Digital Commons Network^™

Heritage Without Equity: Afro-Descendant Representation, State Governance, Museums And The Limits Of Cultural Policy In Belize, Sherilyne L. Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how heritage governance in Belize shapes the representation, recognition, and participation of Afro-descendant communities within national cultural institutions and policy frameworks. Focusing on Creole/Kriol and Garifuna communities, the study analyses how law, institutional designs, museum practises, tourism development, and community-based heritage work to produce uneven forms of cultural visibility. I argue that Afro-descendant communities are not absent from Belizean heritage. Rather, their cultural presence has not consistently translated into institutional authority, sustained investments, or meaningful participation in decisions about national representation. Drawing on critical heritage theory, critical museology, post-colonial scholarship, and the concept of authorised heritage discourse, …

Testimonios From Latine Educational Leaders Supporting Youth Development Programs, Luis E. Feliciano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States has been experiencing a demographic change for the last twenty years representing a rise in both Latiné students and families. Despite this demographic change, Latiné folk remain widely underrepresented in school leadership, and furthermore underrepresented in specific Youth Development Programs (YDPs), with the relationship between educational leaders and YDPs being widely unexplored in academia. This study sought to bridge the gap between YDPs and educational leadership, specifically for Latiné folk by asking how Latiné educational leaders used their cultural heritage to encourage YDP development. To accomplish this a testimonio methodology was implemented via a two staged interview …

Evaluating The Role Of Individual Differences: Impact On Fruit And Vegetable Intake Outcomes In Nourish-T+ Caregivers Of Pediatric Cancer Survivors, Sandra Soca Lozano

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pediatric cancer survivors are at increased risk for obesity and related long-term health complications, highlighting the need for interventions promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors during survivorship. The present study examined caregivers’ fruit and vegetable intake in the full NOURISH-T+ intervention and evaluated whether their dietary outcomes changed from baseline to the 3-month post-assessment and differed by selected caregiver sociodemographic characteristics. The study also examined whether these characteristics accounted for variance in 3-month fruit and vegetable outcomes. Participants included 68 caregivers in the full NOURISH-T+ condition who completed both baseline and 3-month post-assessments. Fruit and vegetable intake was assessed using the Healthy …

Building Trustworthy Information Systems: A Unified Framework For Comparative Risk Detection, Parisa Momeni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Risk detection in large scale information systems increasingly depends on heterogeneous data generatedby both centralized and distributed ecosystems. While centralized systems provide curated and validated reports, distributed environments produce large-scale and real-time observational evidence. Existing computational approaches analyze these ecosystems in isolation, limiting systematic comparison of risk repre-sentations across heterogeneous sources.

This dissertation presents a unified computational framework for comparative risk detection across centralized and distributed information systems. The framework provides a domain independent methodology for transforming heterogeneous risk reporting data into comparable multidimensional representations. To enable interpretable comparison of heterogeneous risk distributions, this work introduces the Geometric Overlap Score …

Language Models For Oncology Clinical Text: How Model Architecture And Data Strategies Shape Tumor Phenotype Extraction And Disease Progression Detection, Thanh Duong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rapid growth of electronic health records (EHRs) has created new opportunities to apply machine learning to clinical data.However, a large portion of important clinical information is still stored in unstructured text, such as pathology reports, radiology reports, and longitudinal clinical notes.These documents contain key details about tumor characteristics, diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes.Extracting structured and useful information from this text is challenging due to complex medical language, varied document formats, and the need to combine information across multiple reports over time.This dissertation studies how language models can be designed and adapted to better extract and use oncology-specific information from …

Examining The Referral Pathway For Black Families Evaluated Through The Early Steps Program, Zelda Fleming

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research indicates that for children with or at risk for developmental delays, early intervention services are associated with improvements in academic and cognitive skills by the time they reach kindergarten (Atkins et al., 2020; Litt et al., 2017). Untreated developmental delays are linked to early school failure and social and emotional problems (Sher et al., 2020). Black children are 5 times less likely to receive early intervention services when compared to their White peers (Barnard-Brak et al., 2021; Feinberg et al.,2011). Thus, they often do not have the opportunity to receive early intervention services. The literature in this area suggests …

