Digital Commons Network^™

Are Individual Mental Health Issues Treated Fairly By The Criminal Justice System?, Taylor Anderson

Master of Arts in Human Services

The intersection of mental health and the criminal justice system is a critical area of inquiry that highlights the complexities of addressing psychological disorders within our legal frameworks. This paper explores the prevalence of mental health issues among incarcerated individuals and examines how systemic deficiencies contribute to a cycle of recidivism and inadequate treatment. By analyzing the existing literature, the research aims to illuminate the pressing need for a reform in the handling of mentally ill offenders, advocating for a shift towards more rehabilitative approaches rather than punitive measures. The implications of those findings extend beyond individual cases to societal …

‘Passing’ The Baton Of Trauma: Queer Failure Of The Women’S Sport Policy Working Group’S Anti-Trans ‘Position’, Meredith M. Bagley, Mary Anne Taylor, Sarah F. Price

Publications and Research

Engaging in critical rhetorical theory and methodology, we interrogate the contemporary landscape of anti-trans backlash in women’s sport. Specifically, we read the ‘TERF wars’ (Pearce et al.) across critiques of biofeminism (Pape) and whiteness (Fischer) while drawing upon critical social science research into trauma-bonding, bullying, and the structural impacts of gender verification policies. Our analysis focuses on the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group (WSPWG), offering a trauma-informed reading of the WSPWG’s ‘Position’ statement to illuminate how lesbian female athletes who were previously slandered for failing to meet femininity norms in sport are unable to overcome that trauma to recognize and …

Mentor Evaluation Of A Black Male Youth Mentoring Program, Kenneth Brown

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study was an exploration of how Black male mentors perceived organizational practices, culturally responsive mentoring, relational safety, and systems level barriers shaping their effectiveness and continued participation. The purpose was to examine early mentor-mentee match dissolution and low mentor retention in a nonprofit youth mentoring through the lens of the ecological systems theory and program evaluation framework. The practice-focused research questions were: How do volunteer mentors and program staff perceive the organizational practices and culturally responsive strategies that influence mentor effectiveness and retention in youth mentoring programs, and what organizational and systemic challenges do Black male mentors encounter in …

Advancing Clean Mobility: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Bus Workforce Development For Transit Agencies, Manideep Tummalapudi, Shantanu Kumar, Jaskaran Singh

Mineta Transportation Institute

Hydrogen fuel cell electric buses (FCEBs) are rapidly transforming public transportation in the United States. However, while transit agencies are investing heavily in new zero-emission vehicles and fueling infrastructure, far less attention has been paid to the workforce needed to operate and maintain them. As agencies accelerate toward ambitious climate and fleet transition goals, they are also confronting a critical challenge: preparing workers for an entirely new set of technologies, safety requirements, and operational demands. This study addresses that gap by systematically identifying the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) required for FCEB vehicle operators and maintenance technicians, assessing current training …

The Varieties Of Precaution: Which Risks, Whose Attitudes?, Tomasz Żuradzki

Animal Sentience

The Edge of Sentience offers an ambitious and timely institutional framework for proportionate precaution under uncertainty about sentience. Its systematic treatment of empirical and theoretical uncertainty across diverse cases is a major contribution. Focusing on the problem of identifying and weighing different risks when designing proportionate precautions, this commentary suggests three areas in which Birch’s framework could be developed further: a more domain-sensitive justification of the priority given to avoiding under-attribution; a clearer distinction among competing forms of risk aversion and their divergent policy implications; and a fuller explanation of how the framework generates different recommendations across cases.

Paragliding The Cliff Edge: Introducing Open Mic Studies. A Creative Response To Navigating The Post-18 Landscape For Young Adults With Send., James Tarling, Charlie Robinson, Nick Hall, Sammy Shepherd

Plymouth Interdisciplinary Education Open Journal

This conceptual article investigates novel ways of thinking about Open Mic Nights (OMN) – performance spaces understood as free, community arts and performance opportunities where the members of the public are welcome to perform music, poetry and comedy in front of an audience. For the purposes of this article, music-related OMN that take place in pubs or community centres are discussed.

