Digital Commons Network^™

Staff Education On Discharge Planning For A County Crisis Stabilization Unit, Eric Rowshaun Luster

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was a staff education initiative developed to address insufficient staff knowledge related to discharge planning for homeless individuals experiencing mental health crises. The purpose of the project was to examine whether enhanced staff training could improve knowledge of transitional care planning, thereby supporting equitable, safe, and inclusive discharge processes. By improving staff proficiency, the project sought to reduce gaps in care coordination and promote continuity of treatment for a highly vulnerable patient population. The project was implemented at a Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) in the southern United States that serves individuals experiencing homelessness, …

Effective Business Strategies To Reduce Rural Hospital Closures, Teika Denise Albury

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Rural hospital closures disproportionately impact the lives of rural residents across the United States, directly affecting health outcomes for rural communities and the overall financial viability of rural health institutions. Policymakers, healthcare leaders, and community stakeholders are concerned about these closures because they threaten access to care and contribute to health disparities. Grounded in Fiedler’s contingency theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore business strategies rural hospital administrators use to prevent rural hospital closures. The participants were five rural hospital administrators who successfully prevented the closure of their rural hospitals. Data were collected through semistructured interviews …

Transparency And Openness In Scientific Publishing Among Malaysian Social Science Researchers, Noor Masliana Razlan

Student Works (2020-2029)

The global movement toward transparency and openness in scientific publishing (TOSP) has become integral in strengthening research integrity, accessibility, and reproducibility. While TOSP practices are increasingly embedded in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, their uptake remains limited and fragmented in the social sciences, especially within the Malaysian context. This study investigates how Malaysian social science researchers interpret, adopt, and implement TOSP practices, and how these are influenced by demographic variables such as age, gender, academic position, discipline, and research experience. Using a sequential mixedmethods approach, the study draws on qualitative interviews with 20 participants and survey responses from …

Staff Education Project For Enhancing Medication Adherence In Mental Health: An Evidence-Based Education Program For Healthcare Practitioners In Outpatient Clinics, Rita Erina Pyuzza

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The staff education project was designed to address medication non-adherence among mental health patients in an outpatient psychiatric clinic by enhancing the knowledge and skills of mental health nurses and nurse practitioners. The lack of structured, evidence-based training on medication adherence strategies has contributed to poor patient outcomes, increased hospitalizations, and higher healthcare costs. Clinic patient reports indicated 50% medication non-adherence, highlighting the need to address non-adherence through effective nursing-led education, medication management, and adherence monitoring. The project assessed whether enhancing the outpatient healthcare providers’ skills and knowledge through a structured, evidence-based program would improve the providers’ medication adherence strategies. …

Adult-Child Caregivers’ Fear And Coping Regarding The Risk Of Inheriting Alzheimer’S Disease, Rebecca Anne Ledbetter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Caring for elderly parents with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) poses two major challenges for adult-child caregivers: the tasks involved in taking care of ailing parents and also potentially living in fear of developing the same disease. This research examined how caregivers with such fear regard their vulnerability to AD and how they manage the stress that comes with caregiving for someone with a disease they dread developing themselves. This grounded theory study employed the appraisal theory of emotions and the theory of moods as frameworks and aimed to establish awareness regarding coping strategies that adult-child caregivers have about caretaking and their …

Can We All Get Along? Assessing Interdisciplinary Collaborations At A School Of Health Sciences, Merly Thomas

Dissertations

This study explores the process, conceptualization, and understanding interdisciplinary collaborations through a lens of organizational learning. More specifically, this research focuses on the barriers, challenges, definitions, and self-constructed metrics with a health sciences campus, situated in a religious institution in the Midwest. Through a single institution qualitative case study, this research interviews 16 participants, spanning across program coordinators, directors, and individuals in both operations and administration, to examine how a school of health sciences housed at an academic medical campus, operates across disciplines and departments, to advance interdisciplinary collaborations that foster a more productive and engaged workforce. Findings illuminate the …

Comprehending Students' Experiences With A Language Learning Resource Center: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study Of College Life And Belonging, Paulina Dzieza

Dissertations

This study explores the impact of Language Learning Resource Center (LLRC) services on college students' overall college experience and their sense of belonging on campus. In the constantly evolving world of higher education, higher education institutions work to provide welcoming spaces where students can flourish academically and socially. In higher education, where there is a growing focus on student support services, the LLRC is essential for promoting academic achievement, cross-cultural interaction, and social integration for foreign language learners. This qualitative study, guided by a combined theoretical framework of Community of Practice and Ethics of Care, aims to advance knowledge of …