When “Mild” Isn’T Minor: Return-To-Work Challenges In Post-Stroke Mild Aphasia, Maya Berro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Return-to-work (RTW) is an important aspect of social participation and quality of life following stroke. However, limited research has explored the experiences of individuals with mild aphasia in the RTW process. This purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how individuals with post-stroke mild aphasia perceive their ability to RTW and identify factors that influence this process. Ten adults with mild or very mild aphasia participated in individual semi- structured interviews conducted via Microsoft Teams. Interview transcripts were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Three major themes emerged: (1) Barriers to RTW, (2) Facilitators to RTW, and (3) Perceptions of …

Discourse Production And Its Relationship To Cognition In Mild Aphasia, Marcy D. Edwards

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Objective:Standardized assessments such as the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised do not reliably detect subtle language impairments in mild aphasia (Dalton & Richardson, 2015). Discourse tasks may provide a more sensitive measure of impairment. Although discourse tasks differ in cognitive demands (Kim & Kintz, 2024), variation in discourse performance across tasks and the influence of cognition remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined (1) whether discourse performance differs across different discourse elicitation tasks, and (2) the extent to which cognition influences discourse performance in individuals with mild aphasia.

Participants & Methods: Fifteen participants with mild aphasia participated (mean age = 62.7 years). Discourse …

Listener Factors In Integrating Syntax And Plausibility In Sentences Produced With Versus Without Stuttering, Gabriella L. Burgess Hayes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Purpose: Development of communication-focused therapy for people who stutter requires better understanding of how stuttering impacts oral comprehension. One aim was to investigate how stuttering impacts listeners’ ability to integrate syntax and world knowledge (plausibility) in sentence processing. A second aim was to investigate how listener factors predict ability to integrate information in sentences with stuttering.

Methods: 224 adults heard 24 experimental sentences interspersed with 24 fillers. Experimental sentences included six plausible double-object dative (DO) constructions, six plausible prepositional dative (PD) constructions, six implausible DO constructions, and six implausible PD constructions. Implausible constructions served as analogues of communication breakdowns. Half …

Measures Of Linguistic Complexity And Vocabulary Diversity As Indicators Of Oral Language Production Growth Of 4th Grade Spanish-Speaking Els, Carla T. Zayas-Santiago

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As fourth-grade students transition from learning to read to reading to learn, their ability to use language for academic purposes becomes increasingly important, particularly for Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs). However, students often have limited opportunities to produce extended oral language during instruction. Students’ oral language production reflects both structural aspects of language use, captured through measures of linguistic complexity, and lexical aspects of language use, captured through measures of vocabulary diversity. Although prior studies have examined transcript-derived measures of oral language production, limited research has examined how these measures predict English proficiency, capture growth over time, and respond to different …

Unquaint Pigs’ Stakeholder Perspectives On Wild Swine In Central Western Florida, Tyler Koerner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Anthropocene presents important questions for how to address the continuous transferal of new species into new spaces and the cascading impacts of environmental transformations. Novel ecosystems present one such outline for conservation that acknowledges the modification of historic ecosystems and the social entanglements that arrive with new species. I argue that novel ecosystems can benefit from further anthropological integrations that aid in describing the entanglements of introduced species and the pursuit of best managerial outcomes. For wild swine in Florida, the adoption of a novel approach is especially relevant because of entanglements with historic and modern Floridian stakeholders and …

An Equity Analysis Of Battery Electric Vehicles During Evacuation Considering Social And Financial Disadvantage, Divyamitra Mishra

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increasing share of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the transportation system is introducing new challenges to the emergency evacuation planning and management. During Hurricane Milton (2024), incidents involving BEVs, including battery fires, attributed to saltwater exposure risk, and advisories recommending relocation to higher ground, highlighted operational vulnerabilities unique to this technology. These emerging risks are likely to be experienced heterogeneously, as access to charging infrastructure, available resources, and evacuation flexibility varies across the population. This raises critical questions about how BEV-specific constraints interact with existing inequalities during evacuation. Motivated by this context, the dissertation investigated inequity in BEV evacuation …

