Digital Commons Network^™

A Constructive Engagement Between Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy And Latin American & Latine Liberatory Philosophy, Alessandro R. Moscaritolo Palacio

Comparative Philosophy

In this paper, I bring into dialogue a movement in Latin American social and political philosophy – which I have named Latin American and Latine Liberatory Philosophy – and a Western, or more precisely global North, philosophical movement sometimes called Ordinary Language Philosophy. By ‘Latin American and Latine Liberatory Philosophy’, I refer to a movement, adumbrated at the dawn of the 19^th century and developed during the 20^th century, whose guiding theme is the political, social, and cultural liberation of Latin America (and global South peoples more generally). By ‘Ordinary Language Philosophy’, on the other hand, I refer …

International Collaboration To Explore Elements For An Effective Residential Childcare Workforce, Justyna Siemionow, Patrick M. Tyler, W. Alex Mason, Deogratias Musoke, Maia Ordonez, Jaime A. Gomez-Blaya, Joseph G. Grzywacz

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Residential childcare workers provide critical support to vulnerable children around the world. Building and maintaining a qualified residential childcare workforce is challenged by myriad forces, the foremost of which is recruiting and retaining staff for valuable work often misaligned with available compensation; making individual qualifications at hiring; ongoing training; supervision; and data support systems to monitor performance critical for quality care. This study explored the similarities and differences among these essential elements of staffing across distinct programs: Youth Education Centers (YEC) in Poland, CiudadEscuela Muchachos (CEMU) in Spain, and the Boys Town Family Home Program (BTFHP) in the United States. …

Varona, Federico, San Jose State University

Emeritus and Retired Faculty Biographies

USA:

University of Kansas, Major: Organizational Communication. Minor: Intercultural Communication, 1991 Ph.D.

University of Kansas, Major: Organizational Communication Minor: Intercultural Communication, 1988, M.A. [M.A. Thesis: A Comparative Study of Communication Satisfaction in Two Guatemalan Companies]

FRANCE:

Center AudioVisuel Recherche et Communication, Lyon, France, Audiovisual Communication.1977 Diplome

SPAIN:

Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain, Major: Theology, 1976 Licenciado [Thesis: De Carl Rogers a la Pedagogía de la Fe]

Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain. Major: Psychology. Minor: Clinical and Educational Psychology, 1976 Diplomado

GUATEMALA:

Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala, Psychology, 1972-1974

Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala, Theology, 1972-1974 …

The Relationship Between Hindrance Demands And Work Engagement: The Moderating Role Of Resilience, Adoré Davis

Master's Theses

The coronavirus pandemic decreased work engagement globally due to increased hindrance demands. Many organizations were motivated to increase work engagement, which is positively correlated with beneficial organizational outcomes. The intention of this study is to examine if personal resources like resilience moderate the relationship between hindrance demands and work engagement. Hindrance demands are refined from job demands and hindrance stressors, which are stressors that impede progress in employees. Resilience is a personal resource correlated with pro-social behavior, internal locus of control, and higher levels of empathy. Resilience as a personal resource has mainly been studied as a predictor of work …

Latticeanalytics: Strut-Level Visualization And Inspection Of Additively Manufactured Lattice Structures, Haichao Miao, Saurabh Narain, Vuthea Chheang, Garrett Hooten, Raiyan Seede, Pavol Klacansky, Kaila Morgen Bertsch, Gabe Guss, Brian Giera, Peer Timo Bremer

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Additive manufacturing (AM) is revolutionizing the production of custom components with complex internal geometries, essential for high-performance applications in diverse fields such as medicine and defense. These AM parts optimize strength while minimizing weight by utilizing internal lattice structures consisting of large quantities of small interconnected struts. However, the complexity of these structures, combined with the challenges of using X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT) data, makes validation of part reliability difficult. This ultimately inhibits the development of novel parts for our collaborating material scientists. We introduce LatticeAnalytics, a novel framework specifically designed for visual inspection of defects in these lattice structures. …

Evaluating Demand-Responsive Scheduling In Public Transportation Service Offerings To Retirement Communities, Steven D. Silver

