Digital Commons Network^™

Check All That Apply: The Persistence And Problem Of The Black/White Racial Binary In Iowa Public Schools, Jessica Nessan Kluck

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The promotion of monoracial normativity has profoundly influenced the language used in policies, creating societal expectations that other the identification of Black/white Biracial and multiracial identities. Despite the reality of our quickly shifting demographics, multiracial identities continue to be marginalized and misconstrued through racial reporting guidelines. Racial reporting used on forms required by the Iowa Department of Education are comingled with non-racially categorized data to further distance reality in education and the public-school rankings (Iowa Department of Education, 2012; State of Iowa, 2024).

The purpose of this study was to trace the legacy of the socially constructed racial binary, preserved …

Adaptive Nussbaum Design For Nonholonomic Systems With Asymptotic Stabilization Against False Data Injection, Guilong Liu, Yongliang Yang, Weinan Gao, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article addresses the stabilization challenges of nonholonomic systems under the threat of false data injection (FDI) attacks, which compromise the integrity of state information. A novel adaptive control strategy using Nussbaum-type gains is proposed to ensure the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system while maintaining signal boundedness. The approach extends conventional Nussbaum designs to handle multiple unknown control directions. It integrates online learning mechanisms to mitigate the impact of FDI attacks. Additionally, adaptive backstepping and fuzzy-logic systems are utilized to approximate and compensate for unknown nonlinear dynamics. The methodology transforms nonholonomic systems into equivalent cascade structures to address inherent …

Processing Of Verbal Versus Adjectival Agreement: Implications For Syntax And Psycholinguistics, Zuzanna Fuchs, Olga Parshina, Irina A. Sekerina, Maria Polinsky

Publications and Research

Linguistic theories distinguish between external and internal agreement (e.g., noun-verb agreement vs. noun-modifier agreement, the latter also known as concord) and model them using different mechanisms. While this distinction has garnered considerable attention in syntactic theory, it remains largely unexplored in experimental work. In an effort to address this gap, we conducted two studies of external/internal agreement in Russian using self-paced reading and eye-tracking while reading. We measured the response to violations generated when native speakers encounter a noun that mismatches the features on an earlier element inflected for agreement (verb, modifying adjective, and predicative adjective). Both experimental studies found …

Genai’S Impact On Global It Management: A Multi-Expert Perspective And Research Agenda, Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Laurie Hughes, Mohammad S. Al-Ahmadi, Vincent Dutot, Syed Q. Ahmed, Shahriar Akter, Rahul De’, Keyao Li, Nitish Singh, Paul Walton

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Generative AI (GenAI) is disrupting global IT management and challenging established practice. The increasing use of GenAI technology is redefining localization, transforming existing workforce roles, outsourcing strategy, and team dynamics. Simultaneously, GenAI’s security complexities have prompted the rethinking of existing risk frameworks to meet a new set of challenges from GenAI enhanced cyber threats. This article explores these complex and converging factors, providing a roadmap to address GenAI’s significant impact on global IT management. We advocate the responsible adoption of GenAI and importance of building resilient, value-driven, globally consistent IT ecosystems able to adapt to the significant challenges and opportunities …

Dialogic Drawing: A Pedagogical Tool To Promote And Monitor Learner Engagement, Amelia Ruscoe, Leanne Lavina

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This project presented a unique opportunity to apply an evidence‑based method, Dialogic Drawing, to the longstanding challenge of understanding and monitoring the learner engagement of young children as they begin their school journey. Early childhood is a critical period in which children are not only adjusting to the routines and expectations of school but are also forming their identities as learners. Yet monitoring engagement during this phase is complex. Young children’s developing language and literacy skills prompt educators to think holistically about how children might come to understand and share in their thoughts and feelings about school and learning. While …

Mapping Engineering Ethics Education, R Tormey, T Børsen, Shannon Chance, T T Lennerfors, Diana Adela Martin, G Bombaerts

