Digital Commons Network^™

The Roots Of Collapse: Imposing Constitutional Governance, Catherine Baylin Duryea

Faculty Publications

The foundational assumption of constitutional governance poses a conundrum for contemporary state-builders: a constitution heavily influenced by foreigners does not represent the views of the governed. Can a modern state-building effort foster democratic institutions when the new government reflects foreign? Nowhere was this tension more apparent than in Afghanistan, where the United States and the United Nations were heavily involved in drafting the 2004 Constitution. They shaped the process from the initial framework to the final, frenzied approval. Foreigners were engaged at both the procedural level—determining how the negotiations would occur and who would participate—and at the substantive level—providing input …

Group-Based Diabetes Self-Management Education For Somali Population With Type Ii Diabetes Mellitus, Hamdi Abdi

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background and Purpose: Type II Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a serious chronic disease that requires knowledge, daily self-management, and lifestyle modifications. T2DM is a widespread disease in Western world, however, it affects racial minority immigrant populations, including Somalis at disproportionally higher rates than the general population. This quality improvement project was developed and piloted to discern whether culturally appropriate small group-based education program for Somali patients with T2DM may improve self-management skills to alleviate long-term complications.

Methods: This project used descriptive statistics to compare participants’ knowledge and T2DM self-management behavior pre and post intervention. Subsequent to Seattle University IRB approval, …

Implementation Of A Patient Satisfaction Survey: A Pilot Project, Amy Brenner

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

Background: Patients who report higher satisfaction scores have better healthcare outcomes and lower financial burden in comparison to those who report lower satisfaction scores. Those less satisfied with their medical care tend to have poorer physical and mental health, which can impact daily life. For students in particular, health status impacts academic performance. Patient satisfaction surveys are a standard tool used to determine areas needing improvement within a healthcare delivery system.

Objective: The purpose of this project was to implement a patient satisfaction survey at a student health center on a university campus.

Design: The project was a two-month pilot …

Use Of Virtual Resources For Older Adults With Mild Depressive Symptoms, Stephanie Sirisithi

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

With the higher prevalence of depression and disrupted access to healthcare caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a rapid shift towards utilizing virtual platforms for treating patients. The use of technology was an innovative way of solving the dilemma but use of this is low among older adults and minorities of low socioeconomic status due to education and access.

The purpose of this study was to develop a guide of virtual resources for residents of an assisted living and to assess its usability and effectiveness in reducing depressive symptoms in lower socioeconomic status and minority older adults. The Donabedian …

How To Bring Your Kids Up Queer: Family Law Realism, Then And Now, Kris Franklin, Noa Ben-Asher

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Paula Ettelbrick fought for us.

As a pragmatic and radical litigator, Ettelbrick spent years trying to use a frequently uncomprehending and often outright hostile court system to protect LGBTQ+ Americans. While her work took her into the many areas of law that touched queer lives, a special focus and passion of her advocacy was reserved for queer families.

Paula also tried to warn us.

In the absence of legal recognition for the families we construct, queer lives are rendered not just invisible but virtually nonexistent; we become legal strangers to our loved ones in ways that violently obliterate our …

Analyzing Behavioral Adaptation To Covid-19 And Return To Pre-Pandemic Baselines In A Cohort Of College Seniors, Vlado Vojdanovski

Computer Science Senior Theses

As the critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be winding down, it is important to analyze the adjustment to COVID-19 and return to normalcy of various populations. In this study we focus on the behavioral adjustments exhibited by a cohort of N=114 college seniors. To infer COVID-19 adjustment we compare the 2021 year (second year of COVID-19) to the 2020 year (first year of COVID-19) and 2019 (prepandemic baseline year). We begin with a broad analysis between the second and first covid year, finding that the second year of COVID-19 shows significant returns to pre-pandemic baselines on multiple …

He, She, They, Other: An Examination Of Gender Associations With The Chatelaine In The Anglo-Saxon Culture, Dane A. Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this paper is to study the chatelaine as a marker of gender attribution and overall usage within the Anglo-Saxon culture. Chatelaines are artifacts used to suspend multiple items to be employed for such purposes as grooming, tools, or keys and have been used widely from the Roman occupation of England during which it was used by all genders, to the Ninth Century when it was primarily used by women. As such, it is asserted that a single artifact should not to be solely relied upon to assign a gender identity to a burial, that these should be …

"Should Supreme Court Justices Fear Access To Their Papers? An Empirical Study Of The Use Of Three Archival Collections", Susan Demaine, Benjamin J. Keele

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

Susan deMaine's contribution to this volume is "Should Supreme Court Justices Fear Access to Their Papers? An Empirical Study of the Use of Three Archival Collections." Co-authored by Benjamin J. Keele.

