Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between Self-Stigma, Psychological Inflexibility, And Help-Seeking Attitudes Across Three Different Groups: A Cross-Cultural Study, Mst Tajlima Tamanna

Masters Theses

Self-stigma of mental illness is one of the most important factors that influence people’s help-seeking attitudes. A higher level of self-stigma is associated with less favorable attitudes toward help-seeking. Additionally, psychological inflexibility may also contribute to this process by increasing people’s tendency to internalize the negative stereotypes associated with mental illness, which contributes to higher self-stigma. The present study examined the relationships between self-stigma of mental illness, psychological inflexibility, and help-seeking attitudes across three groups: Bangladeshi students living in Bangladesh (Group 1), Bangladeshi students living in the United States (Group 2), and United States college students (Group 3). A total …

Disparities In The Identification Of Vulnerable Communities Due To Design Storm Methods: A Case Study In The Vermilion River Watershed, South Louisiana, Usa, Claire Orgeron

Masters Theses

Accurately identifying socially vulnerable populations at-risk of flooding is critical for equitable disaster mitigation and planning. This study investigates how the selection of design storm method, which is fundamental to developing flood risk maps used for this identification, influences which socially vulnerable populations are recognized as being at elevated flood risk. The most widely used design storm approach relies on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Atlas 14 point-based rainfall frequency estimates. These estimates are typically applied spatially using areal reduction factors, thereby disregarding rainfall spatial variability in real storms. Stochastic Storm Transposition (SST), an alternative design storm approach that …

Design And Development Of Pcb-Fabricated Faraday Probes For Micropropulsion Diagnostics, Avery Adams

Masters Theses

An investigation into the feasibility of printed-circuit-board-fabricated (PCB) Faraday probes (FPs) for use in micro-electric spacecraft propulsion (EP) diagnostics was performed at the Aerospace Laboratory for Plasma Experiments (ALPE), at Western Michigan University (WMU). This investigation included the design, fabrication, calibration, and characterization of a prototype probe-board for the purpose of exploring the physical constraints for this design concept. Analytical calculations and modeling in COMSOL Multiphysics were used to quantify the error sources in incident ion current flux measurements. Decoupled electrostatic and charged-particle tracing models were used to evaluate the error impact of charge buildup on dielectric surfaces and the …

Real Time Grid Connected Der Inverter Control Fault Ride Through Model In Accordance With Ieee 1547–2018 Standard, Mark Joseph Booge

Masters Theses

Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) include inverter-based power generation units, which are increasing in demand due to the rising consumption of energy, need for improved grid stability, and other environmental factors. DERs can either supply or supplement the grid using different control strategies depending on the grid’s needs. IEEE standard 1547-2018 dictates the interconnection and operation requirements of grid-connected DERs under nominal and abnormal voltage conditions. Although inverter ride-through operation has been widely studied, the effects of the standard’s time-based requirements within a distribution grid system require further investigation.

This study investigates how the IEEE 1547-2018 time-based ride-through requirements affect a …

Lower Extremity Muscle Activation In Elite Female Field Hockey Players With And Without Low Back Pain During A Prone Hip Extension, Madison S. Cornell

Masters Theses

Context: Low back pain (LBP) is a common chronic injury seen in field hockey players and more prominent in females than males. The purpose of this study was to identify if bilateral muscle activation differences exist in erector spinae (ES), gluteus maximus (Gmax), and biceps femoris (BF) in collegiate female field hockey players with and without LBP during a prone hip extension (PHE). It was hypothesized that individuals in the LBP group would have decreased Gmax and increased BF activation. Methods: A cohort design was utilized through a convenience sample to analyze variations in the dependent variables (muscle activation, flexibility, …

The Relation Between Parental Bonding And Sexual Self-Concept In College Students, Kinsey Hatfield

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the relation between two dimensions of parental bonding—care and overprotection—and four aspects of sexual self-concept including sexual agency, desire, anxiety, and satisfaction in college students. We also explored the use of a relatively novel measure of sexual self-concept, the MSSCQ-SF. 292 college students completed measures regarding parental bonding, sexual self-concept, and various demographic questions. Results partially supported our hypotheses, with parental care and overprotection being correlated with sexual anxiety and satisfaction but not desire or agency. Further, parental overprotection was positively correlated with sexual anxiety above and beyond the demographic variables assessed. These findings suggest that parental …

