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Through Their Eyes: A Photovoice Study Of Mental Health And Well-Being Among Rural-Dwelling Latina Adolescents, Ashley Marie Coburn

Dissertations

Latina adolescents are more prone to depressive symptoms, less likely to receive mental health services, and face higher rates of suicidality compared to their non-White peers. This population becomes more vulnerable to adverse outcomes when their problems are compounded by barriers to mental health care common in rural communities such as limited resources, stigmatization, and systemic inequities related to race/ethnicity, income, and insurance status. Despite Latinx youth representing the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in rural areas across the United States, there is limited research on the distinct factors shaping mental health outcomes for this population. Guided by an …

Reinforcement Learning And Virtual Human Animation: A Novel Approach To Data-Driven Animation, Portraying Dynamic, Flexible Human-Like Behaviours, Vihanga Gamage

Dissertations

Virtual characters require animation capable of portraying dynamic, context-sensitive human-like behaviours. Several approaches to generating such animation have been developed, but each carries limitations. Motion capture can produce high-fidelity animation but is expensive and ill-suited to systems that must respond in real time. Physics-based reinforcement learning (RL) enables flexible, dynamic behaviour portrayal, yet relies on simulation feedback signals that are unavailable for social gestures. Supervised approaches can learn social behaviours from motion capture data but yield agents with limited flexibility and generalisation.

This thesis presents RLAnimate, a model-based, data-driven RL framework for character animation that enables a single agent to …

Human Resource Management And Black Teachers’ Employee Experience In K-12 Urban Public Schools, Danielle Renee Cooper-Williams

Dissertations

National teacher data indicate that publicly funded schools in the United States struggle to retain Black teachers in high-need urban areas and in comparison to other groups (Carver-Thomas & Darling Hammond, 2017). This qualitative investigation employed case study methodology. The case study focused on one school within a charter management organization (CMO), exploring interactions among Black teachers and their supervising administrators at the site and management organization levels. The study was organized around concepts articulated at the nexus of teacher retention scholarship and human resource management theory, two bodies of literature yet to be substantially integrated to understand Black teachers’ …

Examining Associations Between Internalized Racism, Psychological Flexibility, And Well-Being Among Bipoc, Cerella Chandra

Dissertations

Internalized racism has been defined as the adoption of negative stereotypes related to one’s racial/ethnic group and associated with psychological distress. There is little research on the effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on diverse populations, but recent intervention studies have indicated that psychological flexibility may counter the negative psychological effects of self-stigma. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between internalized racism, psychological flexibility, and psychological distress and life satisfaction among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Self-report data was collected using Qualtrics with prospective participants recruited from a large public university in the …

Difficulty In American Dramatic Literature, David Turkel

Dissertations

Speaking broadly, this dissertation explores the marginalization of American drama within the field of literary studies. In attempting to account for this marginalization, theater scholars have tended to invoke the genre’s supposed lack of “difficulty,” meaning its failure to pose meaningful interpretive challenges to its readers. However, this dissertation takes an alternative view of the matter, contending that if American drama has indeed been marginalized, it is not because literary studies departments have regarded it as intrinsically “simpler” than other literary genres; in fact, it is theater scholars who have been more likely to read the genre as simple, or …

Enhanced Point Cloud Generation From A Novel 360° Underwater Lidar, Olagoke E. Daramola

Dissertations

This dissertation presents novel algorithms to improve the mapping capabilities of a 360-degree underwater Pulsed Laser Line Scanner LiDAR (PLLS-360°). Due to its 360° field-of-view (FOV), the PLLS-360° is a compact full-waveform omnidirectional imager suitable for seafloor mapping, underwater asset inspection, object detection, ice-sheet mapping, and construction progress monitoring. The proposed methodology includes an improved waveform fitting technique for saturated waveform recovery, detection array response correction, radiometric corrections, and fusion of LiDAR and sonar bathymetric datasets. The first part of this dissertation assesses the LiDAR’s performance and describes how the data for this unique 360° FOV architecture is processed. The …

