Digital Commons Network^™

I’M All The Fishes In The Sea: Creating An Animal Care Ethic From Spinoza’S Ethics, Denicia Finney

Theses & ETDs

Although Spinoza encourages us to understand Nature, and our place as parts in it, he felt inclined to say that the lower animals have nothing in common with our nature, and so ‘we have every right against them that they have against us’. Is he ultimately justified in making this claim? I believe that Spinoza's ethic, and the end that ensues from it would actually warrant fair consideration of the lower animals. I demonstrate this through the separation of the eternal essence and the particular essence which each individual is composed of. Insofar as humankind acts according to the universal …

Navigating Barriers: Challenges And Strategies For Adopting Artificial Intelligence In Qualitative Research In Low-Income African Contexts, Kahabi Isangula

School of Nursing & Midwifery, East Africa

Introduction:

 AI is transforming qualitative research. It enhances efficiency, accuracy, and depth in studies. Technologies like machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and large language models (LLMs) simplify tasks like transcription, coding, and thematic analysis. However, in low-income African settings, there are barriers to AI adoption. These include ethical concerns, infrastructure limitations, financial constraints, and technical skill gaps. Issues around data privacy and the dehumanization of research also add challenges.

Methods: 

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities of AI in qualitative research in low-income African contexts. It uses a descriptive approach, reviewing literature and personal experiences from rural …

What’S Cooking? How To Understand A Miniature Penis In A Pan, Jan Huyghe, Ann Marie Rasmussen

Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture

No abstract provided.

Merlin, Myth And Monument: The ‘Stonehenge’ Miniature In Bl Egerton Ms 3028, Betsy Chunko-Dominguez

Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture

No abstract provided.

Literacy Teachers’ Self-Efficacy And Instructional Choice Within A Structured Literacy Approach, Brianna Horst

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

In the United States over the past two centuries, differing views on reading instruction have fueled public and scientific debate. In the mid-2020s, Structured Literacy has become a central focus in education policy, pre-service teacher preparation, professional development, and curricular design. While Structured Literacy offers a strong foundation for early literacy, it does not fully capture a holistic view of literacy.

This mixed-method explanatory sequential design examined teachers’ stance on Structured Literacy, their instructional practices, and self-efficacy in literacy instruction. Participants included 30 survey respondents and 5 interviewees. Albert Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory (1978, 1997) informed the analysis. Phase I involved …

Personalized Therapy To Meet Individual Children’S Needs And Improve Access: Identifying A “Goldilocks” Group Therapy Length For Children With Post Traumatic Stress (Pts), Rosa L. Boniface

West Chester University Doctoral Projects

Objectives. The present study investigated the incidence and correlates of early treatment response among youth participating in a school-based intervention for PTSD symptoms. Methods. 44 elementary school children who participated in the Bounce Back Program (BB) from 2017 to 2019 were included. A Reliable Change Index (RCI) score was calculated for each child on the UCLA-R for PTSD. Youths with a significant RCI score by session 5 of the 10-session protocol were classified as early treatment responders. Pretreatment characteristics were examined in relation to early responder status. Results. PTS means in this sample decreased significantly after 5 …

Eastern Michigan University, Spring Commencement, April 27, 2025, Eastern Michigan University

Commencement Programs and Materials

No abstract provided.

A Narrative Portrait Of Black Teachers Mitigating Deficit Thinking Through Culturally Responsive Professional Learning, Mia A. Rollack

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative study was developed in response to the deficit thinking Black students experience, which stems from the historical and ongoing racism in the United States. As result of receiving my K-12 education and teacher education in this country, it is no surprise that I, along with other Black teachers, can also hold a deficit perspective of Black students. After engaging in equity-based professional learning, I had a shift in beliefs that made me curious about the experiences of other Black teachers participating in professional learning as well. A combined focus on culturally responsive leadership and deficit thinking informed the …

Patient-Centric Barriers To Clinical Trial Participation In Developing Countries: A Retrospective Analysis, Kirandeep Kaur

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The underrepresentation of developing countries in clinical trials limits the applicability of research findings to a significant portion of the global population. This study addresses this gap by conducting a retrospective analysis of published literature to identify patient-centric barriers to clinical trial participation in developing countries. A comprehensive search of PubMed, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library databases yielded four relevant studies, which were subjected to thematic analysis. The study identified 12 key emerging themes, with safety and efficacy concerns and trust issues being the most prevalent. The thematic analysis partially supported the hypothesis: While trust issues were found in …

Supporting Multilingualism In Michigan Schools: Educator Perspectives On Language Education And The Seal Of Biliteracy, Janet Leppala

