Digital Commons Network^™

From Evolution To Revolution: Narrowing The Technological Skills Gap Of Accounting Graduates, Geraldo Vasquez, Frank Manzi, Mark Martinelli, Cynthia Scarinci

Journal of Global Education and Research

A growing number of firms have cited the lack of technological skills that college graduates entering the accounting profession exhibit, raising concerns about their ability to serve clients effectively. Yet accounting graduates are not exposed to new technologies in the classroom or on the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam. The CPA Evolution initiative aims to restructure the CPA Exam to ensure that graduates have the technological skills to enter the profession and assist educators with transitioning to the new exam through the development of the CPA Evolution Model Curriculum. We argue that although the redesigned CPA exam and the Model …

Religious Higher Education In Prison In The United States: The Importance Of Well-Being, Robin L. Labarbera

Journal of Global Education and Research

A growing body of scholarship suggests that incarcerated individuals who participate in education programs, particularly those grounded in faith, are better positioned for lasting community reintegration and positive long-term outcomes. Using a mixed-methods evaluation design, the author examines two interrelated questions: whether faith-based higher education is associated with enhanced well-being among current participants and whether program graduates carry those well-being gains into post-release life. Drawing on group interviews with 109 incarcerated men and women across six U.S. facilities and surveys from 157 participants in four states, the study found that participation in a prison-based theological education program was associated with …

Barriers And Enablers Of Integrated E-Learning In Southern Africa: Student Experiences, Vicente A. Halle, Luzaan Schlebusch

Journal of Global Education and Research

Integrated e-learning is increasingly essential for enhancing higher education globally, yet its implementation in resource-constrained regions such as Southern Africa remains uneven. This study explores the technological, organizational, and environmental factors influencing the integration of e-learning in higher education institutions, using the Technological, Organizational, and Environmental framework. A qualitative phenomenological approach was employed, involving semi-structured interviews with 24 students (12 males and 12 females) from universities in South Africa and Mozambique. Thematic analysis revealed key barriers, including poor connectivity, limited digital literacy, inadequate institutional support, and socio-economic constraints such as power cuts and data costs. Despite these challenges, several enablers …

Bridging The Gap: Addressing Challenges And Enhancing Support For Learners Transitioning From Primary To Secondary School, Redson Nkosi, Precious Nyoni, Philogene Manirahari

Journal of Global Education and Research

This study explored the challenges students face during the transition from primary to secondary school, particularly in their final year of primary and first year of secondary school. Common concerns include bullying, making new friends, increased workload, unfriendly teachers, teasing, new subjects, and adjusting to the secondary school environment. Conducted in Malawi, Mzimba North education district at two secondary schools and one primary school, the research used a qualitative methodology, employing documentary review, interviews, focus group discussions, and observations for data collection. Findings revealed that many of the students’ fears were either confirmed, such as bullying and teacher strictness, proving …

Broadband Diffusion And Digital Preparedness In Tanzania: Harnessing The Role Of Technology In Formal Education, George Matto, John J. Iwata

Journal of Global Education and Research

Broadband, as a high-speed Internet connectivity, is an essential enabler for digital preparedness. However, little is known, in the case of Tanzania, about the nexus between broadband diffusion and digital preparedness, particularly in the facilitation of the teaching and learning process. This study, therefore, aimed at investigating the nexus between broadband diffusion and digital preparedness in Tanzania by focusing on the country’s readiness to leverage the same for formal education. The study employed a systematic review, guided by the PRISMA framework, to obtain the empirical evidence from existing literature. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes, analyze, and interpret qualitative …

Necessary Digital Competencies Of Preschool Teachers In Austria, Walter Fikisz

Journal of Global Education and Research

The aim of this paper is to identify specific digital competencies that preschool teachers require, compared with schoolteachers, to extend the Austrian digital competence model for teachers, digi.kompP. Methodologically, the study is based on interviews with Austrian experts in early childhood education, media pedagogy, computer science, and preschool teacher education. The expert interviews addressed the digital competencies required by preschool teachers, differences compared with schoolteachers, the timing and nature of competence development, and the institutions involved. As a result of this study, sixteen new can-do statements were developed for the expansion of the existing digi.kompP model, which maps the specific …

Fifteen Years Of Open-Access, Feminist Editing And Beyond: Laura L. Runge Transitions From Editor-In-Chief To Co-Director Of Abo Editorial Board As Of Abo Vol. 16, No. 1, Kelly Plante

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This is an editor's note thanking Laura L. Runge for her more than 15 years service as the founding editor of ABO. The current editors thank Laura for her foundational work and we commit to carry on her editorial vision.