Link Between Adverse Childhood Experiences And Parenting Styles Of African American Fathers, Tatianna P. Johnson

Dissertations

African American fathers may be more susceptible than fathers of other races to having a negative parenting style due to their high levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). ACEs are traumatic experiences during childhood that can affect a person’s mental and physical health, income and adult parenting style. African American adults tend to have experienced multiple levels of ACEs at a higher rate than White and Asian adults (Maguire-Jack et al., 2021). ACEs can lead to adults experiencing higher levels of alcoholism, depression, health-related issues, mental illness, substance use, and academic problems. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to …

A Monte Carlo Analysis Of Cost Competitiveness Of Chinese And U.S. Fine Chemical Exports To Europe Under Europe’S Energy Crisis, Lin Luo

Dissertations

The European energy crisis, driven by geopolitical conflicts, has created a significant supply-demand gap in Europe’s fine chemical sector, necessitating reliance on imports from the United States and China. This quantitative study examined how energy, labor, and logistics costs interacted to shape the cost competitiveness of U.S. and Chinese fine chemical exports to Europe, using a Monte Carlo simulation parameterized with historical data from 2015-2023, to provide a probabilistic forecast of competitive outcomes. The findings revealed that while China holds a 76.55% probability of being the lower-cost supplier, its advantage is characterized by high volatility primarily due to its logistics …

Immune Modulation Affects Olfactory Glomerular Recovery In Zebrafish, Bonnie E. Ebendick

Dissertations

Adult zebrafish regenerate neurons throughout their lifetime and exhibit rapid recovery from neuronal damage with support from their immune system, making them an excellent model for studying neuroinflammation and brain repair mechanisms. When olfactory sensory neurons are lesioned, their cell death stimulates the immune system by activating microglia and other immune cells in the olfactory bulb, initiating tissue repair and neuronal replacement. This dissertation investigates how the immune system influences recovery from neuronal damage, testing the hypothesis that immune perturbation in zebrafish alters neural recovery.

To investigate the link between immune function and neuronal regeneration, zebrafish received a unilateral lesion …

Mexican Americans’ Attitudes Toward Mexican Immigrants In The United States, Sandra Daisy Espinoza Montes

Dissertations

The United States (U.S.) has often been described as a nation of immigrants. Among the 40 million immigrants in the U.S., Mexican-descent individuals comprise 25% of the overall immigrant population, positioning them as the largest immigrant group in the country. Additionally, Mexican Americans constitute 63% of the Latinx population, making them the largest minoritized ethnic group in the U.S. Considering that Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans have a significant presence in the country, scholars have called for additional research on attitudes towards Mexican immigrants (Byrne & Dixon, 2016; Flores et al., 2022). However, much of the existing literature on attitudes …

From Colonization To Cultural Responsiveness: Examining Cultural Identity And Representation In Taiwanese Music Education, Peijyun Syu

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the Taiwanese music education system through the lenses of postcolonial theory, critical pedagogy, and culturally responsive teaching—beginning with its establishment during the colonial periods under the Japanese Empire (1895–1945) and the Chinese Nationalist regime (1945–1987), and extending to an analysis of the current curriculum. This study was guided by the following research questions:

Q1 How do current Taiwanese elementary school music textbooks address cultural responsiveness through an analysis of the cultural origins of songs, composers/artists, and instruments included in the curriculum?