The Mediating Role Of Smartphone Usage In The Relationship Between Working Mothers And Children’S Social Interaction, Wulan Patria Saroinsong, Mochamad Nursalim, Azmawaty Binti Mohamad Nor

Jurnal Kajian Bimbingan dan Konseling

This study explores how smartphone usage acts as a mediator in the connection between working mothers and social interaction among children aged 3–6 years in East Java, Indonesia. Due to the insufficient reading and writing skills of children in this age range to complete questionnaires for the children’s interaction variable, data were gathered from their parents’ perspective, notably working mothers, who offered insights into their parenting behaviors and their children’s interaction patterns when using the smartphone. The research utilized a mediation analysis design to examine the relationships among the variables. A structured questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 400 …

Spartan Daily, August 28, 2025, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2025

Volume 165, Issue 4

August 28, 2025, James Madison University

The Breeze, 2020-

The Breeze is the student newspaper of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Faculty Senate Minutes, Georgia Southern University, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Faculty Senate Agenda, Georgia Southern University, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Agendas

No abstract provided.

Feasibility Evaluation Of Secure Offline Large Language Models With Retrieval-Augmented Generation For Cpu-Only Inference, Erick Tyndall, Torrey J. Wagner, Colleen Gayheart, Alexandre Some, Brent T. Langhals

Faculty Publications

Recent advances in large language models and retrieval-augmented generation, a method that enhances language models by integrating retrieved external documents, have created opportunities to deploy AI in secure, offline environments. This study explores the feasibility of using locally hosted, open-weight large language models with integrated retrieval-augmented generation capabilities on CPU-only hardware for tasks such as question answering and summarization. The evaluation reflects typical constraints in environments like government offices, where internet access and GPU acceleration may be restricted. Four models were tested using LocalGPT, a privacy-focused retrieval-augmented generation framework, on two consumer-grade systems: a laptop and a workstation. A technical …

Industry Perspectives On Engineering Communication Skills For The Green Transition, Una Beagon, Stephen Harper, Paul Talbot

Irish Journal of Academic Practice

Effective communication skills are crucial in complex multidisciplinary, multistakeholder engineering projects, where engineers must articulate ideas, negotiate solutions and convey technical information across diverse audiences. However, despite their importance, communication skills are often undervalued in engineering curricula, as students and faculty may view them as peripheral to technical training. Through focus groups and interviews with practicing engineers in Ireland, the study explores communication’s role in professional tasks and stakeholder interactions. The study provides a flowchart outlining each stage of a civil and structural project. This was then used to identify key communication activities which are presented using the who, why …

The Social And Political Identities Of Latine Republicans In The U.S., Gabriella M. Mota

Dissertations and Theses

Between the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections, support for Republican candidate Donald Trump among Latine voters increased from 29% to 42%. This rise has attracted interest given Trump's nativist rhetoric and policies that target Latine immigrants. Previous literature has examined the growing Republican partisanship among Latine Americans, focusing on the processes of assimilation and the effects of racial ideology on the partisanship of the Latine electorate. Although this research is gaining traction, the political attitudes of Latine Republicans remain understudied. This study explores how Latine Republicans manipulate ethnoracial attachments to justify their support for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. …

Hydrosocial Ocean Commons: Offshore Wind Energy In Oregon, Bryce Ashlyn Sprauer

Dissertations and Theses

The ocean has been culturally and legally conceptualized as a commons, a space of subsistence inherited by all. Enclosure or privatization creates overlapping jurisdictions of ocean space. The ocean is also the world's most significant carbon capture, absorbing billions of tons of anthropogenic carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution. Now, the ocean offers an additional opportunity to decarbonize energy production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through 'new frontiers' of offshore wind technology; however, this potential is entangled within neoliberalism. Offshore wind is entering a fragmented legal landscape where the social-legal process of ocean jurisdiction remains contested. As the "new frontier" …

Understanding The Why: Patient, Parent, And Oncologist Perspectives On Prognostic Communication Preferences In Advanced Childhood Cancer, Erin Batchelor, Rachel A Kentor, Calliope Reeves, Harmony Farner, Shoshana Mehler, Caroline Christianson, Erica C Kaye

