Digital Commons Network^™

A Case Study Of California Postsecondary Faculty Collaboration On Rubric Development To Foster Student Learning, Emmanuel Kwadwo Frimpong

Dissertations

Although perceived as the ‘gold standard’ strategy for conquering complex problems, collaboration can be ignored by intellectuals who prefer to work independently. This oversight may occur even in the face of challenging problems such as assessment of scholarships, institutional effectiveness, strategizing, and even the crafting of effective rubrics for assessing student learning. The scholarly literature clearly reveals that real difficulties often refuse to respond to routine assignments or common bureaucratic patterns. Additionally, 21st century conflicts may require creative solutions involving interdependence, joining of forces and brains, or vision sharing. Effective assessment of student learning within higher education may reflect just …

The Influence Of Black African American Fathers’ Parenting Styles On Young Adult Children’S Attachment Styles: The Roles Of Gender And Fathers’ Residence, Robert Baptiste Thompson

Dissertations

Parenting

Black African American (BAA) fathers in the United States are frequently mischaracterized as absent or uninvolved, reinforcing deficit-based narratives rooted in historical and systemic racism. Such portrayals obscure the meaningful and sustained roles many BAA fathers play in their families and fail to account for the cultural, structural, and contextual conditions that shape paternal involvement and parenting practices. Although a growing body of research has documented the importance of father involvement for child development, comparatively limited empirical attention has been given to how BAA fathers’ parenting styles influence their children’s attachment—particularly as a function of fathers’ co-residency histories. This …

Cultivating An Evangelistic Culture At Mountain Chapel Methodist Church Through Preaching, Nicholas Channing Hughes

Dissertations

The purpose of this project was to examine the effectiveness of an intentional sermon series, Everyday Evangelism, in cultivating an evangelistic culture at Mountain Chapel Methodist Church, a Global Methodist congregation. The study used a program evaluation model and addressed the question, How does preaching cultivate an evangelistic culture in the local church, along with questions concerning growth in prayerfulness for the lost, gospel conversations, acts of compassion, invitations to Christian community, follow-up with seekers, and whether leaders exhibited greater change than the congregation as a whole. The project employed a pre- and post-series survey design using two participant groups, …

Transformational Leadership And Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Examining The Role Of Perspective-Taking, Job Satisfaction, And Organizational Trust, Marie A. Smith

Dissertations

The study surveyed employees in the service and helping professions (for example retail, healthcare related, hospitality), to examine the impact of transformational leadership on employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Specifically, it tested job satisfaction and organizational trust as possible mediators to the transformational leader to employee OCB relationship and evidence of perspective-taking as a possible moderator to either of these mediated relationships. The study employed PLS-SEM as the method of analysis and examined the influence of transformational leadership, and employee job satisfaction and trust, on employee OCB. The social exchange theory’s reciprocal nature and the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, based …

Exploring Practices Leaders Of Teleworkers Use To Foster Employee Engagement: A Phenomenological Approach, Ronald Eric Snipes

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify and describe the leadership practices used to foster employee engagement among teleworkers in the Veterans Health Administration’s Workforce Management and Consulting division and to examine why leaders believe those practices are important to sustaining employee engagement. The study was guided by the job demands–resources (JD-R) model, which proposes that employee engagement is strengthened when job resources buffer job demands and support motivational processes. As telework continues to expand across organizations, understanding how leadership practices influence engagement in remote environments has become increasingly important.

Methodology: A qualitative phenomenological research design was …

Semi-Supervised Learning For Annotation And Representation Of Single-Cell Rna Sequencing And Spatial Transcriptomics Data, Haoran Liu

Dissertations

Semi-supervised learning has emerged as a powerful paradigm for analyzing single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and spatial transcriptomics (ST) data, where full annotation is often costly or impractical. scRNA-seq technologies measure the expression of thousands of genes across tens of thousands of cells, whereas ST additionally captures the spatial coordinates of gene expression within intact tissue sections. Annotation is a key step in both scRNA-seq and ST analysis pipelines, aiming to identify cell types, spatial domains, and latent biological structures. However, most existing annotation approaches rely on separate clustering methods that are typically fully unsupervised and fail to leverage side information …