Wake-On-Anomaly Federated Architecture For Privacy-Preserving Poultry Health Early Warning, Mahmoud Aziz Louati

Masters Theses

Highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks, respiratory disease, heat stress, and silent equipment failures share one operational reality: they are detected too late because today’s poultry-health workflow is reactive, manual, and dependent on producers volunteering commercially sensitive data. This thesis presents a wake-on-anomaly federated architecture that addresses both the detection-latency problem and the privacy–adoption deadlock that has so far prevented cross-farm collaboration. The architecture is organized in two tiers. Tier 1 is a lightweight LSTM autoencoder that continuously screens four routine telemetry channels (water, feed, house temperature, activity proxy) and emits a per-window reconstruction-error score. A debounced k-of-m trigger with cooldown …

Kev's Dinghy Boat Workshops, Ruiyang Xiao

Masters Theses

In a culture where convenience replaces process, this project argues that making — even when inefficient, imperfect, or unnecessary — enables forms of engagement that buying cannot.

Technologies and Services nowadays are able to fulfill human’s desire to travel and explore at ease. However, this convenience proposes a mode of engagement based only in deeper knowledge of context and thus our experience with the world around us is hence diminished. Our engagement with the world becomes heavily mediated, regulated and controlled.

This project investigates how hands-on engagement with water can reintroduce + restore our sense of joy, curiosity, consequence, and …

A Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Assembly Line: Jewelry, Facture, And Alienation, Jonathon A. Zalakos

Masters Theses

A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line integrates icons of mass-manufacturing with signifiers of joyful work, stimulating a dialogue between industrial and craft labour. Visible traces of the making process left on these works conjure a spectral ‘maker’, implied by the fingerprints, toolmarks, assembly, and conspicuous decision making of an ‘other’. As we relate to these signifiers as opportunities for our own bodily action, this spectre speaks in our own voice. Possessed by this ghost, viewers are vicariously thrust into an imaginary context and made sensitive to the nature of this work — whether it validates …

Kicau Kericau: The Chirps And Warbles Of A Bird-Human Story, Airien Ludin

Masters Theses

This thesis tells the tale of bird-human relationships and what it means to live alongside one another, subverting the hierarchical view of humans as above birds inherited from colonial history. It asks how the practice of illustration can function as a site of Two-Eyed Seeing, where scientific and local knowledge are held together as an entangled narrative. It also examines how mendongeng (storytelling), as I have experienced it within Indonesian culture and everyday contexts, can help us understand birds as a companion species with their own agency.

This project takes two forms: first, a picture book titled Sun Bird …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

I Miss My Computer: Online Artistry, Web Aesthetics, And Coming-Of-Age In A Digital Landscape, Catherine Capeci

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how young artists develop their creative practices in a world informed by digitality. Through survey research of 44 art students between the ages of 14 and 22, as well as a process of autoethnographic inquiry, I examine how artists in high school and college relate to digital imagery, web archives, online gaming, and social media platforms, and how these experiences inform artmaking. I believe that art educators should explore how the internet informs aesthetic and conceptual sensibilities, and how these sensibilities show up in young artists’ work, more so than focus on digital media as its own …

"Hand And Mind Lead To Life": Craft Pedagogy In Art Education For Older Adolescent Learners, Katherine Fu

Masters Theses

Art educator Jo-Anna Moore (1991) asks “What is the purpose of our individual growth through art or craft?” (p. 162). Moore’s question is daunting not least for the seasoned artist, but for the young people in our art classrooms who, to varying degrees, are or are not interested in art. This thesis draws from my personal narrative as an older adolescent whose introduction to craft helped me navigate great questions of identity, belonging, and motivation. It seeks to discover how craft can become a method of teaching art to all students, and in particular, how such a pedagogy addresses the …

Where My Memory Settles, Rachel Kobb

Masters Theses

My memory is blurry but ever present in an atmospheric state. Through my investigations of memory and sensorial experience, this thesis is an attempt to understand how the body recalls the spaces I have spent the most time: my various homes through life.

