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Family Poison: A Phenomenological Study Of The Role Of Toxic Parental Influence On Romantic Relationships, Kimberly Eichelberger-Searcy

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This phenomenological study sought to describe the lived experiences of adult survivors of toxic parents across the United States. The assumption was that toxic parental influence impacts romantic relationships. The following research questions framed this study: “How do adult survivors of toxic parents describe their experiences growing up with a toxic parent in the United States? How do adult survivors describe the effects of growing up with a toxic parent?” and “How do adult survivors of toxic parents describe the impact of their childhood experiences on their intimate/romantic relationships?”. The two theoretical frameworks guiding this study were Bowlby’s attachment theory, …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 11.0, Robert O. Duncan, Grace Axler-Diperte, Joe Bisz, Christina Boyle, Devorah Kletenik, Carolyn Stallard

Publications and Research

The CUNY Games Conference combines workshops, idea exchanges, interactive participant presentations, playtesting, and playing tabletop games into a one-day online event to promote and discuss game-based learning. The conference focuses on creative pedagogy, such as playful learning activities or games, that teachers can use in the classroom every day. The conference is online and features interactive presentations by attendees, informal idea exchange sessions, and workshops by the conference organizers.

A Multivariate Time Series Analysis Of Secular Stagnation: A Critical Realist Perspective, Francis N. Mensah

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The study investigated whether excess saving over investment explains secular stagnation or is linked to structural break (hysteresis) in aggregate economic activity as measured by the changes in the level of GDP. The U.S. economy, including the advanced economies, is experiencing secular stagnation, potentially caused by excess savings over investment. This condition, if present, could have significant implications for how we can conduct economic policy. Instead of focusing on gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of economic activity, the study extends the existing literature by concentrating on aggregate private-sector output. The rationale is that if there is secular stagnation or …

Continuum Of Academic Collaboration: Issues Of Inconsistent Terminology In Multilingual Context, Cristo Leon Ph.D., James Lipuma Ph.D., Marcos O. Cabobianco, Maria B. Daizo

STEM for Success Resources

Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
1690-4524 (Online)

Revitalization Of Endangered Languages With Ai, Ivory Yang

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The preservation and revitalization of endangered languages, particularly those with minimal digital presence, presents significant challenges for computational linguistics. This thesis addresses these challenges by proposing novel methods for language identification and data generation, focusing on underrepresented Indigenous languages, specifically Nüshu, Native American and Native Alaskan languages.

In the first study, a COLING 2025 paper, we present NüshuRescue, an AI-driven framework designed to facilitate the preservation of Nüshu, an endangered script used exclusively by Yao women in China. Using minimal seed data, we demonstrate how GPT-4-Turbo can generate new translations, expanding a publicly available Nüshu-Chinese corpus, achieving 48.69% accuracy in …

Methodological Memorandum For Michelle Llado-Wrzos' Phd Dissertation, Michelle Llado-Wrzos Ed.D., Cristo Leon Ph.D.

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

This methodological memorandum outlines the research approach for Michelle Llado-Wrzos' PhD dissertation, which explores the underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Despite multiple efforts to reduce the gender disparity, female students remain significantly less likely to pursue STEM majors compared to their male peers. The research focuses on assessing the impact of extrinsic motivators—specifically financial incentives and exposure to female role models—on the STEM major choices of female high school students. By adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study thoroughly integrates quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to examine these motivators.

A quasi-experimental design will assess the …

Narrativas Y Convergencias Transdisciplinarias: Contribuciones Académicas Relevantes, Desafíos Y Horizonte Editorial, Cristo Leon Ph.D.