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Learning more than one language has cognitive, emotional, and social benefits. Despite evidence in favor of bi/multilingualism, and a growing multilingual American population, bilingual education programs are scarce in the United States, foreign language education programs are being eliminated at an alarming rate, and English learners often do not receive the support that they need in American schools. Historically, political positions in the United States have ranged from espousing monolingual language ideologies that enact educational policies favoring English-only education to multilingual language ideologies that create policies in support of multilingual education. Surprisingly, despite the longstanding monolingual hegemonic pull by conservative …

Integrated Behavioral Health In Pediatric Primary Care: Identifying Latent Patient Subgroups And Differential Outcomes, Karen Glownia

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Fifty percent of children do not receive care for their mental health concerns, while 95% are seen annually within primary care by age 6. Individual, cultural, and systemic barriers limit access to mental health care. Integrating mental health services into primary care has the potential to increase awareness, reduce costs, and decrease stigma. However, integrated primary care often relies on a brief and targeted intervention approach that may not be suitable for all families. Therefore, it is important to examine differential outcomes within this setting. Methods: This study analyzed retrospective data from 3,494 new patient medical records at a large …

Annual Report: Nebraska Extension In Lancaster County, January 1, 2025 Through December 31, 2025

Lancaster County, Nebraska Extension: Reports

Lancaster County Extension information from 2025. Contents include:

1) About Extension - mission statement, leadership and program area overview;

2) Staff and Programs - staff directory, 2025 program highlights and impact reports;

3) Financials - summaries of 2024-2025 expenditures and current fiscal year 2025-2026 budget; and

4) Media - website and social media information, samples of the Nebline newsletter and local newspaper articles.

Understanding Assessments For Adult English Learners: A Case Study Of Second Language Acquisition And Development, Chi Ma

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

While standardized tests have become the norm for assessing language proficiency, they may not effectively capture the diversity of adult immigrants, including their backgrounds, experiences, and varying levels of language proficiency. Grounded in experiential learning theory, sociocultural theory on second language acquisition, and concepts of identity, motivation, and investment, this study explored how the Adult English Learning (AEL) program utilized different types of assessments, what the needs and goals of AEL students were in learning English, and how various stakeholders, including teachers, students, and program coordinator, perceived current assessments reflecting students’ needs and goals.

The findings of the study reveals …

Commonsense Consent And Action Representation: What Is “Essential” To Consent?, Roseanna Sommers

Book Chapters

Recent empirical work demonstrates that some instances of material deception are perceived by ordinary people as consent-defeating, whereas other instances are not. One hypothesized account of these divergent lay intuitions draws on the notion of “essence”: roughly speaking, lies that pertain to the “core” or “nature” of a consented-to act are perceived as precluding consent, whereas lies that pertain to features that are “nonessential” or “collateral” to the act are perceived as compatible with consent. To assess this hypothesized account, an independent measure of “essence”—one that does not rely with problematic circularity on notions of consent—is needed. This chapter draws …

What Is Eighteenth-Century Xiaoshuo?, Jessica Dvorak Moyer

East Asian Languages & Cultures: Faculty Publications

This article responds to the question, “What is eighteenth-century fiction?” with a focus on Chinese fiction. It begins with an overview of eighteenth-century Chinese fiction and a deeper reading of the explicit metafictionality of China’s most famous eighteenth-century novel, Story of the Stone (also known as Dream of the Red Chamber). Then it critically interrogates the assumed equivalency between the English term fiction and the Chinese term xiaoshuo through a historical overview of the unequal literary and linguistic engagements between Europe and China. The article concludes that “we can neither reduce Stone to fiction nor deny it the status of …

Affordability Culture In Practice : Survey Validation Through A Socio-Technical Lens, Taylor Yeazitzis

Dissertations

Affordability has been a key directive in engineering projects as organizations seek to develop larger and more complex systems on stable or reduced budgets. This dissertation proposes a socio-technical framework of affordability to evaluate current affordability practices in organizations. Socio-technical frameworks have been used in complex organizations due to the ability to examine both social aspects as well as technical aspects as interconnected organizational components, yet previous research is lacking when attempting to approach affordability from this perspective. This research aimed to bridge this gap by validating a survey that examines affordability from both social and technical perspectives to gain …

An Examination Of Race In Reproductive Oppression: Why Intersectional Abortion Stigma Disruption Is Necessary To Achieve Reproductive Justice In 2024 And Beyond, Emma Adams

UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice

This article examines the perpetuation of white supremacy in reproductive oppression throughout American history. The history of the reproductive rights movement, when applying a racialized lens, often looks contradictory in protections and restrictions implemented by the American government, at both the federal and state level. For example, contraception, while often thought to provide more access to family planning and personal autonomy, was historically implemented in a way that relied on racist and classist framings to prevent more black and brown children from being born. This paradigm has fluctuated throughout American history to now prevent black and brown women from receiving …

Developing Cultural Intelligence Skills At Gracepoint International Church In Gastonia, North Carolina, Sumner Brichelle Rhodes

Doctor of Ministry Projects

Churches across the globe are constantly being reshaped by issues of interculturality, global migration and questions of power and belonging. As churches deal with these dynamics, in our globalized world, it is important for them to have the tools and skills necessary to lovingly reach out to people of all cultures and differences. Reaching people of diverse backgrounds is a part of the Central Commission that Christ commanded for His Church in Matthew 28:19-20. This project explores how developing a high Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is essential for the Church. CQ can help churches lovingly connect with and embrace people of …

Llm-Guided Multimodal Information Fusion With Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Graph Network For Sentiment Analysis, Yujie Jin, Yong Wang, Yuzhe Wang, Qiyang Chen, Bin Hu, Yanling Han, Chaoyin Ma, Witold Pedrycz

Department of Information Management and Business Analytics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Multimodal sentiment analysis aims to attain a precise comprehension of emotions by integrating complementary textual, visual, and audio information. However, issues such as sentiment discrepancies between modalities, ineffective integration of multi-modal information, and the intricacy of order dependency significantly constrain the models' efficacy. The authors propose an LLM-guided Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Graph Network (L-HSTGN). By multimodal large model feature enhancement, bidirectional spatio-temporal joint modeling, and dynamic gate fusion mechanism, they effectively address the aforementioned problems. Firstly, they produce cross-modal emotion pseudo-labels based on the multimodal large model, and the single-modal representation was optimized by combining adversarial regularization. Secondly, they develop a …

Reducing Anxiety And Burden: The Effect Of Caregiver Education In Hospice Care For Immigrant Families, Nicole Maria

Nursing | Senior Theses

Purpose

The purpose of this research proposal is to explore the impact of early mental health screenings, comprehensive education, and support in alleviating caregiver burden and anxiety among hospice immigrant family caregivers.

Methods

This research proposal will evaluate the effectiveness of caregiver education and mental health screenings. Baseline data will be collected using the Zarit Burden Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). After interventions are implemented, a post survey will be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness.

Results

If the findings are statistically significant, they will support the hypothesis that caregiver education can reduce burden, improve caregivers’ mental well-being, and …

A Conceptual Replication Of An Implicit Test Of Grammatical Gender Effects On Inanimate Concepts, D. Mahajan, Frank H. Durgin

Psychology Faculty Works

It has been argued that the incidental and arbitrary use of gender markings for inanimate concepts in language may affect the conceptualization or semantics of those inanimate concepts. The present article sought to replicate the findings of a classic paper that made this argument. Konishi used the potency dimension of the semantic differential method as an implicit measure of perceived gender. He reported that words for inanimate concepts of masculine grammatical gender were rated as higher in potency than words for the same concepts that had feminine grammatical gender. Two preregistered replication studies are reported here. The first was a …

Figurative Language Is (Implicitly) More Dynamic And Emotionally Deeper Than Literal Language, Tshering Yangzom Dorji , '23, Frank H. Durgin

Psychology Faculty Works

Two experiments investigated the nature of the emotional differences between figurative language and literal counterparts. The semantic differential method was used with principal component analysis as a data-driven implicit method for distinguishing emotional variables. The first experiment found that metaphoric stories were reliably different in emotionality than their literal counterparts along three different data-defined dimensions. The second experiment extended the conclusions to the evaluation of individual words used figuratively (including simile and metaphor). In both studies, principal component analysis revealed three distinct underlying sources of variance implicit in the ratings of experimental items including the dimensions of dynamism and depth, …

Modeling Deductive Inference: A Historico-Philosophical Introduction To First-Order Logic, David J. Buller

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

This book is a companion text for lectures on first-order logic and its elementary metatheory (used in Intermediate Logic at Northern Illinois University). It covers the basic concepts of set theory necessary for a mathematical development of first-order logic; develops a formal language of first-order logic; presents a classical Tarskian semantics for the language and the “semantic” conception of logical consequence; presents a Gentzenian proof system and the “syntactic” conception of logical consequence; develops a partial decision procedure for logical consequence in the language; demonstrates applications of the formal system to modeling deductive inference expressed in natural language; and extends …

