Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Affordable Housing In Enhancing Tenants' Economic Stability In Connecticut: A Focus On Income, Employment, And Housing Stability, Osaid Zubi

Dissertations

This study examined the role of affordable housing in promoting economic stability among low- and moderate-income households in Connecticut. Focusing on income security, employment opportunities, and housing retention, this research highlighted the significance of affordable housing as a means to alleviate financial strain, support job retention, and foster community resilience. Utilizing a phenomenological approach, the study gathered insights from tenants, policymakers, and developers through conducting interviews and a focus group. Connecticut was chosen as the study site due to its high cost of living and affordable housing shortage, exacerbated by its proximity to New York City. Findings underscore the economic …

Roses And Concrete: Black Teachers' Roles And Challenges In Marginalized Communities, Alyse N. Barry

Dissertations

Black educators play a vital role in schools that serve marginalized communities, yet their stories are often overlooked in academic research. This phenomenological study explores how Black teachers interpret their roles and navigate challenges within these spaces. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), I centered the voices of ten Black educators to better understand the emotional, cultural, and professional layers of their experience.

Through in-depth interviews, participants described themselves as more than just instructors. They saw themselves as cultural connectors, advocates, and protectors for their students. Their presence helps affirm student identities and bridge cultural divides, but they also carry significant …

The Role Of Teacher Leaders In Sustaining School Culture During Principal Transitions: A Case Study, Leah Curtright

Dissertations

This qualitative case study explored the lived experiences of eight teacher leaders at a public high school navigating rapid principal turnover, with five principals in 36 months. It sought to understand their perceived roles in maintaining school stability, focusing on how they countered adverse effects on culture, morale, and achievement. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with eight teacher leaders. After the interviews were transcribed and codes identified, four themes emerged. The findings were aligned with the frameworks of this study: Eco-leadership, Distributed Leadership, and Teacher Leadership. Findings indicated that teacher leaders actively attempted to mitigate the adverse effects of principal …

High School Students' Mathematics Experiences And Mathematics Learner Identities In A Rural Georgia Town: A Qualitative Study Using Autophotography With Photo-Elicitation, Wesley Cooper

Dissertations

This study examines the mathematics experiences (MEs) and mathematics learner identities (MLIs) of high school students in a rural Georgia town, addressing the underrepresentation of rural perspectives in mathematics education through an asset-based lens. Using autophotography with photo-elicitation, ten participants captured images reflecting their MEs, MLIs, and recommendations for improvement. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups along with two mini-cases amplified participant voices, guided by the frameworks of Four Faces of Mathematics Learner Identity (4F), Content Learning and Identity Construction (CLIC), and Critical Rural Theory (CRuT). Findings highlight how rural students’ MEs and MLIs are shaped by both the strengths of …

Does Artificial Intelligence Bias Exist In Mortgage Underwriting Software? Investigating Bias, Regional Disparities, And Fair Ai Models, Dorian Cornelius

Dissertations

This quantitative study closely emulated Zou and Khern's (2022) analysis of AI Bias in Mortgage Applications. They used the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) dataset from the Federal Financial Institution Examination Council's (FFEIC) website to review mortgage loan data from 2019 to determine if there was bias in the AI mortgage application approvals. Those researchers concluded that bias does exist in the AI mortgage underwriting software. Since their study, research has demonstrated that discrimination continues to exist in AI software. Therefore, this research expands on Zou and Khern’s study to determine if there are differences in the mortgage loan approval …

A “Scary Time” To Be A Man? Comparing Men’S Engagement With Anti-Sexual Violence Discourses In The Private And Public Sphere, Melissa A. Kinsella

Dissertations

The prevalence of sexual misconduct and its consequences for individuals and society remain pressing issues in the United States. While the #MeToo movement has emerged as a prominent response to these challenges, it has faced criticism for emphasizing a singular survivor narrative. Similarly, the study and theorization of sexual violence within sociology have remained limited in scope. This work extends empirical and theoretical perspectives on sexual misconduct by analyzing #MeToo’s utilization in Twitter1 posts from 2017 to 2022, as well as how individuals discuss sexual misconduct in relation to the movement. Additionally, I examine the influence of gender, race, and …