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

La Revista de Estudios sobre Juegos de Rol y STEAM (JRPSSTEAM) se ha consolidado como un espacio transdisciplinario, multilingüe y de acceso abierto que articula investigación, práctica y comunidad en torno a los juegos de rol. En esta editorial, se reflexiona sobre los aprendizajes y patrones emergentes de los tres volúmenes y cinco números publicados hasta la fecha, abordando tanto aciertos como áreas de mejora. Se ofrecen lineamientos prácticos para autores potenciales, destacando errores comunes, criterios de relevancia temática y aspectos que enriquecen la comunicación entre disciplinas. Además, se revaloriza el carácter abierto e inclusivo del JRPSSTEAM, que acoge desde …

Journal Of Roleplaying Studies And Steam (Jrpssteam) Vol. 4 [2025], Número 1 (Issue 1), Ivan Ávila González Phd, Cristo Leon, Romano Ponce-Díaz Phd, Diogo A. Camelo, Alfonso Rincón Vaquero, Edgar Ávila González, Daira Pando Tamayo, Michelle Llado-Wrzos, Leonid Moyzhes, Andrea A. Echeverría Barrios

Journal of Roleplaying Studies and STEAM

La cultura es un diálogo constante con el pasado, el presente y el futuro. Todos nuestros objetos culturales son el resultado causal de las personas que estuvieron antes que nosotros, se actualizan en nuestro proceder en el presente y, les proyectamos al futuro con la esperanza de que aporten algo positivo a las generaciones que estarán delante de nosotros; de tal forma, este Volumen 4 [2025], número 1 (Issue 2) es el resultado directo de la labor de los editores fundadores Mauricio Rangel Jiménez, Miguel Angel Bastarrachea Magnani y todas aquellas personas que trabajaron antes que nosotros para que existiera …

Elemental Analysis Of Sediments In Johnson County, Kansas: Applications In Fluvial Suspended Sediment Tracing, Kiena Campbell

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

This exploratory study investigates whether bulk elemental analysis of sediment samples using inductively coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) can reveal chemical signatures that identify anthropogenic contributions to sedimentation and increased fluvial suspended sediment loads, and whether these contribution sources can be identified. Human activity, urbanization, and changes in land use increase erosion, resulting in higher-than-natural suspended sediments (SS) in waterways and increasing sedimentation in reservoirs across the state of Kansas. These threats to freshwater storage capacity are especially urgent given the projected rise in freshwater demand in the Great Plains region driven by climate change. Understanding the origin of anthropogenic SS …

Emotional Eating Behaviors And Parental Feeding Practices In Three-Year-Old Children And Their Association With Body Composition One Year Later, Keely Wright, Kenia Rivera, Elysia Poggi Davis

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Emotional eating – eating in response to negative emotions regardless of hunger – is an obesogenic trait that often develops in childhood and remains a habit through adulthood. Greater emotional eating is associated with a higher body mass index (BMI; kg/m2) in 7-12-year-old children (Webber et al., 2009). However, few studies have examined the relations between emotional eating and weight gain in preschool-aged children. Moreover, there is limited research on parental feeding practices and weight gain in preschool-aged children. The current work investigated the association of emotional eating behaviors during an emotional eating task in three-year-old children with change in …

Analyzing Human - Nonhuman Primate Conflict Mitigation Techniques In Mto Wa Mbu, Northern Tanzania, Lil Adams

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Human-wildlife conflict is a widespread challenge faced by those living in regular contact with wildlife that can have profound impacts on livelihood outcomes for humans, wildlife, and their shared environment (Barua et al., 2013; Blackie, 2023). Human – non-human primate conflict is particularly crucial due to primates’ high capacity to live among human populations (Chapman & Chapman, 1990; Alberts & Altmann, 2006; Reader et al., 2011; Sinha & Vijayakrishnan, 2017), and is currently on the rise due to increasing contact between human and non-human primates (Hockings, 2016; Uddin et al., 2020). To characterize and analyze techniques currently being used to …

The Effects Of Race And Ethnicity On School Connectedness And Academic Outcomes Among Adolescents, Hafsa Khan Owens

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the role of school connectedness and how racial/ethnic identity in academic outcomes among adolescents/. Guided by the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017) and Garcia-Coll et al’s (1996) Integrative Model, it was hypothesized that higher school connectedness predicts higher GPAs, that students whose racial/ethnic identity aligns with their schools’ majority composition experience stronger school connectedness, and the relationship between school connectedness and GPA will be stronger in schools with more matching peers. Participants included 138 youth (M = 14.98, SD = 1.92) from three urban schools (two K-8th; one high school). The sample was 33.3% Hispanic, 23.9% …

