Digital Commons Network^™

Thinking Artfully With Matter: A Posthuman Enquiry Into The Pedagogical Values Of Sketch-Booking., Melanie Potier

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

Becoming attentive to art practices in terms of what they can do rather than what they are, the writing generates a more tentative-artful engagement with how sketchbooking processes engender more response-able relationship with the world. Exploring the relation between sensation and thought, this exemplification of the speculative potential of force and form, emerges as a powerful resistance to the constraints of the neoliberal education system. Practicing art as immanent doing, Erin Manning’s theory of incipient movement works to develop concepts, such as research-creation, event-time, artfulness and thought in motion, which find expression through the mundanities and ordinary occurrence of the …

Nurturing The Event: A Trauma-Informed Psychosocial Analysis Of Conversions To Christianity And Desistance From Crime, Alex Beaumont

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the role prison chaplaincy and faith-based organisations play in supporting new Christian converts across HMPPS establishments. Drawing on research data from 11 in-depth narrative interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals, many of whom were long-term desisters or still in the desistance process (18 months post-release), this thesis provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of the relationship between early childhood development, traumatic events, and spiritual transformations in prison. Data was gathered using Hollway and Jefferson’s (2001) Free Association Narrative Interview Method (FANIM), which applies psychoanalytic principles to explore subjectivity beyond surface-level descriptions of self and identity. …

Safe Space: A Novel And Accompanying Critical Study Into The Participatory Culture In Fandom And A Historiographic Approach To The Fragmentation Of Popular Culture In Select Novels By Kurt Vonnegut And Thomas Pynchon., Edward Whitfield

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

This research is submitted as both a novel and supplementary critical study. It explores the dynamic interplay between media consumers and content creators within the context of contemporary online critical discourse. The study is anchored by the novel Safe Space, a metamodern science fiction novel that explores the tension between progressive and orthodox ideologies within Anglo-American science fiction fandom – a symbolic battle in the Culture Wars.The investigation uses a historiographic, long durée (or long term) approach to test the hypothesis that periods of cultural anxiety are related to a loss of confidence in great hegemons. The research interrogates the …

Transient Lives: Trans & Non-Binary People’S Encounters With The Harms Of Work, Siggi Auerbach

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

This ethnographic criminological research aimed to address several theoretical gaps in the existing literature surrounding trans people, vulnerability, and victimisation. The overarching objective of this study was to offer a revised account of the harms trans people encounter in relation to their work via a new theoretical framework which is informed by ultra-realist criminology, critical hate studies. The theoretical framework was informed by contemporary criminologies of the harms of work, as opposed to the harms the institution of work is argued to inflict upon intersectional aspects of the individual’s social identity. This thesis aimed to reconceptualise the harms trans workers …

Understanding The Factors That Influence University Environment: Gender Differences In Perceptions Of Female And Male Stem Graduate Students., Rachel Robinson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite increasing female representation in higher education, women remain underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. This thesis investigates gendered perceptions of university environment among STEM graduate students, focusing on the role of faculty-student interaction as a form of social capital. The survey was developed and administered with Qualtrics Online Survey Software by members of the Social Science Research Group of the Pacific Northwest Circles of Success: Mentoring Opportunities in STEM. All graduate students in the participating universities pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees in a National Science Foundation STEM recognized program were eligible to complete the survey. Using …

Fungal Symbionts As Hidden Architects Of Forest Health: From Tree Immunity To Beetle Nutrition, Lorinda Sabin Bullington

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Symbioses of fungi with trees and insects play outsized roles in forest ecosystems, influencing tree growth, defense, physiology, and nutrient cycling. While their functional contributions are widely recognized, they remain poorly understood. I integrate findings from three studies examining fungal interactions with conifers and with bark beetles to highlight their significance in tree resistance to disease, nutrient redistribution within the tree, and forest ecology.

First, I demonstrate that foliar fungal endophytes and ectomycorrhizal fungi, together and independently, can enhance resistance in Pinus monticola seedlings against Cronartium ribicola, the pathogen responsible for white pine blister rust. Symbiont inoculation induced host terpene …

Jurisprudence Of Problem-Solving Courts: A Study Of Structure, Success, And Sociological Theory, Lauren M. Boos

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In response to the failures of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, Problem-Solving Courts (PSCs) have emerged as alternatives to traditional prosecution. These courts employ therapeutic-informed and rehabilitative practices aimed at addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. While widely regarded as more effective than traditional courts, PSCs have developed largely without a formal theoretical foundation. This is notable given their alignment with Sociological Jurisprudence (SJ) and Therapeutic Jurisprudence (TJ), which view the legal system as a vehicle for promoting individual and community well-being.