Like Teacher, Like Student: An Exploration Of Racial Matching On Black Student Identity Development In Secondary Education, Crystal Gloria Lennix

Dissertations

Research on racially matching teachers of color with students of color has demonstrated a plethora of benefits, whether it is in West-Indian teachers with West-Indian students (Warikoo, 2004), Mexicana educators with Mexicana students (Sosa-Provencio, 2019), or Black students with Black teachers (Brooms, 2017). Black teachers are warrior spirits, acknowledging education as a “racial, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual reclamation” for Black students (Sosa-Provencio, 2018). In this study, I sought to understand how the racial matching between Black teachers and Black students can impact Black students’ identity and achievement. Numerous studies say racial matching helps students, but only a few focus on …

Teaching Since 2020: Inhabiting Professionalization, Autonomy, And Classroom Teaching, Melissa Fisher

Dissertations

This study explores teacher professionalization Since 2020 by examining control over teachers’ work as constructed by classroom teachers. Using a conceptual framework combining the teacher disempowerment perspective, inhabited institutionalism, and professionalization, I focus on the question: Given the recent years of upheaval the profession of education has sustained, how are teachers inhabiting the role of "professional teacher," particularly regarding control over their own work? This qualitative study utilizes semi-structured interviews with fourteen teacher participants in an Indiana public school district. This study finds that participants are constructing a new Since 2020 teaching reality. Participants converged on professional challenges including disruptive …

Examining The Creative Process Of Visual Artists: A Phenomenological Study, Filiberto Vargas

Dissertations

Creativity fuels problem solving and innovation, driving both economic growth and individual success. Yet, many schools and organizations fail to nurture it. Today, there is a decline in creativity scores among U.S. students. This is concerning since many of these students will be the future leaders of organizations and communities. For this reason, this dissertation explores the creative process of visual artists to better understand how creativity can be cultivated. Visual artists' perspectives and sense-and-meaning-making processes offer a unique view of innovation and creativity. However, there is limited research on the creative processes of contemporary visual artists from culturally diverse …

The Impact Of A Paid Work Experience On High School Students With Mild To Moderate Disabilities From The Parental Perspective, Lori Lee Schleinkofer

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify and describe how the parents/guardians of high school students with mild/moderate disabilities in Southern California perceive the impact that working while in high school has on their students with respect to confidence, independence, motivation, responsibility, self-advocacy, self-esteem, and social skills. The central research question was “How do parents/guardians of high school students with mild/moderate disabilities perceive the impact that working while in high school has on their students?” Methodology: Interviews were conducted with 11 parents of participants in paid work experience programs. A qualitative interview question development matrix was used …

Breaking Barriers: A Delphi Study On Strategies Military Women Of Color Use To Advance Into Senior Leadership In The California Air National Guard, Michelle Leon Carrasco

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this Delphi study was to determine what strategies military women of color (in ranks of E–8 and above or O–4 and above) used to overcome workplace barriers to advancement in the California Air National Guard (CAANG), to rate the importance of the strategies identified in Research Question 1, and to determine the methods by which they employed the top five most important strategies.Methodology: This study used a three-round Delphi method to collect data from women of color senior leaders in the CAANG. In Round 1, the expert panel identified strategies to overcome workplace barriers to advance …

A Phenomenological Study Of Gender And The Leadership Of Female Academic Library Directors, Julia D. Grace Dr

Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how the gender of female academic library directors affects their leadership. The theory guiding this study was Acker’s theory of the ideal worker, as it offers a framework for examining the impact of worker gender in the workplace. The central research question of this study examined how the gender of female library directors at medium nonprofit private universities and colleges in the U.S. affected their leadership. This study utilized a phenomenological approach, conducting semi-structured interviews of female academic library directors at medium nonprofit private universities and colleges in the U.S. The …

