Digital Commons Network^™

Sipping Success: A Complete Digital Marketing And Customer Journey Makeover For Local Business Mi Boba Using Principles Of Change Management, In-Store Experience Enhancements, And Website Redesign., Joanna Holecko

Honors Theses

Sipping Success captures the journey of customer experience and marketing strategies for a small, woman-owned business in Kalamazoo, Michigan: Mi Boba. Beginning with an in-depth analysis of existing in-store experience using reviews and interviews, this thesis uses insights to guide the creation of a customer service blueprint catered to creating the perfect Mi Boba interaction. From that blueprint, new signage and menus were created to improve the customer experience. Next, the website was completely redesigned to address issues of navigation, visual representation of products, and search engine optimization (SEO). These enhancements improved user experience, resulting in significant increases in website …

Wmu Technical Director For Clue, Fleck Joseph

Honors Theses

This Thesis delves into the pivotal role of the Technical Director in the staging of CLUE, a WMU theatrical production scheduled from November 10 to 19. With a strike date set for November 19 and a load-in work day on October 7, the Technical Director's responsibilities spanned across various domains, from budget management to technical design and construction supervision.

Communication among disparate production departments lay at the heart of the Technical Director's duties. This involved coordinating activities across lighting, sound, scenic, stage management, props, and costume departments. The Technical Director ensured the alignment of creative visions and operational objectives by …

Happy Horn Business Plan, Joseph Schwarz

Honors Theses

As a current Starting Gate member and entrepreneurship major at WMU, I am always surrounded by business ideas and the thought of building and growing my own business. This is the main reason I have made a business plan for my business idea, the Happy Horn.

The Happy Horn is an add on horn attachment for every type of bike, E-bike, and E-scooter. This horn quickly and easily attaches to the handle bars and features 4 buttons. The first button being a normal horn sound. However, the other three buttons are linked to different tones. These tones are selected and …

Privileged Logics: Interrogating Foundations And Practices In Research Ethics, Sandra Borden, David Hartmann, Susan R. Stapleton

Privileged Logics: Interrogating Foundations and Practices in Research Ethics

This one-day conference was held on February 25, 2024, at the end of the APPE Annual Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. The conference consisted of a keynote presentation, three workshop sessions, a working lunch focused on discussion of barriers to change, and a concluding session prompting participants to identify one action drawing on the day’s conversations that they could try at their own institutions or organizations.

The three co-investigators wrote a descriptive summary of the day’s events, and this report is an effort to combine those into a single synthetic account. Two main principles were operative: 1) description rather than interpretation …

Design Of Telemetry And Remote-Control System For Electric Propulsion Testing, Logan Alvesteffer

Honors Theses

Ground testing of electric propulsion (EP) devices occurs inside vacuum chambers and is monitored using high-frequency and low-frequency telemetry systems. These systems provide critical operational information about the device’s performance by monitoring values such as voltage, current, gas flow rates, and chamber pressures. Ground facility telemetry systems can operate as integrated control and safety architecture while testing EP devices. EP testing at Western Michigan University (WMU) is located within the Aerospace Laboratory for Plasma Experiments (ALPE). The Cold plasma Experimental Research Station (CEReS) is outfitted with CTI-250F and CTI-10 cryogenic pumps for a combined pumping capacity of 5,200L/s-air. CEReS facilitates …

Energy-Absorbing Helmet For Safer Football, Aidan Laudeman

Honors Theses

Football-related injuries are a common occurrence and are often detrimental to the player’s health. Force impacts frequently occur at the front, back, and sides of a player’s helmet, resulting in head injuries like concussions. The goal of this project is to reduce recurrent head injuries by designing a solution involving the use of energy-absorbing metallic materials that are inserted into a football helmet. These energy-absorbing materials are configured in target zones inside the helmet to reduce the acceleration of the head based on impact locations. The chosen materials are nitinol and spring steel, which display energy-absorbing properties. Various energy-absorbing material …

How Social Movements Have Influenced Child Custody Standards Over Time, Victoria Miller

Honors Theses

Child custody standards have evolved over time due to societal attitude shifts regarding gender roles. The stereotypes present within the decision-making process of child custody laws have been challenged repeatedly in order to attack sexism within the laws. Child custody decisions are important for the child and family in question, because whichever parental guardian has custody over the child has the legal authority to make life changing choices for the child. These choices can include education, religion, and the environment the child grows and develops in. Parental choices can affect a child's mental and physical well-being, which makes it crucial …

A Legal Analysis Of The Competition And Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act Of 2021, Nicholas Owczarzak

