Digital Commons Network^™

Embracing Language Diversity: An Exploration Of Elementary Teachers' Perception Of African American English, Manijeh Hart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Students of African descent often speak in a dialect that differs from the Dominant American English (DAE) dialect, known as African American English (AAE). Since this dialect is not considered mainstream, students who speak and write in this dialect may be at a disadvantage when being assessed on literacy skills and responding to literacy instruction. However, it is possible to address this issue by preparing and supporting teachers in recognizing AAE use in literacy activities and providing them with instructional strategies to support students who use AAE. The goal of this research was to investigate the perceptions that elementary school …

Let’S Talk About Quality: How Equitable Funding And Program Structure Impact Academic And Social Outcomes In Supplemental Education Programs, Inayah Ansari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although many studies have highlighted how high–quality supplemental education programs (early childhood education and after-school programs) help children and adolescents reach developmental milestones faster, very few studies focus on how programs are structured to create the quality that produces positive outcomes. In this paper, I define quality as equitable funding and program structure and interrogate how this conception of quality determines cognitive and social-emotional benefits, particularly for programs in New York City. Using fiscal data and study reviews, I illuminated the impact of budget cuts on programs and the importance of funding. Using a thematic analysis of six interviews conducted …

When College Is Not Working Out: Obstacles To Community College Completion, Elisabeth Lackner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation investigates what contributes to low community college completion rates, what college interventions may be working to support students, what are the experiences of the students, and how did the COVID-19 pandemic impact these dynamics. I am guided by the assumption that multi-dimensional inequalities including low level of social capital constitute a cumulative disadvantage for many students to be able to persist and to graduate. The dissertation includes quantitative and qualitative data types measuring inequalities outside and inside of college with two large student record data sets from one minority-serving open-access public community college and data from a student …

Navigating Climate Action: The River As Teacher For Eco-Literacy, Educational Regeneration And Creative Participation, Bibi (Silvina) Calderaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultures' engagements with land and its more-than-human elements reveal their attitudes toward these dimensions, spanning a spectrum from reciprocal to transactional practices. In time, these engagements form a body of knowledges that nurtures the culture and its land, or arrests their vital and diverse qualities. This research project aims to bring to light how the different ways of engaging with and relating to land are embedded in knowledge production, distribution and communication—in short, in general educational endeavors and their philosophies—to promote a better understanding of the principles of eco-literacy. Additionally, a purpose of this project is to provide insights into …

The Jamaica Now Leadership Council: A Study Of Stakeholder Participation In The Revitalization Of Downtown Jamaica, Queens, Melva M. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Urban revitalization in the United States has often been characterized by uneven community development, where marginalized communities bear the costs while receiving limited benefits. This dissertation examines how the dynamics of stakeholder participation impacts the practice of Community Economic Development (CED), focusing on the Jamaica Now Leadership Council (JNLC) as a case study. Formed to oversee the Jamaica Now Neighborhood Action Plan, the JNLC represents a model of inclusive, stakeholder-driven urban development aimed at addressing historical disinvestment and promoting equitable economic growth in Downtown Jamaica, Queens.

The study explores how power dynamics, stakeholder histories, and role expectations shape participation in …

A Historical Analysis Of Saturday Night Live's Engagement In American Presidential Politics, Isabel Fox

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In October 1975, Saturday Night Live began its journey of changing not only television but the ways in which Americans understand political discourse. When the production first aired it introduced the world to Chevy Chase’s Nixon impersonation and has continued that tradition with Will Ferrel’s George Bush, Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin, Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump—and many more. But between these comedic impersonations the show also introduced the world to a satirical newsroom in Weekend Update and hosted numerous politicians. From the way this all sounds it would seem as though Saturday Night Live is akin to network news and yet …

The Influence Of Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (I/Dd) Curriculum Content On Career Interests For Social Work Students, Sabretta G. Alford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines how curriculum content on Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (I/DD) impacts the career interests of social work students. With the growing demand for social workers proficient in I/DD services, it is crucial to understand how educational experiences shape career choices. Using a QUANT→Qual mixed-method approach, this quasi-experimental pre/post-test survey combined quantitative data (N 66 [experimental group]; N =103 [control group] and open-ended survey questions (N = 66 [experimental group]; N =103 [control group] from social work students.