Despite being celebrated as therapeutic innovations, PSCs often embody these principles unevenly. Using …

Reinventing The Concepts Of Group And Isomorphism In Abstract Algebra, Chrisitan José Lopez-Mercado

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study explores the reinvention of the concepts of group and isomorphism in abstract algebra through design-based research. It investigates how students can reinvent these concepts and how mathematical artifacts transform their mathematical reasoning during the reinvention process. The study identifies a reinvention ecology comprising three interrelated components: students' mathematical activity, social interaction, and the continual emergence of mathematical artifacts. Using the guided reinvention principle of realistic mathematics education, students engaged with contextual situations, such as a 12-hour analog clock and the symmetries of an equilateral triangle, to progressively develop structural observations, formalize group axioms, and assemble them into the …

"A Changed Understanding Of Our Present": Moby-Dick As Prophetic Ecological Activism, Katie Ann Schini

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.

In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and …

Examining Rural Second-Graders' Literate Identities In Relationship To Reading Proficiency: A Mixed Methods Case Study, Ashley R. S. Olsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although the act of reading is inherently multi-faceted, encompassing an array of interrelated cognitive, social, and cultural processes, the bodies of reading research typically align to either qualitative or quantitative methodologies. This routinely bifurcated approach to reading research reflects the ongoing disagreement surrounding best practices for literacy instruction. Numerous quantitative findings have supported the use of systematic and explicit foundational skill instruction to improve students’ reading proficiency. On the other hand, previous qualitative studies have emphasized the existing identities that children bring to any learning community and the benefit of nurturing literate identity formation in the classroom. Intersecting a modified …

Penta Ef-Hand Protein Alg-2 Regulates Copii Activity At Eres In Response To Calcium Signaling, Jacob Ryan Lapka

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Intracellular protein trafficking is critical for maintaining cellular homeostasis, relying on highly regulated vesicular transport pathways originating from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Central to this process is the COPII coat complex, which governs cargo export at ER exit sites (ERES) by selectively packaging secretory proteins into transport vesicles. Recent studies highlight the regulatory role of calcium (Ca²⁺) signaling at ERES, where the Ca²⁺-binding Penta EF-hand proteins ALG-2 and peflin modulate COPII coat dynamics and cargo sorting in a context-dependent manner. In Chapter 2, we show that knockdown of the Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor-3 (IP3R-3) in normal rat …

Investigating The Impact Of Aerial Firefighting On Rate Of Wildfire Spread, Lindsay Ann Wiard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Aerial retardant drops are widely used in wildfire suppression, yet their effectiveness in slowing fire spread remains difficult to quantify at scale. This study evaluates the impact of aerial suppression on wildfire rate of spread (ROS) using a modeling framework that incorporates both observed (real) and counterfactual (synthetic) drop locations from a sample of 62 wildfires in Oregon. Synthetic drops were generated to simulate a no-suppression baseline, allowing us to compare changes in ROS in the presence and absence of suppression. We trained two random forest classifiers: one using both real and synthetic drops (the full model), and another using …

Ineligible Partners: Tribal Nations And Cooperative Federalism In The Historical Development Of National Forest Law And Policy, James H. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lands within the National Forest System (NFS), like all federal public lands, are rooted in Aboriginal Title and were once exclusively inhabited by Indigenous peoples and communities. Through the process of treaty-making, the federal government amassed millions of acres of ceded Tribal lands, many of which are now managed by federal public land agencies, including 194 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Several Tribes reserved various use and property rights on these lands that are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty and Supremacy Clauses. The federal government also has an overarching trust obligation to Tribes – a …

Equity And Social Vulnerability In Drought Planning And Response In The Northern Great Plains, Amishi Singh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Drought is a natural phenomenon that has long been a part of the climate regime in the Northern Great Plains. However, as climate change intensifies, drought across the region will worsen. This worsening drought will harm vulnerable communities more than their less vulnerable counterparts. Understanding how current policies either reinforce existing systems of marginalization or work to counter them is vital when determining what kind of policy will be needed in times of worsening drought. The first analysis sought to answer the following question: how are states incorporating key concepts of social vulnerability, procedural justice and climate change into their …

A Pilot Training Program For The Cultural Formulation Interview In School-Based Assessment, Jaida A. Lilly

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

School psychologists are responsible for promoting and maintaining an equitable, inclusive environment for all students to learn. For those who work in school settings, assessment of a student’s academic, mental health, and behavioral difficulties are often a significant component of school psychological practices. However, for various reasons, the assessment process can be flawed, and can unintentionally perpetuate systems of oppression in school-settings; this is especially true when working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. Within culturally responsive assessment, conducting interviews is necessary for connecting with and effectively supporting the student and family. The Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) …

