Digital Commons Network^™

Editor's Preface, Gabe Smock

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This editor's preface explores the origins and enduring mission of The Thetean, BYU's undergraduate history journal. Through archival research in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, the journal's founding history is traced to its inaugural 1967 edition, revealing the origin, pronunciation, and meaning of its distinctive name as a reference to Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. The preface highlights the journal's longstanding commitment to encouraging scholarly research, providing publication opportunities, and introducing students to the work of historians. By recovering the journal's own history, it underscores the broader value of historical inquiry: understanding the past to better …

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Equivocation Analysis Across Continuous And Discrete Memoryless Channels, Md Munibun Billah

Theses and Dissertations

Physical-layer security uses the noise already present in the channel to keep a message secret without making any assumption about the eavesdropper's computing power. In Wyner's wiretap channel model, coset coding uses randomness to map the message to many codewords and protects against information leakage from an active eavesdropper. The secrecy provided by such codes is measured by their equivocation, which is the eavesdropper's remaining uncertainty about the message after she observes her channel. So computing equivocation is an important aspect of analyzing the wiretap channel model. Many channels of practical interest have no closed-form expression for equivocation, and exact …

Instructional Slides From Molten Salt Electrochemistry Symposium (Moses) 2026, Devin Rappleye, Carlos Mejia, Alex Peroff

Faculty Publications

This instructional slide set was developed for the 2026 Molten Salt Electrochemistry Symposium (MoSES) as an introduction and review of fundamental electrochemical concepts and methods used in molten salt systems. The material is intended for students, researchers, and practitioners seeking to better understand and interpret electrochemical measurements in high-temperature molten salts.

Topics include electrochemical thermodynamics, kinetics, mass transfer, electrode potentials, cyclic voltammetry, chronopotentiometry, chronoamperometry, square-wave voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and common approaches for analyzing electrochemical data. Emphasis is placed on building physical intuition, understanding underlying assumptions, recognizing common experimental artifacts, and connecting electrochemical signals to real chemical and transport …

A Danish Romantic Organ Voice: The Music Of J.P.E. Hartmann And The Marcussen & Søn Organ, Benjamin T. Tischner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the organ works of J.P.E Hartmann (1805-1900), an organist and composer who was at the center of the Romantic movement in Denmark. Hartmann, along with contemporaries Niels W. Gade and A.P. Berggreen, helped establish a musical style unique to Denmark during the Romantic era. This thesis analyzes this Danish musical style as it pertains to Hartmann’s compositions, defining what it means for this music to be uniquely Danish. In this regard, Hartmann’s organ works can be distinguished from other corners of the Romantic organ repertoire, especially the organ music being composed in Germany around the same time. …

Blended Learning Development In Mongolian K-12 Education: A Systematic Review And Psychometric Study Of Teacher Readiness, Batbold Bukhchuluun

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines blended learning (BL) in Asian K-12 education through a systematic review and an empirical validation study in Mongolia. The first study reviews peer-reviewed K-12 BL research published between 2000 and 2024 using PRISMA procedures. We analyzed 42 studies to identify publication trends, geographic representation, BL model adoption, articulation of physical and pedagogical design layers, implementation challenges, and reported outcomes. Findings indicate that BL research is concentrated in a limited number of countries, frequently employs flipped learning models, and often lacks detailed pedagogical specification. Common challenges include infrastructure limitations, teacher preparedness, and institutional support. The second study adapts …

Transcriptomic And Genomic Insights Into Nutrient Stress Responses And Subgenome Evolution In Chenopodium, Ashley Kathleen Marcheschi

Theses and Dissertations

Chenopodium is a diverse genus of nutritionally and ecologically important species in the Amaranthaceae family. This thesis investigates two outstanding questions in the genus: how Chenopodium quinoa responds transcriptionally to nutrient deficiency and how Australian Chenopodium species are related through their subgenomic ancestry and evolutionary history. First, we characterized transcriptomic responses of C. quinoa to deficiencies of twelve essential macro- and micronutrients across leaf and root tissues using RNA sequencing. Leaves showed the strongest responses under nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, and zinc deficiency, while roots responded more evenly across conditions. Recurring responses included suppression of photosynthesis, remodeling of translational machinery, reactive …