The article is intended to be a primer for OMN studies that offers new and emerging trailheads for future research and discussion. Its central focus is how OMN may benefit the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) community with …

The Mundlak Estimator In A Panel Data Model With Serially Correlated Error Component Disturbances, Badi H. Baltagi, Long Liu

Center for Policy Research

This paper shows that the classic Mundlak (1978) result where the random effects estimator reduces to the fixed effects estimator when the regressors are all correlated with the individual effects, may not hold if the remainder disturbances have a general serial correlation variance-covariance matrix. This includes the popular AR(1), MA(1) and ARMA(p, q) processes for serial correlation. This is illustrated with an empirical example for the AR(1) case.

When Childcare Becomes A Crime Space In Contemporary Indonesia, Isyana Kurniasari Konoras, Dr. Dra. Vinita Susanti, M.Si

Jurnal Kriminologi Indonesia

Abstract. The increasing incidence of violence against children in daycare institutions reflects a structural crisis in contemporary child protection systems. This study examines the violence case at Little Aresha Daycare in Yogyakarta to identify the criminogenic factors underlying abuse in institutional childcare settings. The research applies a normative-empirical qualitative method through media-based case studies, legal analysis, and criminological interpretation. The findings demonstrate that violence emerged from the convergence of three major factors: structural strain experienced by caregivers, weak capable guardianship within daycare institutions, and the normalization of abusive disciplinary practices. Robert K. Merton’s Strain Theory explains how economic and occupational …

Beyond Extremism: Rethinking Anarchism In Contemporary Indonesian Security Discourse Through Anarchist Criminology, I Gusti Ngurah Aditia Tjandra Asmara

Jurnal Kriminologi Indonesia

This article examines how contemporary Indonesian security discourse increasingly frames anarchism through the categories of radicalism, extremism, and national security threats. Responding to the emergence of academic and security-oriented narratives that position anarchism as a form of anti-state extremism, this article asks how anarchism is represented and securitized within contemporary Indonesian criminological and security discourse. Using a qualitative critical-discourse analysis approach, this article draws upon perspectives from Anarchist Criminology and Cultural Criminology to examine the construction of anarchism within contemporary Indonesian security narratives. The findings demonstrate that anarchism is frequently reduced into a simplified and homogeneous category of extremism through …

Symbolic Reform And Police Legitimacy In Indonesia, Nur Zena Anggita Raissa

Jurnal Kriminologi Indonesia

The Indonesian National Police (Polri) are facing a sustained crisis of legitimacy amid increasing public distrust, digital activism, and intensified external oversight. While reform has been repeatedly promised since the post-authoritarian transition, institutional change remains fragmented and largely symbolic. This article examines Polri’s reform trajectory through a criminological lens, drawing on theories of social solidarity (Durkheim), procedural justice (Tyler), and the sociology of professions (Abbott) to analyze the interaction between external pressures and internal organizational dysfunctions. Using theory-driven qualitative analysis of corruption cases, recruitment controversies, and public trust surveys, the study argues that Polri’s legitimacy crisis is rooted not only …

Nasa’S Ecostress Satellite Reveals Widespread Midday Depression In Ecosystem Evapotranspiration, Jingyi Bu, Jingfeng Xiao, Joshua B. Fisher, Yiqi Luo

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Plants often exhibit a midday depression in water use (i.e., transpiration), reflecting a constraint on their ability to sustain maximum water transport, which may occur at the cost of reduced photosynthesis. Eddy covariance observations and geostationary satellites cannot quantify this widespread phenomenon globally while resolving fine-scale spatial variability. Using evapotranspiration measurements from the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) and machine learning, we quantify the global distribution of midday depression in evapotranspiration. Midday depression primarily occurs during peak-growing seasons in temperate zones and dry periods in the tropics, with a morning shift of the peak evapotranspiration time …

Unlocking Multiple Intelligence Skills Among Medical Library Professionals: An Analysis Of Nigeria And Pakistan, Mariym Muhammad Ismail, Naweed-E-Sehar, 3. Kamaluddeen Isa El-Kalash