Assessing Best Practices Of Facilitation Of The Free Exercise Of Religion By Army Chaplains Utilizing The Success Case Method, Geoffrey N. Bailey Phd

Dissertations

This mixed-methods study examined how U.S. Army chaplains experience and facilitate the free exercise of religion. The research explored compelling narratives of best-case facilitation experiences, identified leadership qualities associated with successful religious support, and analyzed similarities and differences between best and worst-case scenarios. Using Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method, the study distributed a quantitative survey to 1,478 active-duty chaplains (achieving a 23% response rate) followed by twelve guided interviews with participants representing diverse ranks and faith traditions. The research revealed six major themes: significant gaps in education for pluralistic ministry, tension between personal religious convictions and professional duties, crucial impact of …

Affordability Culture In Practice : Survey Validation Through A Socio-Technical Lens, Taylor Yeazitzis

Dissertations

Affordability has been a key directive in engineering projects as organizations seek to develop larger and more complex systems on stable or reduced budgets. This dissertation proposes a socio-technical framework of affordability to evaluate current affordability practices in organizations. Socio-technical frameworks have been used in complex organizations due to the ability to examine both social aspects as well as technical aspects as interconnected organizational components, yet previous research is lacking when attempting to approach affordability from this perspective. This research aimed to bridge this gap by validating a survey that examines affordability from both social and technical perspectives to gain …

Rejected From Pastoral Leadership: A Phenomenological Study Of The Voice And Lived Experiences Of African American Pentecostal Women In Clergy, Cynthia Ann Hurns

Dissertations

The study explored the lived experiences of 10 African American Holiness-Pentecostal clergywomen who faced rejection in a predominantly male-led church system. These women shared detailed stories of their experiences in leadership as pastors, apostles, and co-pastors. A qualitative phenomenological methodology was employed, using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) because it allows for in-depth exploration of how people make sense of their experiences, aligning with the study’s focus on leadership journeys. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed through descriptive and iterative coding. Codes were grouped into broader categories, resulting in five emerging themes: voiceless calling, bound to tradition, call from …

Generalizing Coordination Threshold Graphical Games On Contagion And Secret Sharing Through Graph Features, Alexandra Fedrigo

Dissertations

Coordination graphical games depict interactions among a network of participants that must work together to achieve a desired outcome. Many sociological, economic, and political scenarios are modeled using these games. The flexible framework graphical games provide leaves a variety of parameters to be determined based on application, though the parameters that describe the network of participants are of central importance. There are several avenues previously unexplored in this area. In this work, a metric is introduced to describe graph fitness for a basic coordination graphical game and restrictions on the longterm behavior of the game are identified. Similarly, game outcome …

Including Conscientiously: How Charter School Educators Experience Inclusion Education Implementation, Joe A. Petty

Dissertations

This narrative inquiry examined how charter school educators experience inclusive education implementation while confronting ableist systems that maintain exclusion through seemingly neutral practices. This research emerged from my lived experience of how educational structures systematically marginalize disabled students while appearing progressive. The study investigated two research questions: how support structures and leadership practices either perpetuate or dismantle ableist assumptions embedded in educational practice, and how educators negotiate tensions between implementing evidence-based inclusive strategies and addressing environmental factors that create the need for those strategies.

Data collection employed semistructured interviews with eight credentialed educators across two Southern California charter school sites, …

Assessing The Selection And Impact Of Completeness In Technical Measure Sets In Systems Engineering, Casey Eaton

Dissertations

Technical measurement is foundational in large-scale complex engineered systems (LSCES) design and contract awards due to the state of practice of systems engineering. Although technical measurement is ubiquitous in systems engineering practice, the selection and assessment of the impact of a set of technical measures is often heuristics-based, rather than based on empirical evidence or theory. Current technical measure set selection has been observed to be subject to many challenges which, in turn, can degrade system outcomes. Two main thrusts comprise the research: selection and impact. Motivated by the potential impacts of a poor set of technical measures, a significant …

