from the 2016-2017 School Year Staff Salary Information file from the Treasurer's Transparency Project through the Office of the Ohio Treasurer's website. Due to low response rate, additional participants were added via amending the IRB in order to send the survey to an additional school district in Southwest Ohio. Participants (n=42) responded to demographic questions, a preparedness scale, and professional development questions. Responses indicated no significant impact of years of experience teaching, years of experience teaching ELL students, or professional development on self-reported preparedness. No participants reported holding TESOL Endorsement. Implications for future research are discussed.

Parkinson ’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder that affects one’s movement. As the disease develops, individuals begin to present with symptoms that include but are not limited to bradykinesia, rigidity, tremors, and hypokinetic dysarthria. These symptoms affect a person’s entire body, including his/her voice. The Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) program for treating individuals with PD is supported by over twenty-five years of research. It is considered a safe, non-invasive method to improve vocal loudness and speech clarity in individuals with PD. However, simply because LSVT is effective in its current state, it does not mean that the protocol is the most efficient or effective it can be. One potential shortcoming of LSVT is that it does not provide patients with much, if any, visual feedback. We hypothesized that visual feedback would enable the client to more easily produce a voice characterized by increased loudness and vocal quality. The results of the study do not fully support this hypothesis. There was less variability in the client’s performance within each session during the experimental weeks the patients performance over the course of the week improved, this pattern was not observed during the non-experimental weeks. Additionally, the participant expressed preference for treatment days when the visual feedback was used, finding it helpful in more effectively regulating the volume of his voice.

The ability to separate chemicals is vitally useful to a wide variety of fields including chemistry, biology, pharmacology, and environmental analysis. Thin-layer chromatography is advantageous in the world of chemical separations as it is easy to use, can accommodate multiple samples at once, and has a wide range of applicability. However, this technique can be limited by band broadening, thus decreasing its efficiency. In an effort to increase efficiency particle sizes have been reduced, which in turn has decreased the mobile phase velocity. The used of micro- and nanopillar arrays systems mitigates this decrease due to the more ordered arrangement of the pillars, but efficiency is still limited by the mobile phase velocity. The work presented herein focuses on the fabrication and development of separation platforms that improve efficiency of pillar array chromatography systems by increasing mobile phase flow velocity through the use of centrifugal force.Likewise, the ability to separate particles on the micro- and nanoscale is important for many applications such as food processing, medical diagnostics, and cosmetics. There are a variety of techniques to create devices capable of sorting and separating micro- and nanoparticles. However, these devices are aimed at separating low volume high value samples. The second project described in the work herein proposed the use of micro 3D laser printing to create mesh filters in channels for the separation of nanoparticles suspended in solutions of low volume, as well as a system allowing the study of diffusion of particles through the mesh filters.