Mineta Transportation Institute

This project addresses alternatives to fixed schedule local transportation service offerings to members of retirement communities. The project design measures the effects of the contrast between fixed schedule (Fixed) service and demand-responsive services (DRT) in retirement communities in Santa Clara County that are closely matched in demographic profiles and geographic location. The research team investigates the effects of scheduling alternatives in a diary format with a within-person variable of four recent trips. The measure of public transportation usage under the Fixed schedule and DRT service offerings is supplemented by a measure of subjective well-being (STS) for each trip—in other words, …

Understanding Residential Development In A High-Quality Transit Area (Hqta): An Application Of Deep Learning, Dohyung Kim

Mineta Transportation Institute

Considerable research addresses the dynamics between land use and public transportation, including the impacts of transit systems on urban development and vice versa. However, this research has underestimated the heterogeneity of contributing factors to urban developments near transit by property type: vacant lot and occupied property. That is, what drives development in vacant lots differs from what drives development in already-occupied property. A lack of comprehensive data that differentiates development records based on the type of property is one explanation for this research gap. This project fills this research gap by employing a deep learning algorithm and separately examining the …

Roadside Asset Extraction From Mobile Lidar Point Cloud, Yushin Ahn, Riadh Munjy, Stephen Choi

Mineta Transportation Institute

Mobile LiDAR systems are powerful tools that help us map roads and their surroundings in 3D with great speed and precision. The data provided by these systems support urban planning efforts, digital mapping, transportation infrastructure maintenance, and more. This report presents a comprehensive workflow for roadside asset extraction using Mobile Terrestrial Laser Scanning (MTLS) data, focusing on road lane detection, cross-section slope analysis, and point cloud classification. Roadside asset extraction is the identification and classification of roadside features like signs and poles. The dataset, acquired using a high-resolution mobile LiDAR system, contains over 5.7 billion points (pieces of data) across …

Anticolonialism And Qualitative Methods For Culture-Centered Interventions, Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Ambar Basu, Satveer Kaur-Gill, Debalina Dutta, Mahuya Pal, Iccha Basnyat, Selina Metuamate, Venessa Pokaia, Phoebe Elers, Indranil Mandal, Rabindranath Mandi, Pankaj Baskey, Devalina Mookerjee, Shaunak Sastry, Jaime Robb, Andrew Carter

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In this essay, we a collective of Indigenous, Black, and migrant Global South scholars engaged in experiments with the culture-centered approach (CCA) draw on our lived experiences amidst struggles against land grab, neoliberal extractivism, and capitalist exploitation to outline a framework for qualitative methods as anticolonial politics. We begin by exploring the interplays of colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism that have shaped the origins and uses of qualitative methods toward serving extractive agendas of global capital. This critique serves as the basis for outlining the key principles of the CCA, turning to voice, storytelling, and embodied action as the basis …

Seeing Bias Through Eye Movements: Investigating Empathy And Engagement With Authentic And Altered Refugee Imagery, Reem Albaghli, Akshay Sunil Gurnaney, Nada Attar

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study investigates perceptual biases in responses to Syrian and Ukrainian refugee images using human-computer interaction (HCI) techniques. We hypothesized that media portrayals might shape empathy and influence both biases and donation behavior. Participants viewed both authentic and face-swapped images, with eye-tracking data capturing pupil size and decision-making patterns. In Experiment 1, participants' eye-tracking data and donation behavior indicated higher engagement and donations for authentic images, suggesting a preference for unaltered images without ethnicity-based bias. Experiment 2 explored this further by presenting cropped refugee faces alongside neutral or intellectual art, asking participants to choose the art that best matched each …

Understanding User Behaviors: Impact Of A 28-Day Intervention On Screen Time And Problematic Internet Use, Cade T. Campigli

Master's Theses

This thesis examines a 28-day self-monitoring intervention to reduce problematic internet use among undergraduate Instagram users. A quasi-experimental factorial mixed design with a repeated measures component was used, with participants split into an experimental group (daily Instagram screen time logging) and a control group (reporting Instagram interactions). Problematic Internet use was measured using the Generalized Problematic Internet Use Scale 2 (GPIUS2). Results showed no reduction in problematic internet use in the experimental group compared to the control, nor a correlation between screen time changes and problematic internet use. However, the experimental group showed a modest decrease in mean screen time …