The author-constructed survey assessed student attitudes, perceptions, preparedness, ability to identify I/DD, knowledge of I/DD, and willingness to practice with individuals …

The Elephant (And Donkey) In The Room: The Effects Of Political Ideology On Diversity Training Effectiveness, Luke P. Kayga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent years, the prevalence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) trainings in organizations has grown significantly (Wang et al., 2024). DEI trainings are typically designed with the purpose of educating organizational members on DEI-related content and promoting feelings of inclusion in the workplace (Devine & Ash, 2022). Much like many other types of organizational training efforts, the effectiveness of DEI trainings is contingent on a variety of input factors. One such factor that has been extensively covered in the broader training literature but relatively understudied in DEI training research is trainee characteristics. Since DEI trainings are values-based, ethically prescriptive …

Tracing Reverberations: Vietnamese Refugee Mothers' Adaptations To Complex Structural Forces And Intergenerational Engagements, Kim Khanh Nguyen-Nalpas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The main purpose of this study is to learn how refugee mothers adapt to hierarchical systems of oppression with agency and resistance. Global refugee forums and decades of past research on refugees have identified the importance of increasing agency to best support refugees as they resettle. Previous research by the author has demonstrated that refugee mothers model resistance to oppressive systems which has implications for children who witness this resistance. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 Vietnamese refugee mothers to explore their mothering practices, how they adapted given the socio-political forces shaping their lives, and how these adaptations reverberated through …

Lishmah: An Exploration Of Syntactic Ambiguity And Biblical Exegesis Through The Jewish Calendar Year, Shani Tzoref

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lishmah (Hebrew, meaning “for its own sake”) is a digital resource for exploring syntactic ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible and traditional Jewish biblical interpretation. Hosted on CUNY Manifold, it currently features twelve curated cases of syntactic ambiguity, each linked to a month of the Hebrew calendar, accompanied by annotated medieval Jewish commentaries.

The project employs digital tools for data compilation, presentation, and user interaction. While in its early stages, Lishmah aims to contribute to digital humanities by bridging traditional close reading with computational approaches and highlighting discourse analysis in biblical studies.
Future plans include developing Lishmah into a collaborative research …

Proximity In Pixels: The Moderating Roles Of Structural And Psychological Distance On Behavioral Leadership Effectiveness, Ethan J. Ray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With a sharp increase in virtual working arrangements in recent years, there is a distinct need to reevaluate what constitutes effective leadership at a distance. Although research on virtual leadership exists, it has often lacked a focus on specific leader behaviors and the psychological intricacies unique to virtual work settings. The present study examines followers' perceived effectiveness of two enduring leadership behavior categories: task-oriented and relationship-oriented. Utilizing dyadic distance theory, the study tested whether perceived effectiveness of these behaviors is contingent not only on the tangible effects of virtual work, referred to as structural distance, but also on the intangible …

Echoes Of Chinese Tradition: A Guide To Mandarin Diction Through Fixed-Ipa And Traditional Phonology, With Insights Into Intertwined Intonation Contours Of Chinese-American Art Songs, Xiaoming Tian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents a comprehensive guide to Mandarin Chinese diction and articulation, rooted in traditional Chinese phonology and articulated through Fixed-International Phonetic Alphabet (Fixed-IPA). It unfolds in two primary segments, with the initial section delving into the historical underpinnings and phonetic nuances of traditional Chinese opera singing. This inquiry not only systematically introduces Chinese pronunciation rules but also illuminates the influence of traditional Chinese opera elements on contemporary Chinese art songs and operas. This part also reflects upon the significant strides made in Chinese language Romanization since the Wade-Giles system's introduction in the 19th century, discussing how it facilitated literacy …

Constructing A Parameterized Stimuli Space Suitable To Induce Controlled Changes In Human And Machine Perceptual Systems, Andrew Frankel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditional computer vision applications focus on objective tasks, such as object detection, classification, or segmentation. Much of human experience is inherently subjective, such as our personal response to artwork. Individualized experiences are challenging to replicate in a controlled laboratory environment, as those experiences depend on the unique history and internal models of the observer. This work presents a technique to construct a 2-dimensional parameterized stimuli space suitable to induce controlled changes in the perceptual systems of both human and machine observers. Our contributions are threefold:

1. Using a balanced dataset of 8,800 fine art images spanning 11 art movements and 88 …

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Essays On The Impact Of Monetary Policy Shocks, Rubaiyat Tasnim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters.

Chapter 1 - Households’ Balance Sheet Adjustment in Response to Monetary Policy Shocks.

Household’s balance sheet and housing decision have played crucial role in understanding the transmission of monetary policy in the last two decades. Monetary policy can affect the broader economy through household finances via the income channel and the wealth channel, and especially of they are debt or liquidity constrained. This chapter studies the unhedged interest rate exposure (URE) following Auclert (2019) for households using micro-level data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for the years 1994 to 2012. Using the URE, I …

Studies On The Synthesis, Function, And Properties Of Troponoids, John-Charles A. Baucom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Troponoids are a unique class of non-benzenoid aromatic compounds with a wide range of demonstrated applications in pharmaceuticals and molecular sensing. The cycloheptatrienone scaffold possesses a noteworthy degree of tunability as a function of ring oxygenation. This manuscript describes our efforts toward a better understanding of the physical consequences of the scaffold to better utilize the motif. Chapter the first discusses our efforts at elucidating the mechanism of troponoid inhibition of the Hepatitis B virus reverse transcriptase RNAse H enzymatic domain. Using homology modeling in conjunction with traditional in vitro assays we were able to establish the likely mechanism of …

