Digital Commons Network^™

From Unstructured Data To Demand Counterfactuals: Theory And Practice, Timothy Christensen, Giovanni Compiani

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

Empirical models of multi-product demand rely on low-dimensional product representations to capture substitution patterns, increasingly using proxies built from unstructured data. When proxies are imperfect, standard workflows yield biased counterfactuals and invalid inference. We develop a practical toolkit to address these issues. Our methods apply to market-level and/or individual data, require minimal additional computation, provide simple standard-error formulas, and accommodate proxies from fine-tuned models. Further, we propose diagnostics to assess proxy quality. Our methods yield meaningful improvements in predicting substitution in empirically calibrated simulations and in an application where we assess counterfactual prediction performance against a ground truth.

Canyon Ferry Reservoir: A Regional Recreation System In Montana, Kika Bradford, Melissa Weddell

Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research Publications

This study examines recreation use, visitor behavior, and infrastructure demands at Canyon Ferry Reservoir, Montana, using a combination of visitor surveys, automated counts, and systematic observations conducted between February and October of 2025. Results indicate that Canyon Ferry functions primarily as a high-frequency, locally driven recreation system characterized by repeat visitation, small travel groups, and short-duration trips. Use is highly concentrated at a limited number of sites and during predictable peak periods, creating localized infrastructure pressures despite relatively stable overall visitation levels. Findings show that parking areas and campgrounds experience more consistent capacity constraints than boat ramps, and that perceptions …

Application Of Information Literacy Skills To Everyday Life Information Seeking In College Students: Implications For Instruction, Stephanie Ward, Rachel Dineen, Darren Ilett

Communications in Information Literacy

Academic librarians who teach information literacy (IL) skills hope students will transfer those skills to their information seeking in everyday life. However, there is little evidence that students are transferring what they learn about research to their lives outside college. This study aims to find out what search and evaluation strategies college students who have had IL instruction apply to their own personal information seeking behaviors. To do this, a talk-aloud protocol was used to record participants’ thoughts and actions as they navigated scenarios that required them to select a source that met a non-academic information need. The findings indicate …

The Relationship Between Sleep And Mental Health, Lily Faucher

Psychology Student Publications

This paper looks at the relationship between sleep and mental health across the lifespan. Sleep is an essential process for our bodies to function. Understanding this relationship between sleep and mental health can help individuals to choose healthy habits and prioritize sleep as it is an important part of overall wellbeing.

The Spiritual Communities Of Bronies, Amie Sexton

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bronies, adult, typically male, fans of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, have long been regarded for seemingly breaking expectations around gender norms. This study finds that Bronies break expectations around what is expected of spiritualism. Through interviews and ethnographic observation of social media spaces Bronies frequent, it is found that spirituality based on the cartoon within the fandom is broad, diverse, and at times, normative. A proportionally-small group of fully sincere spiritualists with plural experiences and strong convictions inspire a much larger community of post-ironic aspirants. Aspirations towards spiritual experiences and the development of profound terminologies create …

Field Report: Communicating The Uottawa Library Collection Rightsizing Effort, Mackenzie Kathmann

Collaborative Librarianship

This field report examines the development and evaluation of a communications strategy for an academic university library’s multi-year Collection Rightsizing Effort. Recognizing that weeding projects often provoke stakeholder concerns around transparency and consultation, the project team adopted best practices from the Weeding Communications in the Collections Lifecycle Project Communications Matrix framework, developed by a subgroup of the joint Rosemont/ Partnership Communications and Advocacy Working Group, to guide and assess communication practices. The report outlines the creation, evaluation and improvements made to a comprehensive communications strategy. Survey results from the first year reveal strong awareness of the project and shared print …

Activating Shared Print As A Strategy For Legacy Print Access, Michael M. Brewer, Niamh A. Wallace

Collaborative Librarianship

While most libraries participate in collaborative shared print efforts but tend only to rely on them as a failsafe, this article underscores the timeliness and importance of more libraries “activating” shared print as a core strategy for access to legacy print content. The University of Arizona’s experiences with SCELC and HathiTrust for monographs and the WEST-Internet Archive pilot for serials are discussed as examples of how libraries might choose to pursue this approach.

