Block Schedules In Virginia Schools: Purposes, Outcomes, And Policy Considerations, David Naff, Meleah Ellison, Jamelle Simmons, Xun Liu, Martin Darby, Crystal R. Bell, Shelby Garofalo, Obed Boateng, Wendy Rodgers, Audrina Farrar, Karli Johansen, Mysia Perry, Maggie Szydlowski, Fatemah A. Khawaji, Katherine Urban

MERC Publications

When schools and divisions choose a daily schedule structure to follow, it is important to consider its purpose and potential impacts on students, educators, and families. The purpose of this MERC research and policy brief is to inform the work of school division leaders and school board members making decisions about whether to adopt or continue the use of block scheduling in middle and high schools. It explores the following questions:

1. What are block schedules and where are they used?

2. How are school schedules related to student outcomes and educator quality?

3. What policies at the federal, state, …

Supporting Students In Transition To And From Elementary School, Meleah Ellison, Jamelle Simmons, David B. Naff, Taryn G. Traylor, Meredith Dean, Sooyeon Moon, Jia Jia Liu, Latonja Y. Wright, Cameron Parkins, Jennifer Locasale-Crouch, Dana V. Yarbrough, Audrina Farrar, Obed Amoakoh Boateng

MERC Publications

This report is part of a two-part series focused on supporting students in transition across PK-12 education. Specifically, it explores transitions into and out of elementary school. The report includes a synthesis of recent peer-reviewed literature, analysis of publicly available data (with a specific focus on Virginia and the metropolitan Richmond region), and summary of relevant federal, state, and school division-level policies. It answers the following questions:

1. What are key considerations for supporting students in transition to and from elementary school in the MERC region?

2. How do federal, state, and division policies guide support for student transitions to …

The Cut Worm Forgives The Plow, August Neuscheler

Theses and Dissertations

The explorations in this thesis writing are centered on William Blake’s proverb “The cut worm forgives the plow.” It has been reinterpreted as an allegory of history and energy. A theory of their relation is proposed based on forgiveness, a theory that accepts the palimpsest of orders as evidence for the abundance of the present moment. The writing focuses on questions of proportionality, scale, archaeological screening methods, planar cutting, and a critique of entropy as grounds for this theory. Some of its subjects include the Statue of Liberty, Kate Raworth’s donut economic model, sashimi, triangulation, Joseph Beuys’ “7,000 Eichen,” semiconductors, …

Comparative Evaluation Of Three Endodontic Rotary File Systems In S-Shaped Root Canals: An In-Depth Analysis, Mudher Bahar

Theses and Dissertations

Objective: This study compares three endodontic file systems—XP‐3D Shaper⁺, EdgeFile X7 and WaveOne Gold in S‐shaped simulated canals in resin blocks. It aimed to quantify canals volumetric changes post‐instrumentation to guide clinical selection of a system that preserves tooth structure while efficiently shaping root canals.

Methods: Thirty S‐shaped canals in resin blocks were divided into three groups (n=10) for instrumentation with XP‐3D Shaper⁺, EdgeFile X7 or WaveOne Gold using the crown‐down technique and manufacturers recommended settings. A no‐treatment control provided a baseline for volumetric changes measured via CBCT scans analyzed with ITK‐SNAP. Data were analyzed using ANOVA and Tukey’s test …

Infinite Finite: A View On Human Progression Through Emergent Generative Systems, Fatima Abbas

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary crises reveal an imbalance in human progression, prioritizing material advancement while neglecting ethical, compassionate, and spiritual dimensions. This thesis examines natural progression through the lens of emergence, where simple interactions produce complex outcomes. Analyzing natural patterns across different scales, from cosmic formations to neural interactions, underscores emergence's universal nature.

Within this context, Infinite Finite introduces a generative digital tool simulating emergence through iterative cycles of construction and deconstruction. Depicting a century of human progression informed by historical behaviors via simulated cellular interactions, the tool visually differentiates ethical from unethical progression. This is represented through ten data visualization tiles composed …

¡Bip Bip!, Diego Pablo Málaga Beckhart

Theses and Dissertations

¡Bip Bip! is a body of work that investigates the car as it exists in the American imagination, a metaphorical and physical object where culture, identity, and power intertwine. This work uses painting, printmaking, collage, video, and installation to explore the car as a space of expression, interiority, and understanding the world through a marginalized lens.