Q2 What are the views of Taiwanese elementary school music teachers …

Revealing The Impacts Of Teachers’ Lived Experiences With Burnout: An Educational Criticism Study, Joanna Laurx

Dissertations

The purpose of this educational criticism study is to describe the experiences of burnout for four teachers in a western state school district. To represent and illustrate these experiences, Eisner’s methodology, educational connoisseurship and criticism, was utilized. Three research questions guided this study; How do teachers describe experiences of burnout?; How do teachers describe the impact of curriculum on burnout?; How do teachers perceive burnout impacts their instruction and interactions with students? Data for this study was collected on the four participants through a one-on-one interview, two focus groups, two classroom observations, and artifacts and analyzed using emotions and values …

Internalized Heterosexism Through Intersectionality: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Devon Alexandra Monica Bortfeld

Dissertations

While the impact of LGBQ+ individuals experiencing overt, interpersonal discrimination (i.e., heterosexism) is well-documented, the propensity for stigmatization, invisibilization, and violence to be internalized by LGBQ+ has only recently been examined as a factor contributing to poorer health outcomes. Internalized heterosexism (IH) was defined as the consumption and internalization of negative societal attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs towards homosexuality by LGBQ+ individuals and was linked to multiple forms of psychological distress. However, the methodological and clinical gaps in the research contributed to a clinical utility that was lacking for multiply marginalized LGBQ+ individuals. The purpose of this study aimed to understand …

Teacher Leadership In Social Studies: The Search For Meaning And Identity, Zachary F. Lawson

Dissertations

This qualitative research study brings together social studies education and teacher leadership. Social studies lacks study in the teacher leader literature. This study aimed to understand whether the disciplinary nature of social studies education influenced the enactment of teacher leadership. This study sought an answer to the central research question: What does it mean to be a social studies teacher leader? Using a hermeneutic phenomenology research design, data were collected through semi-structured interviews across two groups of participants. Seven social studies teacher leaders made up one group, and five social studies teachers without leadership roles comprised the other. Findings indicated …

Degrees Of Freedom: How Project Rebound Facilitates Access To Higher Education For Adjudicated Adults, Elizabeth Regina Wirtz

Dissertations

Marginalized students are recommended for suspension and expulsion at higher rates than non dis/abled White peers. Exclusionary discipline contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline and recidivism rates in adults. Educational programs have been effective ways to support adjudicated adults as they transition back to their life after serving their sentences. The CSU program Project Rebound is a highly successful rehabilitation tool for adults seeking higher educational opportunities with an effective 0 percent recidivism rate. To learn about this organization a mixed methods study was conducted. The goal of this study was to capture quantitative and qualitative data about the experiences of …

Perceptions Of Department Chairs And Program Directors Of Ethnic Studies In The California State University System: A Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Study, Christopher Jarrett Cox

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation study is to explore the conditions of Ethnic Studies departments and programs in the California State University (CSU) system nine years after the release of the CSU Ethnic Studies Task Force report released in 2016. Using a convergent parallel mixed methods analysis, this dissertation revisits several questions from the original CSU survey to assess the effectiveness of Ethnic Studies units in the CSU. Respondents to the survey included 13 of the 58 recognized department chairs and program directors for Ethnic Studies units among the 23 campuses of the CSU system, and interview participants included 5 …

Early Care And Education Systems In The United States Of America: Voices Of The Past, Present, And Future, Timothy Harper

Dissertations

This mixed-methods study centers the voices, knowledge, and leadership of Black and Indigenous women working in Early Care and Education (ECE) while tracing how racism, sexism, and classism have shaped the field from colonization to the present day. Twenty in-depth interviews with sixteen Black and Indigenous educators across the United States are paired with secondary analyses of national workforce data to create a multilayered portrait of their professional realities. Grounded in Black feminist thought and Indigenous desire-based inquiry, the analysis surfaces six inter-locking themes: (a) enduring structural barriers that depress wages and limit advancement, (b) the day-to-day resilience that sustains …

Engagement Of Secondary History Social Science Teachers With Professional Development: A Phenomenological Study, Suzanne Paulazzo

Dissertations

Secondary social science teachers tend to feel disengaged and frustrated with their professional development (PD) experiences. They also feel that recommended meaningful practices appear to be time-consuming, require extra hours of preparation, and rely heavily on collaboration. Using phenomenological methodology, the dissertation research investigated secondary social science teachers' perceptions of their roles as educators, their professional growth, and their motivations for engaging in professional development opportunities. Nine male and one female teacher participants from a History-Social-Science Department in an urban public school in Northern California participated in an interview. This study addressed the following research questions: How do teachers perceive …