Trends In U.S. Academic/Public Joint-Use Libraries Since 2000, Karen Tatarka

Collaborative Librarianship

Joint-use academic/public libraries in the United States experienced a surge in popularity at the turn of the millennium following the formation of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, CA and the Alvin Sherman Library in Davie, FL. These partnerships were met with a mix of enthusiasm and trepidation, and as the number of joint-use libraries grew, a corresponding body of literature developed to help guide prospective partners through the process. Now, twenty-five years after the boom, this article provides a current literature review and examines the existing landscape of academic/public joint-use libraries in the United States. …

What Collaboration Means To Me: From Coordination To Collective Action: Cclp And Cyclops As Infrastructure For Collaborative Collection Stewardship, Boaz Nadav-Manes

Collaborative Librarianship

Academic libraries face growing pressure to manage complex collections under significant resource constraints. While consortial collaboration has long been recognized as a strategic response, existing models remain limited, often failing to influence the full collections lifecycle. This article examines how the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) and the Cyclops platform together offer a new model for moving beyond coordination toward genuine collective action in collection stewardship. CCLP provides a community-governed framework structuring collaboration from selection and acquisition through preservation and deaccessioning, while Cyclops complements it with an open, analytics-driven infrastructure that aggregates data across institutions, enabling cross-institutional analysis and translating …

"Certain" Unalienable Rights: Christian Nationalism And Beliefs About Freedom Of Speech, Emily J. Haan

Honors Projects

Christian nationalism can be defined as an ideology advocating for the fusion of Christianity with American civic life. While the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and religion, Christian nationalism has been linked to limiting the rights of those who do not fit into their vision for America. Citing the belief that America was founded as and should continue to be a Christian nation, Christian nationalists hold an exclusionary view of America, pointing to a relationship between Christian nationalist ideology and a limiting freedom of speech for stigmatized groups. This project uses data from the General Social Survey, 2021, (N …

Front And Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Power-Sharing Under Pressure: What A Decade Of Community Partnership Reveals For Philanthropy Today, Clare Nolan, Pilar Mendoza

The Foundation Review

Between 2017 and 2024, U.S. philanthropy experienced a period of significant innovation as many foundations reconsidered long-standing assumptions about control and began taking steps to share power more directly with the communities they fund. This article draws on community leaders’ reflections, alongside the authors’ perspective as long-term evaluators, to examine how these commitments were experienced in practice.

The article focuses on the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Starting Smart and Strong Initiative (S3I), a 10-year effort to strengthen early learning systems across East San Jose, Fresno, and Oakland, California. Drawing on interviews with grantees and technical assistance partners, along with …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

An Inferential Analysis Of Lexical Networks, Christopher D. Gravelle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lexical networks are graphs where words are treated as nodes, and relations between words are treated as edges. The adoption of lexical networks in psycholinguistics is impeded by a lack of readily available inferential methods, which limits work to purely descriptive analyses with little ability to make inferences about what variables account for lexical network structure. The current research explores the use of latent space network models as a method for analyzing lexical networks. Latent space network models are latent variable regression models, which model the presence or strength of edges by estimating pairwise distances between nodes in a latent …

New Age Spirituality In Post-Secular Turkey: Navigating Secular Sensibilities And Class Privilege, Zeynep Ozbarlas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The conflict between religion and secularism has been one of the major forces shaping Turkey’s socio-political landscape since the late nineteenth century. With the radical secular turn during the founding of the Turkish Republic, secularism remained the dominant force until the rise of political Islam in the 1980s. This dissertation, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, argues that New Age spirituality, adopted by the secular upper-middle class, has become an alternative venue for the reproduction of secular sensibilities and socio-economic privilege in contemporary Turkey, at a time when the two-decade tenure of the Erdoğan regime has undermined secular hegemony.

Although New Age …

Goddess In A Trash Can: Religious Ritual Disposal In New York City Public Parks, Zoe Oro-Hahn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Practitioners of Afro-Caribbean religions, including Santería, Vodou, Espiritismo, and Las 21 Divisiones, utilize the New York City Public Parks system to hold rituals, connect with spirits and ancestors, and dispose of religious remains leftover from trabajos (workings) and brujería (witchcraft). Utilizing photos from Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, my thesis considers the religious, political, social, and practical rationale behind this phenomenon, explores the rituals occurring, and provides policy suggestions that balance religious needs of practitioners with the safety and wellbeing of New York City’s parks.

