Digital Commons Network^™

Identifying Graduate Students’ Instructional Strategies And Approaches Towards Teaching Employable Skills, Elizabeth S. Che

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

College instruction tends to focus on imparting disciplinary knowledge rather than employable broad-based skills emphasized by undergraduate guidelines. The lack of emphasis on broad-skill development may leave many undergraduate students unprepared for the workforce. Graduate students who are future professoriate, are teaching undergraduate courses with various attitudes and strategies. This dissertation comprises three published studies that used data from two surveys identifying graduate students’ instructional strategies and approaches to teaching employable skills in their courses.

The first study asked whether graduate students teaching undergraduate courses (N = 114; 70.2% women, M age = 30 years) aim to teach employable …

Who’S Afraid Of Employer Sanctions?: Political And Institutional Dynamics Of Workplace Enforcement, Michael C. Macher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the breakdown of comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, a growing number of states have enacted work verification laws aiming to accomplish what the federal government could not: halt unwanted immigration by building a "wall" around the labor market. However, the empirical record on these laws remains mixed. While scholarly and journalistic reports observe that states appear to lack both the institutional capacity and political will to enforce their own work authorization policies, economic impact studies show that these same “poorly enforced” laws nonetheless produce substantive effects on the strategies of employers and migrants alike. This thesis asks the question: …

Sigma_N-Correct Forcing Axioms, Benjamin P. Goodman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I introduce a new family of axioms extending ZFC set theory, the Sigma_n-correct forcing axioms. These assert roughly that whenever a forcing name a' can be forced by a poset in some forcing class Gamma to have some Sigma_n property phi which is provably preserved by all further forcing in Gamma, then a' reflects to some small name such that there is already in V a filter which interprets that small name so that phi holds. Sigma_1-correct forcing axioms turn out to be equivalent to classical forcing axioms, while Sigma_2-correct forcing axioms for Sigma_2-definable forcing classes are consistent relative to …

Three Essays Applying Dynamic Models In Economics, Finance, And Machine Learning, Lucas C. Dowiak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a composition in three parts. Collectively, these essays investigate dynamic methods and their application in the fields of Economics, Finance, and Machine Learning. It pulls liberally from all three. In particular, this dissertation makes repeated use of multi-state modeling frameworks popular in Economics to bring a faceted view to the underlying data and detect its hidden heterogeneity. The challenge of modeling financial assets and estimating their dependence is another focus. For stimulus, concepts in the Machine Learning field are brought in to aid or compete with established econometric techniques.

Econometric Applications of the Hierarchical Mixture-of-Experts

In this …

Grieving: A Record Of My Becoming, Neyshka Diaz Maldonado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This memoir travels into my experience growing up in Puerto Rico throughout moments of joy, sorrow, triumph, and growth. Through memorable recollections and introspective thoughts, the memoir navigates memory, offering insights into my relationships, aspirations, and struggles. Each chapter unfolds and captures the essence of my life up until this moment.

I explore my ability to overcome challenges with resilience and grace, discovering strength in vulnerability and wisdom in the face of adversity. Through moments of self-discovery and profound transformation, they unearth the threads of my resilience, embracing both the light and shadow that define my life experience.

This memoir …

Adaptations And Transformations: Perceptions Of Change In Academic Motivation, Resilience, And Covid-19 Stress, Ella V. Gregorio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Of concern to educators, post-COVID-19 assessments have revealed significant achievement gaps in student performance, as well as significant decreases in adolescent mental health. Less is known about changes in achievement motivation. Here we ask how students perceive their own motivation and whether it changed between “before” the pandemic to the present (Fall 2022 - Spring 2023), about three years after the beginning of the pandemic when many school routines were returning to “normal.” To understand how variance in these perceived changes might be related to pandemic-related stressors, trait resilience, and current mental health, we conducted a large survey study (N …