District Leadership Influence On The Sustainability Of Dual Language Bilingual Education Programs, Jessica Hessler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dual language bilingual education programs operate within policy environments that often constrain their long term viability, despite their deep historical roots in the United States. This qualitative study examined how district/central office leadership systems supported the sustainability of these programs. While prior research has emphasized school site collaboration between principals and teachers, limited attention has been given to the district/central office level leadership systems and strategies that shaped program coherence, implementation, and endurance. Guided by a framework integrating social justice leadership with principles of sustainable leadership, the study examined the research question: How do district or central office leadership systems …

Challenging The Deliberative Consensus: Participatory Strategies, Transparency And Citizen Trust Across Municipal Contexts, Fadel Al-Marsoumi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the relationships between participatory governance strategies and multidimensional citizen trust in municipal contexts. Although local governments have implemented deliberative forums, digital platforms and hybrid participation approaches to restore declining public confidence, inconsistencies between theoretical predictions and empirical outcomes have raised questions about participatory governance effectiveness. Motivated by this gap between deliberative democracy theory's optimistic predictions and limited empirical support, the study investigates the psychological, political and contextual mechanisms that shape trust formation through civic engagement. Drawing on an integrated framework combining organizational trust theory and deliberative democracy frameworks, the research conceptualizes trust as a multidimensional construct involving …

Teachers' Perspectives On The Inclusion Of Children With Autism In Preschool And Kindergarten Programs Within Inclusive Classrooms In Saudi Arabia, Budur Alsalamah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has witnessed a significant increase in the number of students with autism being integrated into mainstream classrooms. This is thanks to laws and regulations enacted to provide appropriate education for students with special needs, particularly those with autism, in less restrictive environments. This is a positive step towards providing equal educational opportunities for students with special needs. However, teachers' views on integrating children with autism into mainstream education remain varied. Studies have shown that teachers with positive attitudes towards inclusion are more likely to provide inclusive education in the classroom (Dev & Hayes, 2015). This …

The Power Of A Princess: Rebranding For A New Generation, Victoria A. Heath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The lyric “Well, that sounds an awful lot like princess problems” from Snow White (2025) reflects Disney’s evolving portrayal of its princesses as more self-aware and independent. This shift is echoed in earlier live-action adaptations, such as Beauty and the Beast (2017), where Belle’s longing for “adventure in the great wide somewhere” signals her rejection of a limited, traditional role. Guided by Feminist Film Theory and media framing, this study examines how Disney’s rebranding of princess characters in Beauty and the Beast (2017), The Little Mermaid (2023), and Snow White (2025) reflects contemporary ideals of empowerment. Through narrative content and …

Making Sense Of The Body: Cognitive Science, Disability, And Embodiment, Cheyne L. Joslin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to analyze different methodological approaches in the philosophy of cognitive science, with the goal of determining their usefulness for explaining and understanding bodily awareness and skill-acquisition over time. The examples of skill-acquisition are limited to motor control, impaired by various kinds of disability—but then acquired over time, via technological or rehabilitative means. These phenomena of motor learning are then viewed through the lens of two competing theoretical approaches in cognitive science: neuromechanical cognitive science, and radical enactivist cognitive science.

The strengths of the neuromechanical framework are found in its historical pedigree, and in the …

Semiotics Of Difference: Language, The Body, And Haitian Personhood In The Dominican Republic, Benjamin Puterbaugh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation is an ethnographic and multimodal semiotic analysis of the role of signs in the daily life of Haitians in the Dominican Republic (DR). I investigate how language and other embodiments of Haitian alterity are perceived and ascribed value by hegemonic social orders. I center the analysis on the popular perceptions of the Haitian person-type or characterological figure (Agha, 2003) as (over)determiners of actual Haitian subjectivity. I investigate the ways that Haitian personhood is translated, that is, perceived and assigned value, in the Dominican context, and the implications this has on realities of Haitian immigrants. In addition to …