US. Supreme Court justices typically donate their working papers to archives upon their retirement, often with lengthy embargoes. 1 Researchers have debated whether the justices should be required to retain and disclose their papers as government · records, but there has been little study of how the papers are used in scholarly and journalistic discussions of the Court.· This empirical study examines how the papers of Justices William Brennan, …

Proxy Re-Encryption In Blockchain-Based Application, Wangcheng Yuan

Master's Projects

Nowadays, blockchain-based technology has risen to a new dimension. With the advantage of the decentralized identity, data are transferred through decentralized and public ledgers. Those new contracts provide great visibility. However, there is still a need to keep some data private in many cases. Those private data should be encrypted while still benefiting from the decentralized on-chain protocol. Securing those private data in such a decentralized blockchain-based system is thus a critical problem. Our solution provides a decentralized protocol that lets users grant access to their private data with proxy re-encryption in SpartanGold (a blockchain-based cryptocurrency). We implement a third-party …

Whose Voices Count?: Sourcing U.S. American Television News About The World, David C. Oh, Omotayo O. Banjo, Nancy A. Jennings

Media Studies - Open-Access Faculty Scholarship

The current study examines the extent to which U.S. coverage of world news events relies on White and Western sources as well as the role that journalists’ race, story type, and interview type have in the selection of news sources. Furthermore, this study examines whether such sourcing biases exist across commercial and public networks, namely ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. Relying on a critical media effects approach, we drew connections between indexing theory and critical race and postcolonial studies to conduct a content analysis of more than 200 news stories and more than 600 sources in 2019 and 2020. The …

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 24, 2022, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

2021 Update To The Quality Assessment And Performance Improvement Strategy, Tennessee. Division Of Tenncare.

TennCare Additional Reports

No abstract provided.

Milton’S Cardinal Directions Symbolism In Paradise Lost, Micah Gill

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

Transforming Educators: A Framework For Developing Accomplices For Racial Justice In Prek-12 Schools, Linsay Demartino

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

This article aims to disrupt the manifestations of whiteness in educational spaces. With an understanding that white supremacy is endemic in our society, this article is framed by the manifestations of whiteness in the form of white privilege, emotionality, and shame present within our schools and argues for the adoption of authentic and critical caring, love, and hope in our educational institutions. Most importantly, this article addresses the importance of rejecting the manifestations of whiteness in favor of equity, justice, and antiracism amid resistance in schools and concludes with practical recommendations to better prepare educators for their adoption of equity …

Achievement Goal Orientation As A Predictor Of High-Impact Practice Participation For Postsecondary Students, Angie L. Miller

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

Achievement goal orientation has been studied within education for decades, and previous research has linked the construct to student achievement and engagement. This study uses the 2x2 achievement goal orientation as a framework for exploring high-impact practice (HIP) participation for approximately 8,000 college students across 15 different institutions participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Through a series of binary logistic regression analyses, results suggest students who employ a mastery-approach orientation are more likely to partake in a variety of beneficial HIPs, such as learning communities, research with faculty, service learning, study abroad, culminating experience, and formal leadership …

The Complexity Of Disrupting The "Struggling Reader" Label: The Potential For Cross-Pollinating Disability Studies And Dynamic Models Of Comprehension In Literacy Teacher Education, Kristine M. Schutz, Rebecca Woodward, Amanda R. Diaz

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

There have been numerous recent calls in literacy research and teacher education to disrupt the 'struggling reader' label, but a dearth of empirical studies on the topic. This qualitative analysis explores the complex issues preservice teachers (PSTs) faced as they examined young readers' sense-making through a reading assessment assignment. Our research question asked: How do PSTs challenge and/or reinforce the 'struggling reader' label as they examine young readers' sense-making? Using a conceptual lens that cross-pollinates dynamic models of reading comprehension with Disability Studies in Education, we look across three cases to identify ways PSTs challenged and reinforced the 'struggling reader' …