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Writing a handbook implies describing the fundamental information needed by those teaching or researching in a field. This is a challenging task when the field is still maturing. This handbook grew from the idea that we could ‘collaboratively write’ engineering ethics education. In this introduction, we define the field in three dimensions: engineering, ethics, and education. The latter dimension is divided into three parts: the subjects that shape the teaching of engineering ethics education, the understanding of learners and learning that informs the pedagogical choices made, and the fusion of these two in the pedagogical methods used in teaching engineering …

Accreditation Considerations In Engineering Ethics Education: Bridging Global Standards And Local Practices: Bridging Global Standards And Local Practices, Louise O'Gorman, Alison Gwynne-Evan, Leah Ridgeway, Marek Rebow, Shannon Chance

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Accreditation can drive curricular innovation and change in engineering and can have a role in encouraging students' development of ethics-related competencies. Despite engineering educators' competence in the technical aspects of design and research, there can be an element of discomfort in planning and delivering lessons relating to ethics that span social justice, diversity and inclusion, environmental sustainability, and ethical theories. Because engineering accreditation can encourage and/or require the inclusion of ethical content in accredited engineering courses, the recently published Routledge Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education dedicated an entire section to the topic. This paper critically assesses the handbook's accreditation section …

Major Eleanor M. Roberts Papers - Accession 1796, Eleanor Marguerite Roberts

Manuscript Collection

The Major Eleanor M. Roberts Papers consist of records related to Major Eleanor M. Roberts (1916-2000) who was a 1938 graduate of Winthrop and a 25 year veteran of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and Women's Army Corps (WAC). This collection includes photographs, photocopies, postcards, report cards, illustrations, handwritten notes, military documents and certificates, service medals and ribbons, military dog tags, two photo albums, transcriptions of WWII correspondence, and Roberts family histories. An original draft and copy of Robert’s memoir Wings on My Heels, as well as material relating to Roberts’ time at Winthrop College like her Five …

Securing Federated Learning From Distributed Backdoor Attacks Via Maximal Clique And Dynamic Reputation System, Priyesh Ranjan, Ashish Gupta, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Federated Learning (FL) is a distributed learning paradigm that leverages the computational strength of local devices to collaboratively train a model. The clients train the local model on their respective devices and submit the weight updates to the server for aggregation. This paradigm allows the clients to experience diverse data without sharing their local data with other participants or the server. However, FL is susceptible to backdoor attackers that deliberately train the model on altered data, essentially trying to get favor on a specific subtask separated from the main task. In this work, we focus on powerful backdoor attackers who …

Fuzzy-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning For Suicidal Ideation Detection In Online Social Networks, Greeshma Lingam, Sajal K. Das

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Suicidal ideation is a major psychological problem, and preventing this social risk is recognized as an important research topic. In reality, there can be several reasons why a person experiences suicidal ideation. Each individual can express views, emotions, and several types of symptoms related to suicidal ideation on the most popular social media platforms. In online social networks (OSNs), identification of suicidal ideation is one of the major challenging tasks. Existing studies have shown that the delay in understanding and identifying various risk factors can cause the suicidal event to occur. Due to the scarcity of data and understanding, the …

Policy And Poppycock In Proximate Cause Cases A/K/A Scope Of Liability And Starting To Make Sense, Thomas Galligan

FIU Law Review

Studying proximate cause is like trying to decode mumbo jumbo. Courts continue to use words like direct, remote, natural and probable, foreseeable, hindsight, and intervening and superseding causes, and they make them sound like tests. They make them sound like law. Furthermore, as one test is debunked and another appears, courts continue to apply the debunked tests. They just pile on a new one as well. Then, they calm themselves and say that proximate cause is all a matter of policy. After all, Leon Green said that; William Prosser said that. It must be true. But courts fail to ever …