Beyond Words: A Systematic Multimodal Framework For Text, Images, And Extreme Helpfulness In Online Reviews, Alvaro J. Aguado Marin

Dissertations

Online product reviews have become increasingly multimodal, combining text with media-rich elements such as images. However, academic research has largely examined textual features in isolation, overlooking how visual content and its interaction with text shape perceived helpfulness. This dissertation addresses that gap by developing and empirically validating a comprehensive framework capturing how textual, visual, and contextual features collectively influence review evaluation. Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and extended through the Text-Image Elaboration Likelihood Model (TI-ELM), the framework advances understanding of how consumers process content from both user- and business-generated sources. It also lays the foundation for examining emerging …

Computational Design Of Nanoporous Materials For The Adsorption Of Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances, Daniel D. Mottern

Dissertations

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a large family of chemicals that have seen wide usage due to their fluorinated carbon backbone. The presence of strong C-F bonds in the backbone lends PFAS molecules high thermal and chemical stability, as well as strong hydrophobicity and lipophobicity. This combination of properties has led to heavy use of PFAS as surfactants, non-stick coatings, and aqueous foam forming films and flame retardants. However, these properties bring their own consequences. The high chemical and thermal stability of PFAS renders them persistent, with the C-F bonds resisting naturally occurring forms of degradation. Existing forms of …

Entropic Forces Near Fluctuating Surfaces, Rubayet Hassan

Dissertations

Nanoscale structures are inherently dynamic due to persistent thermal fluctuations. Even in solid materials, these random deformations, driven by ambient thermal energy, can become significant when their characteristic scale approaches that of the structure itself and strongly influence their overall mechanical behavior. Examples of such structures include crystalline membranes, appearing in diverse forms such as nanotubes, nanoribbons, and kirigami/origami structures. Similarly, biological nanostructures, including lipid membranes, microtubules, actin filaments, and DNA, exhibit extreme flexibility and responsiveness due to their low bending rigidity. Numerous physiological processes are intrinsically linked to these thermal fluctuations, including exocytosis and endocytosis, membrane fusion, pore formation, …

Computational Methods For Single-Cell And Multi-Omic Data Integration And Regulatory Network Inference, Jianlan Ren

Dissertations

Single-cell and multi-omic technologies have transformed the dissection of cellular heterogeneity and regulatory dynamics in health and disease. However, the high dimensionality, technical variability, and biological complexity of these datasets present significant challenges for integration, annotation, and interpretation. In this dissertation, a suite of computational approaches is introduced to address key problems in single-cell and multi-omic data analysis through model-based innovations and applied statistical frameworks.

First, a constrained deep learning framework for single-cell data integration, label transfer, and clustering is proposed. By incorporating biologically motivated constraints into the training process, robust performance is achieved across simulated and benchmark datasets spanning …

Material Degradation And Analysis Of N-Doped Graphene/Mof Nanocatalysts For Orr In Electrochemical Energy Systems, Niladri Talukder

Dissertations

The development of advanced electrochemical energy conversion and storage systems is crucial for achieving sustainable energy security. As alternatives to precious metal-based catalysts in electrochemical systems, especially for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), Nitrogen-doped Graphene with Metal-organic Frameworks (N-G/MOF) nanocatalysts have shown exceptional promise in recent years. This research advances the understanding of N-G/MOF nanocatalysts by systematically examining their structural features, degradation traits, correlated performance losses, and other aspects related to catalytic activities.

First, nitrogen-doped graphene (N-G) nanocatalysts were thoroughly investigated, resolving their physical properties, the influence of synthesis parameters, molecular-level material structures, and chemical and electronic structural details of …

Data-Driven Analysis And Atomistic Simulations Of Next-Generation Materials For Energy Conversion And Storage, Yuliang Shi

Dissertations

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), with their modular architectures and tunable properties, represent an especially rich domain for accelerated material design and discovery for a range of diverse applications. Within this class of multifunctional materials, two-dimensional (2D) electrically conductive MOFs (EC MOFs) are of particular interest, as their 7r-stacked layered structures combine permanent porosity with electronic conductivity, enabling potential breakthroughs in energy storage, energy conversion, and quantum sensing. But the discovery and design of new EC MOFs based on expensive experimental screening is increasingly impractical due to the infinite chemical space. Furthermore, the practical implementation of EC MOFs for specific tasks depends …

