Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Interculturality And Enacting Culturally Based Pedagogies: A Mixed Methods Study Of In-Service World Language Educators In Secondary Classrooms, Heather L. Sandy

Theses and Dissertations

This research study explored the relationship between an understanding of interculturality and culturally based pedagogies among world language teachers. The study examined the relationship between language teachers’ upbringing, their development of intercultural competence, and their self-efficacy in culturally responsive teaching practices. It addressed a practical knowledge gap concerning the intersection of interculturality and culturally based practices, specifically among secondary education teachers of Spanish and Mandarin Chinese in the United States.

The data sources focused on the qualitative aspects of interculturality, culturally based teaching practices, and world language pedagogy, with quantitative results to enhance qualitative data. The qualitative data collection included …

Why Make Books In Art Class Or Art In Reading Class? How Storytelling Impacts Youth Literacy And Cultural Dialogue, Holly Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

Given complex factors affecting reading literacy and students’ need for empowerment through creativity, this thesis project will investigate possibilities for combining artmaking with written narrative. Creative solutions, such as integrated and project-based learning activities, are documented as having some of the best positive impacts on overall learning growth (Laur, 2021; Aydin & Mutlu, 2023). Therefore, my thesis includes a discussion on Arts Integration initiatives and an illustrated book for students ages 10-15, which can be used as an example for their own studies into personal narrative. While the research presented here touches on multiple factors affecting students’ self-esteem and willingness …

Customers' Perceptions Of Customer Service After The Covid-19 Pandemic, Marissa Young

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how customers perceive customer service after the COVID-19 pandemic, using qualitative data from an open-ended survey to evaluate how expectations, experiences, and the meaning of service have shifted. The findings demonstrate that consumers view customer service as a holistic process influenced by interpersonal communication, operational efficiency, product availability, and pricing transparency. Participants emphasized both positive and negative encounters, stating that the COVID pandemic fostered lowered expectations due to staffing shortages and work stress, while also remaining observant of service inconsistencies. These results relate to theories of service quality, emotional labor, and organization-public relationships by illustrating how crisis …

Children’S And Adult Perspectives On Mental Health In Children’S Youth Literature And Media, Edcel J. Cintron-Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation extends existing work on mental health in children’s literature to examine the different narratives strategies that text, film, and media for young audiences use to connect childhood, caregiving, and emotional wellbeing. Three areas of scholarship—children’s literature scholarship, health humanities work, and feminist care ethics—inform my project. Overall, I am interested in how a variety of genres for young readers represent mental health not only as an individual experience, but also as something shaped by family, culture, community, and adult-child relationships. It is therefore important to delineate the different concepts and frameworks that help make sense of how mental …

Interaction Of The Gram-Positive Human Pathogen Staphylococcus Aureus With Host Lipids, Sharanya Paul

Theses and Dissertations

Staphylococcus aureus is a prominent pathogen that is known to incorporate straight-chain unsaturated fatty acids (SCUFAs) into its lipids in addition to the normally biosynthesized branched-chain fatty acids (BCFAs) and straight-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Furthermore, it has recently been shown that the incorporation of oleic acid into S. aureus lipids significantly enhanced the growth of the organism at low temperatures due to the greater fluidity imparted to the membrane. Together with others in the Wilkinson and Dahl laboratory, I have shown that low-temperature growth is enhanced by various SCUFAs, including the human antimicrobial fatty acids sapienic acid, linoleic acid, and …

The Synergy Between A Silver-Ruthenium Antimicrobial And Aminoglycosides Is Based On Severe Macromolecular Damage, Emmanuel Parkay Oladokun

Theses and Dissertations

The rise of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial pathogens, including uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC), highlights the urgent need for alternative treatment strategies to restore antibiotic efficacy. The silver-ruthenium antimicrobial AGXX exerts potent bactericidal effects through the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS); however, its potential synergy with antibiotics has not been thoroughly investigated. Here, we show that sublethal concentrations of AGXX strongly enhance aminoglycoside-mediated killing across a diverse panel of Gram-negative and Gram-positive MDR clinical isolates, including highly aminoglycoside-resistant strains. Combinational treatments significantly reduced the effective concentrations of gentamicin, tobramycin, kanamycin, and amikacin required to kill bacteria. Mechanistic analyses revealed that AGXX/aminoglycoside …

Digital Truth Making, Creative Resistance, And Power Negotiation Through Social Media: A Digital Ethnography Of The 2024 Gen Z Uprising In Bangladesh, Mustafizurrrahman Rahat

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates how social media shaped political participation during the 2024 July Uprising in Bangladesh, focusing on the production and negotiation of political truth, legitimacy, and resistance through everyday digital practices. Rather than conceptualizing social media solely as a communication tool, the study analyzes digital platforms as contested spaces where activists, state-aligned actors, and other participants constructed, circulated, and challenged competing political narratives throughout the uprising.

Drawing on digital ethnography, this study integrates netnographic observation of Facebook groups, pages, hashtags, memes, and protest-related visual content with content analysis, reflexive participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with Generation Z participants. The …

Transforming Instructional Spaces: Professional Development And The Design Of Culturally Responsive Classroom Displays, Tisha M. Ortega

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative action research study examined how secondary teachers at a Midwest high school engaged in the process of designing classroom displays for culturally responsive teaching. The semester-long study explored how teachers’ understandings of culturally responsive teaching informed their design decisions, how they engaged students with display content, and how ongoing reflection and participation in a professional development study group shaped their practices over time. Data were collected through interviews, surveys, study group transcripts, and photographs of classroom displays.