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background/objectives: High-quality prognostic communication in pediatric oncology is essential to support informed decision making, foster trust, and honor goals of care. While families differ in their preferences for how prognosis is discussed, clinicians often rely on assumptions rather than directly eliciting these preferences, risking misalignment and distress. To address this gap, we aimed to characterize patient, parent, and oncologist perspectives on key variables, experiences, and circumstances that influence their preferences for prognostic communication.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 85 participants (25 patients aged 12-25, 40 parents, and 20 oncologists) to elicit their preferences for prognostic communication and the reasons …

Time Ticks Slowly For Kidney Transplant Reform: Eskd Patient Challenges And Opportunities, Gregory P. Hess

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

No abstract provided.

Addressing Job Satisfaction In Emergency Services: An Exploratory Study, Jacqueline Christianson, Tiffany Warthon, Tala Fuad Abuzahra

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Purpose: Emergency services professionals (ESPs), like emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and registered nurses, work in stressful, low-resource environments and are vulnerable to work-related burnout (Crowe et al., 2020; Hinderer et al., 2014). While many ESPs are motivated by compassion for others, most ESPs never learn what happened to the patients they cared for (Ntatamala & Adams, 2022; Patterson et al., 2005). Disconnection from patient outcomes may limit compassion satisfaction among ESPs and make it more difficult to actualize their role in patient care and contribute to burnout, which negatively affects patient care (Georgakakos et al., 2022). The purpose of this …

The Wellness Ambassador For A Healthy Work Environment, Adriana Rumoro, Judy Friedrichs

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Nurses are working in a self-care deficit. The lower the self-care quotient, the more at risk a nurse is for safety and quality issues. Recently, the Work Life Balance committee members have completed training to formally become the Wellness Ambassador to support a healthy work environment.

Per the ANA Code of Ethics, self - care is more than a nicety. It has been found to be critical to the nurse, the team, and the patient. Each of the Wellness Ambassador surveyed the staff on their unit on what would a healthy work environment include. The overall top two topics identified …

Beyond The 9-To-5: The Rx For Happier Healthcare Workers, Emily Calabro, Rodica Pop

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Purpose: This pilot feasibility study aimed to investigate the impact of flexible work schedules on the mental, psychological, and physical health of healthcare workers within a large hospital system.

Background: Traditional work schedules often negatively impact productivity, well-being, and job satisfaction. This study explored the feasibility and benefits of flexible workweeks among different nursing teams.

Methods: A quasi-experimental, mixed-methods, time-series design was implemented across a 12-hospital system with the partnership of 4-Day Global, a leading expert in flexible work schedules. Eligible participants were encouraged to flex their work hours daily or at least weekly. Clinical leaders ensured on-call coverage during …

How Research-Based Listening Techniques/Interventions Improve Communication And Work Environment, Florence Schaefer

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

In the age of multitasking, it is not always easy to stop what we are doing and truly listen to those around us. Mandel, one of the world’s leading providers of communication skills for professionals, published a paper titled “The cost of not listening on your organization”. Within the workplace, not listening attributes to low employee engagement, decreased productivity, and increased turnover. This served as the impetus for the development of this project.

Stephen Covey said, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply”. Listening for the purpose of replying is …

Making An Impact: Building A Workforce That Represents Our Community, Rosemary Pine, Janelle Headley, Nancy Yuill, Leah Blackwell, Bryan Sisk

Creating Healthy Work Environments (CHWE)

Two decades ago, the Sullivan Commission's report Missing Persons: Minorities in the Health Professions (2004) underscored the need to increase the number of professionals from underrepresented minorities in health care. The report stressed that, “the lack of minority health professionals is compounding the nation's persistent racial and ethnic disparities.” The Advisory Board (2021) recommends action in providing development, advancement, and promotion opportunities for Patient Care Technicians (PCT) who are people of color. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022) reports that 46% of certified nursing assistants identify as an underrepresented racial or ethnic minority, Patient care technicians (PCTs) provide a critical …

Achieving Empowerment In Transition: Advice From Former Female Athletes, Ashlyn Hardie, Molly Harry, Kristi Oshiro, Marlene A. Dixon

Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics

Scholars have highlighted the various challenges college athletes encounter in their transition from sport. Yet, the strategies athletes adopt to navigate this transitory period require further examination. Thus, we leveraged Zimmerman’s Psychological Empowerment Model and Schlossberg’s Transition Theory to explore these strategies and associated processes in-depth. The sample for this study consisted of 20 former female athletes from the U.S. who played a college sport. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed numerous strategies current and future female college athletes implement to mitigate the challenges present in their transition, specifically: Finding Acceptance, Be Proactive, Don’t Stop 100%, Embrace the …

Sport Media Consumption In Ncaa Division І Fbs Subdivision: A Panel Regression Model Using X/Twitter, Seungbak Lee, Minsoo Kang, Wonson Lim, Ju-Pil Choe, Brennan K. Berg

Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics

Athletic departments in collegiate sports have increasingly focused on enhancing sport consumer interest through social media. As social media usage continues to grow in college sports, understanding audience behavior on these platforms has become essential for athletic departments. This study examines the factors influencing consumer interest in Division I football teams’ X (formerly Twitter) accounts, utilizing a panel dataset comprising 18,221 team-day observations. Key determinants of changes in X followers were identified, including teams’ social media activity, on-field performance, scheduling events, and timing effects, with a focus on fan interest across temporal patterns such as month-to-month and day-to-day variations. The …

Sport Employees And Resilience: An Examination Of Organizational Change With Ncaa Conference Realignment, Hailee Hernandez, Claire C. Zvosec, Brent D. Oja

Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics

NCAA conference membership is critically important to institutions as it is closely associated with revenue generation (i.e., conference-wide revenue distribution, ticket sales, fundraising, etc.) in addition to institutional visibility and prestige. Therefore, universities may pursue conference realignment opportunities based on higher potential revenue, institutional and athletics financial stability, and increased notoriety. Over the past 20 years, there have been at least 80 cases of schools moving conferences at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level. As universities move conferences, employees within the athletics department are exposed to rapid change in organizational structure and are forced to adapt to new institutional, athletics …

Name, Image, And Likeness: A Critical Exploration Through Self-Determination Theory, Molly Harry

Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics

Through Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study explored college athletes’ experiences with Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Analyzing congressional testimonies from 10 current and recently graduated college athletes, this research highlighted how NIL fostered/constrained athlete development within the broader power structures of college sport. Findings revealed while NIL enhances self-determination through autonomy, competence, and relatedness, institutional discourses and governance mechanisms continue to regulate athlete development. Through Fairclough’s (1995) CDA framework, this study demonstrated how language throughout the athletes’ testimonies maintained/disrupted power dynamics which reinforced/challenged authority of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The integration of SDT and …

Analogical Thinking: An International Case, Yunhan (Cecilia) Zhu

Silicon Valley Sociological Review

This study explores global demographic change and aging by analyzing Japan as a case study among G20 countries. It compares Japan’s demographic trends and policy responses with those of the United States, China, and India. Japan faces severe population decline and aging due to low fertility and limited immigration, creating economic and social challenges. In contrast, the U.S. benefits from immigration, while China and India face emerging risks. The contribution of this study is that it reveals diverse social response patterns in the process of global demographic transition by comparing the population dynamics and policy choices of different countries horizontally. …

Wearing Saris And Suits On Capitol Hillnavigating Elite White Spaces As South Asian American Women In Politics, Ambika Kathya Ramadurai

Silicon Valley Sociological Review

This preliminary research paper explores how South Asian American women navigate the elite white nature of U.S. politics, focusing on how they balance authentically representing their cultures and communities while navigating varying levels of power that prioritize individual advancement. Through initial interviews with South Asian American women in prominent political roles, and by applying established theoretical frameworks on identity-based hierarchies and social justice leadership, this study aims to offer insights into how South Asian American women approach the challenge of conforming to white standards in politics while maintaining their ethnic and cultural identities.

Peer-Led Sexual And Reproductive Healtheducation Programs At Universities, Madison Michelle Patrick

Silicon Valley Sociological Review

This applied research explores the accessibility, visibility, and comprehensiveness of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education and services at universities, with a specific focus on contraceptive risk awareness. Recognizing college students as particularly vulnerable to misinformation regarding hormonal contraceptives, unintended pregnancy, and STI exposure, the study examines the role of university-provided SRH resources in mitigating these risks.

A mixed-methods content analysis was conducted on the SRH publicly-available web pages of four Northern California universities—Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Santa Clara University, and the University of California, Berkeley, chosen for their diversity in institutional identity. The research assessed each university’s …