Building Cultural Competence In Schools Through Teacher Capacity, Latonya R. Robinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the dynamics of how teaching culturally responsive strategies to teachers can help eliminate the opportunity gap between students of color and their White counterparts. The action research method involved first collecting quantitative data through several surveys and then explaining the quantitative results with in- depth qualitative data through interviews and professional learning communities. In the first phase of the study, the culturally responsive and teacher efficacy scale data was collected from the participants within the study and the district at large. While the district survey was not mandated, it was strongly encouraged. …

Metaphors In Language Learning And Teaching: Discovering The Underlying Factors Affecting Demotivation In Anglophone Learners Of Modern Foreign Languages, Holly Sallah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In response to increased levels of demotivation in anglophone students of modern foreignlanguages, this thesis attempted to discover potential underlying causes through the use of metaphor elicitation directed at tertiary learners in the United States of America. Students were asked to metaphorize both the language learning process and the role of the language teacher. Afterwards, a qualitative metaphor analysis revealed that participants were overwhelmingly positive in respect to the role of the language teacher, but more mixed in their metaphors regarding the language learning process, with high frequency words such as “work” and “skill”. Contrary to the literature, the role …

Perceptions Of English Learner Support Provided By K-12 Leaders To Educators In Mississippi, Ladonna Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The demographic of public schools in America is continuously changing. According to the United States Department of Education (USDE), the English learner population increased in over 25 states from the 2009-2010 school year to the 2014-2015 school year (USDE, 2017). In 2014-15, there were more than 4,800,000 English learners enrolled in schools, accounting for 10% of the total student population (USDE, 2017). With this shifting demographic, educators must be prepared to meet the needs of EL students.

The purpose of this study is to examine educators and instructional leaders’ perceptions of EL instructional support and to highlight the need for …

The Contributions Of Immediate Retrieval And Spaced Retrieval To Word Learning In Preschoolers With Developmental Language Disorder, Laurence B. Leonard, Patricia Deevy, Eilseen Haebig, Jeffrey D. Karpicke, Christine Weber

Purdue Center for Early Learning Faculty and Staff Publications

Background and Aims Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) benefit from word learning procedures that include a mix of immediate retrieval and spaced retrieval trials. In this study, we examine the relative contribution of these two types of retrieval. Methods We examine data from Haebig et al. (2019) in their study that compared an immediate retrieval condition and a condition of spaced retrieval that also included immediate retrieval trials. Participants were 4- and 5-year old children with DLD and same-age peers with typical language development. Each child learned novel (made-up) words referring to unusual plants and animals in both conditions. …

Legitimizing Lies, Courtney M. Cox

Faculty Scholarship

Lies are everywhere today. This scourge of misinformation raises difficult questions about how the law can and should respond to falsehoods. Legal discourse has traditionally focused on the law’s choice between penalizing and tolerating lying. But this traditional framing vastly oversimplifies the law’s actual and potential responses. Using trade secrets as a case study, this Article shows that the law sometimes accepts lies as a legitimate option for fulfilling legal requirements and may even require lies in increasingly common circumstances.

Commonly supposed legal and moral commitments against lying do not undermine this reality. To the contrary, the Article reveals that …

Novel Natural Language Processing Models For Medical Terms And Symptoms Detection In Twitter, Farahnaz Golrooy Motlagh

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on disambiguation of language use on Twitter about drug use, consumption types of drugs, drug legalization, ontology-enhanced approaches, and prediction analysis of data-driven by developing novel NLP models. Three technical aims comprise this work: (a) leveraging pattern recognition techniques to improve the quality and quantity of crawled Twitter posts related to drug abuse; (b) using an expert-curated, domain-specific DsOn ontology model that improve knowledge extraction in the form of drug-to-symptom and drug-to-side effect relations; and (c) modeling the prediction of public perception of the drug’s legalization and the sentiment analysis of drug consumption on Twitter. We collected …

The Bilingual Code-Switching Profile (Bcsp): Assessing The Reliability And Validity Of The Bcsp Questionnaire, Daniel J. Olson

