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Ka Here Tāngata:1 Mātauranga And Te Ao Māori In Biocultural Kākāpō (Strigops Habroptilus) Conservation Approaches, Sophie Perfetto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis examines conservation as a form of living cultural heritage practice through the co-management of kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus), a critically endangered parrot and taonga species in Aotearoa New Zealand. Situated within ongoing histories of colonial dispossession and Western frameworks of land and species management, contemporary kākāpō conservation is shaped through the partnership between the Department of Conservation’s Kākāpō Recovery Programme and Ngāi Tahu. Drawing on semi-structured interviews collected during fieldwork from July to August 2025, this study examines how institutional partnerships structure decision-making, authority, and responsibility in contemporary conservation governance. Findings demonstrate that Māori knowledge systems …

Otherness And The Trinity: Toward A Critical Reimagining Of Christian Divinity From A Postcolonial Ethos, Taylor Muma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I address the Trinity’s potential as an emancipatory relational archetype in the philosophy of religion, while at the same time recognizing the complicity of Christian doctrine in colonial conquest. My dissertation will be a reimagining of trinitarian theology as an ecotonal paradigm of multiplicity and alterity that provides a generative means of moving beyond the enmeshment of divinity with constructs of mastery.

The post-structuralist and postcolonial methodologies in this project emerge from the work of such scholars as Homi Bhabha, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Gloria Anzaldúa. They foreground critical ideations of otherness and multiplicity in ways …

The Permanent Emergency: The Anti-Fascist And Anti-Colonial Intersections Of James Joyce’S Ulysses And Roberto Bolaño’S 2666, Lily V. Mcmanamy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis is going to explore the (Irish) Anti-Colonial and (Spanish) Anti-Fascist parallels between James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (2004). Using the major epic novels of two exiled authors, I hope to explore the intersections of poetic fiction and political resistance. I read these texts as bookends spanning the pre- and post-war periods, highlighting the continuities of colonialism, totalitarianism, and fascism, and the way these authors develop a post/modernist narrative that nods towards these themes. I plan to draw on Alberto Toscano’s LateFascism (2023) as a means of situating these authors’ novels with our own political moment …

Perceptions Of Giftedness: A Mixed Methods Study Of General Education Classroom Teachers And Gifted And Talented Specialists, Rachel J. Martino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This convergent mixed methods study examined similarities and differences in perceptions of giftedness held by general education teachers and gifted specialists in two suburban elementary school districts. Grounded in social constructivism and labeling theory, the study explored how educator role shapes understandings of giftedness and gifted education. Survey data from 70 educators and interviews with eight participants were analyzed and integrated. Findings revealed alignment regarding the multidimensional and social–emotional nature of giftedness, but statistically significant differences in perceptions were found related to instructional practices and differentiation, identification, autonomy, and service models. Findings also revealed a gap between belief and practice, …

Tracing The Flow Of Value In Ecotourism: A Case Study Of Lekki Conservation Center, Lagos, Nigeria, Queen Oluwatobi Olafadehan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the flow of value in ecotourism at Lekki Conservation Center (LCC) in Lagos, Nigeria, using a political ecology framework to analyze how economic benefits, participation opportunities, and environmental impacts are distributed among different community groups. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 16 community members, participant observation, and photographic documentation, the study investigates how surrounding communities perceive and experience ecotourism, how revenue is understood to be distributed, and in what ways communities are included in or excluded from conservation decision-making. The findings reveal that ecotourism at LCC generates benefits that are unevenly distributed, that community participation in governance remains …

Improving Cluster Expansion Efficiency And Generalizability, Samuel D. Bills

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The cluster expansion (CE) method is a powerful framework for modeling alloy systems by linking atomic configurations to thermophysical properties. However, constructing accurate and robust CE models requires careful selection of both training structures and cluster bases. In this work, we investigate how structure enumeration and cluster selection strategies influence CE performance in binary face-centered cubic alloys using a Julia-based implementation. Model performance is evaluated using empirical risk and the generalized aliasing decomposition (GAD), which provides insight into the relationship between model complexity and generalization error. We find that physically motivated selection strategies that prioritize small clusters consistently outperform approaches …