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Multiple Intelligence (MI) plays a crucial role in comprehending extensive intellectual abilities and aptitudes among individuals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the Multiple Intelligences in medical library professionals in Pakistan and Nigeria by incorporating Howard Gardener's Theory. Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences provided the foundation for the research method implemented in this study. The current study is explanatory in nature. The research employs a quantitative approach and survey as a research method, which involves collecting and analyzing numerical data. A questionnaire with five-point Likert scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), was adopted to …

Exploring Speech-Language Pathologists’ Development Of Hearing Loss Health Literacy, Ellie Cooper, Krystal L. Werfel

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

Purpose. This qualitative study examined how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) develop hearing loss health literacy through academic training and on-the-job experience. Specifically, it explored SLPs’ perspectives on how graduate coursework and clinical exposure contributed to their readiness to work with children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH).

Method. Participants included 48 SLPs with a range of specialty academic coursework and on-the-job experience working with children who are DHH. SLPs were categorized into four groups: with/without specialty academic training in aural (re)habilitation and more/fewer than three years of experience with at least ten children who are DHH. Semi-structured interviews were …

Early Childhood Access To Language Acquisition Services In Arizona, Kendra Benedict, Wendy Steuerwald, Najwa Ghattas, Cheryl Johnson

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

This investigation reviewed existing services and gaps for young children who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) in Arizona and explored community-based approaches to improve access to language development resources. The study was conducted in two phases, each focusing on different approaches for language acquisition based on surveys of parents and providers. Phase I, completed in 2024, addressed listening and spoken language (LSL) as a methodology for language acquisition while Phase II, completed in 2025, focused on the use of American Sign Language (ASL). Findings from Phase I surveys found that 63% of parents reported using LSL as the …

Unboxing Relations: An Ethnographic Study Of Blind Box Consumption In The U.S., Wendy Zheng

Sociology Honors Projects

Blind box consumption is a format for purchasing packaged toys without knowing the specific item in advance. It has become a global trend and is often viewed as irrational or gambling-like behavior in past literature. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in retail settings, this study examines how consumers make sense of uncertainty through social interaction. This study proposes a two-layer model of consumption. In the first layer, social interaction during the consumption process helps consumers negotiate risk, generate meaning, and become more skilled buyers. In the second layer, consumers engage in moral and value judgments that involve distancing …

Recursive Artificial Intelligence Training And The Homogenization Of Discourse, Sam Hemesath

Political Science Honors Projects

As Large Language Models (LLMs) begin to produce text on the internet, the same repository from which training data for LLMs are scraped, LLMs will start to train on data they produced. What will happen to future models when LLMs are trained on their own text? Scholars have raised concerns about the possibility that LLMs homogenize language and discourse. These concerns are further exaggerated as LLMs begin to infect their own repositories, marking a turn from human-produced training data sets. In this paper I simulate a recursive training loop by prompting a popular open-source LLM with 1000 prompts and using …

Covid-19, Politicization, And Vaccine Hesitancy: A Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Non-Medical Exemptions In Minnesota, 2014-2024, Benjamin Arnold

Geography Honors Projects

Vaccination rates have declined due to the growing hesitancy by many parents to vaccinate their children, signified by an increasing amount of non-medical exemptions. While there has been previous spatial analysis of exemption patterns as a threat to herd immunity, there has not been much post-COVID. This analysis provides a modern analysis of changing exemption clustering in Minnesota, while also considering the impact of public health being increasingly politicized. We used kindergarten vaccination data for 1475 elementary schools to analyze the evolution of clustering and predictors of NMEs across space and time in Minnesota, from 2014 to 2024.