Making Waves: Comfort Women Justice Movements Across Generations, Julia A. Jacobellis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1932 and 1945 an estimated 200,000 women across the globe were coerced into becoming comfort women for the Japanese military. As comfort women they were forced to prostitute themselves to soldiers, and endured physical, psychological and emotional torture. While comfort stations were liberated in 1945 with the end of World War II, the Japanese government has yet to formally apologize for their treatment of comfort women, and has failed to meet the demands of survivors and their families who seek reconciliation and justice. The global leaders of these movements for reconciliation are institutions and organizations in South Korea, China, …

Vote For The Ccrb In 2025: A Data Visualization Analysis Of Police Oversight Under Three Mayoral Administrations, Thomas Fagin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project examines the relationship between mayoral administration and police oversight in New York City through an analysis of Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) data from 2002 to 2024. Using interactive data visualizations, historical context, and annotations that delineate the trends within the data, the project illuminates how mayoral administrations have influenced the handling and outcomes of civilian complaints against police officers. This influence can be seen in policing policy as well as appointments to the board itself. The goal is to educate voters about the CCRB and the direct impact their choice for mayor has on police accountability through …

Creating School: Writing And Reading Texts For Children, Carlyn Kolker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children can come to understand themselves and their lived experience through fiction. Yet writing, reading, and interpreting fiction for children are all projects that challenge society’s commonly-understood beliefs about childhood, literature, and even the category of children’s literature itself.

This capstone project uses a cross-disciplinary approach to examine the notion of what it means to write fictional texts directed at children, and in particular, how fiction presents the deeply-contested American institution of school and the school environment. This project consists of two parts. The first is a critical consideration of how contemporary literary texts directed at children portray conditions of …

The Material Folklore Of Occult Zines, Jacqueline G. Coffey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone is a paper on and catalog of contemporary occult zines. Through the collecting, arranging, and analyzing of about one hundred zines, I stipulate that these zines draw from the rich and rebellious histories of both the occult and zines. With the dominating influence of multi-industry corporations on our lives, these often independently produced and handmade texts are evidence of the mystical and mysterious forces with which we still grapple. Not only do zines showcase the breadth of spiritual possibility, they can also be used to integrate new metaphysical awareness into mundane reality.

The catalog is also intended to …

Improving Low-Resource Translation With Finite State Grammars, Nicholas J. Uva

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scarcity of training data continues to pose a problem for the development of neural machine translation systems for low-resource languages. This study develops a method for the incorporation of linguistic information into the training of neural machine translation models for low-resource languages, using morphological grammars created using finite state transducers. This study explores the benefits, historical background, and effectiveness of this approach. This study incorporates morphological tags into a pre-trained multilingual neural machine translation model using a dual encoder structure. This study finds an improvement in performance in the Irish-English translation scenario. This method offers promising results with low computational …

Characterizing The Nutrition-Gut Microbiome-Host Physiology Axis To Examine Flexibility In A Fruit-Specialist Primate, Nina Beeby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nutrition and, increasingly, microbiota are recognized in shaping all aspects of animal behavioral ecology and physiology. Since diet and nutrition shape not only animal physiology but also gut microbiota, and these microbiota serve as suppliers of and competitors to host nutrition, this raises questions of how these complex nutritional and microbial environments synergistically affect animal physiology. Examining this nutrition-gut microbiome-host physiology axis has immense potential to unveil how these intricate relationships contribute to animals’ responses to environmental change at multiple scales. Most of what we know about primate responses to environmental change is based upon studies examining one or few …

Tracing The Sources Of Nitrogen In Submarine Groundwater Discharge And Primary Producers In The Great South Bay Estuary, Nia H. Rene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The primary aim of this research was to elucidate the impact of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) and septic effluent on coastal primary producers in the Great South Bay (GSB). The study focused on three main objectives: assessing the impact of precipitation patterns on SGD, tracing nitrogen sources into the GSB, and determining the impact of these nitrogen sources on coastal primary producers. The research revealed that current precipitation patterns significantly influence SGD across different seasons, highlighting the seasonal variability in groundwater discharge and its implications for nutrient loading in coastal waters. A suite of tracers was employed to identify and …

The U.S. Grand Strategy Toward The Pacific Islands, Angela Vasovic

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The United States has recently placed its relations with the Pacific Islands, fourteen small states far out in the Pacific Ocean, on its high-priority diplomatic agenda. Although it has been interacting with the islands since the 1800s and had heavily relied on their cooperation during World War II, the importance of the islands waned in the eyes of the United States in the late twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century as the country turned its attention to other regions of the world. However, in recent years, the U.S. has recognized the need to strengthen relations with the …

Synchronizing Work And Teaching Practices With The Spatial Dna Of Distributed Work And Learning, Manju Aishwarya Adikesavan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Phygitality, the seamless and synergistic integration of physical and digital realms, is an indispensable and irrevocable part of contemporary office-based work. Phygitality facilitates spatially and temporally distributed or multi-local working where employees work from diverse locations such as their home, office, and third places at any time of day or night. It also makes nonterritorial working at temporary workspaces accessed on a session-by-session basis possible.