Evaluation And Distillation Of Source Code Generation Tasks By Large Language Models, Danny Brahman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Large Language Models (LLMs) are predominantly assessed based on their common sense reasoning, language comprehension, and logical reasoning abilities. While models trained in specialized domains like mathematics or coding have demonstrated remarkable advancements in logical reasoning, there remains a significant gap in evaluating their code generation capabilities. Existing benchmark datasets fall short in pinpointing specific strengths and weaknesses, impeding targeted enhancements in models’ reasoning abilities to synthesize code.

To bridge this gap, this thesis introduces two novel contributions: CodeEval and CodeQual. CodeEval is an innovative, pedagogical benchmarking method that mirrors the evaluation processes encountered in academic programming courses. It comprises …

The Organizational Experience Of Next Gen Learning Through Portrait Of A Graduate, Kathleen J. Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative single-case study investigates the organizational journey of navigating the complexities of systemic transformation. In 2021, Silver Peak School District (SPSD; a pseudonym), a rural educational organization in the western United States, implemented a graduate competency framework known as Portrait of a Graduate. This study analyzed the experiences of teachers, instructional coaches, and principals with the explicit Portrait policies, practices, and resource flows of five learning structures—graduate competencies (in SPSD, this is analogous to Portrait), deeper learning, agency, performance assessment, and teaching culture—in a district in the messy middle of Portrait adoption. By focusing on a district situated in …

She Believed She Could, So She Did: A Lifecycle Approach To Understanding Leadership And Self-Efficacy Development In Women Astronauts, Savanah Faith Sellars Bray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines how women leaders develop and sustain self-efficacy, and develop as leaders, throughout their lives. Although decades of research document the barriers women face navigating leadership journeys, including the challenges described in the Women’s Leadership Labyrinth of prejudice, discrimination, and childcare issues, existing literature offers limited insight into how women actively build belief in their capacity to lead and accomplish their goals. Further, research consistently shows that women report lower leadership self-efficacy than men, even with comparable experience, yet the developmental processes that shape this gap, beginning in childhood, remain underexplored. Guided by self-efficacy research and its four …

Reseeding Relations: Comparing Museum And Indigenous Seed Sharing & Rematriation Protocols In The Midwestern United States, Madeline G. Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) paved the way for the repatriation of ancestors and certain cultural objects to Indigenous communities, museums still struggle to address other forms of cultural returns. Heritage seeds, those which hold cultural significance to Indigenous peoples, held within museum collections perpetuates the colonization of Indigenous lifeways. This research examines rematriation as an Indigenous form of cultural return better suited to address these needs than limited repatriation models. I analyze how museums are working to create rematriation processes for their collections which reflect diverse Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies through a three-tiered approach: …

Improving Patient Experience And Cms Reimbursement Stability In Non-Profit Women’S Health Centers, Jacaia Ellis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

No abstract provided.

A Case Study Of Principal Preparation In A Social Justice-Informed Principal Preparation Program, Katie Golieb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative case study examined how a social justice-informed principal preparation program fostered the development of socially just school leaders and how graduates perceived their capacity for resilience as educational leaders in the contemporary PK–12 context. The Mountain Range Principal Preparation Program (MRP3), a university–district partnership designed to prepare educational leaders to be transformative leaders equipped to improve student achievement and address challenges in low-performing schools, served as the site of inquiry. The study explored how principals made meaning of their preparation experiences and how those experiences shaped their enactment of equity-focused leadership and their ability to sustain such work. …