The Interchangeable-Part Structure Of Food And Drug Law, Adam I. Muchmore

FIU Law Review

This Article demonstrates that nested tiers of interchangeable parts serve as the foundation for the regulatory programs administered by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Core interchangeable parts used in FDA-administered programs include product categories, prohibitions on adulteration and misbranding, agency-registration requirements, current good manufacturing practices, product standards, marketing authorization requirements, postmarket requirements, and user fees. In each of these areas, Congress or the FDA has engaged in interchangeable-part lawmaking (IPL). IPL occurs when a government takes a portion of its law in one subject area and uses it as a model for its own law in another subject area. …

Being Pregnant In Someone Else's Body, Jennifer S. Hendricks

FIU Law Review

In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion, now is a critical time to re-assess how legal feminism theorizes the pregnant body. Before Dobbs, feminist legal scholarship had blazed a path of anti-maternalism, a stance rooted in liberal, formalist notions of equality that denigrates the “feminine” and too often minimizes the importance of reproductive issues both as tools of sex-based subordination in the present and as foundations for liberation in the future. Anti-maternalism is attractive to legal scholars because it minimizes sex and gender differences and may appear to be gender-inclusive. It has produced arguments that …

The Role Of Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder In The Associations Between Minority Stressors And Self-Reported Suicide Likelihood In Lgbtq+ Adults., Ines Cano-Gonzalez, Ruby Charak, Roman Ronzon-Tirado, Jorge I. Cantu

Psychological Science Faculty Publications

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer individuals (LGBTQ+) report higher rates of suicide-related behaviors when compared to heterosexual cisgender individuals. The minority stress theory proposes that the suicide risk disparities among LGBTQ+ individuals may be explained by the additional exposure to stressors unique to their minority sexual orientation and gender identity. However, less is known about the mechanism of minority stressors and suicide risk among trauma-exposed LGBTQ+ individuals. The present study aimed to explore the role of the International Classification of Diseases, version-11 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (disturbances in self-organization [DSO] + PTSD) in the associations between …

Animating Soil: Cultivating Young Children's Soil Relations, Jane Merewether, Mindy Blaise, Stefania Giamminuti

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article explores young children's relations with soil, drawing on research that positioned soil as animate, lively and interconnected. The paper investigates how animist approaches offered a mode of encounter for children and their teachers, encouraging them to see themselves as part of a larger ecological community. The research began with a "soil biome immersion"experience where teachers engaged with soil through sensory and arts-based experiences. These initial encounters led to further exploration of child-soil relations through experiential learning and storytelling. Children, as active meaning-makers, co-constructed the inquiry through imaginative and sensory engagements. Findings suggest animism cultivates soil relations, challenging traditional …

Developing Memory And Understanding Skills For Subject-Specific Knowledge Processing And To Face High-Stakes Exams: A Case Study, Jabbar Al Muzzamil Fareen

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

University students possess different levels of language and cognitive abilities in gaining their subject knowledge and face tremendous challenges to get through the exams in distinction. The present education system expects the students to possess excellent subject knowledge and outstanding results in their exams. In light of this context, this paper attempts to address how students are engrossed in learning difficulties while subject knowledge processing and facing their examinations. Qualitative case study approach has been undertaken to analyze the language and cognitive skills of the students in memory processing of their subject knowledge to face the exams. Their language learning …

Law As A Lamp Post, Janet Freilich

Faculty Scholarship

Law produces all manner of public information: court documents, securities filings, patents, property records, and much more. This information is used in a multitude of ways—it teaches readers about individual cases, transactions, or entities, and is also aggregated to inform policymaking, set priorities, and drive predictive analytics and artificial intelligence.