Assessing The Influence Of Disability Views On Perceptions Of Hearing Aids Among Older Korean Adults, Stasha Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background

Age-related hearing loss, also known as presbycusis, is highly prevalent among older adults, yet hearing aid adoption remains low, in part due to concerns about stigma and negative social perceptions. This study aimed to examine whether attitudes towards disabilities influence perceptions of individuals wearing hearing aids among older Korean adults. It also explored the potential effects of cultural identity and the age of the individual wearing the hearing aid on these perceptions.

Methods

Ten participants completed the Attitudes and Perspectives on Persons with Disabilities (APPD) questionnaire and rated 8 different images of individuals (one younger male and one older …

New York State Excelsior Scholarship Program: A Post-Implementation Analysis Of Student Success, Eligibility, And Indebtedness – An Intersectional Study Of Black And White Female Students, Marcus I. Richardson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The New York State (NYS) Excelsior Scholarship Program, introduced in 2017, was designed as a “first-in-the-nation” tuition-free initiative intended to expand college affordability for undergraduate students attending public institutions in New York State. While the program aims to increase access to higher education, its eligibility requirements, particularly the expectation that students complete 30 credits annually through continuous full-time enrollment, may disadvantage students whose academic pathways diverge from traditional enrollment patterns. This study examined the relationship between structural, financial, and academic factors and students’ ability to retain Excelsior Scholarship eligibility at the City University of New York (CUNY). Using institutional data …

Access Denied: Financial Aid Inequalities And The Economic Impact On Daca Students, Teresa D. Jordan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project argues that financial aid policies in the United States create a system of structural inequality that systematically denies Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients’ equitable access to higher education. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship, federal policy data, and large-scale survey research, this paper demonstrates how the categorical exclusion from federal financial aid, inconsistent in-state tuition laws, and recurring DACA renewal fees form an interlocking barrier with profound psychological and economic consequences for a population that is deeply integrated into American society. These compounding barriers force students into a framework of constrained rationality, distorting their academic major choices …

A Hot Topic:
Congressional Polarization And Climate Change, Mercedes R.P. Wilby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars offer competing explanations for how congressional polarization develops and operates. The literature variously points to shifting agendas, procedural change, or member adaptation or replacement. In this project, I study how congressional polarization occurs by asking what mechanisms account for the emergence of climate policy polarization. Climate policy is a useful test case to evaluate these competing theories. As a relatively low-salience, highly technical issue that is neither new nor inherently ideological, it is not an obvious candidate for deep partisan division. Yet climate policy has become sharply polarized, extending partisan disagreement even to the underlying science.

In order to …

Implicit Attitudes Toward Hearing Aid Visibility: Conspicuous Versus Inconspicuous Hearing Aid Colors, Orly R. Ames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hearing aid stigma remains a significant barrier to treatment uptake, with device visibility frequently identified as a contributing factor. Although prior research has examined visibility in relation to hearing aid size and style, the role of color as a distinct aesthetic dimension has not been systematically investigated. The present study assessed whether hearing aid color affects implicit and explicit attitudes toward hearing aids and whether such evaluations differ across contexts. Twenty-six adults who were not current hearing aid users participated in an online quantitative multi-method study consisting of an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and self-report questionnaires. The IAT measured implicit …

Covert Scrambling To The Edge In Tshangla: An Analysis Of Wh- In-Situ, Tshering Y. Dorji

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the syntactic derivation of wh- in-situ constructions in Tshangla, an understudied Tibeto-Burman language of Bhutan. Argument wh-items can remain in-situ in islands—including sentential subjects, adjunct clauses, relative clauses, and coordinate structures—while projecting their scope to the matrix level. This island-insensitivity for certain wh-items suggests a lack of movement in the narrow syntax, yet diagnostic tests, including crossover effects, reconstruction effects, and parasitic gap licensing, provide compelling evidence for a movement-based account. I propose an analysis involving covert LF scrambling to the left edge of an island clause. This movement is driven by semantic requirements …