Developing An Understanding Of Concavity Built On Covariation, Jade E. Gregg

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated how six students developed a quantitative understanding of concavity founded in covariational reasoning through a series of task-based teaching interviews. A key finding was the importance of multivariational reasoning--the coordination of more than two variables--in helping students reason deeply about concavity in context. Common difficulties, including confusion about negative rates and overreliance on visual representations, served as productive opportunities for learning when addressed through carefully designed tasks and discussions. The findings extend existing frameworks of covariational reasoning and highlight instructional approaches that can support students in developing a robust, quantity-based understanding of concavity.

Property Tables For Thermally Perfect Gases At Low Pressure, Travis J. Moore, Matthew R. Jones

Faculty Publications

Tables giving gas properties at low pressure enable the efficient analysis of processes in which the gas is approximated as thermally perfect but not calorically perfect. In addition to specific enthalpy and specific internal energy, thermally perfect gas tables include special functions that depend only on temperature—relative pressure and relative specific volume. These functions may be used to determine pressure, volume, and temperature of thermally perfect gases undergoing hypothetical isentropic processes. However, the definitions of these functions included in widely used thermodynamics textbooks are vague, inconsistent, or incorrect. The intent of this work is to discuss common inaccuracies in the …

A Chorus Of Voices: Student And Teacher Shared Dialogical Experiences And Insights, Jennifer Anne Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations

Dialogue is inherently tied to learning, but as a secondary English Language Arts (ELA) classroom teacher it can be difficult to facilitate classroom dialogue that provides authentic learning opportunities for every student. I wanted to learn more about the student experience, so I implemented an action research study to increase my understanding of how students learn through dialogue. My research question was: How does collaborative languaging, to facilitate student-teacher interaction, lead to improved classroom mediation, authentic learning, dialogue, and development? I conducted transformative action research in my classroom, focusing on students enrolled in my general English 10 classes. In an …

The Effects Of Social Impact Mentoring On Women Seeking Employment, Adriano Santos Carneiro

Theses and Dissertations

Women seeking employment often face barriers such as limited professional networks, reduced access to career guidance, and lack of consistent support during the job-search process. This study examined the effects of a social impact mentoring program that connected women seeking employment with women professionals who served as mentors. Participants included 11 mentees who were seeking employment opportunities and 11 mentors who were employed or recently employed in professional roles. Using a mixed-methods pre-post design, the study collected quantitative survey data and open-ended responses before and after four virtual mentoring sessions. Mentee measures focused on confidence in securing employment and readiness …

Beyond Static Measures: The Predictive Validity And Classification Accuracy Of A Dynamic Assessment Of Decoding For Early Elementary, Bridgett Bakula

Theses and Dissertations

Early and accurate identification of children at risk for reading difficulty is essential to prevent long-term academic failure, yet traditional static assessments often struggle to distinguish between a true reading disorder and a lack of prior instruction. This is particularly evident in the early grades, where floor effects and cultural/linguistic biases limit the classification accuracy of traditional screeners. This study investigated the predictive validity and structural utility of the modifiability index of a dynamic assessment (DA) of decoding, administered in kindergarten. Unlike static measures that evaluate "already actualized" knowledge, DA measures a student's learning potential and modifiability, or the capacity …

問題を抱えた宣教師すら主役に変わる, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

困難を抱える宣教師を、個人面談などを通して少しずつ正常な状態へと導いていくことは、大きな時間と労力を要する働きです。伝道部会長は、ただでさえ多忙な職務の中で、こうした対応にかなりの時間を割かれ、伝道部全体を導くという本来の責任を果たす上で、大きな負担となっているのではないかと拝察いたします。

しかしながら、このような一対一の対応には、一つの見落とされがちな側面があるように思います。それは、支援を受ける宣教師を、常に「助けられる側」という受け身の立場に置き続けてしまうことです。その結果、本人の内側にある力が引き出されず、かえって成長の機会を狭めてしまっているのではないでしょうか。