Central to my practice is my personal vehicle, Guadalupe, which functions as both muse and metaphor, the main driver of the framework within ¡Bip Bip! My practice examines the different but congruent contexts intersections of this iconic American symbol, the car. In my paintings, …

Crafting Futures: Balancing Tradition And Technology In Craft Practices, Saga Elkabbash

Theses and Dissertations

Under pressure from mass production and the decline of artisan skills, craft traditions risk becoming relics of the past. Crafting Futures challenges this by treating machines as tools of creative expression, working alongside and in harmony with traditional hand techniques. By pairing an experienced potter with a creatively deployed 3D-printer to develop a series of artifacts, this research fosters a dynamic conversation between partners. Digital fabrication can engage with, rather than replace, traditional making practices, emphasizing the role of the maker’s imagination as the site of knowledge, intuition, and improvisation. The resulting series of hybrid clay vessels reinforce not only …

The Page And The Stage: How Comics Perform, Elizabeth Buccella

Theses and Dissertations

Comics and theatre share several, often overlooked similarities, like their unique concept of the gaze, interpretation and execution of a script, and the curation of a distinct visual language. This makes comics a viable candidate for analysis using the field of performance studies and other theatrical forms of analysis. The process of comics and how they are read is discussed before a brief literature review of performance and comics studies scholarship. Two comics, one nonfiction and one fiction, are analyzed using the key concepts from the literature review.

I Love Getting Mad At The Internet, Tariye George-Phillips

Theses and Dissertations

This book discusses the changing ecosystem of the internet in relation to my installation ‘In These Worlds’. This is not a direct translation of the installation, but shares the research and thought that informs the work, as well as sharing some of the work that preceded.

Wander, Wonder: Beyond The Window, Se Young Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how small, site-specific interventions can reframe everyday spaces through acts of observation, walking, and placement. In response to the increasing detachment from physical environments caused by digitized, image-saturated culture, this research asks how gentle gestures might restore presence and embodied perception in overlooked urban sites.

Drawing on the notion of the flâneur and grounded in theories by Peter Zumthor, Rebecca Solnit, and others, walking is employed as a form of spatial inquiry—a way of thinking through movement, of seeing through slowness. Along a recurring route between home and studio, three underappreciated sites were identified and engaged through …

Understanding The Experiences Of People Of Color Who Engage In Psychedelic Use, Amber B. Livingston

Theses and Dissertations

There is a growing body of research that supports the potential of psychedelic substances being used to support individuals with alleviating mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and existential distress. Though it has been labeled that Western society is within a psychedelic renaissance, it should also be noted that many indigenous cultures have utilized plant-based medicines as a form of healing and connection. Despite the ever increasing amount of studies being conducted, a consistent deficit is the lack of representation of non-White individuals in research samples. Utilizing the theoretical framework of set and setting, the present study aims to …

Health Equity In Times Of Crisis: The Impact Of Economic And Public Health Shocks On Access To Care Among Women In Zimbabwe And The United States, Vimbainashe Dihwa

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

This dissertation examines health equity during times of national public health and economic crises by examining access to care among women of reproductive age. Papers 1 and 2 estimate the effects of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic in the United States (US). Paper 3 examines the potential effects of the 2008 hyperinflation and subsequent economic crisis in Zimbabwe.

Paper 1 assessed the role of health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) in the Covid-19 pandemic-related temporal trends in mental health access among women in the 18 to 44 years age group with self-reported anxiety and/or depression. The findings suggest decreased unmet prescription …

Intuitive Mixed Reality Interfaces For Creative And Interactive Robotics: Roboart, Magnaforma, And Playmeow, Miles Popielamc

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis details the development and application of intuitive Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces designed to broaden access to robotic control for creative and interactive uses. The central contribution is the RoboART system, a novel MR interface built with the Microsoft HoloLens 2 to program an ABB GoFa collaborative robot for non-expert users, such as artists. The work describes RoboART's application in the Magnaforma project, where it enabled complex artistic expression.

Additionally, the thesis introduces the PlayMeow project, which explores adaptive pet interaction through a laser-guided turret. This system's control strategies were deeply informed by the intuitive paradigms developed for RoboART, …

Machine Learning Models Leveraging Patient-Similarity And Clinical Temporality For Disease Prognoses, Ahmad F. Al Musawi

Theses and Dissertations

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) constitute a comprehensive and high-dimensional repository of clinical data, encompassing a wide array of patient-level information such as diagnoses, procedures, medications, laboratory results, and unstructured clinical narratives. These data hold immense potential for advancing predictive modeling in healthcare, including tasks such as disease progression modeling, hospital readmission prediction, and length of stay (LoS) estimation. However, the intrinsic complexity of EHR data—manifested in its heterogeneity, sparsity, and temporal dynamics—poses significant analytical challenges that limit the generalizability and interpretability of conventional machine learning models. Recent methodological advancements in deep learning and graph-based learning, particularly Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), …