Honors Theses

This legal analysis examines the “Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act of 2021” proposed by Senator Amy Klobuchar, which would amend Section 7 of the Clayton Act to prohibit more anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions. Senator Klobuchar and other antitrust law experts disagree with how courts currently evaluate mergers using the Chicago School of Thought, and Klobuchar sought to strengthen antitrust laws which would change the way mergers are evaluated. This bill mainly aimed to create a lower burden of establishing an anticompetitive merger, from mergers that may “substantially lessen competition” to mergers that may “create an appreciable risk of …

Kalamazoo Nature Center Mobile Application, Jacob Tebben

Honors Theses

This project aimed to address the challenge of enhancing visitor engagement and information dissemination at the Kalamazoo Nature Center (KNC) through the development of an integrated mobile and desktop application system. This initiative arose due to the limitations posed by traditional mobile applications which often become outdated and need to be updated by a dedicated software team. This project was designed for any user of the KNC desktop app to be able to update content on the mobile app, without the need of a dedicated software team.

The mobile application was designed for visitor use, enabling them to access up-to-date …

Electric Ducted Fan Lander, Maggie Waechter

Honors Theses

This report, and corresponding project, addresses the fact that there are not many student experiments with controlling real spacecrafts due to the scarceness of the craft, cost, risk, and finite fuel supply. This project demonstrates the possibility of a classroom substitute for students to understand how landers would operate on planetary bodies. In order to achieve flight from the drone, there were two separate designs produced, the electrical and structural system, that were integrated together to form a full prototype. The performance of the electric ducted fans (EDFs) as well as the batteries were tested to ensure that the components …

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Catalyst Test Stand For Single Cell Evaluation, Tyler Johnson

Honors Theses

The main objective of this project was to develop at test stand and relevant testing procedures to aid in ongoing research being conducted by Dr. Ghantasala’s team on platinum-alternative catalyst materials used in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). To do this, various software (Microsoft Excel, Python, and Simscape) were used to create fuel cell simulations of increasing complexity. These simulations served as baselines for PEMFC evaluation in experimental testing, and they were used to create polarization curves, a standard method for evaluating steady state fuel cell performance. A test stand was also created in order to effectively and efficiently …

Production Of Mrna Vaccine For Influenza, Christina Miller

Honors Theses

The objective of this project is to design a process to produce an mRNA influenza vaccine that serves as an alternative to conventional influenza vaccines, replacing current options with innovative mRNA technologies. Given that older populations are most likely to follow up on immunizations consistently, and the increasing average age worldwide, the market for this project appears to be expanding in the next 80 years. Additionally, experts predict more frequent mutations and outbreaks of viral disease from a variety of factors including globalization and global temperature trends. Rapid response to these viral outbreaks will continue to be as, or even …

How Does Childhood Exposure To Toys And Video Games Relate To Young Adult’S View On Gun Control?, Shelby Wilmot

Honors Theses

The present study investigated the factors influencing support for gun control and attitudes toward gun control restrictions on individuals, specifically violent video games and toys. From the 119 total responses collected, 78 (65.5%) of the participants identified as female, 34 (28.6%) of the participants identified as male, and 7 (5.9%) of the participants identified as nonbinary. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between various independent variables and the dependent variables representing these attitudes. For the dependent variable measuring support for gun control, the model summary revealed a moderate correlation

(r = .610), with approximately 37.2% of the variability …

Dollarization In Latin America, Chloe Wieber

Honors Theses

Dollarization occurs when a country uses the US dollar or other foreign currency alongside or in place of the country’s domestic currency. This research seeks to understand the reasons countries dollarize and analyzes the extent that formal dollarization affects the economic wellbeing of dollarized countries in Latin America. The use of the US dollar is considerable in Latin America with Panama, Ecuador, and El Salvador being formally dollarized, and with Argentina currently considering formally adopting the US dollar. Using difference-in-difference techniques, I analyze the impact of dollarization on economic agents’ perceptions of the economy, on economic growth, and on inflation …

1st Person Ev With Electronic Differential, Tessa Biondo

Honors Theses

The First Person EV with Electronic Differential for Vehicle Dynamics Analysis project makes a significant leap forward in the exploration of electric vehicle (EV) stability and performance enhancement. Lead by a team of skilled electrical engineering students under the guidance of WMU’s associate Professor Dr. Sandun Kuruppu, this project aims to improve EV stability by optimizing power and torque distribution between wheels using an electronic differential system. The project encompasses the design and assembly of a 1/7^th scale custom electric vehicle, capable of remote control via a first-person view (FPV) camera and modified USB wheel and pedal assembly. The …

Fear Of The Other: Judaism And Its Role In The Horror Genre, Wesley Luka

Honors Theses

Horror films reflect the fears of their creators. Some of the first examples of the genre come out of Germany before the Second World War, a time where antisemitism was widespread. Many German filmmakers pre-Nazi Germany used the fear of the other to create movie monsters that are now classics in the horror genre, such as the Golem and Nosferatu. How Jewish representation in horror films has changed since the last century from antisemetic movie monsters to horror movies more respectfully based on Jewish folklore, is an important shift when it comes to the role Jewish representation plays in the …

5675 Wiredcats Scouting Hub, Sebastian Smiley

Honors Theses

The WiredCats Scouting Hub was created to provide FIRST team 5675 with an application that allows them to make more informed strategic decisions regarding their competitive play. The app synthesizes data from multiple sources, parsing multiple data formats into a single source of truth. It also presents data to users through graphs and charts and provides interactive tables. The application meets the requirements set forth by the leadership of team 5675, effectively providing the capabilities they seek.