Retrospective: The Burney Centre, Mcgill University, 1945-2024, Peter Sabor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The origins of McGill University’s Burney Centre go back to 1945, when Joyce Hemlow was appointed to McGill’s Department of English. After publishing a major biography of Frances Burney in 1958, Hemlow initiated what she termed the Burney Project: a research centre devoted to producing scholarly editions of the journals and letters of Burney and her father, the music historian Charles Burney. The Frances Burney edition was completed, in 25 volumes, in 2019; five volumes of the Charles Burney edition have appeared to date, with a sixth and final volume to follow. Joyce Hemlow was succeeded as Director of the …

A Review Of The South Central Society For Eighteenth-Century Studies (Scsecs) Annual Conference (Pinehurst, Nc 19-21 February 2026), Laura Runge-Gordon

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A conference review for the South-Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference held in Pinehurst, North Carolina February 19-21, 2026.  The conference was organized by SCECS President Catherine Parisian and featured the keynote speaker Peter Radford.

A Review Of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights Of London (University Of Delaware Press, 2024), Mattie Burkert

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Willow White's Feminist Comedy: Women Playwrights of London by Mattie Burkert.

Teaching Evelina With Digital Humanities, Hilary Havens

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Digital humanities, an interdisciplinary field that applies digital methodologies and technologies to the humanities, is an excellent lens through which to approach the eighteenth century.  I integrate digital humanities tools and workshops alongside primary source readings in all of my eighteenth-century British literature classes to help students better understand those texts and the world in which they were created.  In my upper-level undergraduate class on late eighteenth-century literature, I teach four digital humanities tools to students, two of them (StoryMapJS and Voyant) in connection with Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778). These tools train students how to uncover historical and geographic contexts …

Teaching Frances Burney's Evelina With Netflix’S Bridgerton, Willow White

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This pedagogical essay explores strategies for teaching Frances Burney's first novel Evelina (1778) through comparison with Netflix's popular series Bridgerton. The essay demonstrates how Bridgerton's widespread popularity has renewed interest in Georgian literature and provides an engaging and accessible entry point for undergraduate students to explore Evelina's themes of social anxiety, gender, and coming of age.

Teaching A Stand-Alone Course On Burney, Lorna J. Clark

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This essay outlines a stand-alone course on Frances Burney, suggesting that she offers a good entry point into eighteenth-century studies. Given that she wrote in so many genres—novels, plays, journals, and letters—such a course avoids the narrowness which often marks a single author course. In twelve weeks, the course studied ten works: four novels, five plays (three comedies and two tragedies) and a selection of journals and letters. The latter describes well-known figures in Burney’s social and literary networks in eighteenth-century London and leads to discussion of techniques of the epistolary, of diary-writing and of women’s life-writing. Burney’s novels are …

Reading Burney’S Mastectomy Letter: Presentist Thinking And Personal Responses In The Classroom, Heather Meek

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Frances Burney’s mastectomy letter, in its graphic and detailed depiction of the operation she underwent without anesthetic in 1811, does not always lend itself immediately to standard, scholarly classroom discussion. It tends, rather, to incite unusually intimate responses, as well as conversations about medicine and health today. In my teaching of the letter in literature courses at Université de Montréal over the course of the past 13 years, I have found that students are inclined to seize upon the subject of breast cancer as especially contemporary in its relevance and to share their own anecdotal knowledge of the disease. I …

Lifelong Learning: Approaches To Teaching Frances Burney’S The Wanderer To Adults, Miriam Al Jamil

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The construction of a course for adult learners who are not studying for a qualification or credits but rather for enjoyment and engagement with learning for its own sake, requires an approach centered on needs which may not be entirely academic. Drawing on students’ individual life experiences while avoiding assumptions based on familiarity with the material shapes the course and offers many benefits. The essay is based on teaching Workers Education Association (WEA) courses and proposes the structure of a literature course on Frances Burney’s 1814 novel The Wanderer. It selects thematic content which resonates with older learners, such …

The Wanderers: Teaching The Literature Of Migration And Exile, Linda Zionkowski

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In our current global landscape, exile—or forced, often permanent migration—appears a central rather than tangential experience, being driven by armed conflict, environmental destruction, economic collapse, and political repression. The climate on many university campuses reflects students’ awareness of and concern for the situation of displaced populations, and this awareness has influenced political discourse and political action inside and outside the classroom. My course titled “The Wanderers: Teaching the Literature of Migration and Exile” begins with  Frances Burney’s narration of exilic experiences in her life writings and The Wanderer. Burney’s texts offer a conceptual foundation for exploring instances of physical …

Introduction: Concise Collection On Teaching The Works Of Frances Burney, Dana Gliserman Kopans

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This short essay introduces a Concise Collection special issue on teaching Frances Burney. The collection brings together a range of texts and approaches to them and demonstrates that Burney can be successfully taught to students outside of the graduate context.