Findings indicated that participation in the study group served as both validation and inspiration, supporting teachers in refining their approaches to …

Transgender Representation In Japanese Video Games And Their Corresponding American Fandoms, Aj Abad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores transgender and gender non-conforming characters within Japanese media and their corresponding American fandoms. In this thesis, I use a methodology named trans negotiated readings, stemming from Stuart Hall’s theory of dominant codes and negotiated readings. Through focusing on two characters from two different Japanese media—Arashi Narukami from Ensemble Stars!! and Mizuki Akiyama from Project Sekai: Colorful Stage Feat. Hatsune Miku, I uncover some of the dominant codes encoded the original source material. After, I also examine their corresponding American fandoms, uncovering the negotiated readings from the fanbase. This thesis attempts to show different cultures’ interpretation of transgender …

From Stage To Screen: Hamilton: An American Musical, Emotional Communication, And Digital Audience Discourse, Christopher J. O'Quinn Jr

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how musical theatre functions as a communicative and affective medium that extends beyond live performance into digital spaces where audiences actively construct and share meaning. Focusing on the Broadway musical Hamilton: An American Musical (throughout the thesis, I will refer to it as Hamilton), this research explores how audiences interpret, express, and create emotional responses through social media platforms. Using a modified digital ethnographic approach, data were collected from Instagram comments on posts from 2024 to 2026. Subsequently, a discourse analysis was employed to identify patterns in emotional expression, lived experience, meaning-making, performer appreciation, and shared …

Exploring The Reading Motivation And Reading Experiences Of Secondary School Students With Dyslexia In England, Ahmet Kaan Alper

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences Theses

This research examines how a small group of secondary school students with dyslexia in England make sense of their reading experiences and motivation to read across school, home and everyday settings. It responds to concerns that literacy policy and practice foreground accuracy, speed and comparison, leaving limited space for reading for pleasure on students’ own terms. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concepts, the study treats dyslexia and literacy as historically and institutionally produced categories and explores how discourses, norms and accountability regimes shape what counts as legitimate reading and a motivated reader. The research is grounded in a relativist ontology and …

Large-Scale Coastal Dynamics: New Incites From Lidar And Satellite Remote Sensing, Aikaterini Konstantinou

School of Biological and Marine Sciences Theses

This thesis leverages remote sensing methods to advance understanding of shoreline morphodynamics from storm to decadal timescales, focusing on three interrelated objectives. First, regional patterns and timescales of beach recovery following the extreme 2013/14 winter were quantified using bi-annual LiDAR and RTK-GNSS surveys of 23 south-west England sites. Recovery trajectories exhibited consistent patterns aligned with pre-existing storm response classifications, demonstrating that both storm response and post-storm recovery can be classified into four groups governed by intrinsic geomorphological and hydrodynamic controls. Almost 90% of sites had recovered at least 75% of lost sediment within three years, while some fully exposed beaches …

Crustacean Sensation: Intraspecific Sensory Diversity And Patterns Of Information Acquisition And Use Of An Intertidal Malacostracan, Ari Drummond

School of Biological and Marine Sciences Theses

The following thesis examines intraspecific sensory diversity in the common hermit crab, Pagurus bernhardus (Plate 1), a tractable Malacostracan model for research in sensory biology and information ecology. By examining variation in sensory morphology and behaviour across two sensory appendages: the chelipeds (chemo-mechanosensory) and the antennules (chemosensory), this work demonstrates how interdisciplinary approaches can elucidate how organisms gather and use information and the structural variation necessary to do so. It further considers the potential fitness consequences of intraspecific sensory diversity (Chapter 1). A discussion of two sources of intraspecific sensory variation—body asymmetry and sexual dimorphism of chelar tissue—and the functional …

Assessing Past Storm And Tsunami Events With Coastal Boulder Deposits: Implications For Offshore And Coastal Renewable Energy Infrastructure, Storm Roberts

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Theses

Coastal boulder deposits are found on coastlines worldwide, transported inland by extreme storm or tsunami events. These deposits are understudied, yet hold unique information about the magnitude of the waves which emplaced them, enabling the addition of new events to the storm and tsunami record. However, boulder transport by storm waves is commonly misidentified as tsunami events, traditional methods for calculating boulder size are outdated, the influence of boulder shape on transport is understudied, there are difficulties making comparisons between physical experiments and field data, and commonly used equations for estimating wave flow velocities from boulders have been shown to …

Characterization And Antibacterial Assessment Of An Isoborneol-Loaded Nanoemulsion, Sharon M. Rodriguez Villacis

Graduate Studies Theses and Dissertations 2026

In the United States, about 35,000 fatalities occur annually due to antibiotic resistant infections. It is progressively becoming one of the largest challenges when treating hospital-acquired infections. This decline in effectiveness of commonly used antibiotics makes it essential to identify, synthesize, and formulate compounds that possess antimicrobial activity against these common pathogens. Isoborneol, a compound that is naturally occurring terpene that can be derived from the Camphor tree, Cinnamomum camphora, is known for its antimicrobial properties in traditional medicine and in prior literature. To assess this hypothesis, an oil-in-water (OW) nanoemulsion of isoborneol was synthesized, characterized, and assessed for …

Village District Of Eastman Annual Report 2025, Eastman Village District Representatives

Eastman Village District of Springfield, NH Annual Reports

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a village district in the state of New Hampshire.