Veterinarian Perception Of The Impact Of Covid-19 On The Mortality Of Pets, Jason Bainbridge

Honors Theses

The pandemic led to many changes in society, changes that may have affected pets either directly or indirectly from the new way people had to live life. The primary variable of investigation is if the changes were significant enough to affect pets enough to see a trend in mortality. This thesis used a survey, sent out to veterinarians for their perspective, to see the effects the pandemic had on the mortality of pets, as well as any secondary variables. This survey had 38 responses, with 34 being eligible to complete the survey. The survey did not obtain the information of …

Art, Family, And A Calling To Occupational Therapy, Erin Barrus

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Karen Sames was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI. From an early age, she was surrounded by art. An experience with occupational therapy during the third grade jumpstarted her journey connecting art to occupation. Karen believes that art is a necessary part of life and credits much of her own personal success with art to her friends and family for their inspiration and to the instructors at the Eagan Art House in Minnesota. Her piece “Cherry Blossoms,” a pastel on paper, is based on a photograph taken by her son, who is currently living in Japan, and graces the cover …

Sibling Involvement: Highlighting The Influential Role Of Siblings In Supporting Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Gracie Krueger, Robyn Otty

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Social impairments experienced by children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can limit participation in meaningful occupations. Incorporating typically developing siblings of children with ASD in occupational therapy-based community settings is an emerging practice approach that aims to support children with ASD during social challenges to enhance their participation in daily activities. The inclusion of siblings in occupational therapy practice presents a unique opportunity to address social skill development while facilitating positive sibling relationships. In this Opinions in the Profession paper, the influential role siblings play as social models for their siblings with ASD will be examined. The purpose of …

Promoting Equity And Inclusion For Mothers Of Young Children In Academia, Sabina Khan

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Equity and inclusion are critical factors in ensuring that mothers of young children are able to participate fully in occupational therapy academia. Mothers of young children often face significant barriers that prevent them from fully engaging in academic pursuits, including lack of access to childcare, limited support structures, and societal expectations regarding gender roles and caregiving responsibilities. This opinion paper reviews strategies for academics at various levels within academia to promote equity and inclusion for these individuals.

The Role Of Occupational Therapy In The Recognition, Assessment, And Treatment Of Presbyvestibulopathy, Jennifer Hill, Ellen Hudgins, Sharon Leonard

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Sensory functions decline with age, and the likelihood of having multiple sensory impairments increases with age, potentially leading to decreased physical activity and performance, decreased social participation, poorer quality of life, and greater health care spending. Presbyvestibulopathy (PVP), a diagnosis established in 2019, is a vestibular dysfunction or loss related to the aging process characterized by mild bilateral vestibular deficits, chronic dizziness, unsteadiness, gait disturbance, and/or recurrent falls. Given the potential impact of vestibular dysfunction on occupational performance and participation in meaningful activities, occupational therapy’s (OT) role in PVP is evident; however, limited literature exists specific to OT and vestibular …

Improving Occupational Therapy Doctoral Students’ Social Awareness For Making Equitable Policy Decisions: A Quantitative Quasi-Experimental Study, Alysson Goodwin, Denise Crowley

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Occupational therapy has set a strategic vision to increase equity and health access through leadership in all practice areas. To this end, educators in occupational therapy doctorate programs must increase the students’ ability to lead with an awareness of the social impacts of policy decisions. The purpose of this study was to explore educational opportunities to support occupational therapy doctorate students in developing social awareness for decision-making. The study aimed to use an e-learning module to increase social awareness surrounding a departmental decision about a white coat ceremony. A quantitative quasi-experimental one group pre-test post-test study examined if a significant …

Associations Between Learning Environment And Study Satisfaction Across Time: Two Cross-Sectional Analyses Of Occupational Therapy Students, Gry Mørk, Susanne G. Johnson, Astrid Gramstad, Linda Stigen, Tove Carstensen, Tore Bonsaksen