A Rubber-Band System For Dynamic Incentivization Of Parallelized Gamified Objectives, Nicholas Diliberti

Dissertations

With the advent of videogames as the world's first mass-market interactive media, gamification has emerged as the premier way to harness powerful behavior-affecting gamified elements and place them in other contexts, such as education, fitness, and rehabilitation. This transposition, however, ignores a key tenant of user engagement: reward ought to be aligned with effort. Most, if not all, current gamification systems dispatch static reward allocations for their spread of gamified behaviors. In this paper, an alternative is presented: dynamic gamification. This dynamic gamification reads the user's current gamified state for indicators of aptitude, dynamically remaps rewards with a tuneable evaluation …

The Ethical Theory Of Enrique Dussel: An Investigation Of Violence And Coercion In His Three Foundational Principles, Eric Antonio Del Valle Cruz

Dissertations

Problem

Enrique Dussel's ethics proposes addressing global inequality through legitimate coercion as a means of liberating the poor, contrasting it with the violence of the current system. However, the inclusion of life-threatening acts, such as armed revolution, as coercion raises practical challenges for the Christian community, including ethical-political dialogue, inclusion of opposing parties, and potential dehumanization, which need further exploration in light of Dussel’s use of Scripture in support of his proposals.

Purpose

This dissertation aims to assess Dussel's philosophical principles and their connection to coercion and violence, ultimately establishing a framework for a conservative Christian proposal that combines the …

Moral Identity And Its Relationship To Higher Education Mentoring And Community Service Engagement, Maria O. Rodriguez

Dissertations

Problem

A moral action is a result of the engagement of multiple psychological processes set in motion when an individual faces a moral conflict. Research suggests that an individual's moral reasoning and moral identity strongly influence the psychological processes that precede a moral action. Recent studies have shown that higher education positively influences students' moral reasoning; however, there is a lack of understanding as to the degree to which higher education can influence the moral identity of students.

Method

This study performed a quantitative cross-sectional study to investigate the relationship between independent variables—mentoring experiences and community service engagement—and dependent variables—moral …

Support Needs Of Agrarian Women To Build Household Livelihood Resilience: A Case Study Of The Mekong River Delta, Tran Thi Ngoc Tran

Dissertations

Problem

Rural livelihood faces significant challenges due to the increasing frequency and severity of climate change impacts. However, the development of women’s livelihood resilience remains constrained by gender-blind policies, limited sex-disaggregated data, and a lack of integration of gender-specific needs and priorities in resilience-building interventions. This study aims to address these critical gaps. This study aims at exploring the perceived support needs of rural agrarian women in building household livelihood resilience to climate change. Specifically, it seeks to (1) understand how household livelihood resilience is perceived by rural agrarian women, and (2) identify the support they require to effectively adapt …

Religious Participation, Subjective Happiness, And Purpose In Life As Predictors Of Psychological Resilience Among College Students At A Faith-Based Institution In The United States, Elaine Powell Oliver

Dissertations

Problem

During the transition from adolescence to adulthood, also known as emerging adulthood, many college students experience psychological distress, such as anxiety, depression, stress, and loneliness (Arnett & Tanner, 2009; DeRosier et al., 2013). For some students, their psychological distress will impact how they perform academically and whether they will persist in their academic goals (Hartley, 2012; Robbins et al., 2018). Many students lack the resilience needed to survive and thrive amid the challenges of college life (Lane, 2020; McLafferty et al., 2022; Watkins et al., 2012). -- Resilience is considered an essential psychological characteristic to assist students in navigating …

The Concept Of Israel In The Old Testament And Its Divine Purpose: An Exegetical And Theological Analysis, Gregory Arutyunyan

Dissertations

The aim of this study is to undertake a fresh look into the concept of Israel in the Old Testament and its divine purpose in the context of the overarching theology of the Hebrew Bible. The working method used in this research is a theological and exegetical analysis of relevant Hebrew text along with incorporating historical and socio-archaeological background studies.