Nonactin And Salinomycin Fragment Scaffold Derived Synthesis For Antibiotic Drug Discovery, Evelyn Amelia Schwartz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Antibacterial drug discovery is an important necessity across all medical practices in both treatment and prevention of antimicrobial resistance. Infections with antimicrobial resistant pathogens are likely to increase over the years, and new classes of antibiotics can address this issue directly. Traditional screening of natural product libraries unfortunately has exhausted these resourceful compounds so that few easily accessible medical drug candidates remain. Natural products have often been recognized for their unique and complex structures that are attributed to their biological activity. This esteemed trait also is linked to cytotoxic activity and difficult synthetic modifications. A fragment of the natural product …

When Does Might Make Right? The Role Of Race/Ethnicity And Implicit Bias On Teacher Reactions To Peer Aggression, Charlotte Jane Moss

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Educators must evaluate social interactions between children on a daily basis. Social evaluations are thought to be impacted by cognitive (e.g., perceived controllability) and emotional (e.g., anger, sympathy) processes, and the ways in which teachers respond to bullying incidents may be influenced by their own implicit racial biases. There is inadequate research examining how these variables influence teacher reactions to bullying scenarios. Additionally, within the bullying literature, many studies focus on the bully and/or the victim, with less emphasis on other roles, such as a student defending the victim. Moreover, researchers typically define defenders as a student who gets help …

Identity Construction Of Post-2000s Class Monitors In The Public University Of China, Guoming Li

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The identity construction experiences of a key group of student leaders in China’s public universities, class monitors born after the year 2000, were explored through a descriptive phenomenological approach guided by Giorgi’s (2019) framework. From the in-depth interviews with 14 participants, how these student leaders interpret and make meaning of their experiences within the unique context of China’s student cadre system was investigated. Three central dimensions of identity construction were showed: (1) alignment with servant leadership discourses that emphasize responsibility, care, and moral commitment to peers; (2) navigation of a complex followership process involving compliance and responsiveness to institutional supervisors; …

Challenged: A Practice-Based Analysis Of Simulating The Realities Of Teaching Through Play, Shanel Lara Locke

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

ChallengED is a classroom simulation game designed to explore the emotional and procedural realities of teaching through interactive play. Rather than attempting to manufacture empathy, the project focuses on conveying the unpredictability, humor, and fatigue that shape daily classroom life. Drawing from my own teaching experience, the game uses experiential realism and embodied interaction to communicate how educators navigate constant interruptions, shifting demands, and limited control. The development process also became a therapeutic practice, offering a way to reinterpret professional challenges through creative experimentation. Situated within practice-based research, ChallengED demonstrates how game design can function as both artistic inquiry and …

Counselor Educators’ Understanding Of Ableism: A Mixed Methods Study, Cynthia Renee Boyle

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ableism, defined as beliefs and practices that prioritize able-bodiedness and lead to disability discrimination, is a prevalent but often overlooked form of oppression rooted in the historical American legacy of other forms of prejudice, discrimination, and is foundationally rooted in higher education through eugenics. Despite the counseling profession's mandate for multicultural competence, disability issues and ableism are often excluded from mainstream curriculum, contributing to a knowledge gap among counselor educators. This convergent mixed methods study explored and analyzed counselor educators’ understanding of ableism using a cross-sectional questionnaire administered to 48 participants. Quantitative results indicated a positive correlation between more formal …

"I'Ve Never Felt A Pain Like This" A Dialogic Analysis Of Parent-Child Estrangement Narratives On Reddit, Grant W. Lane

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

How do adult children estranged from their parent(s) create meaning and make sense of their estrangement in Reddit posts on the subreddit r/EstrangedAdultChild? This study analyzed Reddit posts written by estranged adult children for a presumed audience of other estranged adult children. Using relational dialectics theory (RDT) as a lens for analysis, this research examined the competing discourses that influence the meaning-making and sense-making processes of estranged adult children in their posts when the intended audience is fellow estranged adult children. Seventy-four posts from r/EstrangedAdultChild, authored by adult children who self-identified as estranged from at least one parent, were collected …

Formal Victories And Roads Not Taken: Excavating Departures And Throughlines In Challenges To The Place Of Marriage, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