All Eyes On Me: Security And Preventative Measures In The Era Of Shoplifting, Clarissa Guevarra

Master's Theses

The passing of CA bills ranging from AB 1779 to SB 1416, and Proposition 36 aims to combat a supposed rise in retail theft, particularly denoting the increase in organized retail theft. This research investigates the accuracy of mainstream narratives surrounding retail theft, focusing on the various security strategies adopted by major retailers—namely, Walmart and Target stores—in the San Francisco Bay Area. The study aims to analyze the different types of security (human and physical), and their efficacy, and to envision alternative strategies to address theft beyond the adoption of punitive security strategies. Using a visual ethnographic approach, supplemented with …

Replicating Vignoles Et Al. Results On Multidimensional Self-Construal: Comparing The United States, East Asia, Southeast Asia, And Latin America, Jon Lorenz A. Lim

Master's Theses

Contemporary research on self-construal indicates that people define and perceive themselves either as independent or interdependent. Self-construal scales have become the most common method to quantitatively measure both types of self-construal across the United States, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Multidimensional measures of the self tend to be more accurate in defining the self than earlier dichotomous scales. In general, European Americans and Latin Americans perceived themselves as independent and East and Southeast Asians as interdependent. In the current study, undergraduate European American, East Asian American, Southeast Asian American, and Latin American students from San Jose State University …

Superconducting Quantum Chip Design And Simulation, James F. Saslow

Master's Theses

This work presents a comprehensive analytical and simulation-based study of superconducting quantum chip architectures, spanning both 2D planar and 3D-integrated designs. We first design and simulate a planar quantum chip layout using Qiskit Metal, which is imported into Ansys HFSS (High Frequency Structure Simulator) to construct a 3D model and perform electromagnetic simulations. A detailed analysis using Driven Modal, Eigenmode, Magnetostatic, and Q3D Capacitance Extraction solvers ensures our simulations accurately reflect physical behavior. The results are validated against analytical models from microwave engineering. pyEPR (Python Energy Participation Ratio) is used to extract key quantum metrics, including eigenfrequencies, quality factors, decoherence …

Contracts, Communication, And Contextual Integrity: A Case Study About Student Data Use In Higher Education, Joseph Fessehaye

Dissertations

This case study examines the contractual agreements between the University of Missouri System and the California State University System with the Educational Advisory Board (EAB), focusing on how these contracts align with institutional student data privacy policies. The research utilizes a Policy Document Analysis approach and explores both universities’ strategic plans, student data privacy guidelines, and the third-party agreements with EAB, using a Contextual Integrity framework to analyze how student data is managed and protected. Through the analysis of these documents, this dissertation investigates whether the flow of student data within the context of these contracts meets institutional privacy standards …

Healing Circulos(Circles): Putting Our Educator's Mask First, Janet Martinez-Angeles

Dissertations

Educators play a pivotal role in supporting students throughout their educational journeys. In addition to academic instruction, they provide vital guidance for students' social, emotional, and personal development. They work tirelessly to help students navigate the complexities of education and life, often while shouldering multiple responsibilities and roles beyond the classroom. This dynamic contributes to high attrition rates and weakens the educational system. Much like the familiar safety instructions on an airplane, where passengers are reminded to put on their oxygen masks before assisting others, educators must be given the space, resources, and support to tend to their well-being before …

Early Care And Education Systems In The United States Of America: Voices Of The Past, Present, And Future, Timothy Harper

Dissertations

This mixed-methods study centers the voices, knowledge, and leadership of Black and Indigenous women working in Early Care and Education (ECE) while tracing how racism, sexism, and classism have shaped the field from colonization to the present day. Twenty in-depth interviews with sixteen Black and Indigenous educators across the United States are paired with secondary analyses of national workforce data to create a multilayered portrait of their professional realities. Grounded in Black feminist thought and Indigenous desire-based inquiry, the analysis surfaces six inter-locking themes: (a) enduring structural barriers that depress wages and limit advancement, (b) the day-to-day resilience that sustains …