A Theoretical And Empirical Framework To Estimate The Impact Of Conflict On The Economic Resilience Of Clustered Firms In Ukraine, Alexander D. Ginn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I develop a theoretical and empirical framework to estimate whether participation in industrial clusters contributes to firm-level economic resilience to conflict-based shocks. Focusing on Ukraine following the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, the study situates industrial organization and firms’ resilience to conflict within a dynamic environment characterized by spatially heterogeneous exposure to conflict events and persistent institutional constraints. I document how Ukraine’s contemporary economic geography reflects the interaction of Soviet-era industrial path dependence, uneven post-transition institutional development, and conflict-induced reconfiguration, evaluating how these dynamics generate systematic variation in both firms’ baseline vulnerability and their exposure to …

A Computational Micropatterning Approach To Study Caveolae And Protein Localization In Vascular Biology, Andrew B. Grespin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Caveolae are specialized, flask-shaped membrane invaginations highly expressed in endothelium and dysregulated in atherosclerosis. Caveolae play a central role in buffering membrane tension, yet the principles governing their spatial organization remain elusive. Thus, we sought to generate the most comprehensive and systematic analysis of blood vessel caveolar spatial organization. However, cell culturing, the backbone of human-focused biological research, does not standardly do well to model physiologically relevant cell behaviors such as migration or polarity-based tissue formation, particularly for punctate proteins and structures like caveolae. Micropatterns are cell-adhesive shapes that biophysically confine cell(s) to a user defined geometry which stereotype organelle …

Characteristics Of Social Capital In Informal Housing Settlements, Lena Parsons

University Honors Theses

Many cities see growth of informal housing settlements as urban populations rise across the globe. Residents of informal settlements are observed to use robust networks of social capital to support themselves in an environment of resource scarcity and marginalization. This review synthesizes research examining characteristics of social capital in informal housing settlements, finding that (1) social capital influences residents' acquisition of basic needs, (2) the structure of social capital networks depend on the context of the settlement, and (3) the built environment of informal settlements has a cyclical relationship to their social capital networks. This synthesis concludes that formal solutions …

Who Tells Our Stories?: An Analysis Of Lgbtqia2s+ Community-Museum Collaboration In Northeastern Wisconsin, Frances Kerkhof

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, histories of LGBTQIA2S+ individuals have been excluded from mainstream conversations and censored from public records. This exclusion was evident in how LGBTQIA2S+ history is retold in museum spaces. Over the past few decades, public institutions have shifted how LGBTQIA2S+ histories are communicated, with efforts to include more diverse histories and perspectives. During the summer of 2025, I conducted a museum ethnography of the Neville Public Museum’s Telling Our Stories: LGBTQ+ Voices of Northeastern Wisconsin to answer the research question: How does community engagement enhance the representation of the LGBTQIA2S+ community in a local museum in Northeastern Wisconsin? Through this …

Becoming The Phoenix: Black Women’S Experiences And Leadership Growth Through Humanized Black Feminist Action Learning, Jovan Keith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the workplace learning experiences of Black women professionals in corporate leadership contexts. Leadership development programs often rely on standardized models that overlook the lived realities shaping Black women’s professional experiences. In response, this study introduced Humanized Black Feminist Action Learning, a leadership development intervention that integrates Black feminist scholarship, humanizing pedagogy, and critical action learning.

Using a qualitative case study design, the research examined a cohort of midcareer Black women professionals who participated in four facilitated learning sessions structured around workplace dilemmas. During these sessions, participants engaged in reflection, dialogue, and action as they examined workplace dynamics …

Educator Perceptions Of Human-Ai Co-Creativity: A Mixed Methods Study, Wendy L. Jensen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Educators play a critical role in navigating the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence in the work of teaching and learning. As frontline implementers of daily instruction and decision-makers around the use of technology tools, teachers determine, in practice, how creativity and artificial intelligence converge in learning environments. Because teachers play this central role, examining their perceptions is critical for fostering the effective use of AI in educational contexts in ways that preserve and advance creative teaching and learning. In this convergent mixed methods study, I investigated educators’ perceptions of human-AI co-creativity, with particular attention to how these perceptions inform …

