Digital Commons Network^™

Divine Attachment: A Canonical Model For Discipleship And Religious Education, Kristina Marie Freed

Dissertations

Problem

Christianity is in decline in the United States and, with it, discipleship engagement. While several explanations and many remedies have been offered as solutions to the problem over the last half-century, demographic research shows that the decline continues. The problem addressed in this dissertation is the lack of a theological model to augment psychological models of religious attachment theory. The research sought to identify a canonical model of divine attachment which may contribute to the revitalization of personal discipleship and religious education by offering a new relational context. This model is based on an understanding of God as an …

"A Raisin In A Box": The Experiences Of Racialized Black Males In Leadership Roles In The Non-Profit Sector In Toronto, Canada, Morris Anthony Beckford

Dissertations

Problem

The marginalization of Black and other racialized bodies (people of colour) has led to the position of a leader becoming so synonymous with Whiteness that it is normalized and naturalized; and worse, there has been limited analysis about why this is so. There is even less analysis of the experiences of the few people of colour who occupy leadership roles in organizations (Berkshire, 2008; Bradshaw et al., 2009; Mills et al., 2010; Nkomo, 2011; Ospina & Foldy, 2009). Astonishingly, organizations in diverse communities also have exiguous conversations about such salient issues like race and gender even though there is …

Teaching Shante Curtelia Dominique Ophelia Brown Johnson : An Autoethnography Of A Black Male, Seventh-Day Adventist, Jazz Avant-Garde Artist, Michael Gayle

Dissertations

Leadership is part and parcel of societies and cultures. Leadership research can provide understanding that in turn provides knowledge, resources and growth opportunities for leaders. Leadership may be understood from a personal perspective as being bound up with identity. As I examine myself as a person and as a leader, I realize that several identities are prominent: Black male identity, Christian identity, jazz avant-garde artistic identity. Each of those identities have features that contribute to leadership.

The purpose of this study is to describe and explore leadership experiences of a Black male, from the Seventh-day Adventist Christian tradition who is …

Toward A Biblical And Missiological Framework For Transformational Advocacy In The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Michelet William

Dissertations

Problem

Adventists have been inconsistent in dealing with inequality and injustice in society, swaying between silence, accommodation, positional statements, and direct advocacy approaches. Although advocacy has become more prominent among Adventist thinkers since the end of the twentieth century, there is a lack of empirical data which answer questions related to contemporary Adventists' beliefs and practices in relation to advocacy in the context of mission. Concomitantly, there does not yet exist a documented or articulated Adventist missiological perspective on advocacy.

Research Questions

(1) What part, if any, has biblically-based social advocacy played in Adventist mission history? and (2) What do …

Measuring The Effect Of An Intervention On Student Engagement And Reading Comprehension, Kaitlin Reichart

Dissertations

Students arrive at school each day with a great disparity in emotional and learning readiness. This is caused by a multitude of factors such as chronic stress, family separation, poverty, the COVID-19 pandemic, sexism, trauma, ACEs, racism, and lack of access to resources. Students need daily assistance in understanding and regulating their emotions. Schools have become the central place for supporting students' mental health, yet teachers are generally overworked and underprepared in the area of supporting mental health. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the impact of a universal tier one self-regulation intervention on student engagement and reading …

Play On; Give Me Excess Of It: Intercorporeality And Musical Definitions, Abram Basil Soucy Capone

Dissertations

Philosophy of music, especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, presides over a relatively narrow range of field-specific ontological and metaphysical questions. I claim that a focus on classical music and a reliance on analogies to the plastic arts constitutes an unhelpful (but pervasive) methodology in philosophy of music, one that stands in tension with its purported aim of accurately accounting for “the ways we talk, think, and act” in relation to music and musical works (Rohrbaugh 2003, 179). While philosophers of music explicitly aim to describe praxis, a significant gap exists between existing theory and ordinary musical experiences. To …