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

There is increasing attention toward students’ satisfaction and how they perceive the quality of the program they attend. This study examined stability and change across time with regard to the relationships between learning environment factors and occupational therapy students’ satisfaction with the program. In the two consecutive cross-sectional analyses performed in this study, 163 second-year students and 193 third-year students from all six occupational therapy education programs in Norway participated. The Course Experience Questionnaire was used to assess learning environment factors and study satisfaction. The data were analyzed with Pearson’s correlation coefficient r and with hierarchical linear regression. Bivariate associations …

The Relationship Between Holistic Admissions Criteria And Program Ranking Among Occupational Therapy Entry-Level Programs, Kristian Taylor, Cat-Tien Nguyen, Jenny Grant, Mary B. Brewster, Mary A. Barrett, Teal Benevides, Sharon M. Cosper

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Holistic admissions criteria are one strategy to be more inclusive of students with a variety of experiences, cultures, and beliefs. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between holistic admissions criteria and occupational therapy program ranking. We used a retrospective cross-sectional cohort descriptive study design of occupational therapy programs in the United States to understand whether top performing programs employ holistic admissions criteria. Secondary descriptive analysis from the top and bottom 50 ranked occupational therapy programs in 2020 U.S. News & World Report (Morse et al., 2020) was completed. We used a nominal scale to classify programs …

Barriers That Affect Equity In The Occupational Therapy Admissions Process: Student And Faculty Perspectives, Quinn P. Tyminski, Lenin Grajo

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

The use of holistic admissions in higher education has been demonstrated to increase the diversity of incoming student classes; yet, in occupational therapy (OT) research, admissions processes remain under-explored. This phenomenological study aimed to explore the process of OT admissions from the perspective of students, faculty, and staff at a single OT program with the goal to create a more inclusive, equitable, and holistic process. Focus groups were conducted with first-year students, and an online survey was sent to faculty to explore perspectives on the admissions process, necessary qualities for an OT graduate student, and suggestions for increasing inclusion and …

Perspectives Of Occupational Therapy Graduates On Sentinel Events During Transitions To Practice: A Phenomenographic Study, Nileththi Achini De Silva, Eleanor Furtado, Anne W. Hunt

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Research suggests new occupational therapists face many positive and negative experiences during their transition from student to therapist. Current research lacks information regarding sentinel events that occur during this shift. An exploration of sentinel events as interpreted through the life course perspective may inform how to support the transition to occupational therapist. The purpose of this study is to (a) determine sentinel events that occur during the transition to practice for new occupational therapists and (b) the impact of these events. A phenomenographic approach guided a semi-structured interview with 14 recent occupational therapy graduates. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematic …

The Effects Of Cervical Cancer Diagnosis On Occupational Performance, Wynnet Sinclair, Christine Mcconnell, Emily Clark, Katie B. Mcentire, Caitlin Lewis, Lyndsi Pound, Katherine Wuertz

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Background: In the United States, it was predicted that approximately 13,960 new cases of invasive cervical cancer would be diagnosed in 2023 (American Cancer Society, 2023). The research question focused on identifying changes in occupational performance for patients with cervical cancer. The areas of occupational performance considered were activities of daily living, leisure, work, education, social participation, and mental health.

Methods: The respondents completed a cross-sectional, mixed methods Qualtrics survey. Likert scale questions captured the degree of functional impact of cervical cancer on the predetermined areas of occupational performance.

Results: Twenty-seven subjects (ages 18 to 70) fully …

Adolescent Perceptions Of Weighted Blankets And Quality Of Sleep: A Mixed Method Design, Tara D. S. Summers

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Background: The purpose of this mixed methods case study was to describe the perceived sleep quality experience of an adolescent, without a pre-identified sleep need, when they used a weighted blanket during sleep.

Method: Adolescents (n = 5) 11 to 16 years of age completed a sleep diary for 7 days, sleeping with a self-selected weighted blanket for at least 3 days. A semi-structured individual interview was held after Day 7.

Results: The majority of the participants would like to continue using a weighted blanket for sleep. Eighty percent of the adolescents choose to sleep with a …

Occupational Therapists' Perceptions On Addressing Spirituality: A Cross Sectional Survey, Shannon Metzger, Jeanine Beasley, Jordan Marheineke, Amy Stites, Amy Riley, Christine Byam, Diane Maodush-Pitzer, Dawn R. Devries

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Background: Occupational Therapy (OT) was founded as a holistic profession that addresses the mind, body, and spirit. Research indicates that occupational therapists feel uncomfortable incorporating spirituality into practice. Method: This study aimed to identify perceptions of occupational therapists in addressing the spiritual needs of their clients. A cross-sectional Qualtrics survey was adapted from the Religious/Spiritually Integrated Practice Assessment Scale (RSIPAS). The survey was electronically sent out by several professional OT organizations. It was sent to occupational therapists and OT assistants to obtain their perspective of incorporating spirituality in practice. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis was completed. Results: Of the 52 …