Unmanned Aerial Support Program In Portland Police Bureau: A Case Study, Eiryn Renouard

Dissertations and Theses

With the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) adopting drone technology in 2024 as a tactical tool, officers have begun to experience change in the way they approach their roles as they learn to work in conjunction with this new technology. Known as the Unmanned Aerial Support program (UAS), this drone program is embedded into PPB's patrol unit. The recency of the program offers an opportunity to examine how a new program using new technology builds its culture and impacts the perspectives and behaviors of its participating officers. By interviewing officers and conducting field observations of the officers and drones in action, …

Supporting The Humans In Human Services: Understanding The Impacts Of Indirect Trauma Exposures & Promoting Resilience To Bolster Professional Wellbeing And Strengthen Service Provision, Mandy Jr O'Malley

Master of Arts in Human Services

The on-going exposure to the trauma of others that is regularly experienced in the daily work of human service professionals carries with it risks to the wellbeing of the individual professional, the health of the organization in which they work and to the quality of care that they are providing. The scope of the effects that are experienced both acutely and over time include, among others, mental and physical exhaustion, mental health symptoms that mirror those of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in those directly impacted by trauma, changes in worldview, and dramatic reductions in empathy. By understanding the consequences of …

Islamic Business Ethics, Muslim Feminism, And The Rhetorical Construction Of Entrepreneurial Legitimacy: Evidence From Emirati Women, Hayfaa A. Tlaiss, Valerie Priscilla Goby

All Works

Despite the United Arab Emirates’ state-led promotion of women’s entrepreneurship as central to national transformation, Emirati women entrepreneurs continue to face patriarchal norms that frame entrepreneurship as a masculine domain, rendering their entrepreneurial legitimacy both precarious and contested. Based on in-depth interviews, this study examines how women entrepreneurs construct entrepreneurial legitimacy within a patriarchal Muslim context, marked by a tension between empowerment rhetoric and gendered constraints. Drawing on Suddaby and Greenwood’s (2005) framework of rhetorical legitimation together with Islamic business ethics and Muslim feminism, we demonstrate how Emirati women entrepreneurs mobilise state-led empowerment and national transformation discourses to construct entrepreneurial …

Leadership Practices And Their Influence On Employee Retention And Productivity In Group Homes, Tolif Bekele Gemechu

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Employee retention and workforce productivity have consistently challenged residential group homes serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, reducing continuity of care, increasing costs, and limiting organizational effectiveness. This qualitative case study explored how leadership practices influenced employee retention, workforce productivity, and alignment with the Baldrige Excellence Framework. The study was guided by three research questions addressing leadership practices, employee engagement and retention, workforce productivity, and organizational alignment. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 DSPs and leaders and analysis of organizational documents, workforce records, policies, and procedures. Thematic analysis using NVivo software was conducted, with trustworthiness established through …

Business Educational Skills For Successful Aviation Fire Officers, Leo Sedlmeyer

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Purpose: This paper explored the business educational skills aviation fire officers use to manage airport fire departments.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The methodology was a qualitative phenomenological study design. The participants began with 10 aviation fire officers from airports throughout the USA who were at least 28 years old, in a leadership role, and had at least 10 years of experience as aviation fire officers (Buttenschon, 2016). Saturation was reached at seven during the interview phase. The limitations of this study were gaining participants' trust and obtaining comprehensive information from them.

Findings: Six themes emerged from this study, with the top three identified: …

``I Don't.. I Don't Remember The Answer'': A Psycholinguistics Study Of Language Processing Impairment Caused By Traumatic Brain Injury In Film ``The Vow'' (2012), Fathiya Rosyada, Emy Sudarwati, Lee Huan Yik, Putrie Rahayuningtyas

Bahasa dan Seni: Jurnal Bahasa, Sastra, Seni, dan Pengajarannya

There is substantial evidence of an association between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and language difficulties, particularly those related to cognitive impairment. Addressing an underexplored narrative perspective, this study examines the interaction between memory and language in the representation of cognitive-communication disorder (CCD) following TBI in the film The Vow (2012). Using a qualitative approach informed by Clinical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study analyzes selected dialogues to identify post-traumatic cognitive-communication difficulties reflected in language comprehension and production. The findings reveal a dissociation between relatively preserved linguistic competence and impaired communicative performance. In language comprehension, this dissociation is reflected in pragmatic misinterpretation, …

From Awareness To Engagement: University Students’ Perceptions Of The Sustainable Development Goals And The Role Of Higher Education Institutions, Ajda Fosner

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This study examines how university students perceive the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a focus on their self-reported knowledge, attitudes, and views on the role of institutions in promoting sustainability.

