Digital Commons Network^™

Ai In Healthcare: Enhancement Not Replacement, Daniel Pappalardo

IdeaFest 2026

KINS 492 senior project. Research poster on the future of AI in healthcare, arguing that AI will enhance current healthcare work instead of replacing human doctors.

Community-Based Approaches To Health: Addressing Food Insecurity Through Open Door Gardens Levit Cantu Castillo, Levit Cantu

IdeaFest 2026

Open Door College Corps Fellowship

Arcata House Partnership Needs Your Support!, Adam Ibarra

IdeaFest 2026

We are showcasing the beneficial impact of our College Corps site - Arcata House Partnership - on the community of Arcata including the Food Bank that operates there every Wednesday. We are also illustrating the obstacles that Non-Profits face while relying on gramt funding and how they need support and inclusion in legislative policy.

Runner's High Or Running High, Whitney Ogle

IdeaFest 2026

Cannabis use has been associated colloquially with laziness, but inactivity in cannabis users has not been supported by research. In fact, more research is showing people are pairing cannabis with physical activity for a variety of reasons. The purpose of this study was to understand the prevalence of and cannabis use behaviors among distance runners who participated in the Avenue of the Giants 10k, 1/2 Marathon, and Full Marathon in Spring 2025. 42% of the sample of 151 participants reported consuming cannabis and 95% of the total sample reported they don't think athletes who test positive should be banned from …

Athletes Should Play More Sports : An Ecological Dynamics Perspective, Adam Garrison

IdeaFest 2026

This project looks at early sport specialization and its associated risks, including increased injury rates, burnout, and limited long-term athletic development. It highlights how repetitive, single-sport training can restrict adaptability and overall skill development in youth athletes. To combat this, the project explores ecological dynamics as an alternative approach. By emphasizing varied movement experiences, environmental learning, and adaptability, this approach promotes more holistic athlete development. The project ultimately argues that multi-sport participation naturally aligns with ecological dynamics and can help lessen the negative effects of early specialization.

2026 Mcm Problem A: Modeling Smartphone Battery Drain, Jonathan David Juarez

IdeaFest 2026

This study develops a continuous-time model of smartphone battery discharge incorporating activity-dependent current demand and temperature-driven degradation. Simulations evaluate battery performance under common usage scenarios and varying states of health. Results indicate that high-energy activities significantly accelerate depletion, while battery aging and elevated temperatures reduce overall runtime. Model predictions align with benchmark data and observed usage patterns, demonstrating the framework’s ability to replicate realistic discharge behavior. The model provides a practical approach for estimating battery life and assessing the impact of user behavior and thermal conditions.

Safer Pediatric Asthma Telephone Triage In A Rural Tribal-Serving Primary Care Network, Wayne Barton

IdeaFest 2026

In a rural primary care clinic, pediatric asthma telephone triage is a high-risk process because nurses must make rapid decisions based on caregiver report alone. Inconsistent assessment, documentation, disposition, and follow-up may delay escalation, increase avoidable urgent care use, and worsen inequities, including for American Indian/Alaska Native children. This theoretical quality improvement project proposes caregiver asthma action plans with teach-back, a standardized RN triage workflow with EHR prompts and training, and a closed-loop follow-up protocol to improve safety, consistency, and timely follow-up.

Improving Suicide Screening In Oncology: High-Risk Older Adults And Males, Dezeray Stevens

IdeaFest 2026

Suicide risk among patients with cancer is often overlooked, despite being significantly higher than in the general population, especially among older adults and males. In many inpatient oncology settings, screening is inconsistent and limited to admission, leaving changes in distress undetected. This quality improvement project proposes a structured, multilevel approach, including standardized screening, improved communication, and policy-driven protocols. Guided by the Johns Hopkins model, the goal is to improve early identification and timely intervention. Expected outcomes include increased screening consistency, better recognition of distress, and improved patient safety.