But choices about the information produced (or hidden) by law are often unintentional. Doctrines and institutions that appear facially unrelated to information production—like subject matter jurisdiction—nonetheless affect the shape and quantity of data produced. And even doctrines focused on information— like property recordation—create data used for purposes never envisioned by …

The Major Questions Doctrine, Post-Chevron?: Skidmore, Loper-Bright, And A Good-Faith Emergency Question Doctrine, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

When my students and colleagues fretted about Chevron's fate, I have said, "Worry less. Skid-more." Just as old Skidmore "weight" or "respect" returns post-Chevron, the new (and newer) major questions doctrine(s) survive as a reason to give less weight to an agency interpretation. This symposium essay suggests a special role for the post-Chevron major questions doctrine: an Emergency Questions Doctrine. When the executive asserts an emergency power, when the statutory basis is open-ended (often for very good reasons), majorness means less deference to simple and fast textualism, and more time for courts to engage in deeper purposivism to …

Judicial Accountability, Anya Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

Judicial decisions are moving ever more authority over regulatory statutes away from agencies and to courts instead. One justification offered for this power transfer: agencies lack the accountability of courts. This Article takes up that claim, assessing the institutions’ relative capacities for accountability in their authoritative interpretations of regulatory statutes—agency regulations and court rulings. I take accountability to involve actors undertaking reasoned decisionmaking grounded in publicly recognized values and facts and justifying their decisions to others who can evaluate, influence, or override those judgments. Accountability thus involves a give and take: it gives an account of government reasoning to a …

Constitutional Comparisons And Language, De Maartje Visser

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Language can be seen as an intuitive challenge for those who embark on comparative constitutional research: its intricate entanglement with law is often overlooked and not engaged with explicitly. This chapter argues that this is a missed opportunity at best, and arguably presents a hazard for the collective quality of the scholarly discourse. It discusses four ways in which language matters when engaging in constitutional comparisons: the problem of literal translation; the problem of legal-conceptual translation; a multilingual discourse that is marked by fragmentation; and expectations in communication with a foreign or international readership. The approach taken is constructive, with …

Toward Embodied Navigation Through Vision And Language, Muraleekrishna Gopinathan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Embodied AI is a challenging but exciting field in which a robot learns to interact with human-living spaces to perform various tasks. This thesis studies the embodied navigation problem in which a robotic agent navigates in a previously unseen indoor environment based on a challenging task. In particular, the Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) task requires a robot to navigate based on a descriptive human-language instruction. This thesis aims to improve VLN agents on four key aspects - their understanding of the environment, training via additional data, correcting navigational errors, and predicting the layout of the environment for better planning.

First, we …

Dr. Eric Angel Ramos - A Shooting Star That Inspired Marine Mammalogists And Beyond (1987 – 2024), Laura J. May-Collado, Jeremy J. Kiszka, Nataly Castelblanco-Martínez, Beth Brady, G. Rieucau, Daniel Gonzalez-Socoloske, Renata Sousa-Lima, Diana Reiss, Macelo Magnasco, Roderic Mast, Wayne Sentman, Joy S. Reidenberg

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence & Criminal Justice: Cases And Commentary, Benjamin Perrin

All Faculty Publications

When I was given the chance to develop a seminar this year at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, I jumped at the opportunity to develop something new and engaging. After brainstorming ideas with students, it quickly became evident that there was substantial interest and enthusiasm for a seminar on the growing integration of artificial intelligence and the criminal justice system.

Embarking on this journey has been a steep learning curve for me as my students and I worked together to shape the course along with input from generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, along with open-source …

Mythogenesis In As I Lay Dying: A Comparative Exploration Of Mythmaking And Counter-Myths, Allison K. Groupp

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This thesis explores William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying through the lens of comparative mythology, arguing that the novel constructs a counter-myth that challenges dominant Western narratives. By engaging with non-Western mythological traditions—particularly Proto-Indo European, Hindu, and Indigenous cosmologies—the study reveals how Faulkner embeds symbolic structures that transcend Christian and Greco-Roman frameworks. Using semiology and structuralist frameworks developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes, the analysis deciphers a mythopoetic narrative that refocuses marginalized myths to destabilize binary oppositions such as Christian/Pagan, civilized/uncivilized, and male creation myths with female creation myths. Each chapter examines a different mythic layer: …