Collaboration Across The Silos: Consultation As A Means For Integrating Services For Twice-Exceptional Learners, Kimberly Bowers Yoshino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Twice-exceptional (2e) learners are underserved in American schools. As students who demonstrate both giftedness and disabilities, 2e learners maintain profiles that warrant tailored educational services across special and gifted education programs. Yet, these programs are considered institutionally mutually exclusive as legal mandates create de facto isolation — the antithesis of what is recommended for the students’ optimal development. School psychologists have been identified as professionals critically positioned to support 2e learners because of their specialized skill set, namely in consultation. However, little is known about their consultative practices with the educators who serve 2e learners or how they traverse school …

Enhancing Multi-Step Stock Price Forecasting With Social Media Sentiment And Engagement Metrics, Damilare Olaniyan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates whether social media sentiment can improve the accuracy of stock price prediction beyond traditional historical data. While financial markets have long relied on structured numerical indicators, the growing influence of public discourse on platforms like Twitter has introduced new opportunities for extracting market-relevant signals from unstructured text. The study focuses on four major technology firms and combines sentiment features derived from Twitter with historical stock prices in a hybrid machine learning framework. Engagement-weighted sentiment, linguistic complexity, and polarity intensity were extracted using natural language processing techniques and incorporated into classification and regression models. Results show that including …

Benefits Of Extended Unemployment Insurance On Post-Unemployment Outcomes, Alyssa Roche

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates how unemployment insurance (UI) affects individuals during and after unemployment. Drawing on historical evidence from recent recessions in the United States, publicly available data, behavioral insights, and mathematical modeling, it argues that the benefits of extending UI outweigh the potential costs. The analysis incorporates a wide range of sources, including empirical economic studies using regression models and psychology and business research that highlight behavioral responses to financial stress and job insecurity. By combining quantitative data with behavioral context, the thesis offers a more comprehensive understanding of how extended UI influences job search decisions, wage outcomes, and overall …

Culture And Environment: The Calling Lakes Ecomuseum As A Community Sustainability Initiative, Kace N. Anders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Located in Saskatchewan, Canada, the Calling Lakes Ecomuseum, CLEM, is a community-based organization focused on water management and sustainability. Ecomuseums are holistic organizations that occupy landscapes, are responsive to community needs, conserve in situ heritage, and incorporate sustainability along with community development. The ecomuseum movement came from a need for holistic heritage management that disengaged with conventional museology and created space for communities to engage with their heritage in ways that promote community identity. This thesis analyzes the Calling Lakes Ecomuseum and how it utilizes the ecomuseum concept alongside environmental sustainability. Both semi-structured interviews and place-based field observations were used …

A Spatial Analysis Of Residential Photovoltaic Adoption In New Jersey: Focusing On 2020 With Trends Through 2025, Brandon Mcalister

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

This capstone project seeks to find the relationship between socioeconomic and demographic variables and their relationship to residential photovoltaic installations across New Jersey. The study consists of Geographic Weighted Regression Analyses to construct and socioeconomic index indicating the likelihood of photovoltaic adoption in New Jersey zip codes. Then using the index to predict future photovoltaic adoption across the state. The study found that socioeconomic and demographic variables can predict photovoltaic adoption within one year, but when placed in an index and used to predict future adoption trends, the model under predicts and extremely over predicts. While socioeconomic status is a …

Political Ecologies Of The Livestock Industry, Jecca Bowen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the United States today, livestock production is dominated by an intensified, industrialized production paradigm whose growth in recent decades has utterly transformed the logistical realities and community impacts of animal agriculture. This dissertation investigates the effects of this production paradigm on livestock producers—whose decision-making is shaped by multi-scalar and often contradictory forces—as well as residents living near these large operations. To do so, I draw upon mixed-methods fieldwork, including in-depth interviews, spatial analysis, and field odor measurements in Weld and Morgan Counties in northern Colorado. I also use political ecologies of emotion, embodiment, and health to examine the complex …