Defying Impossibility: Critical Qualitative Reorientations To Black Lgbtqia+ Sense Of Belonging, Olivia H. Hunte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Belonging is a human need central to survival and can be cultivated within all spheres of life. Social environments are vital for experiencing a sense of belonging. In some social environments, Black LGBTQIA+ people encounter greater impediments to their daily lives with consequences for survival, including threatening their belonging needs. Within the United States, systems of oppression create and inform conditions within social environments that can potentially thwart pathways to belonging for Black LGBTQIA+ people. Thus, fulfillment of belonging needs for Black LGBTQIA+ people is one of nuance, pain, resilience, hope, harm, trauma, resistance, and healing; scant research is available …

Higher Education Institutions In U.S. Blockchain Innovation Governance Documents, Clarissa Terracciano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Blockchain technologies have attracted growing attention as an evolution of digital recordkeeping, prompting interest in higher education governance, credentialing, and data management. Yet, no systematic analysis exists on how U.S. government blockchain documents define institutional roles and governance authority within higher education institutions. As the national blockchain innovation system expands through governance infrastructure, the inclusion of higher education institutions as governing actors is imperative for coherent and equitable deployment. This qualitative study examines what roles the U.S. government blockchain documents assign to higher education institutions within the national blockchain innovation system.

Using innovation systems theory, particularly the triple-helix model of …

Heroes At Home: Developing And Evaluating A Comprehensive Parenting Program For Expectant Parents And Parents Of Young Children, Olivia Adams

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Parental preparedness plays a critical role in parental wellbeing, relationship functioning, and early child development; however, many parents report feeling unprepared for the emotional, relational, and developmental demands of parenthood. Although psychoeducational parenting programs have demonstrated positive effects on parental mental health and child outcomes, access to comprehensive and time-efficient interventions remains limited. This pilot program evaluation assessed the feasibility and preliminary outcomes of a brief, online psychoeducational parenting program designed to reduce parenting stress and enhance parental self-efficacy. A quasi-experimental pre–post design was used to examine changes in parenting stress and parental self-efficacy following participation in a single 120-minute …

Motherwise In Nicaragua: The Implementation Of Culturally Adapted Relationship Education For Women During Pregnancy And Postpartum, Amanda Key Correa Love

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a concerning public health issue of global proportions, particularly within rural and under-resourced settings. Communities in these settings face elevated risk for relationship abuse, further compounded by barriers to access culturally responsive preventive intervention programming. This qualitative study investigated participant experiences, cultural adaptation, and implementation of the MotherWise program, a healthy relationship education intervention in rural Leon, Nicaragua. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with former and current program participants as well as the program facilitator following the initial program implementation. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify patterns related to participant experiences, the types of …

Lost In Loss: A Supportive Handbook For Teens Grieving The Suicide Of A Loved One, Gabriella Potter

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Adolescence is a complex developmental time. For adolescents grieving a suicide death, there can be added layers of complexity in navigating this developmental period, due to unique challenges and stigma, family disruption, trauma, unanswerable questions, feelings of rejection, abandonment, responsibility, and anger that can result from a suicide death loss. Through a literature review of the available research on adolescent suicide bereavement, this doctoral paper examines models of grief, adolescent development, and suicide loss, aiming to bridge the literature in all these domains. Despite the high prevalence of bereavement in young people, there are limited, tailored resources designed to support …

A Narrative Study Of The “Religious Dones” And Their Religious Identity, Relationship To God, And Social Connections, Michelle Suh

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

This qualitative study aims to learn about how religious dones — those who were formerly religious but no longer identify as religious — have constructed their life narratives in light of their religious deidentification, with particular attention on the evolution of religious identity, perceived relationship with God, and social connections across the lifespan. A narrative methodology was employed to capture participants’ experiences in a story format to understand the subjective meaning-making process of their lived experiences, and six young adults between the ages of 23-29 participated in the study. Data collection consisted of a life-story portion of the interview with …

Investigating The Interactions Of Auxiliary Subunits With The Nav1.5 Channel, Lucy Summer Woodbury

