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Neuron-Enriched Extracellular Vesicle Micrornas Reflect Hormonal Suppression Associated With Oral Contraceptive Use In Young Women, Amulya Chowdhory, Rebekah Frye, Roxann Roberson-Nay

UROP Posters

Hormonal contraceptives alter hypothalamic–pituitary–ovarian (HPO) feedback, but their impact on brain-associated molecular communication remains poorly understood. Neuron- enriched extracellular vesicle (nEV) microRNAs (miRNAs), isolated from plasma, provide a minimally invasive window into brain molecular activity. This pilot study examined nEV miRNA expression in young women (ages 18–22) who were either naturally cycling or using a combined monophasic oral contraceptive (OC) pill. To identify hormonally responsive miRNAs, we calculated effect sizes (Cohen’s d) between the two groups and selected those showing large between-group differences (|d| ≥ 0.8). These miRNAs were entered into a principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce dimensionality, and …

Neanderthals And Their Exhibitions Of Fine Art: Unpacking Neanderthal Art On The European Continent, Jacob T. Simpson

UROP Posters

This research project aims to bridge the gap between anatomically modern humans and our closest genetic relative, Neanderthals. By analyzing research literature on artistically symbolic artifacts potentially created by these ancient humans (focusing on populations in Europe) I hope to offer a superior speculation of Neanderthal intellect. Neanderthals potential capability to create artistic objects could transform our understanding of them and their cognitive abilities, and raise philosophical questions on what it means to be human.

The Effects Of Coping Motives On Alcohol Use Consequences, Madisyn E. Feliciano, Samantha Pelfrey

UROP Posters

The purpose of this study was to examine the difference in alcohol use consequences between those who drink to cope with anxiety or depression symptoms and those who do not. Our research aimed to expand on earlier studies by placing emphasis on how coping with anxiety and depression influences alcohol consequences using constructs aligned with DSM-V symptom criteria. Research has consistently shown that those who drink to regulate distressing emotions experience more harmful consequences, making this an imperative area for prevention efforts. It was hypothesized that coping motivated drinking would be associated with an increased amount of alcohol related consequences. …

The U.S. Campaign Gacha System And Youth Underrepresentation, Rebecca Burrows, Eleanor Harris

UROP Posters

This research investigates why young people remain underrepresented in elected U.S. offices and why youth voter turnout has historically remained low. Motivated by persistent shortcomings in U.S. youth turnout, the dominance of older elected officials, and recent high-profile victories by young mayoral candidates, this study asks whether young candidates (< 40) increase youth voter turnout in U.S. elections—and, if so, whether structural factors prevent these candidates from winning. Existing literature on descriptive representation and electoral inequality suggests that young candidates may energize youth voters yet face systemic disadvantages that hinder their success. This research contributes to the literature by exploring how the U.S. campaign finance system shapes young candidates’ electoral viability. Using a qualitative comparative case study design, we analyzed four large U.S. mayoral elections: two with victorious young candidates (Boston 2021; New York City 2025) and two where no candidate under 40 appeared on recent ballots (Los Angeles and Columbus). For each city, candidate eligibility rules, ballot requirements, party bylaws, primary election methods, and campaign finance laws were examined using publicly available legal and institutional documents. This approach allowed us to identify structural barriers while remaining open to unanticipated patterns across cases. Our findings reveal no explicit legal or party rules that impede young candidates. Instead, obstacles lie implicitly in the U.S. campaign finance system’s lack of limits on contributions, candidate spending, and the normalization of high-cost campaigning. These conditions allow older candidates—who are more likely to possess greater financial resources—to outcompete younger challengers, limiting youth descriptive representation and alienating youth from electoral politics. We conclude that youth underrepresentation is sustained less by overt legal barriers than by embedded systemic inequalities in campaign finance, an issue with broader implications for electoral integrity, representative democracy, and youth voter turnout in the United States.