Treatment Resistant Obesity Among Midlife Women Receiving Care From A Specialized Weight Management Clinic, Emily C. Stevens

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Obesity is a complex chronic disease that conveys significant health risk. Women with obesity are at greater risk for associated conditions including heart disease, hypertension, ischemic stroke, and sex-specific cancers compared to their male counterparts. Midlife may present unique challenges for women as it is during this life phase that they experience an increase in their overall obesity prevalence and severity. Some midlife women experience treatment resistant obesity (TRO), a phenomenon not previously explored in the research literature, conceptualized as failure to achieve clinically meaningful weight loss of ≥ 5% after having received medically specialized obesity care for one …

Visible Modulation Of Epsilon Near Zero Materials, Jonathan M. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

While Epsilon-Near-Zero materials have offered many benefits from their introduction to the field of nonlinear optics, those materials have also narrowed the range of wavelengths often studied. With reliable and proven enhancements to light-matter interaction in the ENZ region, many researchers have had little reason to extend the spectrum measured in experiments. The purpose of this work is to measure the intensity dependent refractive index of Indium Tin Oxide across a broad spectral range, from ultraviolet to near infrared, to improve the understanding of semiconductor nonlinearities far from Lorentz and Drude resonances. Furthermore, the visible region is naturally low-loss in …

Exploring Collaboration In Interdisciplinary Ei/Ecse Programs: A Qualitative Study On Service Provider Preparation, Meagan Dayton

Theses and Dissertations

Interdisciplinary preparation is critical for early childhood special education professionals, yet few programs are designed to support such collaboration across disciplines. This study aimed to explore how interdisciplinary EI/ECSE preparation programs support collaboration. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) How are program components designed to support the development of collaboration skills? (2) What is the student experience of collaboration in the program? (3) What connections exist between program components, student experiences, and the development of collaboration skills? Using a qualitative multiple-case study approach grounded in ecological systems theory, data were collected from program documents and interviews …

Plasmon-Assisted On-Chip Integration Of Quantum Emitter For Scalable Quantum Networking, Samprity Saha

Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades, quantum theory has sparked a revolutionary outlook on our long-standing perception of information processing and communication technologies. Photon-based quantum systems, relying on single photons governed by quantum mechanics, hold immense promise for quantum networks due to their resilience against decoherence and fast propagation speeds. However, challenges persist in realizing practical quantum networks, including the need for scalable, robust, and cost-effective quantum light. To address these challenges with classical photonic concepts, this thesis focuses on a plasmon-assisted approach for on-chip integration of single-photon sources. The study aims to develop a scalable solution for integrating quantum emitters on-chip, leveraging …

How To Touch Your Bile, Aleckxi Dorhofer

Theses and Dissertations

I have been reflecting on my past decade-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia. Reinterpreting this experience through the lenses of mythology and magic, I have constructed these Stygian carcasses (from the river Styx, which serves to separate the living and the dead) using my own bodily proportions in muslin, an intermediary material which requires transformation. In this work, I utilize these forms to symbolically rot for me as my body did, performing a type of sympathetic magic (magic worked from afar on another person) on myself, extending my life and allowing all which occurs between birth and death to affect …

A Multimethod Approach To Examining Racial Coping Socialization Among Black Adolescents, Rachel J. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Experiences of racial discrimination are pervasive in the lives of Black youth and result in race-related stress. Racial coping has been found to mitigate the negative physical and mental health effects of racial discrimination; thus, it is imperative that we understand the process that Black youth undertake to navigate racialized experiences by utilizing a person-centered approach. Additionally, parents socialize their Black youth to navigate racialized experiences, indeed, previous research has investigated racial and emotion socialization as separate phenomena, however, this does not reflect the integrated nature by which racial and emotion socialization processes are interconnected during parents’ and youths’ discussions …

A Mixed Methods Study: High School Teachers’ Perspectives On Incorporating Mindful Artmaking In Their Classroom As A Mental Health Resource, Sherry A. Bosarge

Theses and Dissertations

Mental health concerns and the need for mental health resources for high school students continue to rise in Virginia. Some of the reported benefits to the current mental health services and resources offered in Virginia schools are increased academic outcomes, attendance, and positive behaviors. The reported barriers to current mental health services and resources are lack of participation, lack of training, time constraints, funding, and resources. This explanatory sequential mixed methods study examined high school teachers’ perspectives on the benefits and barriers to incorporating mindful artmaking in their classrooms as a mental health resource at a local high school. This …

Using Habituation And Affective Forecasting To Distinguish When The Passive Enjoyment Of Harm Begets The Active Pursuit Of Aggression, Drew M. Parton