Level Up Your Teaching: A Qualitative Analysis Of Teachers’ Perceptions On Gamification As A Tool For Learning, Bryant Wesley Lazenby

Dissertations

This qualitative study investigated K-12 teachers’ views about gamification as an instructional tool to increase student motivation, self-efficacy, and learning mastery. Kelly’s Curriculum Theory and Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory were used to investigate how gamified learning environments affect teacher practice and self-efficacy. Seventeen teachers participated in a researcher-designed Qualtrics survey that included both Likert-style and open-ended items. The researcher used descriptive statistics and thematic coding of responses, based on participants’ self-identified levels of gamification experience. The research produced three main findings, which showed that (1) Gamification motivates students through collaborative work, challenging tasks, and progress tracking systems, (2) Students build self-efficacy …

Student Voices On Trauma And Resilience: A Critical Phenomenological Study Of Gun Violence And College Student Experiences, Lucia Helena Garcia

Dissertations

This study posits that gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis and that colleges and universities must actively collaborate to develop and implement solutions to address and prevent this crisis, which affects communities and students. Gun violence can and does lead to disruptions in educational access, travel and safety, as well as have longstanding impacts on mental health. While extensive research exists that is focused on the impact of community and gun violence exposure on K-12 students, the impact of community violence and gun violence exposure on emerging adults in university settings is limited and remains …

Understanding Medication Adherence Among American Indian/Alaska Native People With Type 2 Diabetes Within A Commercial Health System, Leandra Bitterfeld

Dissertations

American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) adults experience higher rates of type 2 diabetes and worse glycemic control than non-Hispanic White Americans. Despite the importance of medication adherence for T2DM management, there is only one study in the last 15 years examining the relationship between medication adherence and A1C among AI/ANs. Furthermore, T2DM research among AI/ANs has largely been conducted within Indian Health Service and Tribal healthcare systems, though most AI/ANs live outside of reservations, meaning many use commercial health systems. The purpose of this dissertation is twofold. We sought to first understand the experience of AI/AN people accessing T2DM in a …

A Mixed-Methods Design-Based Research: Study Of Teacher Self-Efficacy And The Implementation Of Social Emotional Learning In The High School Classroom, Avia Brown

Dissertations

The escalating mental health crisis among adolescents, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, positioned schools as critical intervention sites for supporting student well-being (K. McNamara, 2020). However, teacher capacity and self-efficacy in implementing social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies remain significant barriers to effective, sustainable practice. This mixed-methods design-based research study examined the efficacy of professional development and instructional coaching in enhancing teacher self-efficacy and supporting the implementation of SEL competencies in high school classrooms.

The researcher employed a comprehensive, five-stage design thinking framework (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) to develop and evaluate a structured eight-week professional development and coaching intervention targeting SEL …

Title I School Principals And Academic Coaches’ Perceptions Of School Strategic Planning, Implementation, And Monitoring On Plan Outcomes: A Case Study, Elizabeth A. Mize

Dissertations

This qualitative case study involved a sample of Title I elementary schools, their principal, academic coach, and district Title I supervisor, who are involved in the school strategic planning process. The study aimed to explore the strategies and processes Title I schools use to develop, implement, and monitor their school strategic plans to grow student achievement. Data collection methods included a demographic questionnaire, a document analysis of each school’s strategic plan and mid-year monitoring plan, and one-on-one semi-structured interviews. The findings highlighted the importance of well-developed plans that incorporate implementation processes and strong monitoring used to adjust, if needed, the …

Navigating The Intersection: Black Women’S Leadership Journey In Educational Technology, Monika Davis

Dissertations

Despite the significant underrepresentation of Black women in district-level leadership for public school districts, diversity in educational technology leadership has been recognized as essential for student success. This phenomenographic study investigated the experiences and perceptions of Black women in district-level educational technology leadership roles within public school districts across the United States. The study addressed two research questions about how these leaders perceive and interpret the intersectional challenges of race, gender, and technology, as well as the variations in their experiences. Using two questionnaires and in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven Black female educational technology leaders, the study explored their lived …

The In-Between: Poetic Counter-Narratives Reimaging The Canon, Yisheika Lawrence

Dissertations

This qualitative, arts-based study examined how tenth grade students in a rural early college Multicultural Literature course engaged with and reinterpreted canonical texts through poetic counter-narratives. Grounded in culturally responsive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017), and poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2019), the study explored how students from marginalized backgrounds used poetry to articulate identity, resist erasure, and construct belonging within an academic context that often privileges dominant cultural narratives.