Commonwealth Times 2025-12-03

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Unmasking Injustice In Tumultuous Times: Protest Art And Student Agency In A Summer Program, Indira Bailey

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

In today’s political climate, academic freedom is increasingly threatened, and topics that challenge dominant narratives are often censored. Art education faces growing pressure to thoughtfully integrate these critical issues into its curriculum. This paper explores a five-day summer social justice art workshop at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Using a social justice art education framework, the workshop engaged undergraduate students, including non-art majors, in social justice research through creative expression and protest art making. The author argues that non-visual art students can create impactful visual counter-narratives that confront oppression while engaging deeply with both creative processes and social …

Bridging Generations Through Art: Community, Creativity, And Wellbeing, Eva V. Coker Phd, Johnson K. Wor

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

Bridging Generations Through Art: Community, Creativity, and Wellbeing

Abstract

This article documents an intergenerational Art Day event that brought together participants of all ages to engage in a shared community art experience. Hosted in a community setting and facilitated by graduate students, the event emphasized intergenerational artmaking as a way to foster connection, creativity, mutual leaning, and wellbeing across generations. Through activities such as mindful pattern-making, montage, linoleum block printing, and weaving, participants collaborated, exchanged skills, and created artworks. Each art station was designed to support personal reflection, exploration, and participants across ages and abilities, and was informed by research …

Community-Based Participatory Sound Play For Critical Holistic Learning, Shannon Perry, Emmie Pierce, Jon Vogt

International Journal of Lifelong Learning in Art Education

This visual essay explores what unfolded during a month-long participatory sonic space in a community art gallery in the southeastern United States. We walk through the multiple sound stations we designed to provoke playful interactions and challenge dominant hierarchical binaries that often persist in gallery and art education space (e.g., artist/audience, instrument/non-instrument object, music/noise, culture/nature). While considering these various spaces we created for nudging visiting audience members to engage with diverse sonorous objects in becoming active musicmakers, thus becoming audience-participants, we also consider the concepts underpinning our design decisions. We conclude by considering how the living sound exhibit and participatory …

Archaeology As Alternative Prison Education, Jayne Price Dr, Caroline Pudney Dr

Journal of Prison Education Research

This paper presents the educational focused outcomes of a set of workshops entitled 'Introduction to Archaeology’ that were delivered within a prison. The workshops were delivered as part of a project that seeks to explore the pro-social benefits and social capital (i.e. social and structural aspects that support positive identity formation) that could be developed through engagement with archaeology, specifically for those within the criminal justice system. The workshops offered a bespoke, alternative, educational offering within an adult male prison in Wales. It was designed and delivered by an archaeologist who has an established background in the field, especially in …

Do No Harm?: An Assemblage Of Care, Compliance, And Resistance To North Carolina’S Parents’ Bill Of Rights, Sarah Cornette, William Pryor Iv

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

North Carolina’s Parents’ Bill of Rights (NC-PBOR) requires school counselors to disclose sensitive student information to parents, creating profound legal-ethical dilemmas. This study examines how counselors navigate these mandates through interviews, surveys, and arts-based analysis. Findings show counselors experience institutional betrayal, ethical precarity, and emotional exhaustion, yet also engage in subtle resistance through strategic ambiguity, relational buffering, and quiet noncompliance. Methodologically, we integrate coding, poetic inquiry, and visual confection to capture affect, embodiment, and contradiction often missed by conventional analysis. By foregrounding emotion and multiplicity, we contribute to assemblage-informed policy studies and queer qualitative inquiry, while bearing witness to the …

Commonwealth Times 2025-11-05

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-10-29

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Italian Mathematics Prison Teachers’ Perspective On The Teaching/Learning Of Mathematics In Prison School, Andrea Maffia, Luca Decembrotto, Chiara Giberti, Federica Mennuni, Gabriella Pocalana, Silvia Regola, Agnese Telloni