Utilizing Spatial Criteria To High-Grade Wyoming Eor Opportunities Along Proposed Pipeline Corridors: A Value Driven Approach, Jack Borski

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Oil and gas development has played a critical role in human civilization, and continues to bring drive economies around the world. One such economy is the state of Wyoming that has seen oil and gas production generally decline of the last several decades due to the depletion of high volume conventional reservoirs. A proven secondary technique such as CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR) may serve as a method to arrest declining production, and increase economic activity. Wyoming has recognized this opportunity, and has attempted decrease the barriers of entry for oil and gas operators to invest in field-level CO2 EOR …

Object-Based Image Analysis And Artificial Intelligence Identification Of Anthropogenic Disturbance On Lesser Prairie Chicken Habitat In Cheyenne County, Colorado, Tara Hoelzer

Geography and the Environment: Graduate Student Capstones

Renewable energy projects often require extensive landcover for their operations. When one of these projects encroaches into territory of threatened species, such as Lesser Prairie Chickens, an analysis of habitat suitability and human disturbance is required to proceed. Traditionally, this involved manually reviewing aerial imagery within a 6-mile radius, digitizing features, and interpreting them using a human technician—an approach that was time-consuming and prone to human error. By using pretrained AI models within Model Builder™, the identification of roads and structures was automated, making the process faster and more consistent than manual visual analysis. As AI and technology continue to …

Conceptualizing The Explanatory Fully Longitudinal Mixed Methods Case Study Design: A Demonstration With An Arithmetic Education Trial With Kindergarten Children, Menglong Cong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In employing longitudinal mixed methods designs, researchers have commonly used the fully longitudinal mixed methods design. This has occurred mostly in the health sciences but less in education. The current investigation proposes a novel longitudinal mixed methods research design, explanatory fully longitudinal mixed methods case study design. It demonstrates its potential for addressing research inquiries in educational research using the arithmetic learning trajectories datasets. This study is presented in three components. The first is a quantitative phase, selecting an exploratory case from a previous arithmetic learning trajectories study (Clements et al., 2021) for qualitative analyses based on maximizing the …

Toward Sustainable Human Well-Being: A Multidimensional Assessment In Colorado, Uma Umut Baysal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Evaluating progress in human well-being is essential for guiding effective policy and promoting sustainable development. Traditional approaches often emphasize economic and social dimensions while overlooking ecological indicators critical to long-term sustainability. This research addresses that gap by proposing a layered, scalable local framework for county-level analysis and bottom-up decision-making, integrating multiple objective indicators to assess and compare well-being outcomes across regions.

The first goal of this dissertation is to measure human well-being in Colorado counties by developing a Human Well-Being Index (HWBI). This index combines a newly developed Built Environment Index (BEI) comprising five sub-indices: accessibility, housing affordability, transportation, …

Cultivating Resilience In The Anthropocene: Evaluating A Gssw Ecological Justice Curriculum, Windy Selig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This Dissertation in Practice evaluated the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work (GSSW) Ecological Justice Pathway to examine how resilience is conceptualized and cultivated within the curriculum. Grounded in a constructivist paradigm and guided by an ecological justice framework, this evaluation explored the pedagogical and curricular strategies designed to prepare social work students for the emotional, ethical, and professional demands of practicing in the Anthropocene—a time marked by ecological degradation, climate crisis, and compounding social inequities.