Simulation Psychological Safety Ecosystem: A Grounded Theory Study Of Nurses’ Experience With Psychological Safety In Prelicensure Simulation, Susan Eller

Dissertations

Over the past couple of decades, the utilization of simulation-based education in prelicensure nursing expanded in both frequency and functionality. Learning through simulation requires psychological safety where participants feel comfortable engaging to their fullest extent and can speak up or ask questions without fear of embarrassment to themselves or others. Professional simulation organizations provide recommendations for creating psychological safety, yet anecdotal stories from nurses report variability in their experiences ranging from positive to negative. Research regarding psychological safety in nursing education revealed some consistent themes of anxiety due to being observed or unfamiliar with simulation environments or expectations. The evolving …

Dungeons & Dragons & Dewey: Toward A Ludic Pedagogy Of Democratic Civic Life Through The Philosophy Of John Dewey And Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Susan Haarman

Dissertations

In this dissertation, which uses philosophical inquiry, I posit that tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) can provide an educative experience for democratic civic life in the Deweyan tradition. Tabletop RPGs present an invaluable resource for ongoing civic formation by encouraging deliberation and consensus building across shared goals and circumstances. Philosopher John Dewey emphasized that democracy is defined by the civic habits and collective action, not formal governance structures. The experience of playing tabletop RPGs can cultivate habitus and space for future and current citizens to practice democratic skills and commitments. Therefore, these games are a means that align with the ends …

None Of Us Are Safe: How Leaders Sustain Culturally Responsive Elementary And Middle School Improvement Planning, Jerry B. Michel

Dissertations

In the spring of 2020, school leaders, school boards, and teachers faced challenges beyond the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, finding themselves under attack for the perceived applications of critical race theory in school curriculum. These conditions made active engagement in equity-focused school improvement planning more challenging. School leaders and leadership teams may benefit from using an established framework to identify strengths and areas for growth around culturally responsive pedagogy for effective school improvement planning. This article explores the use of Hammond’s (2015) Ready for Rigor Framework as a tool for identifying prioritizing which conditions for culturally responsive pedagogy …

Establishing A Health-Based Social Hierarchy, Akila Salaam Raoul

Dissertations

Social dominance theory (SDT) proposes a basic human nature to form social hierarchies based on social group membership with dominant and subordinate social groups. These social hierarchies are maintained through legitimizing myths, or beliefs that work to frame the existing social system as fair by suggesting that individuals receive the social status they deserve based on their actions and contributions to society as opposed to their group membership. The level at which an individual wants to maintain social hierarchies is indicated by their Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). SDT has been extensively studied in the context of race, gender, and age …

A Portrait Of The Leadership Of Women In Early Christianity: An Archaeological Study In Light Of The Historical And Socio-Cultural Contexts, Carina Prestes

Dissertations

Problem

The participation of women in the Early Christian communities is widely accepted. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on what was their role in these communities. Until now the study of women in the Early Christian communities has focused mostly in the writings of some ancient authors and a few biblical texts. These studies have been done mostly by theologians and historians. Such studies rarely take a deep look at the Greco-Roman background and at the historical, socio-cultural contexts. This contextualization can be quite fruitful and should be informed by recent archaeological discoveries of the first centuries of Christianity. Thus, …

Relationships Among Perceptions Of Support, Experiences Of Gatekeeping, And Burnout In Counselor Educators And Supervisors, Alicia Lamar

Dissertations

Counselor educators and supervisors carry out the responsibility of ensuring that counselors in training are competent and fit for practice. Burnout can occur when stressors in the workplace are not addressed. Engagement in the role of gatekeeper and perceptions of support can be factors that impact burnout in counselor educators. The exploration of variables that may relate to counselor educator burnout would benefit the counseling community including counselor educators, counseling students, counseling clients, and the community at large. There has been a paucity of research exploring the relationships among faculty members’ perceptions of support, experiences of gatekeeping, and burnout in …