Journal of Prison Education Research

Teaching in the prison context is characterized by a high complexity level; it is a multifaced activity influenced by several factors depending on the specific context. We present a preliminary but overall picture of schooling in Italian prisons by considering teachers’ reflections regarding their experiences in teaching mathematics in correctional facilities. To address the gap in the current literature on this issue, we conducted a SWOT analysis on the reflection provided by a group of nine Italian mathematics teachers who teach in different prisons and with different experiences and backgrounds. Their reflection allowed us to identify and describe six theory-driven …

Art Inquiries Volume Xx No 1 2025 - Full Issue, Kris K. Belden-Adams

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Redefining Gender And Rural Life In The Pampas: Alessandra Sanguinetti’S The Adventures Of Guille And Belinda Series, Alejandra López-Oliveros

Art Inquiries

At the time of Argentina’s independence, the gauchos (nomadic horsemen) had become the symbol of the nation in its purest form. Celebrated as independent, heroic and strong, and usually portrayed as the sole inhabitants of the Pampa, the idealized image of the gaucho has flooded popular culture and art even today, to the detriment of flesh-and-bone wage laborers of all genders. As opposed to this static image, I propose to examine Alessandra Sanguinetti’s photographic series, The Adventures of Guille and Belinda (ongoing since 1999), which focuses on girls and women in the countryside, pointedly highlights their previous absence. By contrasting …

The Political Construction Of Anti-Transgender Policy: A Critical Policy Analysis Of North Carolina State Legislators' Discursive Strategies, David Osworth, Morgan Edlin

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

In recent year anti-LGBTQ policy has been cropping up at the state level across the United States. While these policies have been described as unprecedented, they signal a period of retrenchment for the rights of queer and transgender individuals in the United States. This critical policy analysis of North Carolina state legislation that is decidedly homophobic and transgender examines the discursive tactics of policy actors (i.e. North Carolina Legislators) as they argue these policies during legislative sessions. Through our analysis of legislators’ commentary during House of Representative sessions we identified discursive formations that were considered allied with the LGBTQ community …

Wayward Joy In Queer Femme-Inist Educational Research, Sarah Stapleton, Lindsay Cavanaugh, Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This article draws on our experiences with “Femme Educational Futurities,” a dream-mapping (Author 2, 2023), critical arts-based, participatory-informed project about softness in K–12 schools, to explore the boundaries of queer, femme-inist research. We trace how our attempts to enact research softly (Schwartz, 2020) led us towards wayward joy (Hartman, 2019): a messy affective terrain marked by connection, vulnerability, shame, and hope. For each author, we identify what Applebaum (1995) calls a “stop” moment and explore within each instance the convergence of softness, radical love (hooks, 2000) and tender failure (Halberstam, 2011), and discuss what joy means to us as a …

“It Has Made Me Stronger”: The Strengths Of Trans And Nonbinary Teachers, Heather K. Mcentarfer, Matthew D. Rice

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This study draws from two data sets collected from interviews with trans and nonbinary (TGNB) teachers. It highlights the strengths related to gender identity and gender history that the teachers bring to schools and classrooms, as identified by the teachers and the researchers. Strengths identified included multiple ways of supporting LGBTQ+ students (especially TGNB students), connecting with all students, greater self-awareness, and seeing beyond “boxes.” The study adapts Pennell’s (2016a, 2016b) queer cultural capital, introducing and exploring TGNB cultural capital.

Commonwealth Times 2025-10-08

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

The Path Toward Spiritual Activism: Queer Latinx/A/O College Student (Muxerista) Activism As Sites Of Resistance, Hope, Joy, And Futurity, Roberto C. Orozco, J. Audra Williams

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This study examined collaborators’ engagement in activism as sites of resistance, hope, joy, and futurity. We answer the following research question: In what ways do Muxeristas (Revilla, 2012), or queer Latinx/a/o college student activists, envision and act on kinship and liberation in their activism? We conceptualize our response to this question through Anzaldúa’s (2002, 2015) concept of spiritual activism. Our data analysis articulates three main components of a spiritual activism practice for Muxeristas (Revilla, 2012), which include: 1) engaging in forms of resistance through a queer and feminist world-making, 2) centering joy and love with and for each other as …