そこで本提案では、発想を転換いたします。困難を抱える宣教師を「問題として対処する対象」としてではなく、今のありのままの状態で、他の宣教師の成長に貢献できる存在として位置づけ直すのです。他の宣教師を助けるという経験を通して、自分自身を見つめ直し、自分にも価値ある貢献ができるということを実感し、結果としてより主体的で生産的な宣教師へと成長していく――これが本提案の核にある考え方です。ここには、一人一人の宣教師の中に天与の可能性を信じる、信仰が必要とされます。

具体的なイメージとして、同じ住居に生活する４人の宣教師を例に考えてみます（もし２人だけなら、そのペア２つを電話でつなぐことも可能）。この４人全員を対象に、まずオリエンテーションを行います。その際に伝えるべき要点は次の４つであり、これらを参加者自身がしっかりと理解することが、やる気やスムーズな導入の鍵となります。一方的な説明ではなく、４人で話し合いながら共に学んでいく形を取ると、より効果的でしょう。

ここで特に大切にしたいのは、特定の一人の宣教師の「問題」に焦点を当てないことです。あくまで４人全員が互いに支え合う関係を築くことを目的とし、その中で、困難を抱えていた宣教師もまた、仲間の成長を後押しする大切な役割を担う――そのような、前向きで対等な関係性を作り出すことが、この提案の目指すところです。

When Even A Struggling Missionary Becomes The Hero, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

Guiding a struggling missionary back toward wellbeing—through one-on-one counseling and similar interventions—is demanding work that requires significant time and effort. I can only imagine how much of a mission president's already limited time is consumed by this kind of support, making it that much harder to fulfill the broader responsibility of leading an entire mission.

Yet this kind of one-on-one intervention has a drawback that is easy to overlook: it tends to keep the missionary receiving support permanently cast in the role of "the one being helped." As a result, the strength that already lies within that missionary often goes …

Data For Post-Retail Application Of Chitosan Coating And Uv-C Irradiation: Effects On Strawberry Shelf Life, Microbial Quality, And Consumer Acceptance, Jonathan Kershaw

ScholarsArchive Data

Food waste is a global issue with significant environmental, economic, and human health impacts. The largest share of household and retail food waste comes from fresh produce, much of which is still edible at the time of disposal. While previous work has investigated shelf-life extension technologies applied on freshly harvested produce, almost no studies have investigated the efficacy of these treatments when applied to post-retail produce. This study investigated the effect of UV-C exposure and chitosan coating on the quality, microbial load, and visual acceptance of post-retail strawberries. Strawberries were assigned to low dose UV-C, chitosan dip, or one of …

Science, Uncertainty, And Stewardship: Climate Change Viewpoints In Higher Education, Jamie Jensen, Isaiah Aduse-Poku

ScholarsArchive Data

This dataset supports a Q-methodology study of climate change viewpoints among undergraduate students at Brigham Young University. Participants were recruited from an introductory non-majors biology course during Fall 2025. The study examined how students organized climate-change views across scientific evidence, human causation, uncertainty, political beliefs, religious stewardship, moral responsibility, perceived agency, climate policy, and future risks.

Repetition As Ritual Structure: Sound, Movement, And Electrodermal Activity In A Hmong Shaman Ceremony, Maile Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationship between repetitive sound, physiological arousal, and embodied participation in a Hmong shamanic ritual. Drawing on scholarship about music, trance, absorption, repetition, and Hmong ritual journeying and communication, I consider how sonic layers such as chant, rattle and gong help structure ritual time and sustain the shaman's altered state. The project uses electrodermal activity (EDA) data from wearable sensors, video and audio recordings, and my own event coding of sonic and physical activity during a selected 30-minute section of a recorded Hmong shaman ceremony. By aligning EDA data with a timeline of chanting, rattling, gong playing, …

Religious Bias In Llms Is Significantly Understudied, Sheryl Carty, Nancy Fulda, Walter Reade