Cultivating Belonging: Empowering Hispanic Parents In The U.S. Education System, Kalpana Galagali

Dissertations

This qualitative study explores the experiences of Hispanic families at Bay Area Middle School and the strategies I employed to create a sense of belonging and support for both students and their families. Key strategies included fostering effective communication through Spanish interpreters, celebrating cultural traditions, and organizing inclusive events like the annual cultural fair. Parents expressed gratitude for the personal attention their children received and noted how these initiatives positively impacted their sense of belonging. The findings highlight that cultural integration and community-building efforts significantly enhanced family engagement, transforming perceptions of the school environment from feelings of disconnection to appreciation …

Cultura Y Corazón: Latina Elementary School Principals Leading Schools, Mariana M. Alvarez

Dissertations

This qualitative participatory study focused on understanding the experiences of Latina elementary school principals on their pathway to school leadership and how cultural intuition and community cultural wealth influence their approaches to school leadership. Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE) and Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) framed the study, while testimonio y pláticas served as the methodological framework. The concept of Community Cultural Wealth served as an analytical framework. Students of color often feel their histories, experiences, and languages are undervalued in education. Participants in this study shared challenges in navigating school, coming from families that valued education but faced barriers. Their …

The Effect Of Cognitive Biases And Organizational Constructs On Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation Success In Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Pls-Sem Approach, Michael Davidson

Dissertations

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are crucial to enhancing organizational performance, efficiency, and strategic competitiveness in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). ERP adoption in SMEs has been known to fail, with more than 75% of the implementations considered failures. These barriers are compounded by cognitive biases, such as temporal discounting (TD) and optimism bias (OB), which skew the strategic decision-making process. The framework suggested in this paper explains the relationships between top management support (TMS), information quality (IQ), system quality (SQ), user satisfaction (US), optimism bias (OB), and temporal discounting (TD) and their impact on ERP implementation success (EIS) and …

Truth, Resilience, And Healing: Deepen Understanding Of Native American Federal Boarding School Histories, Toya D. Holiday

Dissertations

Indigenous communities have endured the long-standing impacts of U.S. Federal Indian boarding school policy. The history of Indigenous boarding school policies and the underlying intent to enact cultural genocide is unknown and unacknowledged. The perspectives of Indigenous Peoples have been excluded from dominant narratives, and until recently, from heritage site programming, leading to intergenerational trauma, fragmented identities, and the misrepresentation of Indigenous cultures and experiences. This basic qualitative study asked the question: When the four-truth framework, developed by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is applied to U.S. Federal Indian boarding school policy, Native American boarding school history, and …

Giftedness In A Post-Secondary Environment: Academic, Social, And Affective Results And Recommendations, Justin Villet

Dissertations

The field of gifted education has been present in America since the early 20th century (Jolly, 2009). After scholars developed a list of gifted characteristics in the 1950s, the concept of giftedness became far more controversial (Terman & Oden, 1959). Over the last 75 years, gifted education in America has gone from a shining star to complete ambiguity, owing partially to politics and partially to decentralized process (Ford, 2013; Gallagher, 2015; Hodges et al., 2018). This study included an examination of the gifted experience from the secondary to post-secondary environments. The researcher examined various qualitative and quantitative secondary data, including …

The Write Time For An Autoethnography: How Writing Project Has Shaped My Understanding Of Professional Learning In Community, Tracy Brosch

Dissertations

This study critically examines the cultural and societal phenomenon that comprises the National Writing Project (NWP), specifically reflecting on my experiences of re-designing Gateway Writing Project professional learning experiences as a leader in the organization. I reflect on my encounters, collaborations, and decisions as an Institute instructor and analyze them within the theoretical framework of Communities of Practice using autoethnography as my research methodology. This autoethnographic narrative documents my analysis and understanding of NWP’s framework of social practices, chronicling my journey from participant to advocate and from organizer to leader. Employing the autoethnographic method enabled me to illuminate my own …