“Makes Me Wanna Holler”: Psychological Safety In Program Development Under Anti-Dei Legislation, Derrick B. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This evocative autoethnographic study explores the professional and emotional experiences of a Black male higher education administrator who developed a college success program for Black male students at a mostly White institution in Northeast Florida. The research took place as new state laws against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) were introduced, showing how these changes disrupt DEI efforts. By using narrative inquiry, the study emphasizes how laws, campus culture, and racial expectations directly affect the emotional intelligence and professional identity needed to support Black male student success.

By focusing on the author's personal experiences, this evocative autoethnography shows the emotional, …

The Dynamic Nature Of Comprehensibility During Itas’ Oral Language Performances, Tania Ferronato

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In U.S. academic settings, everyday oral multilingual interactions can pose communicative challenges (Gass & Varonis, 1984), which can be understood and addressed by looking into communicative dynamics. Exploring the construct of comprehensibility, the perceived ease or difficulty in understanding self and others’ speech (Munro & Derwing, 1995a), through a dynamic lens (Nagle et al., 2019; Trofimovich et al., 2022) helps gaining insights into interlocutors’ subjective experiences to better understand the more social nature of successful real-time communication. This is fundamental in linguistically diverse classroom settings where L2 English speakers can be employed as International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) to teach undergraduate …

Human First: How Journalists Employ Ethics Of Care And Empathy When Covering School Shootings, Grace M. Ficara

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

School shootings have become a regular part of the news media cycle in the 21st century. Now, more than ever, journalists are needing to find innovative, yet empathetic, ways to deal with such crises as they navigate their own professional boundaries. Using the Ethics of Care model, this research intends to showcase how journalists have, willingly or unwillingly, utilized an empathetic approach when covering school shootings and how they use these tools to comfort their sources and themselves. Through semi - structured interviews of 9 participants, this study seeks to connect the practice of journalism with the one thing journalists …

The Emotional Construction Of Religious Experience: Senitmentalism And Moral Motivations, Yvonne Candelario

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper addresses the growing prevalence of reported religious experiences across diverse religious and spiritual traditions, alongside the persistent absence of such reports among many adherents within the same communities. This asymmetry poses a challenge for both supernaturalist and reductively skeptical accounts of religious experience. I develop a naturalistic constructivist framework to explain why some individuals choose to interpret and report some human experiences as religious experiences or report having religious experiences at all, while others do not. Drawing on a post-modern revision of moral theory, an account of constructive sentimentalism, I argue that religious experience is shaped by socially …

Mall For Lifelong Learning: Older Adults’ Self-Directed Language Learning Via Duolingo, Jihye Kim

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) has proliferated due to rapid technological advancements, enabling language learning anytime, anywhere. Among these technologies, commercial applications such as Duolingo have achieved global popularity across diverse age groups. Despite this, research examining efficacy and User Experience (UX) has predominantly focused on undergraduate populations or formal educational settings. While a limited number of studies have explored populations outside university contexts (e.g., Puebla et al., 2022; Rosell-Aguilar, 2018), there remains a scarcity of research regarding the MALL experiences of older adults (aged 60 and above) in informal settings.

Taking a concurrent mixed-methods approach with an emphasis on qualitative …

Construction Of Chinese Identities And Community: A Linguistic Ethnographic Study Of A Chinese Culture-Sharing Club At A Us University, Yuxuan Mu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Chinese identity has been viewed as a debated and contested notion in sociolinguistics (Wong et al., 2021). Existing sociolinguistic research, which has centered on Chinese identity-related questions, such as “Who can be or cannot be Chinese?”, has been closely involved with the current political tensions between mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, as well as their associated linguistic tensions between simplified Chinese writing and traditional Chinese writing, and Cantonese and Mandarin. Building on these studies, this dissertation goes beyond the scope of Sinophone contexts traditionally examined in prior research (e.g., mainland China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) to examine how US …