Faculty Publications

In the earlier years of development of LLMs, it was relatively easy to prompt an LLM to respond with toxic or biased statements about religion. Subsequent improvements in frontier models addressed many of the issues of bias and toxicity in general, including against religion. At the same time, the adoption and usage of these models has grown exponentially. Small and implicit biases, therefore, have a magnified overall impact. In this paper, we (1) briefly review previous efforts to measure religious bias in LLMs, (2) show, by reviewing over 12,000 papers dealing with bias in LLMs, that religious bias has been …

Interference Between Speaking And Computer Tasks In Senior Adults, Tyla K. Flake

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Multitasking is common in daily life. Previous studies have often relied on contrived tasks and utterances to explore divided attention and speech. The focus of the present study was on older adults performing everyday computer tasks while speaking naturally. Thirty participants aged 55 - 82 participated in speech-only, computer-only, and simultaneous speech and computer tasks to measure dual-task interference of the two activities. The speech task consisted of 60-second speech samples based on a list of procedural discourse prompts. Three computer tasks were completed with and without concurrent speech, one requiring data-entry and sorting and a text formatting task with …

The Role Of Complexity In Structural Transfer: A Corpus Study From Turkish And Bulgarian, Sarah Joy Russell

Theses and Dissertations

This study the explores the need to examine the increasingly varied methods of quantifying morphological complexity in regards to their ability to influence structural borrowing across languages, with particular attention to the distinction between enumerative complexity (enumeration of all of the morphemes and distinctions in a system) and integrative complexity (entropy-based calculation of the class distinctions of the system). While existing models in contact linguistics often assume that structurally simpler languages are more likely to serve as sources of grammatical transfer, such accounts typically rely on enumerative measures of complexity alone and do not fully account for the role of …

The Open Wiki Of Electrochemical Methods (Owem): A Community-Driven Educational Resource, Anderson Fuller, Devin Rappleye

Reviews, Analyses, and Instructional Studies in Electrochemistry (RAISE)

The traditional resources for learning electrochemical methods—textbooks, academic literature, and university coursework—remain essential but are limited in accessibility, update frequency, and practical usability. This paper introduces the Open Wiki of Electrochemical Methods (OWEM), an open-access, community-driven platform designed to complement these resources. OWEM organizes content into equations, definitions, methods, tutorials, and supplementary articles, with a heavy emphasis on experimental relevance. A case study on cyclic voltammetry demonstrates how OWEM consolidates foundational theory, lesser-known results, and practical guidance within a continuously maintainable framework to benefit the broader electrochemistry community.

Redesigning Our Curricula To Foster Career Readiness, Benjamin Rifkin

Russian Language Journal

Undergraduate majors are not engraved in stone; curricula have been adjusted and changed over the course of the history of higher education and now is the time to change our curricula once again. This article proposes a reconceptualization of the undergraduate major in Russian away from the framework of “coverage of the humanistic canon” to a framework focusing on the development of transferable or durable skills, i.e., skills that can be deployed in numerous employment contexts throughout an individual’s career trajectory to support career-readiness, in accordance with powerful frameworks offered by prominent educational organizations. This approach helps us support the …

Russian Language In An Interdisciplinary Setting: A Case Study, Foreign Area Studies At The United States Naval Academy, Joan Chevalier

Russian Language Journal

Russian language enrollments have been dropping in recent years at colleges and universities in the United States. In contrast to this national trend, the number of students studying Russian language at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) has remained robust over the past decade and is poised to increase in the near future as a relatively new interdisciplinary major, Foreign Area Studies (FAS), is expanded and revised. This paper traces recent developments at USNA that have led to the development and expansion of Foreign Area Studies, integrating language study into an interdisciplinary curriculum featuring courses related to nations and cultures …

What Do Learners Do With A Foreign Language After Their Studies? A Survey Of Alumni Of A Russian Summer Immersion Program, Dmitrii Pastushenkov, Liya Zalaltdinova, Jason Merrill