Improving Follow-Up For Uncontrolled Hypertension In Humboldt County, Tammy Liebl

IdeaFest 2026

High blood pressure is a leading cause of preventable stroke and heart disease, with rural populations experiencing worse outcomes. In primary care, elevated blood pressure is often identified, but follow-up is not always consistent or timely. Disparities in blood pressure control also exist across racial and ethnic groups. This quality improvement project focuses on strengthening follow-up through nurse-led interventions, including home monitoring support, follow-up calls, and standardized clinic workflows. Improving consistency in care may increase blood pressure control and reduce preventable complications.

Oil Painting & Environmental Conservation, Tobey Greenberg

IdeaFest 2026

A detailed overview of wildlife research based painting portfolio and an in depth look into how I've connected environmental/wildlife conservation activism to 2D oil paintings.

This Is Your Brain On Magnets, Evan Carleton-Sniff

IdeaFest 2026

Research on the effects of rTMS when used in stroke rehab for motor function recovery.

Data-Informed Social Work Curriculum: Modeling The Use Of The California Healthy Kids Survey For School-Linked Practicums, Thea Lamers

IdeaFest 2026

This project highlights the implementation and impact of data-informed social work curriculum with school-linked practicums. Through creating a curriculum that connected public data dashboards to students practicum placements, social work students critically evaluated publicly available data. This curriculum exemplified the required generalist social work competency of understanding the relationship between practice-informed research and research-informed practice. This project synthesizes the curriculum and student reflections from pre and post surveys, as well as a reflective memo assignment completed after the class.

Outdoor Recreation Kickoff, Olivia Hicks

IdeaFest 2026

This project focuses on planning and developing an Outdoor Recreation Festival at Cal Poly Humboldt to connect incoming students with local outdoor opportunities and resources. The event is designed to increase awareness of recreation options in the Arcata area while fostering partnerships between campus organizations and local businesses. Through event planning, outreach, and coordination, this project aims to create a sustainable model that encourages student engagement in outdoor recreation.

The Law Of Health Equity, Govind Persad

Publications

Since 2025, health equity has faced increasing hostility from federal courts, agencies, and the executive branch. Yet health equity’s promise—to narrow stark health gaps along racial, economic, and other lines—remains urgent and widely endorsed by states, localities, and nongovernmental actors. Evaluating how health equity efforts might falter under or surmount these challenges requires understanding their legal underpinnings: the law of health equity.

This Article is the first in legal scholarship to comprehensively examine federal, state, and private sector health equity commitments. It reveals sustained societal recognition of health equity’s importance, while highlighting the need for more precise and actionable definitions. …

The Public Franchise Tradition As A Limit On Patent Takings, Laura E. Dolbow

Publications

A longstanding debate exists over whether patents are forms of “private property” that the Takings Clause protects. Recently, in a different context, the Supreme Court stated that a patent is a specific form of property: a public franchise. Several scholars have argued that the public franchise characterization means patents are not protected by the Takings Clause at all. This Article identifies another potential implication of the public franchise framing. It argues that even if patents are viewed as protected by the Takings Clause, the public franchise framing suggests that the scope of that protection should be quite narrow.

To explore …

Religious Television Of Ukraine In Shaping Spiritual Identity In The Context Of Contemporary Media Practices, Oleh Sokolovskyi, Vadym Slyusar, Maksym Melnychuk, Yuliia Kondratiuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article is devoted to analysing religious television in Ukraine as a key institution of contemporary sacred communication, which shapes a new configuration of spiritual presence within the digital media space. Religious TV channels are examined as mediatized spaces for producing and transmitting symbolic meanings, within which traditional theological narratives are adapted to the demands of audiovisual culture, and the sacred acquires new forms of visualisation, emotional accessibility, and communicative dynamism. It is demonstrated that television broadcasting provides a unique format of spiritual support, enabling faith communities to participate in prayer practices, catechetical programmes, and moral-ethical discourse beyond the boundaries …

The Theological Tradition Of The Orthodox Church In The Aspect Of The Formation Of Military Leadership In Ukraine, Olga Dobrodum, Andrii S. Zborchyi, Tetyana Kondratyuk-Antonova, Oleksandr L. Kolomiiets

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Analysis of the Orthodox theological tradition as a moral foundation for military leadership in the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the full-scale war. The study moves beyond pragmatic managerial models, exploring Orthodox categories such as service (diakonia), sacrifice, and spiritual warfare. Drawing on patristic heritage and modern theologians, the authors examine leadership motivation, the role of faith in professional resilience, and the integration of Orthodox anthropology into military training. Special emphasis is placed on the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's chaplaincy as a key mechanism for actualizing these values while addressing challenges like secularism and multiconfessionalism.