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the antecedents and impellers of aggression is key to preventing violence, and individual differences have been identified as some of the key factors of interest in the study of aggression. Antisocial personality traits such as psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Sadism have received considerable focus from researchers. Among these traits, Sadism stands above them all as arguably the most malevolent of all trait constructs in psychology. Sadism shows the strongest correlations with aggression among malevolent traits and is uniquely linked to unprovoked aggression, even when it is costly. Sadism thus represents an extreme risk factor for aggression, and studying its …

Brute Gamification, Catherine Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Digital platforms are surreptitious structures that gamify the ways in which we engage and exchange. They dictate every step of our journeys even as we navigate onward with a sense of absolute agency. The harder that we try to win, the more the platform will win!

In Brute Gamification, I employ image-based installation and performance to unravel the terms and conditions with which these platforms dictate our lives. A literal platform supports a series of image-games, all of which are about to end in a draw. Through prescribing the user to a designated path to focus on this non-ending as …

Exploring The Development Of Students' Calling To The Work Of An Hod Practitioner In An Undergraduate Hod Degree Program, Neil Dana Rahbar-Daniels

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project consisted of a multiple case qualitative study to explore indications of cross-influences between students’ experiences of learning takeaways as participants in one or more HOD undergraduate degree courses and accompanying experiences (if any) of perceiving and/or living a calling to work as HOD practitioners. This phenomenological inquiry involved four undergraduate students who had completed one or more HOD degree courses at Mid-Atlantic States University (MSU as a pseudonym) during a two-year period. Each participant attended a single interview of about 90 minutes in duration, responded to a short vocational calling survey as a guide for interview questioning, …

Profiles Of First-Year First-Generation Students’ Library Perceptions And Use: An Intersectional, Mixed Methods Study, Megan Hodge

Theses and Dissertations

To effectively support first-generation students, academic libraries must understand their needs. However, limited library research has been conducted into how these students, who often embody multiple structurally disadvantaged identities, perceive and use academic libraries or how their intersecting identities manifest in differing library needs. This study aimed to build understanding of first-year first-generation students’ perceptions and use of academic libraries. To do so, the researcher used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design. First-year first-generation students at Virginia Commonwealth University were surveyed using Winkler and Sriram’s (2015) Academic Capital Scale and Anwar et al’s (2012) AQAK: Library Anxiety Scale for Undergraduate Students. …

Learning From Non-Stationary Data Streams, Gabriel Jonas Aguiar

Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth of data from sources such as mobile applications, sensors, and network monitoring has increased the need for machine learning algorithms capable of handling non-stationary data streams. However, learning from such streams presents significant challenges due to their evolving nature and the presence of concept drift. One of the most complex issues is learning from imbalanced data streams, where shifting data distributions, combined with feature space drifts, complicate continuous adaptation. These challenges become even more pronounced in multi-class scenarios, which are common in real-world applications. Detecting concept drift in such contexts is particularly demanding, as it requires tracking …

The General Movement Optimality Score-Revised (Gmos-R): An Early Biomarker For Developmental Delays, Shaaron E. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The General Movement optimality score may provide insight into the relationship of term age General Movements and future neurodevelopmental disabilities and could be an early biomarker. This dissertation aimed to determine the relationship between term age neurologic function, measured by the optimality score of the General Movements, and postural control at term and three months (Chapter 2), and the relationship between neurologic function, at term and three months, and 12 month cognitive and motor outcomes (Chapter 3) and the impact of intervention on neurologic function and postural control at three months and on 12 month cognitive and motor outcomes in …

Exploring Prenatal Cannabis Use Among Young Pregnant Bisexual Individuals: A Mixed Methods Study, Nicole Boss

Theses and Dissertations

The perinatal period is a critical time for health behaviors with outcomes that have short- and long-term effects for both childbearing person and child. Research indicates that young bisexual people are at greater risk of unintended pregnancy, experience psychosocial health disparities, and may be more likely to use cannabis during pregnancy. Few studies have examined this phenomenon. This study is a secondary analysis of mixed methods data from a longitudinal cohort study. Thematic analysis of qualitative data (n=12) revealed the contextual adaptivity of cannabis use, with participants explaining the situations and rationales which motivated their cannabis use changed over time. …

Cambodian Snowballs (Part One), Chris Knaggs

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A look into the life and political climate as a military student amidst the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

A cold wednesday morning in March goes from bad to worse for a Michigan University ROTC student. Wednesdays are the worst.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists …

Tunnel Rat - Part 2, Gene Pearson

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

Our combat medic has a much needed conversation with the tunnel rat on whether intervention is needed; an understanding is reached.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.