Beautiful Resistance: Nonfiction Theatre Rehearsal Processes, Politics, And Prefiguration In War, Ash Marinaccio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Beautiful Resistance: Nonfiction Theatre Rehearsal Processes, Politics, and Prefiguration in War examines nonfiction theatre rehearsals and devising processes in and about conflict and war. I use the term “nonfiction” to refer to the vast body of collaborative theatre, facilitation, movement, puppet, and performance practices, knowledges, and techniques included under the capacious umbrella of “theatre of the real.” I propose that nonfiction theatre rehearsals are sites of prefiguration, possessing the potential to create a space where systemically oppressed communities can build alternative futures in the present. While there are multiple frameworks for understanding prefigurative politics, within this dissertation, I employ the …

Fragmentation And Some Applications, Joseph Bendana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of the idea that human minds are fragmented and its implications for some ongoing debates in the philosophy of mind and epistemology. Let Fragmentation be, minimally, the view that human cognitive information access is best modeled as having a structure that permits for selective, variable-mediated access, instead of a structure that enables always-on, global access. In chapter 1, I canvass the motivation for this view, its many variants, and some of the key open questions that it raises, situating this project in the broader landscape of work on the view. In chapter 2 I argue …

Creatively Addressing The Employment Gap: Using Creativity And The Arts To Help Autistic Adolescents And Young Adults Build Skills For Employment, Eliana Rachel Grossman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neurodiversity-affirmative autism frameworks present a shift from deficit-based models of autism to the recognition that autism is but one of many facets of biodiversity that should be affirmed and embraced. However, there is little research examining links between creativity and autism that has adopted a neurodiversity-affirming approach. The dissertation aimed to expand upon the nascent interdisciplinary link between neurodiversity-affirmative autism research and creativity to 1) understand the creative experiences of autistic adolescents and young adults and 2) address the critical issue of chronic unemployment faced by autistic people.

The first study examined the perspectives of autistic adolescents and young adults …

Turning Movements Into Markets: How Corporations Co-Opt Cultural Values For Profit, Anthony J. Capote

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I explore how corporations engage in values-based marketing in the 21^st Century. It is hardly a new phenomenon for corporate advertising to co-opt popular cultural values and trends. With the rise of platform capitalism — under which digital platforms generate wealth by cultivating our online data and resell it to advertisers — as well as the political and social context of the Trump Administration, however, major corporations have entered a new phase in the marketing framework that aims to attract consumers based specifically on their cultural and political values. Using a mixed methods approach I explore …

Speeding Up Coded Distributed Machine Learning, Xian Su

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The advancement of artificial intelligence has facilitated the generation of vast datasets, whose size often exceeds tens of terabytes. Meanwhile, machine learning has become the most important technique for big data analytics, and sophisticated models with thousands or even millions of parameters are designed to leverage big data. However, processing big data and training large models necessitate significant storage and computational resources, which has been a bottleneck in the development of artificial intelligence. Distributed computing, such as MapReduce, has been proposed to surmount the computational bottlenecks associated with single-machine analysis.

Although distributed computing harnesses the collective power of numerous less …

Math Anxiety And Avoidance Of Mathematics At The College Level: Undergraduate And Their Sense Of Not Belonging In Math Classrooms, Kay C. Lashley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Negative experiences and perceptions of the subject often influence the avoidance of mathematics at the college level. This study explored this issue by investigating the relationship between math anxiety, belongingness in math classes, and help-seeking behaviors among STEM and non-STEM majors. The study involved 41 participants, including 24 STEM majors and 17 non-STEM majors, all undergraduate college students aged 18 to 54. The results revealed that most students (39 out of 41) felt a sense of belonging in their math classes. Correlation analyses showed a significant positive relation between math anxiety and self-reported math competency, “r(41)= .44, p < .01,” and that higher levels of math anxiety were linked to a greater likelihood of avoiding math classes, “r(41)= .35, p = .02”. Students with lower math anxiety were marginally more inclined to seek help from family or friends, “ X2 (12, N = 42) = 20.1, p = .065”. However, there were no significant differences in help-seeking behaviors between STEM and non-STEM majors. Overall, these findings are consistent with previous studies. Nevertheless, more research and interventions are needed to develop supportive math learning environments at the college level, especially for students with higher anxiety.