A decade after Obergefell, Professor Mayeri’s fascinating and meticulously detailed new book, Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law, tells the stories of “marriage’s challengers,”from the 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century.¹⁶ Along with the stories of some “well-known” lawyers, advocates, and scholars, Mayeri also “rescu[es]” the stories of now “obscure” Americans who “pushed marital boundaries” to protect their parental rights, their careers, or their “freedom to make decisions about their bodies and families.”¹⁷ Such rescue allows readers to “see change as a bottom-up as well as a top-down process.”¹⁸ Mayeri …

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 …

The Administrative State's Second Face, Emily R. Chertoff, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We often assume that there is one administrative state, with one body of administrative law that governs it. In fact, the administrative state has two distinct faces: one turned toward regulation and benefits distribution, and one turned toward physical force and surveillance. The two faces are growing further apart under the Roberts Court, which has hemmed in the first face with decisions like Loper Bright while showing solicitude for national security and law enforcement agencies.

This Article delineates the two faces of the administrative state. It provides a descriptive account of the second face and the distinctive administrative law that …

Patent Infringement In Time, John R. Thomas

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No patent lasts forever. When intellectual property rights expire, a canonical principle states, all benefits of their ownership cease. But patents may cast a long shadow after they are gone, hindering the advent of immediate competition upon their expiration. The law acts unevenly in these circumstances, leading to questionable intellectual property and public health policies. Ordinarily competitors cannot make and use a patented invention until the patent's term has concluded. This delay ordinarily extends the effective period of exclusivity that the patentee enjoys. However, a statutory safe harbor shields from infringement acts undertaken "solely for uses reasonably related" to Food …

Church Ministers' Perceptions On Burnout And How It Shapes Their Leadership Practices., Jason Young

Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored how large church ministry leaders experienced burnout and how that burnout shaped their leadership practices. The study was motivated by a research gap concerning the lived experiences of ministers in large churches. Framed by the job demands-resources theory and the conservation of resources theory, the study sought to understand how the demands of ministry leadership and the availability of personal and organizational resources influenced the experience of burnout. The research employed a qualitative phenomenological design, utilizing semi-structured interviews. A purposive and snowball sampling approach was used to recruit 13 large US church ministry leaders. The …

New Laws Aim To Improve Oral Health, Lance Plunkett Jd, Llm

The New York State Dental Journal

Increased access to fluoride varnish and expanded health and wellness campaign is expected to improve oral health of children and adults. The end of 2024 brought two new laws that specifically affect dentistry. The first such law, Chapter 457 of the Laws of 2024, took effect on Nov. 15. It amended Section 6608 of the New York State Education Law to allow registered dental assistants to apply topical fluoride varnish. Topical fluoride varnish had previously been limited to dentists and dental hygienists. It also amended Section 6902(2) of the Education Law to allow licensed practical nurses (LPNs) to apply topical …

N Y State Dent J January 2025

The New York State Dental Journal

In the January 2025 issue, the reader will find the following feature articles:

• The Open Apex Challenge: A Case Series
• Pathological Changes in Soft Tissues Associated with Radiographically Normal Impacted Teeth
• Bridging the Dental Care Gap: Addressing Oral Health Disparities in New York State Nursing Homes
• Dental Management of a Talon Cusp on a Permanent Incisor in Traumatic Occlusion

This issue includes regular columns with regional news impacting the New York membership including: editorial and perspectives columns, legal, association activities, component news, continuing education opportunities, and classifieds.

Association Between Trust In The Incumbent President And Covid-19 Preventive Behaviors During The Pandemic In Four Latin American Countries, Juliana Mejía-Grueso, Gloria Isabel Niño-Cruz, Javiera Alarcón-Aguilar, Pablo Roa-Urrutia, Sergio Mauricio Moreno-López, Adriano Akira Ferreira Hino, Alexandre Augusto De Paula Da Silva, Fernando López, Deborah Salvo, Rodrigo Siqueira Reis, Guillermo Rosas, Andrea Ramírez-Varela

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed disparities in policy responses in Latin America. We examined the association between trust in the president and COVID-19 preventive behaviors in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. We used data from the Collaborative COVID-19 Response Survey by the McDonnell Academy at Washington University in St. Louis (United States), from September 2020 to March 2021. Nonprobabilistic sampling included adult citizens from the four countries. Multivariate negative binomial regression models were applied. The study included 8,125 participants, with Brazil showing the lowest adherence to preventive behaviors (65.5%). Increased adoption of preventive behaviors was linked with ages 18-26 (aIRR = …

Comparison And Clinical Applicability Analysis Of All-Posterior, Combined Anterior-Posterior, And Combined Lateral-Posterior Approaches In Adult Spinal Deformities: A Narrative Review, Garrison P. Bentz, Christopher Diaz, Nicholas A. Pollatta, Mark J. Lambrechts

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.