Resilience In Crisis: How Bipoc Educators Navigated The Challenges Associated With Covid-19, Racial Awakening, And The Move To Online Learning, Jannet Galicia Castrejon

Dissertations

An unprecedented number of BIPOC teachers exited the profession since June 2020 largely due to the challenges posted by the COVID-19 pandemic (Doan et al., 2024). This study aimed to investigate ways these educators coped with the heavy toll of the converging pandemic(s) by asking what, if anything, sustained them? Participants provided individual and group testimonios and shared snapshots of what it was like to teach and exist during this time via the photovoice methodology and reflected on the challenges and sources of support. BIPOC teachers described the following challenges: difficulty connecting with kids, first-hand and vicarious trauma, increased workload, …

Affective Polarization In Latin America, Juan A. Moraes, Sergio Béjar

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Studies on the determinants and consequences of affective polarization have proliferated in the past decade, focusing mostly on the US and Western European countries. Empirical and anecdotal evidence presented in this chapter, however, suggests that such a phenomenon is also prevalent in many Latin American countries, which may have important consequences for the stability and survival of democracy in a region where partisan institutions tend to be weak. In this chapter, we present a critical review of the scant literature on affective polarization in Latin America. We then carefully analyze levels of partisan affective polarization (PAP) and leader affective polarization …

Sjsu Erfa News, Summer 2025, San Jose State University, Emeritus And Retired Faculty Association

Emeritus and Retired Faculty Association (ERFA) Newsletter

Volume 38, No 4

An Ambient Nox Reduction Reactor System With And Without Forced Air, Hamid Rahai, Rylan Moffit, Komal Gada, Jeremy Bonifacio

Mineta Transportation Institute

Ambient nitrogen oxide (NOX) is one of the main ingredients involved in the formation of ground-level ozone (smog), which contributes to global warming and the formation of particulates in the atmosphere and causes respiratory illnesses, especially in children, older adults, and people with lung diseases. Investigations on adding titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles to the paint used on concrete surfaces such as buildings and its potential in reducing ambient NOX concentration have provided opportunities for the research and development of methods for passive control and filtration of the ambient NOX. The present research used numerical geometrical optimization to identify an optimized …

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Application For Port Drayage Truck: Integrated Transportation And Energy Modeling, Shams Tanvir, Emu Ghosh

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report investigates the viability of hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs) for port drayage applications, focusing on both energy modeling and economic feasibility. Port drayage—trucking operations that move goods a short distance to and from ports—is a key part of freight logistics and the critical movement of goods in American communities. This project developed a microscopic energy consumption model using second-by-second activity data from 38 Class 8 diesel drayage trucks operating in Southern California. The model emulated FCEV operations and determined an average hydrogen fuel consumption of 0.15 kg/mile across 749 trips. This data informed a levelized cost of …

Co-Designed Resources To Improve Sleep Health In Young Shiftworkers: A Qualitative Study, Alexandra E. Shriane, Grace E. Vincent, Sally A. Ferguson, Charlotte C. Gupta, Tracy Kolbe-Alexander, Madeline Sprajcer, Cassie J. Hilditch, Robert Stanton, Matthew J.W. Thomas, Jessica L. Paterson, Jamie Marino, Gabrielle Rigney

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Introduction: Shiftwork contributes to poor sleep and circadian disruption, leading to adverse health outcomes. With a high number of young adults (18–25 years) engaging in shiftwork, exposure to these health challenges can occur from early adulthood. Therefore, there is an urgent need for age- and career-stage-appropriate resources focused on sleep health to mitigate poor health outcomes as early as possible. Given the absence of such resources, this study aimed to develop tailored, evidence-based sleep health materials for young shiftworkers. Methods: A participatory approach was employed, with co-designers (n = 48) attending 1–2 online workshops to develop sleep health resources for …

Explainable Use Of Foundation Models For Job Hiring, Vishnu S. Pendyala, Neha Bais Thakur, Radhika Agarwal