The conclusion that is reached is that Old Testament Israel was a cosmopolitan community of people connected through biological links, intermarriage relationships, and political alliances. In a spiritual sense, the term Israel served as a characterizing title granted to Jacob …

The Inequitable Access: Black And Latinx Students In Ap Courses, Jean C. Woolcock

Dissertations

This study posits that in American high schools, the preparation of Black and Latinx students, starting from the freshman year, can be effective in helping to increase their participation in Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Structural inequities, in how schools are resourced, affect the ways in which Black and Latinx students are denied equal opportunities. On the contrary, members of their peers do obtain this kind of preparation. As a framework, Critical Race Theory (CRT) contends that race, the law, and power are deeply ingrained in maintaining established bastions of wealth and dominance. Gaps in opportunity and achievement spill over into …

Reconceptualizing Christian Nationalism, Robert Stevenson

Dissertations

This thesis sets out to critically engage with existing research on Christian nationalism. It argues that current research suffers from a methodological focus that is too broad, and theoretical grounding that is too imprecise, both of which prevent researchers from grasping the full scope and intent of Christian nationalism, as imagined by Christian nationalists themselves. Drawing on data collected from X accounts (formerly Twitter) of Christian nationalist users, Christian nationalist podcasts, and Christian nationalist books, it employs qualitative content analysis, mapped to Bourdieusian field theory to provide a structured approach for the understanding complex data involving multiple spheres of power, …

Keep It In Your Pants: How Sexual Regulation Becomes Identity Regulation, Madelyn Shoemaker

Dissertations

White Evangelicalism has been studied quantitatively for many years; however, this article examines in-depth interviews with ex-congregants of a specific church located in Chicago. Building from Orit Avasai’s framework of “doing religion,” I argue that due to a high saturation of isolation, sexual regulation and patriarchal power, this specific church’s script of religious performance claims master status in individual identity building, leading to adverse effects in adulthood. Much of the rhetoric utilized to justify the intense regulation of identity mirrors that of the New Right movement of the 1980’s, as well as modern political discourse. This study will assist in …

"I'M Not Having Fun Anymore": A Qualitative Analysis Of Gender And Harassment In Bars And Clubs, Phoebe Marie Jackson

Dissertations

Sexual harassment, while often spoken about in hushed tones or ignored altogether, happens frequently and often loudly. 66 percent of women who have experienced sexual harassment report that the harassment took place in a public space, such as work, school, or on the street (Kearl, 2018). Harassment is not discreet, but rather normalized, and those who experience it are expected to brush it off or take it in their stride. However, such harassment and subsequent dehumanization has a deteriorating effect on the mental well-being of those affected (Graham et. al., 2016). This study aims to hone in on the effect …

Voices Of Chinese American Emerging Adults: Complex Racial Identities, Family Dynamics, And Mental Health Experiences, Maxwell Lou Xu

Dissertations

Although Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial minority group in the United States, they remain significantly underrepresented in mental health research. Furthermore, research on Asian American mental health often aggregates the experiences of different Asian ethnic groups, creating a limited understanding of how distinct ethnic groups may differ in their mental health experiences. This interview study with Chinese American emerging adults ages 18–25 from varied family contexts (single-race, multiracial, and adoptive households) examines how members of this population make sense of the relationships between their identity, family, and mental health. This thesis posits that Chinese Americans' nuanced experiences—particularly around …

Ultramodern Racism: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of The Impact Of Anti-Crt Legislation On Us History Curriculums, Amelia Gernand

Dissertations

In the wake of Donald Trump’s failed 2020 bid for a second presidential term, there was a surge in anti-CRT legislation targeting how issues of race and racism could be taught in public school curricula. While proponents claim that anti-CRT laws will protect students of all races from discrimination, curriculums have historically been used as a tool by those with symbolic power to legitimize white supremacy and perpetuate anti-Black and color-evasive racism. Two states--Florida and Arkansas--recently enacted anti-CRT legislation in addition to Black history mandates. While legislators in these two states claim that their goal is to expand the teaching …