Prosodic Marking Of Focus In Autistic And Neurotypical Adults, Nishtha N. Trivedi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Purpose: This study investigates how adult autistic speakers compare with neurotypical speakers in the manipulation of prosody to mark narrow and contrastive focus in American English. In particular, it explores whether the two groups differ in terms of pitch accent status, pitch accent type, and overall nuclear contour patterns in focus marking.

Methods: We conducted an experiment eliciting speech from autistic and neurotypical adults in which we compared their use of pitch accent in answers to wh-questions and in corrective statements.

Results: We found neurotypical speakers to primarily use H* to mark narrow focus on subjects and L+H* to mark …

Unconventional Computing With Photonic Oscillator Networks, Mostafa Honari Latifpour

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ever-increasing demand for data processing and the challenges in scaling traditional computing architectures are driving intensive research into alternative computing paradigms. Optical computing has garnered renewed attention since the 2010s, driven by its potential to accelerate specialized computational tasks such as combinatorial optimization and neural networks.

Coherent light sources including lasers and parametric oscillators have been around for decades and become indispensable tools in modern technology, but these photonic oscillators are also nonlinear dynamical systems that can exhibit emergent, complex phenomena, especially when coupled in arrays. These nonlinear optical systems have recently been shown to be capable of doing …

Strike A Pose: Performing Gestures Of Female Madness Across Media Circa 1900, Elyse S. Singer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines methods for performing female madness onstage, in the medical theatre, and before the camera circa 1900. My focus is on Western techniques for imitating white women’s hysteria in the United States, England, and France. I argue that theatrical gesture served—and continues to serve—as a safeguard, a survival technique, for the actor (and the spectator) to preserve rationality in the enactment or viewing of mentally ill characters. At the same time, these resilient mad gestures carry traces of the oppressive structures of power that have fostered their legibility. Embodying a person in mental distress is a high-stakes endeavor. …

The Unitary Executive And Power In The Modern American Presidency, Maxwell J. Fuerderer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In evaluating presidential power, substantive focus on the administrative aspects of the presidency emphasizes the crucial importance of a president’s degree of control, and dominance, over the executive branch. In this dissertation, I examine the relationship between the unitary executive, in practice, and the power of presidents to control administrative policymaking. I begin with a theoretical discussion and practical definition of presidential power. I define power as the degree to which a president has unilateral control and influence over the federal government’s agencies, the executive branch, and therefore administrative policies. I then assess the legitimacy and influence of the unitary …

Socially Racialized And Statistically Invisible: U.S. Census Recognition Of The Middle Eastern And North African Diaspora, Aliana J. Jabbary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis delves into the recent decision by the U.S. Executive’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revise the statistical categorization of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) individuals within federal statistical collection, particularly focusing on the U.S. Decennial Census’ racial and ethnic classifications as outlined in the OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive no. 15. Historically classified solely as racially White, the MENA diaspora’s statistical invisibility within federal data has significant impacts on policy eligibility and access to legal protections, contributing to their social erasure from the national identity. Through a comprehensive analysis of racialization and Orientalism scholarship, alongside an …

Evolution Of The Extant And Fossil Colobinae (Primates, Cercopithecidae), Julia L. Arenson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Colobinae (leaf-eating monkeys) are one of two crown cercopithecoid subfamilies along with the Cercopithecinae (cheek-pouch monkeys). They are today represented by a diverse modern radiation comprising two reciprocally monophyletic geographic subtribes, the African Colobina and the Asian Presbytina, which are collectively united by shared adaptations to folivory and arboreality. In addition, the colobine fossil record documents a taxonomically and ecologically diverse, geographically widespread radiation from the late Middle Miocene onwards. Fossil colobines exhibit an array of body sizes, craniofacial morphologies, postcranial adaptations, and dental dietary signals that exceeds those of the modern radiation and are also widespread over Africa, …