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Automating candidate shortlisting is a non-trivial task that stands to benefit substantially from advances in artificial intelligence. We evaluate a suite of foundation models such as Llama 2, Llama 3, Mixtral, Gemma-2b, Gemma-7b, Phi-3 Small, Phi-3 Mini, Zephyr, and Mistral-7b for their ability to predict hiring outcomes in both zero-shot and few-shot settings. Using only features extracted from applicants’ submissions, these models, on average, achieved an AUC above 0.5 in zero-shot settings. Providing a few examples similar to the job applicants based on a nearest neighbor search improved the prediction rate marginally, indicating that the models perform competently even without …

Santa, Socials, And Secrets: Hard Cases For Epistemic Rights, Étienne Brown, Rebecca Chan

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In The Right to Know, Lani Watson forcefully argues in favor of recognizing epistemic rights to all humans. In this paper, we apply Watson’s framework to three hard cases. First, we consider interpersonal relationships and suggest that there is room to explore how epistemic rights bear on, e.g., whether parents can permissibly lie to or mislead their children by asserting the existence of Santa Claus. Second, we turn to social media platforms and contend that Watson’s framework is compatible with contrasting moderation policies and transparency requirements. Third, we examine a foundational case of legal ethics—the buried bodies case—which raises the …

Telling The Library’S Story: A Step-By-Step Tutorial For Using Data Visualization To Show Impact On Teaching And Learning, David Vickers Loertscher, Michelle Young

Learning Hub

This tutorial introduces school librarians to the use of data visualization tools for documenting and communicating their impact on teaching and learning. By leveraging accessible platforms like Google Forms and Google Sheets, the authors demonstrate how librarians can build dashboards and real-time visual reports to showcase co-teaching, instructional collaboration, and student engagement. The tutorial features real-world examples, highlights common data sources already available to librarians, and argues that dynamic visual storytelling is a powerful alternative to traditional library statistics.

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 …

Unraveling The Enigma Of Classification Of Synthetic And Genuine Information Using Machine Learning And Explainable Ai, Vishnu S. Pendyala

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

There is a preponderance of AI-generated text everywhere today. Literature shows that there has been considerable success in detecting such text. This paper uses explainable AI (XAI) techniques to get insights into the workings of the machine learning models used to classify synthetic text. In detecting such text, this work analyzes synthetic and genuine information from visualization and explainability perspectives. The text is converted into vector embeddings using Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach (RoBERTa). Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) are used for visualization and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used for classification. Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME), SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), and …

Sunrise At The Salton Sea: Environmental Justice, Land Use Change, And Hydrosocial Dynamics Of Solar Energy Transitions In The Imperial Valley, California, Dustin Mulvaney, James J.A. Blair, Alida Cantor

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

California's Imperial Valley, with lithium-rich geothermal brines, extensive flat agricultural fields with abundant desert sunshine, and access to transmission lines, is a leading case to explore interconnected themes around just energy transitions. Despite being the poorest county in California and one of the smallest, Imperial already provides 15% of the state’s solar electricity, and the region as a whole represents on the order of 25% of the state’s electric power capacity. This paper brings to light frictions over solar energy development that have emerged over the history of solar power development in the southern Salton Sea region. It describes the …

Volume 151, Issue 151, 2018, Megan Alfaro, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ahmed Moneim, Keenan Norris, Meg Tinsley, T.C. Boyle, Willy Lizarraga, Sophie Anne Berti, Sativa January, Susan Lowell, Brian Barrientez Ii, Steve H. Vu, Ellen Bass, James K. Zimmerman, Cb Follett, Joyce Schmid, James Brasfield, Meredith Davies Hadaway, Gustavo Hernandez, Marin Nelson, Silvia Bonilla, Katherine Morgan, Tommy Mouton, Sally Ashton, Anna Bernstein, Genevieve Deguzman, Suzanne Rico, Peyton Harvey, William Finnegan, Margaret Mcmullan, Don George, Clare Frank, Grace Schaffer, Robert D. Kirvel, Kelly Grogan, Kelley Jhung, Marisa Murrow, Terry Phimister, Sharon Simonson, Susan Shillinglaw, Talia Adry, Noelle Brada-Williams

Reed Magazine

No abstract provided.