Through qualitative methods, including faculty interviews and curriculum document analysis, the evaluation identified both explicit and implicit components that foster student resilience. …

The Improvement Regime: Public Trusts, Real Estates, And India’S Urban Futurities, Anwesha Ghosh

Articles

Over the last two decades, since scholarly writing on India witnessed an “urban turn,” numerous historians have analyzed the role of the improvement trust in the redevelopment of Indian cities in the twentieth century, most specifically those of Bombay, Calcutta, and Delhi. This paper revisits and reassesses some of their key arguments to suggest that rather than studying the “failures” of the individual trusts to foster sanitary built environments, we should pay attention to the contingent workings of the city trusts that were constitutively designed for such failures. Using a comparative analysis of the Bombay and Calcutta improvement trusts, this …

Evaluating The Impact Of Information Literacy Workshops On Student Success, Amanda Shannon, Aaron Skira, Ying Chen, Matt Shreffler

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

Objective – This study was designed to identify the impact of standalone information literacy tutorials on student success indicators. The study was conducted in two different phases to compare findings across different modalities and to identify whether online, asynchronous delivery of substantively similar content affected outcomes.

Methods – Using institutional records from a mid-sized, Midwestern public university, and attendance and completion data from student participation in asynchronous library workshops, the authors used propensity score matching to construct a control group that mirrored library workshop participants based on like characteristics. Statistical analyses were then conducted comparing the GPA, semester completion, and …

Contributions Of California Teacher Librarians To Student Achievement, Keith Curry Lance, Caitlin Gerrity

Learning Hub

This article assesses the contributions of California Teacher Librarians (TLs) to student achievement, specifically in the area of English Language Arts and Literacy. This comparison-of-means analysis employed two major datasets: the California Department of Education (CDE) school library evaluation survey and California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) data, both for the 2022-23 school year. This study found that students who met or exceeded ELA standards were more likely to be in schools with: a full-time, certified TL rather than a part-time TL or no TL; a TL–full- or part-time–rather than no TL; a TL staffing a single library …

Western Kentucky University Stormwater Utility Survey 2025, Warren Campbell

SEAS Faculty Publications

This survey provides data on 2147 U.S. and 82 Canadian stormwater utilities. The data is intended to provide useful data to communities that wish to enact stormwater utilities. Different fee systems are examined with the goal of avoiding legal exposure. Recently, the major source of pre-disaster mitigation funds was eliminated. States should consider state-wide stormwater utilities to make up for this loss.

Pathways To Efficient And Equitable Solutions For Large-Scale Routing Problems, Abhay Sobhanan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses large-scale optimization problems in transportation emerging from hierarchical decision-making, equitable workload allocation, and innovative routing logistics. It presents three sets of contributions, each detailed in a separate chapter, and offers computational tools and insights to advance both the theory and practice of transportation systems.

The first work introduces a deep learning-enhanced genetic algorithm framework for solving the Hierarchical Vehicle Routing Problems (HVRPs). Traditional optimization approaches to such problems require extensive evaluation of multiple lower-level routing solutions and are computationally intensive. Our innovative method integrates a genetic algorithm with a pretrained graph neural network, which is trained on …

The Ancillaries Of Undergraduate Economics Programs: Results Of A Departmental Survey, Gail M. Hoyt, Roisin O'Sullivan

Economics: Faculty Publications

Most economics departments have a cadre of ancillary elements intended to enhance the experience of their undergraduate majors. These may include opportunities to attend speaker series, give conference presentations, participate in student organizations, or work as teaching or research assistants. While economists have studied individual ancillaries, there is merit in a comprehensive examination. The authors design and conduct a departmental survey of 300 U.S. institutions to characterize ancillaries’ prevalence, structure, and perceived benefits. Their findings shed light on how the prevalence and structure of ancillaries vary across different types of academic institutions. Perceived benefits involve meeting departmental learning goals and …

Awareness And Change In Socrates Political Thought, Mohamed Talaat

Future Journal of Social Science

The research paper explores the importance of public political awareness in Socratic philosophy in relation to societal and political changes that can happen as a consequence. By seeing how Socrates emphasized moral integrity, critical thinking, and pursuit of knowledge in order to achieve virtue. The research tests the hypothesis that an increased level of awareness can lead to a societal and political transformation. The research tackles some questions, such as the steps needed for a political change, the tools to increase awareness, and the role of philosophers and great thinkers in guiding their societies to such a path. Through analyzing …