Android Security: Analysis And Applications, Raina Samuel

Dissertations

The Android mobile system is home to millions of apps that offer a wide range of functionalities. Users rely on Android apps in various facets of daily life, including critical, e.g., medical, settings. Generally, users trust that apps perform their stated purpose safely and accurately. However, despite the platform’s efforts to maintain a safe environment, apps routinely manage to evade scrutiny. This dissertation analyzes Android app behavior and has revealed several weakness: lapses in device authentication schemes, deceptive practices such as apps covering their traces, as well as behavioral and descriptive inaccuracies in medical apps. Examining a large corpus of …

Improving The Stimulation Selectivity In The Human Cochlea By Strategic Selection Of The Current Return Electrode, Ozan Cakmak

Dissertations

The hearing quality provided by cochlear implants are poorly predicted by computer simulations. A realistic cochlear anatomy is crucial for the accuracy of predictions. In this study, the standard multipolar stimulation paradigms are revisited and Rattay’s Activating Function is evaluated in a finite element model of a realistic cochlear geometry that is based on µ-CT images and a commercial lead. The stimulation thresholds across the cochlear fibers were investigated for monopolar, bipolar, tripolar, and a novel (distant) bipolar electrode configuration using an active compartmental nerve model based on Schwartz-Eikhof-Frijns membrane dynamics. The results suggest that skipping of the stimulation point …

Photonic Monitoring Of Atmospheric Fauna, Adrien P. Genoud

Dissertations

Insects play a quintessential role in the Earth’s ecosystems and their recent decline in abundance and diversity is alarming. Monitoring their population is paramount to understand the causes of their decline, as well as to guide and evaluate the efficiency of conservation policies. Monitoring populations of flying insects is generally done using physical traps, but this method requires long and expensive laboratory analysis where each insect must be identified by qualified personnel. Lack of reliable data on insect populations is now considered a significant issue in the field of entomology, often referred to as a “data crisis” in the field. …

Integrated Machine Learning And Optimization Approaches, Dogacan Yilmaz

Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the integration of machine learning and optimization. Specifically, novel machine learning-based frameworks are proposed to help solve a broad range of well-known operations research problems to reduce the solution times. The first study presents a bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory framework to learn optimal solutions to sequential decision-making problems. Computational results show that the framework significantly reduces the solution time of benchmark capacitated lot-sizing problems without much loss in feasibility and optimality. Also, models trained using shorter planning horizons can successfully predict the optimal solution of the instances with longer planning horizons. For the hardest data set, …

The Future Of The Urban Street In The United States: Visions Of Alternative Mobilities In The Twenty-First Century, Esther Zipori

Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with the present and future of urban streets in the United States. The goal is to document and analyze current visions, policies, and strategies related to the form and use of American urban streets. The dissertation examines current mobility trends and offers a framework for organizing visions of the future of urban streets, evaluating them through three lenses: safety, comfort, and delight: assessing physical conditions in accordance with livability standards toward sustainable development. At the same time, it demonstrates the way 12 scenarios (NACTO Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism, Sidewalk Labs: Quayside Project, Public Square by FXCollaborative, …

Machine Learning-Based Data Analytics For Understanding Space Weather And Climate, Yasser Abduallah

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses multiple crucial problems in space weather and climate, presenting new machine learning-based data analytics algorithms and models for tackling the problems.

First, the dissertation presents two new approaches to predicting solar flares. One approach, called DeepSun, predicts solar flares by utilizing a machine-learning-as-a-service (MLaaS) platform. The DeepSun system provides a friendly interface for Web users and an application programming interface (API) for remote programming users. It adopts an ensemble learning method that employs several machine learning algorithms to perform multiclass flare prediction. The other approach, named SolarFlareNet, forecasts the occurrence of solar flares within the next 24 …

Bioremediation Of Petroleum Hydrocarbons In Coastal Sediments, Charbel Abou Khalil

Dissertations

The biodegradation of dispersed crude oil in the ocean is relatively rapid (a half-life of a few weeks). However, it is often much slower on shorelines, usually attributed to low moisture content, nutrient limitation, and higher oil concentrations in beaches than in dispersed plumes. Another factor may be the increased salinity of the upper intertidal and supratidal zones since these parts of the beach are potentially subject to prolonged evaporation and only intermittent inundation. Therefore, two laboratory experiments are conducted to investigate whether such an increase in porewater salinity results in additional inhibitory effects on oil biodegradation in seashores.