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The voltage-gated Nav1.5 channel is responsible for the rapid depolarization of the cardiac action potential. A key feature of the Nav1.5 channel is its rapid activation and inactivation. The C-terminal domain (CTD) of Nav1.5 and subsequent auxiliary subunits that bind there can influence the gating kinetics of Nav1.5. In particular, intracellular fibroblast growth factors (iFGFs) and calmodulin (CaM) both shift the voltage-dependence of inactivation, or steady-state inactivation (SSI), in a depolarizing manner. Recently, a non-canonical CaM binding site was discovered on the A-splice variants of iFGFs. As FGF12A and CaM can interact with each other independent of Nav1.5, a model …

Design Principle For Staple-Mediated Stabilization Of Peptides And Proteins, Samantha C. Hatfield

Theses and Dissertations

Macrocyclization, or stapling, has emerged as a powerful strategy to enhance the stability and function of peptides and proteins by constraining their conformational ensembles. Stapling can improve thermodynamic stability, increase resistance to proteolytic degradation, and enhance biomolecular recognition, making it particularly valuable for the development of peptide-based therapeutics. Despite these advantages, staple design remains largely empirical, relying on iterative screening of linker chemistries, lengths, and attachment sites. This trial-and-error approach limits scalability and hinders the rational design of stabilized peptide systems. In this work, we address this challenge by integrating large-scale experimental datasets with molecular dynamic simulations to develop predictive …

Aid As Leverage: How Humanitarian Assistance Shapes The Health Power Dynamics In Eastern Democratic Republic Of Congo, Emmanuella K. Mbuyu

University Honors Theses

This paper examines humanitarian aid in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where it serves as both relief and a force reshaping local power dynamics within ongoing conflict. Humanitarian organizations provide essential services in contexts of state collapse, but aid delivery is deeply embedded in systems of coercion, negotiation, and external influence. Drawing on critical humanitarianism and the aid economy, this study analyzes how humanitarian access is negotiated, how donor priorities shape definitions of need, and how temporary interventions create dependency and instability. The paper explores how humanitarian action can reinforce alternative structures of authority, particularly in weak or absent …

Singing As Liberation: Spiritual Imagination And An Embodied Practice Of Hope Through Spirituals And Songs Of The Uhadi, Matisse Geselle

University Honors Theses

An exploration of the spirituality and the sacredness of music—and especially singing—through recording my own interpretations of spirituals and songs of the uHadi. It is also a poetic inquiry into how imagery of the river is used in spirituals as a pathway to freedom and liberation, and how the singing of spirituals is hope embodied. And it is a reflection of how my experience of the uHadi and my friends of the Ibuyambo ensemble changed me. The process of working on this project also feels like I am connecting to myself—and others—more deeply through singing. And ultimately, I hope for …

More Than "Programs For Women": Centering Incarcerated Women's Voices In The Evaluation Of Prison Programming, Winter Ohara-Frantz

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines whether correctional programming in women's prisons reflects the self-identified goals and aspirations of incarcerated women. Existing research demonstrates that prison programming can provide meaningful benefits, including skill development, emotional growth, and preparation for reentry. However, much of this scholarship evaluates women based on institutional outcomes rather than asking whether available programs align with women's own educational, vocational, and personal goals. Drawing on survey responses from 23 formerly incarcerated women across the United States, this mixed-methods study explores participants' experiences with vocational, post-secondary, parenting, and other correctional programs. Quantitative findings indicate that while most respondents viewed programming as …

Navigating Filipino-American Identity Through Philippine Foodways, Jenelle Kirsten De Leon

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the complexity of Filipino-American identity and investigates how Philippine foodways can function as a meaningful pathway for cultural understanding, identity formation, and intergenerational connection. Shaped by colonization, cultural hybridity, generational divides, and limited representation in Western education and media, Filipino-American identity is often difficult to define and navigate, leaving many individuals without accessible entry points to explore their culture, history, traditions, and more.

Through an analysis of existing literature, primary research, and a survey of Filipino-American youth, this study finds that Filipino cuisine operates as a powerful site of cultural and historical knowledge. The narratives embedded within …