Digitalisation In The Voluntary Sector: An Empirical Study On The Determinants Of It Acceptance, Deniz Dogu

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Digitalisation represents a major societal trend that drives economic and social trans-formation by increasingly embedding digital information and communication techno-logies (ICT) into processes, interactions, and everyday activities across all domains of life. However, the voluntary sector has yet to fully embrace ICT. The extent to which volunteers integrate digital tools depends on factors such as technical infrastructure and willingness to adopt IT. Research in this area remains limited, and findings are often difficult to transfer across different national contexts. This PhD research addresses the gap in understanding IT acceptance in volunteering, using Germany as a case study. A comprehensive literature …

Applications Of Evolutionary Algorithms In Wind Farm Layout Optimisation, Pawel Manikowski

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy is gaining momentum. Countries worldwide are investing significant funds and resources in this shift. The motivations for this change include political, environmental, and social factors, among others. In the UK, which is surrounded by the ocean and experiences strong winds, offshore wind farms are seen as the most viable source of renewable energy. It is anticipated that by 2030, all electricity in the UK will be generated by wind turbines. Hence, the optimisation of the wind farm layouts is the desired direction of research in the UK.In Chapter 3, we discussed the …

Do Audit Partner And Audit Committee Member Ideologies Influence Engagement Partner Selection And Financial Reporting Oversight Effectiveness?, Robert Felix, Sattar Mansi, Mikhail Pevzner, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

This study examines whether the ideological orientation of the audit partner and audit committee members— defined as their personal belief systems and inclinations, including their attitude toward risk, ambiguity, and novelty—has an impact on engagement partner selection and the effectiveness of oversight in the financial reporting process. Drawing on prior evidence that the two main US political parties reflect different ideologies, we hand-collect political donation data to construct ideological scores for audit partners and audit committee members. Our findings highlight several intriguing relationships. First, audit committees are more likely to select an ideologically dissimilar partner. Second, greater ideological dissimilarity between …

Why Constitutional Argument Matters, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The program for this symposium promised that I would be discussing the “descriptive grammar of constitutional law.” To put my purpose less benignly, I should say that I mean to attack the practice of limiting what I will call “modal analysis” to its descriptive virtues. Part of that attack will be the claim that courts and their commentators should pay closer attention to the modal requirements of the fundamental forms of constitutional discourse, but not because straying from this is a kind of grammatical faux pas. After all, if the system I have urged for constitutional analysis — the system …

2026 Spring Commencement, Georgia Southern University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

"I'M Going To College": Protective Factors Shaping The College-Going Identity Of Prospective First-Generation College Students Of Color, Joseph M. Williams, Yakob Lemma, Nina R. Schoonover, Morgan Rustia, Ben Allen

Journal of College Access

A college-going identity reflects a mindset in which individuals view college as a realistic, attainable, and desirable goal. It is characterized by the belief that higher education is a vital part of one's educational journey and is accompanied by a strong aspiration to earn a degree. For students from low-income and marginalized backgrounds, this identity serves as a critical protective factor, buffering against systemic inequities, resource limitations, and low expectations that often shape their educational experiences. This qualitative study examines the protective factors shaping the college-going identity of prospective first-generation, low-income middle school students of color (N = 17). Centering …

Reframing Narratives, Reclaiming Futures: Antiracist School Counseling And Black And Brown Girls In Stem, Renae D. Mayes, Lia D. Falco, Shontell Zenon, Dequindre Hughes, Yijia Chen, Lydia Ross, Medha Dalal