Explicit Composition Identities For Higher Composition Laws In The Quadratic Case, Ajith A. Nair

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The theory of Gauss composition of integer binary quadratic forms provides a very useful way to compute the structure of ideal class groups in quadratic number fields. In addition to that, Gauss composition is also important in the problem of representations of integers by binary quadratic forms. In 2001, Bhargava discovered a new approach to Gauss composition which uses 2x2x2 integer cubes, and he proved a composition law for such cubes. Furthermore, from the higher composition law on cubes, he derived four new higher composition laws on the following spaces - 1) binary cubic forms, 2) pairs of binary quadratic …

Flanker Task Performance In Young And Older Adults: A Behavioral And Erp Study, Fatima Medrano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research suggests that as we get older, executive function abilities decline (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Salthouse, 1996). One affected ability is that of inhibitory control, which aids in monitoring our responses to non-target stimuli or information. Current research on inhibition reveals inconsistencies across studies. Monitoring brain responses during the Flanker (used to measure inhibitory control) task may add valuable insight into the processes underlying group differences behaviorally, by studying the N200 and P300 event-related potentials which have been associated with inhibitory control processes. This study investigated whether there are differences between older and younger adults in inhibitory control and whether …

Examining Visual Processing Of Hierarchical Figures Through Behavioral Measures And Pupillometry In Relation To Autistic Traits In Adults, Chloe Brittenham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and autistic traits in the general population are associated with differences in sensory processing, particularly within the visual domain. Previous studies examining global (i.e., overall gist) and local (i.e., detail) visual processing in relation to ASD have sometimes yielded contradictory findings yet converge on a common theme: slowed global processing and increased local bias associated with ASD. Despite this consensus, the mechanism underlying these differences remains unclear, whether it be differences in visual attention, higher or lower visual perception, and/or cognitive style. The use of traditional tasks and stimuli may further complicate the understanding of contributing …

Aspects Of Parity Breaking In Classical And Quantum Fluids, Dylan J. Reynolds

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parity-breaking is ubiquitous across many scales of physics, from the rotation of galaxies at the largest of scales, to the cyclotron orbits of electrons at the microscopic scale. In describing the collective dynamics of many particle systems, parity breaking effects typically originate from some form of chirality, such as angular momentum, at the level of the constituent particles. External forces can also induce chiral motion, with the primary examples being the Lorentz and Coriolis forces.

The effects of parity breaking are perhaps most strikingly seen in active matter, systems of complex particles that tend to convert energy into some directed …

Altruistic Imperialism: The Co-Optation Of Mutual Aid By The Nonprofit Industrial Complex, Kelly T. Waltz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis assesses the role of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC) in neoliberalism’s material destruction of global community development and its exploitation of human benevolence. An examination of the institutionalization of high-profile social movements such as BLM and #MeToo demonstrates that the nonprofit industrial complex is built upon a misappropriation of feminist and liberation ideologies and practices, an insidious weaponization of our collectivist tendencies, and the systematic subjugation of mutual aid networks originally created and operated independent of systems of capital. The systemic and conceptual limitations of mainstream methods and the criteria by which nonprofit organizations’ effectiveness is evaluated are …

In My Softest & Most Liberatory Dreams: Reflections On Holding Complexity & Decentering Whiteness, Richard C. Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As the world contends with a global pandemic, climate catastrophes, white supremacy, coloniality, and concurrent genocides my attention splinters. In an act of futurity, or future making, I ask myself: What is needed to move from this place toward softer, more liberatory futures? This body of work finds its answer in exploring two interrelated concepts: Decentering Whiteness and Holding Complexity. Decentering Whiteness is the process of working toward a future where all the personal, spiritual, educational, epistemological, social, structural, psychological, financial, and systemic ties to white supremacy are unraveled. Holding Complexity weaves together knowledges of care, accountability, intersectionality, and …