Gramsci’S ‘Democratic Philosopher’ And The Concept’S Foundations In Marxian Social Ontology, Eli Recht-Appel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis deals with the term ‘democratic philosopher’ from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. In order to lay the groundwork for my distinct interpretation of the ‘democratic philosopher,’ I begin by providing an overview of Gramsci’s theory of the role of intellectuals in civil and political society. I then argue that the ‘democratic philosopher’ emerges from Gramsci’s typology of intellectuals but is a category which is both temporally and ontologically distinct from his more well-known concept of ‘organic intellectuals.’ ‘Organic intellectuals,’ intellectuals who co-develop alongside their fundamental social group or class, occupy a variety of cultural and political roles in …

Counterinsurgency In Afghanistan: Doctrine, Implementation, Cannibalization, Noah S. Fischer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Taliban return to power in Afghanistan on August 15th, 2021, is a watershed moment in the 21^st century history of the United States of America. The swift collapse of the U.S. backed Afghan government shocked American politicians, military leadership, and the general public. To many, trillions of dollars were wasted in funding a government that could not even survive a month without U.S. troops. But those dollars were used by U.S. military leadership to implement a new and innovative strategy those same leaders thought would guarantee success: counterinsurgency, abbreviated as COIN. In this thesis, I will ask: what …

Semi-Peripheral Whiteness In A Global City: Central And Eastern European Women In Dubai, Hana Rubenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone examines how Central and Eastern European (CEE) women navigate professional mobility in Dubai and asks to what extent Dubai enables them to bypass the post-socialist stigma attached to their semi-peripheral European identity. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, gender, and critical scholarship on semi-peripheral whiteness, the study addresses the limited attention paid to CEE women as economic actors outside European contexts, where they are often either absorbed into the category of “Western expatriates” or reduced to highly gendered stereotypes. Grounded in a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the study combines digital discourse analysis of 50 publicly accessible LinkedIn profiles …

Race And The Enduring Logic Of Exclusion In U.S. Immigration Policy, 1882–2025, Kejda Nikollaj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how immigration law in the United States has historically functioned as an instrument of racial exclusion and argues that this logic continues to shape contemporary policy and enforcement. Although overtly racist laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) or the National Origins Act (1924) have long been repealed, their underlying rationales and structures continue to survive under the modern language of legality, security, and national interest. This study argues that restrictive immigration policies tend to emerge when racial and social insecurities intersect, allowing old hierarchies to be revived under new legal justifications. Through a comparative historical …

G&P2p: A Multi-Source Approach To Grapheme To Phoneme Conversion, Chun-Yi Peng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis introduces G&P2P, a multi-source framework for grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion that integrates side pronunciations from multiple lexical resources. Unlike traditional single-source approaches, G&P2P fuses data from multi-sourced pronunciation dictionaries—including CELEX, PronLex, NETTalk, and WikiPron—through several fusion strategies. The goal is to improve model performance on out-of-vocabulary words through multi-source learning. Experiments were conducted with attentive LSTM, pointer-generator LSTM, and pointer-generator Transformer architectures. Models were trained on combinations of datasets and evaluated using word error rate (WER) across five random seeds.

Results show that fusing expert-curated dictionaries such as CELEX and PronLex consistently improves accuracy, achieving an 11.81-point absolute error …

Erosion And Accretion: Mobilities Of Sand, People, And Memory At Queer Riis Beach, Jah Elyse Sayers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York, is a vibrant place of queer and trans public-space placemaking—and especially Black and working class queer and trans placemaking. A distinct queer ecology emerges in the interplay of the dynamic movement of the barrier island, queer and trans—especially queer and trans Afro-diasporic—mobilities. This queer ecology, while articulated with, also defies and exceeds logics and workings of private property. In response to a convergence of pressures on Black, queer, trans, and working-class placemaking on the beach site in the 2020s, beachgoers have mobilized longstanding provisional socialities …

Wageless By Design: Dependency In U.S. Visa Regimes, Cristina Ochoa Echeverri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone examines how U.S. dependent visa regimes create a population of migrants who are legally present but structurally excluded from paid work and independent legal status. Focusing on visa categories such as H-4, F-2, M-2, O-3, P-4, R-2, and TD, it argues that wagelessness is not incidental but structurally embedded in the legal design of temporary migration governance through employment restrictions, derivative legal status, and the tethering of dependents to a principal visa holder.

Using a qualitative, interpretive approach, this study draws on documentary and secondary sources as well as digital narratives from platforms such as Reddit. This capstone …