Journal of College Access

Black and Brown girls often have educational experiences that stifle their career aspirations, especially in STEM fields. These experiences can be exacerbated by educators who misunderstand and refuse to recognize their STEM potential, thus limiting their opportunity to build STEM identities. School counselors can disrupt these experiences through antiracist practices that cultivate homeplace and joy for Black and Brown girls to heal and grow while working to address harmful policies and practices. In this paper, authors discuss how school counselors can specifically use antiracist school counseling practices to support Black and Brown girls in STEM as a part of multi-tiered …

Things Humans Do: The Use Of Esds On Autistic Children, Jami L. Anderson

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

On March 26, 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a proposed rule (PR) that would ban the use of electrical stimulation devices (ESDs)—shock devices—for treatment of selfinjurious behavior (SIB) and aggressive behavior (AB). This PR was directed at Judge Rotenberg Education Center (JRC), a residential institution in Canton, Massachusetts, that treats children and young adults with profound intellectual and emotional impairments, most of whom are autistic. Medical evidence has well established that ESDs not only fail to treat SIB, but cause the rate and severity of SIB to worsen. This is the FDA’s second attempt to ban ESDs. …

Prisoners And Choice Democracy, Eileen Prescott, Michelle Theer

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This Article considers how eliminating meaningful choices inside prisons harms individuals and obstructs reintegration efforts. While any individual restrictions on incarcerated people may seem minor—such as limitations on the food available in the commissary— they accumulate to a point where people adopt passive, compliant behaviors and attitudes that are adaptive inside yet maladaptive outside the prison walls. Thus, we argue that even modest improvements in prisoner autonomy could reduce recidivism and achieve the public safety goals of incarceration.

From Victim To Defendant: Battered Woman Syndrome In Support Of Duress, Samantha Casimiro

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

Section I of this article will discuss the origin and phases of BWS as well as its designation as a subcategory of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (hereinafter PTSD) and discuss the prevalence of domestic violence in our society. Section II will layout the elements of a duress defense and analyze the objective reasonableness standard as compared to the subjective reasonableness standard used in other defenses, such as self-defense, explaining that there is a level of subjectiveness that must be considered regardless of the applicable approach. Section III will analyze cases and opinions of the federal circuit courts that support the admission …

Get Out Of Jail Free: The Monopoly Of Big Pharma & Drug Addiction, Melissa E. Morello

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This article analyzes the legal and social parameters of drug addiction and the opioid epidemic, arguing that pharmaceutical companies, lawmakers, and systemic institutions have effectively “gamified” public health, addiction, and their own accountability. It traces the historical trajectory of drug regulation, from early opioid use and racially motivated enforcement policies to the War on Drugs and the emergence of the prescription opioid epidemic fueled by aggressive pharmaceutical marketing. The analysis explores pivotal case law and legislation addressing addiction, highlighting the legal system’s struggle to reconcile criminal accountability with the recognition of addiction as a disease. Throughout this article, there will …

The Impact Anti-Abortion Laws Will Have On Domestic Violence Victims Post-Dobbs Decision, Elissa Schlissel Goldberg

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This paper will focus on the impact a total or near-total abortion law may have on domestic abuse and how male abusers may attempt to seek control by taking advantage of the law. This paper will first address domestic violence, specifically focusing on the different ways domestic violence can manifest and their definitions. Next, the paper will shift focus to abortion and how states have tried to limit a woman’s ability to access abortion. The paper will then move to focus on the connection between domestic violence and abortion, looking into the data from past researchers and the trends that …

Balancing The Scales Between The Evolution Of Affirmative Action Policies And The Equal Protection Clause, Jesicca Patel

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This article argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling ending affirmative action was correct. Affirmative action does not solve the underlying issues of racial inequality and systemic oppression. Instead, affirmative action undermines the success of minorities and inflames racial tensions. This article is divided into Five Parts. The first part examines U.S. Supreme Court precedent addressing the Court’s decisions in upholding affirmative action policies in educational settings before Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The second part discusses Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and why the Supreme Court …