Light-Driven Zonation And Community Structure Of Aerophytic Microalgae In A Tropical Limestone Cave (Gua Tempurung, Malaysia), Wan Maznah Wan Omar, Mohammad Basri Eshak, Luthfiana Aprilianita Sari, Zulaihat Hamza Abdullahi, Yusuf Abdullahi

International Journal of Speleology

Cave ecosystems host specialized phototrophic biofilms structured primarily by light availability, yet quantitative assessments of aerophytic microalgal community organization in tropical limestone caves remain limited. This study investigated spatial variation in the structure of aerophytic microalgal communities across four ecologically distinct zones (entrance, transition, penetration, and low light) of Gua Tempurung, Malaysia. Stratified sampling was conducted during three seasonal periods. Dominant phototrophic morphospecies were identified using microscopy, and community composition was analyzed in relation to key environmental variables. Twenty-three dominant microalgal morphospecies were recorded across the cave gradient. Cyanobacteria constituted the major component of both richness and abundance, followed by …

Examining The Impact Of A Positive Psychology Service-Learning Experience On Undergraduates’ Mental Health And Career Intentions, Cydney E. Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Universities currently face a growing public health concern regarding college students’ mental health and well-being (Hobbs et al., 2022; Sheldon et al., 2021). Given this, research has explored experiences that are advantageous for students’ overall well-being, including courses on positive psychology and service-learning experiences that may promote flourishing (Hobbs et al., 2022; Maples et al., 2022). Service-learning is also well situated to support undergraduate career development (Collison & Eck, 2022). Kranzler et al. (2011) described how the pedagogical approach of service-learning aligns well with positive psychology, leading them to implement a positive psychology service-learning course. However, to date, no study …

"Does The Penis Lie?": Truth, Sexuality, And Psychocarceral Power, Erin Mcqueary

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis critically examines the use of penile plethysmography (PPG), or phallometry, in the treatment and management of sex offenders in the late-twentieth century. Using the Florida Mental Health Institute’s 1986-1989 sex offender treatment program as a case study, it asks how phallometry came to be understood as an objective method for uncovering otherwise hidden sexual truths. Instead of focusing only on its appearance and development throughout the second half of the twentieth century, this thesis draws on the work of Michel Foucault to situate phallometric science within a broader history of sexuality and biopower. In doing so, it argues …

Interpreting Discrepant Multi-Informant Data: Examining School Psychologists’ Decision-Making Processes With Social-Emotional And Behavioral Assessment, Thomas Koza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Multi-informant assessment is a common method used by school psychologists to collect data on students' social-emotional and behavioral concerns across the three tiers of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) framework. While this data can provide a comprehensive understanding of student functioning, informant discrepancies are common, and little is known about how school psychologists make sense of discrepant data or whether using structured frameworks can support their interpretation. This dissertation used an experimental mixed-methods design with vignettes to examine how school psychologists interpret discrepant multi-informant social-emotional and behavioral assessment data and whether exposure to a structured framework influenced this process. …

Building Trustworthy Information Systems: A Unified Framework For Comparative Risk Detection, Parisa Momeni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Risk detection in large scale information systems increasingly depends on heterogeneous data generatedby both centralized and distributed ecosystems. While centralized systems provide curated and validated reports, distributed environments produce large-scale and real-time observational evidence. Existing computational approaches analyze these ecosystems in isolation, limiting systematic comparison of risk repre-sentations across heterogeneous sources.

This dissertation presents a unified computational framework for comparative risk detection across centralized and distributed information systems. The framework provides a domain independent methodology for transforming heterogeneous risk reporting data into comparable multidimensional representations. To enable interpretable comparison of heterogeneous risk distributions, this work introduces the Geometric Overlap Score …

Using Contingency Mapping To Decrease Disruptive Behavior And Increase On-Task Behavior For Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Carelis Y. Pabey Pagan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Visual aids have been widely used in educational and therapeutic settings to support individuals with developmental disabilities, particularly autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Among these, contingency maps, a graphic tool that visually represents the outcomes of alternative behaviors and problem behavior, have shown promise in reducing problem behavior, increasing communication, and promoting independence. However, existing research on contingency mapping is limited. The proposed study extended this literature by evaluating the effects of contingency maps on academic engagement and disruptive behavior for children with ASD in a school setting during natural classroom activities. A multiple baseline design across participants was used to …