Into The Language Barrier: Analysis Of The Debates Of Charles Taylor And Jürgen Habermas With Concentration On The Importance Of Philosophy Of Language, Tom Crosby

Dissertations

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) and Charles Taylor (b. 1931) are two of the most important philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Throughout their lengthy bodies of work, spanning from the 1960s and continuing today, they were frequent interlocutors, and often responded to one another’s theories and arguments. They also engaged in direct debates in edited volumes to which they both contributed, including Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action (1991), Multiculturalism (1994), and The Power of Religion in the Public Square (2011). The goal of this dissertation is to catalogue and analyze Habermas …

"The Divine Light Illuminates The Intellect:" The Role Of Divine Illumination In The Theology Of Meister Eckhart, John Marshall Loving

Dissertations

This dissertation is a study on the epistemological theory of divine illumination in the works of Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 - 1329 CE). Illumination, first asserted by St. Augustine, is the theory that the human intellect is incapable of achieving epistemic certainty regarding what it sensorily receives. To gain this certainty, the mind is reliant upon illumination, wherein the sensed object is known by the mind through the light of that object's divine idea, which also serves as its ontological principle. Divine illumination was the dominant epistemology in Christian thought for centuries until it began to lose its influence in …

Modernism’S Mythic Mothers: Queering Motherhood Through Classical Matrilineage, Samantha Marie Lepak

Dissertations

I position this dissertation at the intersection of modern/contemporary literature, queer/feminist theory, and ancient Greek classics in the hopes of better understanding the spaces in which they meet, engaging with writers from the late modernist era to the present in order to highlight the connections between theories, themes, and practices of queerness from the modernists forward. Using the work of H.D. and writers following in her footsteps, I argue that exploring adaptations of Greek classics written primarily by female and gender-variant authors from the modernist era forward illuminates the extent to which the classics enables writers to “think queerly,” considering …

Maternal Access For Depression In Rural Environments, Simone Parlier

Dissertations

Significance –As many as 25% of birthing persons experience postpartum depression (PPD) within the first year after childbirth making this one of the most common postpartum disorders. PPD is prevalent, incapacitating, and treatable. The first step is identifying those at risk. Rural birthing persons are understudied, and may have unique predisposing characteristics as well as geographic challenges for optimal detection and treatment of PPD. Purpose -The long-term goal is to improve the health of rural families. Using The Theory of Unpleasant Symptoms, the purpose of this descriptive, cross-sectional research was to describe the prevalence of PPD in rural birthing persons …

Ethnicity Through Education: An Analysis Of The Influence Of Formal Education On Ethnicity In Garo Hills, Samirkumar Benedict Talati

Dissertations

In recent decades, the positioning of ethnic groups within the educational context has emerged as an important area of scholarly investigation. The structural, institutional, and local contexts often determine how ethnic groups shape their ethnicity. This study draws from panethnicity and social ontology frameworks to examine ethnic consciousness and the processes of solidarity-building across subgroups within the Garo community in the Garo Hills of Meghalaya. The unequal distribution of educational resources has led to socioeconomic disparities and class formation within Garo society, creating a growing divide between the educated and uneducated Garos. While acknowledging the diversity among subgroups, this study …

Exploring Latinx Students' Experience With School Connectedness: A Hybrid Thematic Approach To Deductive And Inductive Analysis, Maria Olivia Mendez

Dissertations

This qualitative study aimed to deepen the understanding of school connectedness experienced by Latinx high school students. Specifically, the researcher sought to explore how Latinx students described their connection to school during their high school years. Additionally, to examine whether their experiences aligned with the social and ecological structures outlined in the theoretical model supporting adolescent connectedness to school. If there is alignment, in what ways did it manifest? If not, how did the experiences differ? The study had two primary objectives: (a) to gain insight into how Latinx students experienced school and their sense of connection through their narratives, …