Data sources included 22 student poems, five semi-structured interviews, four end-of-unit reflections, and researcher memos. Analysis used a triangulated approach: qualitative coding in ATLAS.ti, computational text analysis …

Secondary English Language Arts Students’ Perceptions And Attitudes Toward Constructing Multimodal Arguments, Jasenda R. League

Dissertations

The 2025 Georgia English Language Arts standards indicate that teachers will be moving away from a monomodal approach to literacy learning to include students’ construction and evaluation of multimodal texts in grades 9-12. As such, this qualitative case study explored 39 Honors American Literature students' experiences with constructing multimodal arguments. The study sought to understand students’ perceptions and attitudes of creating an argumentative multimodal composition, including their attitudes toward each stage of the composing process: planning, drafting/designing, revising/editing, and publishing. The context was a suburban high school, and the research and data collection took place over 12 weeks. Data types …

Georgia Teachers’ And Leaders’ Perceptions Of Teacher Evaluations, Jessica Okelley

Dissertations

This research is a quantitative, non-experimental study that analyzes teachers’ and leaders’ perceptions of teacher evaluations in Georgia. The goals were to identify similarities and differences in teachers’ and leaders’ perceptions and to determine what factors may contribute to any identified differences. The study was conducted in a high-performing, suburban school district using two similar surveys and Likert scale questions to assess levels of agreement with various statements about the teacher evaluation process. This work was rooted in Self-Determination Theory and Postpositivism.

The study found that teachers and leaders have several common perceptions, like a general disbelief in evaluations’ capacity …

Voices Of Resilience: The Journey Of African American Women Superintendents In Public School Systems, Shundreia Neely

Dissertations

The dissertation titled "Voices of Resilience: The Journey of African American Women Superintendents in Public School Systems" addresses a critical gap in educational leadership research by focusing on the experiences and challenges faced by African American women superintendents. African American women remain significantly underrepresented in the superintendency despite increasing diversity within K–12 student populations and the educational workforce. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of African American women superintendents, with particular attention to the systemic barriers they encounter and the resilience strategies they employ to navigate leadership. Guided by Black Feminist Theory, this study centered the intersection of race …

Educators’ Perspectives, Practices, And Implications Of Ai In Education For A Title I Middle School, Melanie N. Garland

Dissertations

This study examines educators’ perspectives, instructional practices, and the perceived implications of artificial intelligence (AI) integration within a Title I school context. As AI technologies become more embedded in educational settings, it is essential to understand how teachers in under resourced environments engage with these tools. The research explores how educators perceive the benefits and challenges of AI, the extent of its integration into their pedagogy, and the broader implications for access, particularly for subgroups such as students with disabilities (SWD) and English language learners (ELLs), as well as student engagement and instructional effectiveness. A qualitative case study methodology was …

General Education Teachers' Perspectives And Practices For Supporting English Language Learners In Memphis Charter Schools, Ijiah Hargrove

Dissertations

The growing enrollment of English Language Learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools, particularly within urban charter settings, presents unique challenges for general education teachers who are often underprepared to meet both linguistic and academic needs. The purpose of this study was to explore the instructional strategies, perspectives of their ability of self-efficacy, and institutional factors that shape how K–8 charter school teachers in Memphis support ELLs. This work is significant because teachers’ beliefs, preparation, and available resources directly impact ELL achievement and equity in education.