Philanthropic Grantmakers’ Roles In Transforming Higher Education: A Narrative Inquiry, Elizabeth Jean Larkin Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Philanthropic foundations have become influential actors in higher education reform, often supporting initiatives to improve student success, advance equity, and promote systemic change. Yet limited research has examined how philanthropic grantmakers understand and navigate their roles in shaping long-term change across the higher education field. This narrative inquiry explored the personal and professional experiences of eight philanthropic grantmakers working across different foundations, roles, and organizational contexts in the United States. Guided by organizational change theory, Strategic Action Fields theory, and sustainability planning in dynamic systems, the study examined how grantmakers made sense of their responsibilities, influence, and contributions to systemic …

Man Down: Exploring Identity, Uncertainty And Resilience In An Autoethnographic Performance Of Prostate Cancer As Applied Health Communication, Kevin Hawley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation study was to explore how an autoethnographic performance of my experience of prostate cancer could serve as a method of applied health communication, designed to encourage men to be screened for prostate cancer. One in eight men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime. However, while the incidence rate of prostate cancer is increasing—particularly of advanced-stage disease—the number of men choosing to be screened is declining (American Cancer Society, 2025).This study explores the barriers to men being screened, both in the literature and in my personal experience. Among those …

Photoluminescent Studies Of Metal-Organic Frameworks For Small Molecule Sensing, Julia T. Dematteo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are highly tunable nanoporous materials with broad applications in gas separation, drug delivery, light harvesting, and chemical sensing. The incorporation of photoactive components into MOFs enables the development of optical sensors capable of detecting a wide range of analytes. Porphyrins and metalloporphyrins are particularly attractive for such applications due to their high molar absorptivity, strong emission quantum yields, and versatile interactions with chemical species.

In this work, two porphyrinic MOFs, PCN-222 and MOF1(Cd), are investigated. Both frameworks utilize tetrakis(4-carboxyphenyl)porphyrin (TCPP) as the organic linker, imparting optical functionality to the materials. Integration of TCPP into the framework induces …

Disclosing Hunger: Predictors And Screening Strategies For Food Insecurity In Undergraduate University Students And Adults Contexts, Jocelyn Emily Jarvis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Food insecurity is a growing public health concern among college students in the United States, with prevalence estimates exceeding those of the general population. Despite the availability of campus, community, and federal food assistance resources, utilization remains low, suggesting that barriers extend beyond structural access. This dissertation examines the psychosocial, behavioral, and institutional factors that shape food insecurity disclosure and help-seeking behaviors among undergraduate students, guided by the Social Ecological Model (SEM).

This work includes three complementary studies. Study One presents a scoping review synthesizing 16 U.S.-based studies to identify psychosocial determinants of food assistance utilization among food-insecure adults. Findings …

Van Der Waals Interactions Through The Lens Of 2d Materials With Emphasis On Many-Body Effects, Thi Xuan Diem Dang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the long-standing challenge of accurately and efficiently modeling long-range electron correlations, with a particular focus on van der Waals (vdW) interactions. These interactions play an essential role in predicting the structure, stability, and functionality of molecular systems and condensed matter materials. Although Density Functional Theory (DFT) has become a robust cornerstone of computational materials science, traditional formulations of the theory frequently fail to capture dispersive interactions, leading to significant errors in determining interlayer distances, binding energies, and stacking configurations. These limitations become particularly pronounced in layered materials and vdW heterostructures (HSTs), where weak long-range correlations are sensitive …

Transformative Leadership In Community Schools: Building Equitable Cultures And Sustainable Community Partnerships For Student Success, Latiecea Janie Hailey-Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This qualitative autoethnographic inquiry explored how transformative and relational leadership were enacted and evolved during the creation, development, and sustainability of a community partnership school, and how these leadership experiences shaped my understanding of leadership and influenced my development and identity as a leader. Grounded in a constructivist paradigm and framed within a scholarly practitioner orientation, I critically examined my leadership experiences as assistant principal and principal of Havenwood: A Community Partnership School, the first community school in Rosewood County, Florida. Through reflective analysis of leadership practices, relationships, and decision-making processes, I illuminated how my leadership contributed to student …

Can Hope Be Changed In 30 Minutes? The Development, Refinement, And Pilot Evaluation Of A Hope-Based Single-Session Intervention, Aileen Kangavary

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: Although mental health problems are on the rise among youth, nearly 80% do not access treatment. Schools serve as key settings to address adolescent mental health and wellness needs given the substantial barriers that limit access to community-based mental health services. Despite this potential, schools often face implementation challenges. Therefore, scalable and accessible approaches are needed to meet the growing demand for adolescent mental health support. Single-Session Interventions (SSIs) represent a promising, cost-effective, and digital avenue for providing timely mental health support to youth. Increasingly, research conceptualizes mental health through a two-dimensional framework that includes the presence of well-being …