In …

Combustion Soot Nanoparticles: Mechanism Of Restructuring And Mechanical Properties, Ali Hasani

Dissertations

Soot, a product of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, is a global warming agent. The effect of soot particles on climate depends on their morphology. Freshly released soot particles are fractal lacey aggregates, but they often appear collapsed in atmospheric samples collected away from emission sources. A body of work has concluded that the collapse is caused by liquid shells when they form by vapor condensation around soot aggregates. However, some recent studies argue that soot remains fractal even when engulfed by the shells, collapsing only when the shells evaporate. To reconcile this disagreement, the effects of the condensation and …

Monitoring Climate Change With Machine Learning And Uncertainty Quantification, Firas Gerges

Dissertations

The impact of climate change on the environment has become increasingly visible today. One important topic in climate change monitoring is to forecast future climate events, which relies on long-term prediction of climate variables at a local regional scale. This topic is crucial for disaster risk management and for resolving climate change at the local level. General Circulation Models (GCMs) allow for the simulation of several climate variables, decades into the future. GCM simulations, however, are at a global large scale and are too coarse to monitor climate change at the local small scale. This dissertation explores new machine learning …

Biotransformation And Biodefluorination Of Fluorotelomer Carboxylic Acids, Chen Wu

Dissertations

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), a class of emerging contaminants of concern, have attacked unprecedented attention given their prevalent detection and adverse health effects. Primary regulatory attention has been focused on PFOA, PFOS, and other perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs). Recent investigations revealed that fluorotelomer carboxylic acid (FTCAs), particularly 5:3 FTCA and 6:2 FTCA, were dominant in landfill leachates and other environmental matrixes. FTCAs are also found as common intermediates during the biotransformation of PFAA precursors. Unfortunately, FTCAs have higher bioaccumulating potential and are at least two orders more toxic than their corresponding PFCAs. However, information regarding the potentials and mechanisms of …

Angiogenic Supports For Microvascular Engineering, Zain Siddiqui

Dissertations

Ischemic tissue disease is caused by a lack of circulation / blood supply to tissue. This can be treated by introducing a number of angiogenic (pro-blood vessel forming) factors into the tissue. This work presents strategies for ischemic tissue treatment utilizing a novel proangiogenic self-assembling peptide hydrogel platform. To demonstrate the utility of this platform, its use alone as an angiogenic therapeutic (both alone as a self-assembling hydrogel and with two-component systems), and its ability to vascularize implants is explored. Due to these angiogenic scaffolds demonstrating efficacy to regenerate microvasculature, this work evaluates diseases that can be treated by the …

Nondirect Line-Of-Sight Free-Space Optical Communications And Networks, Paa Kwesi Affir Esubonteng

Dissertations

Nondirect Line-of-Sight Free-Space Optical Communications (NLoS-FSOC) uses diffuse reflected light to establish communication between two or more stations that are with or without line-of-sight (LoS) to each other. Different from free-space optical communications (FSOC), NLoS-FSOC uses a diffuse reflector (DR) between a transmitter and a receiver so that LoS is not required between them but between the station and the DR. Unlike a mirror, the DR reflects the incident light to all directions and except to itself. That multidirectional reflection broadcast the optical transmission to all receivers with LoS to the DR. The optical broadcast channel establishes a true optical …

Microplastics And Genetic Vectors Promoting The Dissemination Of Antimicrobial Resistance In Municipal Wastewater Treatment Processes, Ngoc Dung Pham