Russian Language Journal

Responding to concerns about the long-term value of foreign language education, this exploratory survey-based study examines how Russian language learners (N = 321) continued to use the language after completing a summer immersion program. The study investigates language use in personal and professional contexts and identifies resources alumni used, recommended, and needed to maintain proficiency. Although opportunities for conversational practice were limited, and interaction in Russian was one of the activities alumni needed but often viewed as unattainable, about 60% of participants continued using Russian at least occasionally. Among those employed full time, 24% used Russian frequently, primarily in …

Workforce Readiness And The Humanities: Building Internship Pathways In Slavic And East European Studies, Ani Kokobobo

Russian Language Journal

As workforce readiness becomes an increasingly central metric for evaluating academic programs, humanities disciplines, particularly small language and area studies fields such as Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (SEEES), face growing pressure to demonstrate measurable employment outcomes. Drawing on national and state-level workforce policy frameworks, employer competency data, and the author’s administrative experience as Dean of Liberal Arts, this article argues that SEEES programs are uniquely positioned to meet contemporary career readiness mandates without compromising their intellectual and civic missions. The article reframes SEEES not as an at-risk humanities field, but as a high-value incubator of precisely the competencies …

Russian For The Professions: Creating An M.A. Program In The Context Of Holistic Foreign Language Instruction, Angela Brintlinger, Andrei Cretu, Helen Myers, Emma Pratt, Larysa Stepanova

Russian Language Journal

This paper presents the design, implementation, and some preliminary outcomes of measures aiming at integrating career readiness into the Russian language program at Ohio State University through the creation of a “Russian for the Professions” (RFP) stand-alone M.A. degree. While the M.A. program is still relatively small, its courses serve a larger contingent of students who have achieved or aspire to higher language competency. The key component of the program comprises courses offering specialized language skills in business, cybersecurity, government and foreign affairs, information services, media, and translation. Career-focused curricular offerings are supplemented by programming offered in partnership with industry …

Spotlight: Resources For Listening Proficiency In Russian, Molly Godwin-Jones

Russian Language Journal

The Digital Resources Corner (DRC) offers reviews of new digital resources that could be beneficial in the teaching and/or learning of Slavic languages. It is intended for instructors looking for or evaluating different materials to use in the classroom.

An Integrative Approach To Professionalizing Russian Language Learning And Teaching, Victoria Hasko, Olga Thomason, Alexandra Shapiro

Russian Language Journal

This article proposes an integrative framework for embedding career readiness into advanced Russian language teaching. Drawing on the experience of a U.S. Russian Flagship Program, the authors argue that career readiness requires deliberate programmatic choices: a proficiency level sufficient for meaningful disciplinary engagement and study abroad immersion; a flexible open-architecture curriculum that admits interdisciplinarity into the core of the program; faculty preparation that makes embedded career advising possible; and institutional partnerships that give language work standing in professional contexts. Framed through the Connections standard of the World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages, the article positions interdisciplinary engagement not as an enrichment …

Book Review: Dynamic Teaching Of Russian: Games And Gamification Of Learning., Olesia Hubrich

Russian Language Journal

This review examines Dynamic Teaching of Russian: Games and Gamification of Learning, a collection of empirically grounded case studies on integrating games and creative activities into tertiary-level L2 Russian language instruction. The volume highlights the pedagogical value of gamified, student-centered approaches in enhancing linguistic proficiency and affective factors such as motivation, confidence, and engagement. While offering a wide range of innovative teaching practices, the volume also identifies gaps in research, particularly regarding game-based learning and diverse learner populations. Overall, the book is presented as a valuable resource for instructors and researchers seeking to incorporate play and gamification into Russian as …

Russian As A Lingua Franca In A Security Cooperation Context: Designing Career-Oriented Language Training Programs, Daniel Medford

Russian Language Journal

As Slavic language programs seek to align their curricula with workforce needs, the role of Russian and other Slavic languages in military and government service presents unique challenges and opportunities. This paper examines how linguistic training, particularly in Russian, can be better structured for students at American universities and colleges who wish to pursue government and security-related careers. Drawing on 30 interviews with native and non-native Russian speakers serving in the U.S. Army, this study explores the implications of using Russian as a lingua franca for U.S. military cooperation with former Soviet states. Given the political sensitivities surrounding the Russian …