The output of this thesis is a paper installation that layers and translates spatial qualities of my past homes. The home is not a neutral container, but instead a space that should support a sense of retreat and security. Drawing upon Gaston Bachelard’s zones of experience, I explore how a domestic space is moved through distinct zones. …

Between Nature And Architecture : A Dialogue Of Five Elements, Niexiangyi He

Masters Theses

Rooted in classical Chinese cosmology, the Daoist Five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water) describe dynamic cycles of mutual generation (sheng)—in which one element produces or supports another—and restraint (ke)—in which elements regulate or limit one another to maintain balance. Rather than a system of symbolic representation, these interactions outline a relational model of equilibrium based on interdependence and continuous transformation. Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water can inform a contemporary design framework for interior and architectural practice. It interprets these cycles as a form of spatial logic that guides material selection, structural organization, environmental modulation, and experiential sequencing, …

Soft Bodies, Hard Frames, Emily Zhang

Masters Theses

Silk is delicate yet strong, responsive to light and air, dependent on living processes and careful labor. These qualities position silk not only as a material object, but as an instrument capable of organizing space. Rather than functioning solely as a surface or decorative textile, silk can operate as a spatial generator, shaping enclosure, movement, and environmental conditions.

For centuries, domestic courtyard houses in the Jiangnan region, located south of the Yangtze River, evolved alongside sericulture, forming spaces that were attuned to the environmental and material requirements of silk. Architectural elements such as courtyards, screened openings, flexible interiors, and canal-directed …

Soft Space/Strong Support, Keqian Li

Masters Theses

Children with early developmental challenges such as anxiety disorders, ADHD, autism, and sensory regulation difficulties often navigate environments that are not designed to support their emotional, cognitive, and sensory needs. In many educational and community spaces, inclusion is treated as an add-on or a specialized accommodation rather than as a fundamental design principle.

This thesis argues that inclusion should be the standard, not the exception, and that interior architecture can function as an early intervention tool that actively supports children’s development. This project examines how spatial design can influence emotional regulation and social interaction for children with early developmental challenges. …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

Fetishismus:Facism, Sodomy, And The Exhibition, Matthew P. Gershovich

Masters Theses

Fetishismus examines the contemporary dislocation between homosexuality and queerness. Homosexuality is the biological, innate quality of same-sex attraction. Queerness is rooted in deviance, perversion, and sociologically attached to the “other.” Although almost always used in an explicitly homosexual connotation, “queerness” is not entirely contingent on the physical engagement of homosexual acts. In historical usage, queer is used as a pejorative adjective, implying a lack of masculinity with the intent to invoke repulsion. In contemporary parlance the two are treated as synonymous. This intertwined relationship relies on the forced lack of social and spatial belonging that is rooted in a foundational …

Recombobulation- Taking The Bad With The Good, Gregory T. Kmieciak

Masters Theses

Recombobulation, a play on the word discombobulated (completely disoriented and utterly confused), is intended as a joke.  In the lore of the Milwaukee airport, the Recombobulation Area is located between the TSA check point and the boarding area, or likewise right after you land and before you are heading out of the airport. It's an area to regroup, get your bearings, or if you're anything like me, have a beer.

I've chosen this made-up word as a thesis title, both for its informal tone and to pay homage to my home town. It offers an air of lightness to otherwise …

The Birdwatching Pause: Reframing Campus Life Through Everyday Bird Encounters, Katherine Zeng

Masters Theses

Birdwatching, typically framed as a leisure pursuit removed from everyday life, becomes here the organizing logic for a three-site campus route of restorative pause. The thesis departs from the assumption that nature must be sought out and instead asks what happens when the birds already present in urban space are made legible through design.

Three existing RISD buildings anchor the project, each organized around a distinct mode of encounter. At Carr Haus Café, a furniture-scaled insertion creates conditions for attentional reset through passive listening rather than active looking. At North Hall, a semi-open balcony garden introduces incidental, distanced contact with …

The Frame You're Holding, Andrea Mato

Masters Theses

The Frame You're Holding explores how my photographer's eye transitioned into a graphic designer's voice. The projects presented explore how to weave the textural and subjective qualities of photography into a design context. My practice explores how the frames of graphic design – the page of a book, the browser window, or the wall of an exhibition – can be expanded or reimagined. As a designer, I became the translator of content into form, seeking to author the design while collaborating with other voices. The Frame You're Holding is a snapshot of my practice as a graphic designer, encapsulating my …

My Mother The Mountain, Ricky Vasan

Masters Theses

Teach me How to Write a Love Song

I catch a glimpse of my mother sitting on her bed in her bedroom from the bathroom mirror. What a rare occurrence! One I am not fortunate enough to witness as often as I would like. A moment that I know —even before it has occurred—will one day become my dearest desire for wanting to turn back time. This moment is a mirage. Once I return to my senses, after the passing of a twelve-hour lag, it will already be too late.