Methods: An online survey was conducted among students in Slovenia.

Results: The results show that most students are aware of the SDGs and support their integration into education, although their personal engagement with sustainability practices is more reserved. Statistical analysis revealed that both the level and field of study significantly influence students’ SDG awareness, with advanced and social science students reporting higher familiarity. Regarding institutional roles, students placed the …

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) As A Communication Pedagogy Mega-Risk, Deanna Sellnow

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

With the ever-expanding capabilities offered by artificial intelligence (AI), communication teachers, scholars, and practitioners are currently in the midst of heated debates about whether and how to use AI both in our classrooms and in our research. This essay contextualizes the debate by describing generative AI as a technological mega-risk that, if left unchecked, may manifest into a mega-crisis impacting people and planet in extraordinarily harmful ways. Consequently, I argue that it is our responsibility as instructional communication scholars, communication education teachers, and communication pedagogy experts to discover strategies for harnessing its power to manage the potential threats posed by …

The Mundanity Of Ai, David Westerman, Nicholas Bowman

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The emergence of ChatGPT in late 2022 brought with it a reemergence of utopian and dystopian claims of the grand power of AI. Yet, AI has failed to achieve such lofty expectations and instead has trended toward far more banal, yet productive, tasks and goals. We argue that this mundanity is precisely what makes AI an important technology, and moreover, those “mundane tasks” are central to communication education. Specifically, we advocate for a decreased focus on the hyped ideas of AI that dominate popular discourse and obfuscate more reasoned analyses of AI as communication technology. A more pragmatic focus should …

Ai Didn’T Break Our Teaching, It Revealed Our Teaching, Michael G. Strawser

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

The rapid emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted widespread concern about academic integrity, student learning, and the future of higher education. While AI is often framed as a disruptive force, this commentary argues that many of the challenges attributed to AI predate the technology itself. Rather than creating new problems, AI has exposed long-standing tensions embedded within higher education and communication pedagogy. Three tensions that have become increasingly visible in the presence of AI are identified: learning versus completion, efficiency versus depth, and human connection versus algorithmic mediation. First, AI challenges assumptions that the successful completion of assignments …

Teaching Ai Through Communication: Rethinking Evidence, Interaction, And Learning, Chad Edwards, Matthew J. A. Craig, Varun Rijhwani, Habeeb Abdulrauf

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This conceptual essay advances a central claim: Communication pedagogy is increasingly engaged in teaching AI through communicative interaction. Moving beyond the familiar distinctions between teaching with AI and teaching about AI, it argues that classrooms function as sites where AI communication is shaped through prompting, critique, revision, and ethical evaluation. Drawing on human–machine communication scholarship, the essay reconceptualizes evidence of learning as visible in students’ reasoning, justification, and contextual adaptation rather than in polished outputs. By foregrounding relational engagement, transparency, and communicative judgment, it positions teaching AI as a defining pedagogical task in AI-mediated educational environments.

How To Blow Up An Ai Data Center, Tyler Rife

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This essay advocates a critical pedagogical orientation to AI guided by a politics of refusal. I pursue this advocacy by, first, showing how the social and environmental harms of AI technology outweigh any promises to its social good and then, second, locating resonances between our contemporary technological situation and similar inflection points in the histories of labor organizing and environmental justice activism. Together, these material implications of the emergent technology help form a pedagogical framework for how communication educators can advance critical literacy about AI in the classroom as a constructive counterpoint to its uncritical adoption in the learning process. …

Ai And Agency: Policy As Problem Posing In The Introductory Communication Studies Classroom, Deanna L. Fassett, Nancy Park

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

This forum essay examines artificial-intelligence policy in introductory communication courses through the lens of critical communication pedagogy. It identifies a tension between institutional pressures for readily enforceable, surveillance-oriented AI policies and relational approaches that support instructors’ and students’ long-term agency. Drawing on problem-posing pedagogy, the authors argue that prepackaged policies can position teaching assistants as policy enforcers rather than reflective educators. They propose collaborative policy development as a means of fostering dialogue, ethical discernment, human connection, and critical engagement with AI’s role in communication education.