A qualitative single-case study design was employed, with twelve general education teachers recruited through purposeful sampling. …

Privacy Preserving-Based Artificial Intelligence For Precision Agriculture, Partha P. Sengupta

Dissertations

The research work finds a solution to precision agriculture of cotton cultivation using artificial intelligence (AI) models. Two sets of model performance based on the application are selected namely a low resource and a high resource setting. This is because using drone surveys to capture images identifying the classes of stressed and unstressed cotton plantation requires limited model architecture and CPU based computation. Thus, traditional AI models were selected for low resource settings. Again, for high computation intensive models like transfer learning-convolution neural network (CNN) based architectures were grouped into high resource settings. There was another issue of class imbalance …

The Malonate Template: The Key To Unlocking Novel Amino Acids, Thomas Owens

Dissertations

The “Malonate Template” provides access to various amino acids, all from a common intermediate. Herein, demonstrates the use of the malonate template to establish a synthetic route to both 2-thiohistidine and 2-thio-3-N-methyl-histidine from a benzyl methyl malonate derived intermediate. Furthermore, efforts exploiting the applicability of the malonate template for the of both 2-thiohistidine and 2-thio-3-N-methyl-histidine as a suitable alternative to methods previously described by Erdelmeier are described.

The method presented incorporates modifications to the biomimetic pathway described by Erdelmeier for the synthesis of 2-thiohisidine. By exploiting the biomimetic formation of 2-thiohisitidne’s mechanism via mass spectrometry, we …

Understanding Crystallization Behaviors Of Polyethylene-Derived Vitrimers, Sara Valdez

Dissertations

Polyolefins (POs), particularly polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), are among the most widely utilized polymers globally, valued for their low production costs and favorable mechanical properties stemming from their semicrystalline microstructure. However, their extensive use and improper disposal have raised serious environmental and human health concerns. In response, PO-derived covalent adaptable networks (CANs) have emerged, integrating dynamic chemistries to enable recyclability and sustainable end-of-life strategies. While existing literature has largely focused on novel CAN systems, structure–property relationships, and network rearrangement in relation to thermal transitions (e.g., topological freezing temperature), the influence of network formation on crystallinity and crystallization kinetics remains …

An Exploration Of Enablers, Barriers, And Strategies Influencing Black College Alumni's Sense Of Belonging Through The Lens Of Cultural Competence, Marc' C. Bady

Dissertations

According to Pew research, 53% of Black students in the United States are enrolled in predominantly White institutions, or PWIs (Hatfield & Anderson, 2024). Black alumni who attend PWIs are one among many marginalized and underrepresented vulnerable populations (Tucker, 2021). The purpose of this study was to engage with Black alumni who attended and graduated from PWIs to learn about their experiences with academic enablers, barriers, and strategies for success as a PWI student. The researcher interviewed six alumni who graduated from a Southeastern research one institution to explore their lived experiences at a PWI. The researcher chose to use …

Motivators And Work Role Satisfaction Among A Post-Pandemic Multi-Generational Sports And Entertainment Industry Workforce, Christopher J. Kinnan

Dissertations

This quantitative causal-comparative study explored intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and work-role satisfaction among a post-pandemic, multigenerational workforce in the North American sports and entertainment industry. Using an adapted version of the Sports Grounds Safety Authority’s (SGSA, 2022) Evaluation of Systematic Stewarding Challenges instrument, the study analyzed data from 560 participants representing safety, security, and service roles across sports and entertainment venues. The research examined generational differences in motivation, satisfaction, and barriers to retention within the framework of Human Capital Theory, Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, and Self-Determination Theory.

Principal component and confirmatory factor analyses verified the reliability and validity of the adapted …

Impact Of Community College Size And Meeting Types On Leader-Member Conversation Quality In Career And Technical Education (Cte) Leaders: A Mixed Methods Study, Kenneth Wayne Kirkland Jr.

Dissertations

Community colleges are complex institutions with the primary mission of workforce preparation and academic transfer. In many cases, community colleges produce the majority of their local workforces. Political influences upon workforce priorities, increased national calls for transparency in higher education training, complicated infrastructure, and technical expertise requirements for faculty have created substantial challenges for career and technical education (CTE) leaders. These complexities require the 21st-century CTE leader to be as externally focused as their presidents, highlighting the importance of communication effectiveness in both leaders.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to investigate the influence of community college enrollment levels …