The Senior International Officer: A Sociological Perspective On The Development Of A Higher Education Profession, Mohammad Mansoor Khan

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Internationalization of higher education institutions in the United States has progressed rapidly since World War II. The pace and specifics of this internationalization vary by institution. However, there are some shared characteristics including, but not limited to, increase in student mobility, both inward and outward, exchange of scholars, cross-border research, and internationalization of the curriculum. This increased the institutional administrative burden and necessitated the centralization of internationalization activities under a single administrative unit and led by an individual capable of providing leadership at their institution in the area of higher education internationalization. This individual is recognized as the Senior International …

Investigating Post-Adoption Abandonment Of Mental Health Mobile Applications Among Young Adults, Donald Harris

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The rising prevalence of mental health issues among young adults has driven increased interest in Mental Health Mobile Applications (MHMAs), which offer accessible and cost-effective solutions to traditional barriers such as financial limitations, stigma, and restricted healthcare access. Despite their promise, MHMAs frequently experience high rates of attrition and abandonment, significantly limiting their long-term effectiveness. Employing a mixed-methods, multi-stage research design, this dissertation explores the determinants of MHMA abandonment among young adults, emphasizing the interplay between technological inhibitors and enablers, individual user characteristics, and the mediating roles of user satisfaction and perceived usefulness.

Study 1 utilized quantitative text analysis, including …

Y’All Means All: Pro-Choice Abortion Activism In West Texas Post-Dobbs, Hannah S. Noblewolf

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

In the spring of 2021, a six-week abortion ban passed by popular vote in the city of Westerburg, Texas. It had a civil enforcement mechanism, allowing someone to collect a reward of $2,000 if they successfully sued someone they reported for “aiding and abetting” abortion. The ban, called the Westerburg Sanctuary City ordinance, was referred to as “bounty hunting.” When the ban passed it became the template for the state-level Texas Heartbeat Act, which provides a greater financial reward for a successful civil suit, with a minimum of $10,000 plus legal fees. In the face of this ban, pro-choice activists …

Climate Change In The Local News: The Role Of Community Characteristics In Shaping Themes And Diversity, Hyerim Jo

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Despite widespread recognition of climate change and its localized impacts, research on how local media cover this topic remains limited. The first study of this dissertation analyzes 15,788 opinion articles published from 2013 to 2020 by 391 local newspapers in the United States to examine their volume, topics, and thematic emphases. Using automated text analysis methods, including Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMN), the study identifies 11 topics and three overarching themes. Findings indicate that the volume, topics, and themes evolved over time, likely influenced by the severity of climate-induced hazards and political and socioeconomic …

Territory And Border Dynamics Among Small Pre-Hispanic Polities In Western Chiapas, Mexico, Antonio Martinez Tunon

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation examines the concept of territory in premodern polities, challenging modern assumptions that territory is a static or obsolete notion in the face of globalization. It critiques the conventional Westphalian model of state sovereignty, emphasizing that premodern political entities often exhibited flexible, overlapping territorial arrangements rather than fixed, linear boundaries. By analyzing territorial organization in premodern societies, this research explores the historical evolution of territoriality, identifying continuities and transformations over time.

Drawing from archaeology, anthropology, and historical geography, the research investigates how different societies have defined and maintained territorial control based on factors such as political authority, economic resources, …

Effects Of Actualized Language Policy On Ukrainian Stability, 1989-2022, Dawn Hersey

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This dissertation seeks to generate a new perspective of the complicated relationship between actualized policy and stability through looking at Ukraine’s language policies and stability in a mixed manner approach that includes both primary and secondary sources. Russia justified its irridentist activities through claiming to protect Russian nationals within Ukraine’s borders: language policies within Ukraine appear to be a trigger for Russian antagonism. Neither Russian irridentism nor Ukrainian nationalism are being considered as right or wrong in this dissertation: the intent is to highlight trends, patterns, and perceptions in alignment with Ukrainian language policy. This dissertation does not present a …