This is the place where I wish to work from. …

Returning To The Hand, Tatum Dodd

Masters Theses

Historical preservation is traditionally understood as the act of protecting objects and buildings from change, reinstating and stabilizing the past so they may endure into the future. When preservation seeks to freeze and resolve the past, it separates it from the reality of our multi-layered histories and the traces of labor, repair, and care unfolding across generations. Through a human-centered lens that allows one to touch, uncover, and redefine, we are able to relate to our built environments through an ethical practice of care, inviting new avenues of dialogue and engagement with our past.

Recording traces of the hand within …

Looking In All Directions, Abby Sunde

Masters Theses

“Looking in All Directions” mobilizes attention towards the concepts of ‘desettling’ through art and ‘desettling’ as a way of being. Desettling constitutes resistance, resilience, survivance, and refusal of current Western modalities within our society. This body of work is a material exploration of these worldviews to find potential ways to embody a practice that aligns ourselves outside of a colonial settler mindset while living within its societal condition. Using glass, sound, and installation work, the artist un-centers expected encounters with an inherited dominant worldview and instead offers an actualized shift in awareness. Concepts of interconnectedness, interwoven time, and embodied memories …

Boring Objects Bureau, Eric Fan

Masters Theses

The Boring Objects Bureau is an anti-sustainability design studio. Through its work, the Bureau is interested in developing new strategies that can challenge the stereotypes of what sustainability looks like for the products that underpin our modern lives.

The Bureau’s first investigation focused on the smartphone, a product where breakage and decay through obsolescence is inevitable. As a result, people are faced with either the expected sustainable approach of repair, which can be expensive and inconvenient, or replacement, which costs more and restarts the cycle. The Bureau therefore wanted to ask: could this breakage and decay instead be embraced as …

Where The Walls Came Down: Reimagining The Disaster-Induced Modern Ruin, Zhenmi Tang

Masters Theses

In contemporary society, large-scale destructive events are continuously generating a new architectural condition: the modern ruin. Unlike historical ruins shaped and legitimized through time, the remnants left by war, wildfires, and other natural disasters remain embedded in lived reality and collective memory. These environments are not distant artifacts of the past, but recently inhabited spaces whose material presence and social meaning remain active. However, prevailing reconstruction practices tend to prioritize complete demolition and site clearance, followed by rebuilding on restored empty ground. While this approach provides reliability in terms of safety, engineering, and regulation, it often interrupts the material and …

Care Ecologies Between Knots, Eliza R. Marris

Masters Theses

Discarded fibers like raw wool behave the way harm reduction does. Harm reduction resists stigma and works to move beyond assumptions and oversimplifications of substance use and addiction. Wool is irregular, complicated, and emotionally charged. It resists compression and maintains its own being even when pulled apart. Working with raw wool is in relationship with complexity, as is harm reduction.

At its core, harm reduction is grounded in thoughtfulness and empathy towards people, their lived experience, and its nuances. It is a witness to lives, memories, and imprints, acknowledging the entangled realities of addiction. Our detachment from fiber remainders, materials …

Feeling Through Space:Designing Emotion In Space Through Alice In Wonderland, Xuanyu Yang

Masters Theses

Emotion is the most direct bridge between human experience and architectural space, but design often treats feelings as a side product. This thesis challenges that idea by asking a specific question: can a designer intentionally use spatial qualities to move a person through a defined emotional sequence? And if so, can that process be documented clearly enough to become a repeatable method?

To test this, the project designs a spatial version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as an immersive theater experience. The narrative is not told through text, performance, or screen, but entirely through the physical qualities of a …

Providence Puzzle:Exhibition Design As Urban Spatial Practice, Ye Chen

Masters Theses

Providence is a city shaped by past industrial production, immigrant communities, artistic practice, waterfront renewal, and urban redevelopment. Its identity exists not only in historical remnants, but also in the cultural atmosphere created through the ongoing interaction between past and present. Former factories, river infrastructure, neighborhood streets, public parks and scenes of everyday life together form an urban narrative that continues to evolve. Yet existing methods of presenting Providence’s history and culture remain limited to informational signage, commemorative markers, or one-directional communication, offering little incentive for people to stop, read, explore, or actively engage. As a city rich in both …