They Find A Way: The Transnational Practices And Experiences Of Diaspora Conflict Journalists, Grace E. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As global tensions continue to rise, media landscapes are changing. Diaspora communities play an integral role in this shift, as they search for verifiable news with a global perspective to keep them informed on crises in their home countries. In order to keep their communities informed, diaspora journalists step up to localize coverage, creating transnational networks to bridge home and host countries. They often work through intense situations, sacrificing normalcy for information. Building on the framework from Ogunyemi’s (2018) diasporic media observations, Fraser’s (1992) counterpublics theory, and D.K. Thussu’s (2006) contra-flow in global media theory, this study explores how diaspora …

Primordial Recognition And The Structure Of Human Cognition: Toward A Quranic Epistemology, Jana El-Boustani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reconstructs a Qur’anic epistemological architecture grounded in narrative rather than abstract system-building. It argues that the Qur’an articulates a unified account of human cognition in which intelligibility is grounded in divine instruction, recognition is affirmed through primordial testimony, and knowledge is exercised within finite yet accountable faculties.

Through close analysis of the story of Adam in Surat al-Baqarah, the primordial covenant in Surat al-Aʿrāf, and the verse of the Amanah in Surat al-Aḥzāb, the study demonstrates that the Qur’an presents human knowing as structured, oriented, and morally conditioned. Revelation functions not as the introduction of wholly new knowledge, …

Manufacturing Main Street: How Historic Plant City Main Street Revitalizes Its Community And Simulates The Commons, Emily Burke

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community has remained a central concern to sociology since its founding, even as industrialization, globalization, and digital media have transformed how social ties are formed and maintained. Small American downtowns once anchored civic and social life, but have faced destabilizing events like globalization, the rise of e-commerce, and the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, many small cities have turned to the national nonprofit Main Street AmericaTM to help them revitalize their downtowns. Although research on small cities is limited compared to large urban centers, emerging literature highlights post-COVID opportunities to renew physical and local shopping on main street (small city downtowns). …

Aging In The Shadows: Szekler Cemeteries And The Case For Recognizing Elderly Populations In Bioarchaeology, Katie M. Mcgrath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The study of aging in past populations lies at the intersection of bioarchaeology and paleodemography, offering insight into both biological processes and lived social experience. Despite this potential, older adults are often rendered “invisible” in skeletal assemblages due to methodological and cultural biases. This thesis addresses this gap through a rare, community-based study of aging among the Székely population of Transylvania. By integrating osteological analysis of individuals (11th–19th centuries) from the archaeological Papdomb church cemetery with demographic data derived from the modern cemetery headstones (ca.1850–present), this research examines patterns of aging, longevity, and elder visibility across a culturally and spatially …

The Bidirectional Effects Of Engaging In Hazard Perception And Work-Related Phone Calls, Hannah V. Pannell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the bidirectional effects of conducting work-related phone negotiations during a driving task. With the prevalence of multitasking in today's fast-paced environments, understanding the effects of dual-task interference is critical for enhancing road safety and workplace efficiency. Experiment 1 established a foundational understanding that multitasking negatively affects both driving ability and negotiation outcomes. Experiment 2 employed an accomplice script to standardize negotiation quality, revealing that while dual-tasking again impaired driving performance, focused negotiators earned more points on the integrative items and overall. Analyses of negotiation behaviors further indicate differences in the use of distributive behaviors. Together, these experiments …

Sensi-Train: Context-Aware Sensitive Content Detection Using Transformers And Large Language Models, Nazeefa Muzammil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The detection of sensitive content has become a critical task in natural language processing due to the widespread use of online platforms and the social harm caused by it. Even though current methods have advanced significantly, many of them mainly rely on surface-level text and neglect to take into consideration contextual and cultural elements that are crucial for correctly assessing sensitivity of any content to a particular individual. Due to this, implicit offense, sarcasm, and culturally grounded expressions frequently cause problems for such systems. To enable culturally grounded sensitive content detection, this thesis presents Sensi-Train, a context-rich dataset and modeling …