School of Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Significant variation exists in bilinguals’ experiences with code-switching, from dense code-switching in multiple interactional contexts to minimal switching. Although recent research has demonstrated that a bilingual’s experience with code-switching is a crucial factor for determining both linguistic and cognitive behaviors, there currently is no commonly accepted method of measuring of a bilingual’s code-switching practices. Responding to this need, this paper presents a new tool to assess a bilingual’s experience and engagement with code-switching — the Bilingual Code-Switching Profile (BCSP) — and assesses its validity and reliability. The BCSP incorporates a multifaceted conceptualization of code-switching experience, drawing on previous research in …

Phonetic Feature Size In Second Language Acquisition: Examining Vot In Voiceless And Voiced Stops, Daniel J. Olson

School of Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in speech perception, debate remains as to the fundamental scope or “size” of featural units. The current study examines potential featural relationships between voiceless and voiced stop consonants, as expressed through the voice onset time cue. Native English-speaking learners of Spanish received targeted training on Spanish voiceless stop consonant production through a visual feedback paradigm. …

Numerical And Experimental Investigation Of The Cylinder Inlet Temperatures For Different Designs Of The Suction Line Of A Hermetic Reciprocating Compressor, Julian Gräf, Jan Tuhovcak, Ricardo Brancher

International Compressor Engineering Conference

No abstract provided.

Hearing And Other Factors Influencing Memory Performance In Remote Assessment, Erika Squires

Wayne State University Dissertations

With the revitalization of aural rehabilitation (AR) and increased use of telepractice services, there is a paucity of research examining factors that have the potential to affect remote assessment. An assessment of memory is commonly included in a comprehensive AR assessment because recently developed auditory-cognitive training programs include auditory-based cognitive activities, such as auditory memory tasks. This investigation explored the effect of presentation modality on speech discrimination performance and whether self-reported hearing ability correlated with remote memory assessment in older adults.Older adults self-reported their hearing abilities and completed speech discrimination and memory tasks. Data were collected remotely via a telephone …

Constructing A Well-Being: Exploring Knowledge Construction In Dbt Skills Training Using Art And Activity Theory, Elizabeth Bailey

Wayne State University Dissertations

Through Arts-based Research, constructed within the theoretical basis of the Activity System, participants engaged with dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) program content to develop a cohesive and meaningful project. Participants are conceptualized as reliable experts in their own experience, and as active agents of knowledge construction. Participants generate profound and relevant insights into their experiences – insights that can enhance DBT practice, expand research methodology, and build conceptual connections across theories. The Arts-based Activity System offers a theoretically-backed methodology that can disrupt the harmful parallels between the development of the disorders DBT is intended to treat and the dominant research paradigm …

"The Battle Trumpet Blown!": Whitman's Persian Imitations In Drum-Taps, Roger Sedarat

Publications and Research

While Walt Whitman’s thematic use of the Orient continues to receive critical attention based on his explicit foreign references, aside from observations of specific Persian signifiers in “A Persian Lesson,” his engagement with the poetry of Iran has remained especially speculative and therefore analogical, with studies like J. R. LeMaster and Sabahat Jahan’s Walt Whitman and the Persian Poets showing how his mystical relation to his own religious influences tends to resemble the Sufism of Rumi and Hafez. A new discovery emerging from an examination of his personal copy of William Alger’s The Poetry of the East along with his …

Hispanic School Leaders And Their Impact On Education, Linda Guzmán

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to investigate the impact Hispanic school leaders have in schools that are primarily Hispanic. The Hispanic community is one of the fastest-growing in the United States. Hispanics are the largest student group represented in elementary and high schools yet are disproportionately underrepresented in school leadership. Hispanic school leaders experience challenges in gaining the education, opportunities, and work experience to achieve leadership roles in schools. Once Hispanic leaders gain leadership roles and grow in experience, they face challenges implementing policies that positively impact their school community. A review of the literature identified challenges …

Understanding The Underserved Student: Barriers Experienced By At-Risk Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Melissa Rosado

Theses and Dissertations

The forced expeditious transition online induced by the COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive disruption to education. COVID-19 exacerbated the inequities that existed in education for years. As technology advances and integrates with education, it can both enhance inclusive instructional practices, as well as exacerbate issues of equity. Achievement gaps will persist unless colleges create equitable educational environments for all students, including “at-risk” populations such as those enrolled in the Extended Opportunity Program and Services (EOPS) program—a state funded equity program.

Through the lens of digital equity and inclusion theoretical frameworks, the purpose of this embedded mixed methods study was to …