Commonwealth Times 2025-09-24

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

The Pedagogical Experiences Of Online Correctional Education English Composition Faculty, Candace Chambers

Journal of Prison Education Research

With increasing efforts to expand correctional education college programs, previous research has primarily explored the experiences of instructors teaching in face-to-face settings. However, little is known about the experiences of faculty teaching in online correctional education programs within the United States. This qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study addresses this gap by examining the experiences of five online English composition correctional education instructors. Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and a focus group. Findings revealed that instructors adapted their teaching practices to accommodate the online format, faced challenges in building relationships with students, and desired more professional development. These insights …

Commonwealth Times 2025-09-17

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-09-03

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

From Student To Teacher: Lgbtq+ Pre-Service Teachers’ Physical Education Experiences, Alexandra L. Stoddart, Niya St. Amant

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

The first phase of an explanatory sequential design explored Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning (LGBTQ+) pre-service teachers’ retrospective experiences from primary and secondary school (K-12) physical education, as well as their physical education experiences in one post-secondary institution. Ahmed’s (2006; 2010) interpretation of orientation was invoked as a conceptual consideration. Quantitative results from the cross-sectional online survey indicated that K-12 physical education remains an unsafe and uncomfortable learning space for many LGBTQ+ students for a myriad of reasons. Conventional qualitative content analysis generated four categories about K-12 class pedagogy and structure, gender and sexuality, change rooms, and the …

Commonwealth Times 2025-08-27

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Commonwealth Times 2025-08-20

Commonwealth Times, 1969-

No abstract provided.

Trans* Educators In Early Childhood Through Secondary (Pk-12) Schools: An Exhaustive Literature Review, Chris Cyan Divens

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This literature review provides documentation and analysis for 22 years of empirical, English-language research on trans* educators in early childhood through secondary (PK-12) education. A total of 87 publications from six different continents provide a basis for researchers and policymakers interested in better understanding this historically marginalized population. Findings include a diverse array of methodological and theoretical approaches as well as several meta-level findings concerning the varied circumstances of trans* educators. There is a need for additional research to address persistent gaps as well as for sweeping policy change and collective action to improve the unacceptable conditions of trans* educators.

The Criminal Record As A Death Sentence: Unmasking The Ignored Realities Of Formerly Incarcerated University Graduates On Professional Licencing Challenges, Mbongiseni Mdakane, Bongani Innocent Nkambule, Sindile Amina Ngubane

Journal of Prison Education Research

Recently it is increasingly common practice for universities and professional registration councils to probe into applicants’ criminal records as a precondition for admission. Using social constructionism, this qualitative study explored the experiences of six formerly incarcerated individuals previously sentenced to life imprisonment, who hold professional university degrees in Law, Education, Psychology and Social Work and investigated whether having a criminal record had any bearing when applying for professional registration. The results indicate that due to the perceived stigma of, and discrimination against a criminal record, there exist varying degrees of criminal record disclosure ranging from partial, to full and non-disclosure. …

Rams In Research: A Guided Journey Through The Mcnair Scholars Summer Program, Rajade M. Berry-James, Cindy Vigil

McNair Journal at VCU

This paper examines the significance of mentoring relationships in higher education, particularly for first-generation college students. Drawing on extensive literature, we highlight how effective mentorship enhances student success by fostering trust, belonging, and self-efficacy. The McNair Summer Research Program serves as a case study, featuring the collaboration between McNair Scholar Cindy Vigil and her mentor, Dr. RaJade M. Berry-James. This partnership focused on analyzing homicide rates in El Salvador, emphasizing key factors such as population, poverty, and government-negotiated truces. Through a comprehensive analysis of data from 1994 to 2019, Cindy refined existing research methodologies and gained valuable insights into the …