The Cultural Complexity Of Immigrants And The Implications For Personality Assessment: Exploring The Role Of Frame Switching, Patrick Jay Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A significant body of personality research has focused on cross-national comparison, but less attention has been devoted to within-country subcultural complexity – especially with regards to the growing population of bicultural immigrants who subscribe to multiple cultural-value systems. Bicultural individuals have been found to view situations under distinct frames of reference corresponding to their heritage and host cultures, and their attitudes and behavior can vary depending on which frame is activated at a given moment. This dissertation investigates whether such frame switching effects can be caused by elements within a formal personality assessment setting, and in turn affect bicultural respondents’ …

Integrating In Vitro And In Silico Approaches To Gain Insight Into The Mechanism Of Amyloid Fibrillogenesis, Marvin M. Bilog

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Amyloid fibril formation, the hallmark of numerous amyloid-related diseases, has been the subject of a vast number of scientific studies due to its pathological implications. Since the fibrillization process exhibits a certain level of intricacy, its investigation requires a multidisciplinary approach that integrates both experimental and computational methods. In vitro techniques involve biophysical assays and imaging tools for characterizing the structural and kinetic aspects of amyloid fibril formation. In parallel, in silico techniques offer programs for predicting atomistic details and behaviors of amyloidogenic proteins and peptides at the nanoscale level. Serum amyloid A (SAA), human islet amyloid polypeptide (hIAPP), and …

Essays On Monopoly Power In Housing Rental Markets, Goncalo Filipe Pessa Figueiredo Costa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters on market power in housing rental markets. It introduces the concept of dynamic monopoly power in housing rental markets, develops methods to estimate that form of market power, and uses its analytical lense over the New York City (NYC) housing rental market.

In the first chapter, I formulate a search model in which market frictions give landlords rent-setting (dynamic monopoly) power. This model incorporates search frictions in the spirit of Manning’s (2003) monopsonistic labor market framework. In this setting, the demand faced by individual landlords (i.e., residual demand) results from an equilibrium between tenants’ …

Knowledge And Attitudes Towards Usage Of Hearing Protection In Volunteer Firefighters, Rachel S. Combs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) represents a substantial global public health concern. Regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health (NIOSH) aim to establish noise exposure limits in occupational settings, yet certain professions, such as firefighting, remain at a heightened risk. Although research has been conducted on noise exposure and hearing protection in career firefighters, a lack of research exists on volunteer firefighters. The purpose of this study was to 1) establish the extent that volunteer firefighters are currently educated on hearing conservation and hearing protection 2) …

A Journey To A Black Woman’S (Read Black Girl’S) Joy And Her Story Of Coming Home, Brittany Lauren Brock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an auto/ethnography about the self-actualizing journey of reclaiming storytelling as my native tongue and my journey to joy. Throughout, using my story and the stories of so many others, I not only lay out the wounds (the pain, the loss, then the hope that comes) within the academy and outside in the world but I also use storytelling as a tool of healing—my tool of healing—to show how I wrote myself free.

When Black women (read Black girls) go through The Reckoning (the moment we realize something isn’t right with how we are perceived by others) …

Electoral Competitiveness And Legislator Responsiveness, Joseph Donza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Members of the United States Congress have a wide array of concerns when representing their respective districts and this includes re-election to office. Legislator responsiveness, a fundamental component to all democratic systems of government, plays a major role in the interaction that occurs between legislators and their constituents. However, many have argued that legislators are not responsive to their constituents when making legislative decisions. This study focuses on the election motives of members of Congress, with a special emphasis on competitiveness of a district as a driving force of legislator responsiveness. A quantitative analysis is conducted to search for correlation …