Dissertations

The spread of antimicrobial resistance in the environment and especially its transfer into human pathogens have emerged as global issues. Activated sludge units at municipal wastewater treatment plants are "hotspots" converging a multitude of contaminants, including antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB), human pathogens, and microplastics. The prevalence of antibiotics can induce stress response of sludge microbial communities and promote the development of new resistance mechanisms and transmission venues, through which the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) arises as mediated by mobile genetic elements (MGEs). In this doctoral dissertation, the impacts of microplastics and genetic vectors (i.e., MGEs and bacterial hosts) …

Evaluation And Revision Of The Practice Environment Scale Of The Nursing Work Index For Acute Care Hospital Staff Nurses, Caitlin M. Campbell

Dissertations

The Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI) is the most frequently used instrument for measuring the nursing work environment. The original PES-NWI obtained its items directly from the parent instrument, the Nursing Work Index, which was developed in the 1980s. However, potential value change among younger generations and vast historical, social, and technological transformations in the way healthcare is provided may have led to different factors that compose a favorable work environment for nurses working today.

Online Clinical Post-Conference, Face-To-Face Clinical Post-Conference: Effects On Critical Thinking In Associate Degree Nursing Students, Kristie A. Berkstresser

Dissertations

Nurse educators, at every level of pre-licensure nursing education, are charged with developing critical thinking skills within their students. Post-clinical conference is one teaching strategy that nurse educators can employ to help promote the development of critical thinking skills in pre-licensure nursing students. However, traditional face-to-face post-clinical conference is marred with issues and concerns, as identified in the nursing education literature. An alternative to face-to-face post-clinical conference, asynchronous online learning environment, mitigates the issues and concerns associated with traditional post-clinical conference. Adult learning theory supports the use of asynchronous online learning environment. The asynchronous online learning environment promotes student-centered teaching …

Water Management And Corrosion Performance From Protective Polymer Coatings With Spatially Controlled Hydrophilic Domains, Jessica M. Davison

Dissertations

Metallic corrosion has become an annual multibillion-dollar problem for the industrialized world and global contamination issue through the process of repair, removing, and reapplying protective coatings. Typical corrosion resistant coatings are comprised of polymeric coating layers with anti-corrosive pigments, plasticizers, sacrificial additives, and/or other formulation materials, which are formulated to prevent, detect, and manage corrosion. Our counterintuitive approach was to improve upon the understanding of how, when, where, and why environmental contaminants (reactants, mainly water and electrolytes) driving corrosion, propagate and accumulate as localized hydrophilicity shifts within a model polymer coated substrate. Herein, hydrogel particles (HGP) were synthesized of defines …

Barriers To Implementing A Work-Based Learning Program: A Health Science Educator Perspective, Daniel Harrison

Dissertations

Career and Technical Education programs’ mission statement is to supply a skilled workforce for all industries (ACTE, 2021). The Health Science pathway lags behind other industry sectors in active work-based learning programs (Greenfield & Stevens, 2018). Therefore, this study examines the potential barriers to implementing work-based learning programs within the Health Science pathway. The qualitative descriptive investigation into the three types of work-based learning of visits to the workplace, work-like experiences, and employment discovered critical findings regarding healthcare requirements, scheduling conflicts, and access to facilities. Finding 1 details healthcare requirements as the most significant barrier to work-based learning programs. The …

Educators’ And Parents’ Attitudes Toward The Inclusion Of Students With Emotional And Behavior Disorders, Shannon L. Howze

Dissertations

Educating students with emotional and behavior disorders (EBD) has historically been a difficult task for educators (McKenna et al., 2021). The general education setting comes with many barriers when attempting to include students with EBD to the equation. Parents are instrumental to the success of their students with EBD regardless to the setting. Educators may lack in the skills needed to communicate, educate, and understand students with EBD. Without educators and parents collectively communicating and collaborating, students with EBD will not have the opportunity to have the positive experiences and outcomes to be successful. Applying the theoretical frameworks of Bandura’s …