Peak Teaching: Exploring And Fostering Sacred Experiences In University Classrooms, Charles Burack

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Supporting the spiritual growth of college and university students with diverse backgrounds and orientations is both important and challenging. It is important not only because spirituality is a crucial dimension of human life but also because the majority of students at both private and public schools want their teachers to address spiritual issues in the classroom. A powerful way to address spirituality is to explore and foster sacred experiences in university classrooms. Sacred experiences include religious, spiritual, mystical, transcendent, numinous, and peak experiences as well as many other nonordinary experiences. The author offers guidance to educators on how to: 1) …

The Rise Of Influencer Marketing And Its Implications On Kenyan Legacy Media Houses' Revenues, Stephen Onjwaya Mbego

Master of Arts in Digital Journalism

The growth of social media influencers popularity has substantially disrupted traditional media and advertising landscapes, redefining audience engagement, brand marketing strategies, and revenue streams for legacy media houses. This study investigates the implications of influencer marketing on Kenyan legacy media, exploring shifts in audience preferences, financial impacts, and factors influencing advertisers toward influencer marketing. Building on the disruptive innovation theory and qualitative data from interviews with media professionals, influencers, advertisers, and audiences, the study reveals a fundamental shift in content consumption and advertising dynamics. Findings show that social media influencers thrive in direct audience engagement, authenticity, and niche targeting, catering …

Media Coverage Of The Closure Of The Rwanda-Uganda Border In The Period 2019-2022., Irigoga Charlotte

Master of Arts in Digital Journalism

The media plays an important role in shaping diplomatic relations and influencing state actions. However, there is limited understanding of media coverage of the closures of the Rwanda-Uganda border. This study sought to investigate media coverage of the closure of the Rwanda-Uganda border closure in the period 2019-2022. It applied Critical Discourse Analysis and Framing Theory as its theoretical framework. Through content analysis of the media coverage from this period and in-depth interviews with journalists from the Daily Monitor in Uganda and the New Times in Rwanda, the study investigated how each newspaper created narratives. The study found that while …

Examining Ethics In New Media, Anthony Irungu Mwangi

Master of Arts in Digital Journalism

Podcasting has become a popular form of new media in Kenya, providing a platform for sharing diverse topics. However, the minimal regulatory oversight in podcasting and the involvement of individuals with limited journalistic training have raised ethical concerns. This study, guided by Social Responsibility Theory, explores ethical awareness among Kenyan podcasters, the relationship between ethical practices and audience engagement, and the prevalence of ethical breaches in podcast content. A quantitative research design, specifically descriptive design, was adopted. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire, and podcast episodes were examined online. Only podcasters who are journalists and have worked or currently …

Programs And Courses Catalog 2025-2026, University Of Northern Iowa

UNI Programs and Courses Catalogs

Contents:

Academic Calendar ... 5
General Information ... 7
The University and Its Programs ... 7
Academic Structure ... 9
Admission Requirements ... 16
Enrollment and Registration Procedures ... 21
Fees and Financial Aid ... 22
Student Life ... 28
University Facilities and Educational Services ... 33
The Fine and Performing Arts at UNI ... 39
Academic Regulations ... 44
Undergraduate Information and Degree Requirements ... 61
Graduate Information, Admission, Academic Regulations, and Degree Requirements ... 81
List of Programs by Department ... 111
Department of Accounting ... 118
Department of Applied Engineering ... 121
Department of Art and Graphic …

Practical Faith For The Real World Reading As If, Believing As If, Kylie Turley

BYU Studies

A few years ago, I was talking with some friends about the Book of Mormon. Actually, if you know me much at all, then you know that those last five words are unnecessary. Of course I was talking about the Book of Mormon. My children have been known to complain that the Book of Mormon is all I talk about. But let’s continue the story: One of my friends indicated that we “cannot read the Book of Mormon down to the word level.” She insisted that it was just not possible to read it “as if individual words are meaningful.”

Causation's Due Process Dimensions, Cassandra Burke Robertson, Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes

Faculty Publications

For decades, courts have grappled with the tension between compensating victims of mass harms and maintaining fairness to defendants when causation is difficult to prove. This Article argues that the Supreme Court’s due process jurisprudence provides a relevant framework for navigating this tension. We contend that the Court over the last three decades has established a consistent Fourteenth Amendment due process approach in punitive damages and personal jurisdiction cases, which is rooted in antecedents tracing to the nineteenth century and relies on a nexus of interests that balances individual rights, state interests, and federalism concerns. This framework, we argue, has …