This dissertation examines how phygital, multi-local, and nonterritorial working reshape individual and group work behaviors, organizational spatial practices, work-centric settings, non-work-centric settings, neighborhoods, cities, and regions. The Spatial DNA of Distributed Work encapsulates a conceptual …

The Perspectives Of Play Advocates On Children’S Unstructured Play In Turkey, Bengi Sullu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Convention on the Rights of the Child has established children’s rights to non- discrimination, development, participation and the observance of their best interests. With this recognition, there has been a growing global interest in acknowledging play as a right. Yet unstructured play, in which children can choose when, where and how to play, with control over their play, has not received the same attention, support and investment as organized, structured play (UNCRC General Comment 17, 2013). The way adults perceive and support play shapes the play opportunities that are available to children (Bianquin, 2018; Göl-Güven, 2017). Additionally, institutions and …

A Meta-Analysis Of Intimate Partner Violence Treatment Programs: The Role Of Risk-Need-Responsivity In Treatment Effectiveness, Irina Fanarraga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nationally, it is estimated that over 17 million people experience victimization by an intimate partner every year. Additionally, individuals who perpetuate intimate partner violence (IPV) often have high rates of re-offending, potentially as high as 60%. IPV Treatment Programs (ITPs) are interventions designed to reduce recidivism among intimate partner violent individuals by changing their thinking and behaviors, ultimately leading to increased victim safety. Although there is significant evidence to suggest that correctional treatment programs can reduce re-offending, the literature on ITPs is less clear about their effectiveness in reducing recidivism among participants. Furthermore, while other correctional interventions have taken more …

Where The Landscape Inspires The Lines: Python-Based Workbooks And Digital Tools For Reading Yoshino Ki, Miaoling Xue

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Where the Landscape Inspires the Lines (https://yoshinoki.info/) explores the intersection of premodern Japanese literature and digital humanities (DH) through an innovative online platform for reading, annotating, and coding. Centered on Yoshino ki 吉野記 (A Record of Yoshino), a seventeenth-century Japanese poetic travelogue authored by the poet and courtier Asukai Masaaki 飛鳥井雅章 (1611–1679), this project offers an interactive and immersive experience designed to meet the academic and research needs of a diverse group of scholars and students while advocating for a multilingual approach that challenges anglophone-centric biases often found in DH. To ensure consistency, the project uses Yoshino ki as a …

Vertex-Based Analysis Of Cerebral Blood Flow And Fractional Amplitude Of Low-Frequency Fluctuations (Cbf-Falff) Coupling In Moderate-To-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury During The First Year Post-Injury, Vaidehi Hemkumar Patel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is known to involve damage in the neurovascular unit. TBI may disrupt the brain’s neurovascular coupling–the relationship between cerebral blood flow and neural activity–that can lead to cognitive and functional impairments. This study attempted to non-invasively investigate neurovascular coupling in patients with moderate to severe TBI (msTBI) during the first year post-injury using a combined metric of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), a proxy for spontaneous neural activity. Using arterial spin labeling (ASL) and functional MRI sequences, CBF and fALFF were measured in 29 msTBI patients 3-, 6- and 12-months …

Freedom Dreams Of Young Black Boys: A Qualitative Study Among Black Male Elementary School Learners, Lamar Ok

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work conducted in this research builds on the work of many who have also worked to provide a platform to illuminate the voices of Black folks, especially Black boys. This research is not the first to make the case that Black boys are as fully human as anyone else, and yet they have internalized the white gaze, even as they are proud of their blackness, their color, their race, their culture. However, there exists limited research with Black boys in elementary school, particularly before the 5th grade (before 10 years of age).

This project was about freedom dreaming—a collective …

Deuce Redemption: Grindhouse Cinema, Moral Panic, And Urban Renewal, Robert Brenner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you consult standard histories of the “redevelopment” of 42^nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, AKA “the Deuce,” you will read that it was filled with nothing but criminals and pornographers, that decent people avoided it at all costs, and the only way the block could be “saved” was by seizing it via eminent domain, evicting all the current tenants, and replacing them with Disney and its fellow entertainment corporations.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a more nuanced alternative to these standard histories. I will argue that the Deuce was a lower-class, multiracial, queer entertainment …