Digital Commons Network^™

Global Campus, Christian Stuart

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Design Solutions For Common Problems In Senior Living Facilities, Mary Schmidt

Senior Honors Theses

With the aging population of the United States, the prevalence of dementia rises along with its challenges for individuals in long-term care facilities. As cognitive function deteriorates, dementia patients face growing difficulties in performing daily activities. Common issues such as wayfinding, wandering, exit attempts, agitation, and a generally low quality of life plague most dementia patients at long-term care facilities. Design features can improve quality of life, safety, and coherence for residents with dementia at assisted living facilities. This paper examines existing research to present various design strategies that can enhance daily life for dementia patients in long-term care facilities. …

Faculty Senate Minutes April 28, 2025, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• Call to Order
• Approval of Minutes - March 31, 2025
• University Business
• Faculty Senate Business
• Information
• EPC Report - April 3, 2025
• The Office of Equity
• Report
• Committee on Committees (CoC) Annual Report
• Calendar Committee Annual Report
• Retention Annual Report
• Recruitment Annual Report
• Old Business
• New Business
• Adjourn - 4:30 pm

How To Be Unique: A Guide To The Law School Admissions Process, Abigail E. Bjerke

Master's Projects

The law school admissions process can be a difficult thing to navigate, especially with updates that occur each year throughout the process. Therefore, this guide to law school admissions aims at making said admissions process easier to understand for all law school candidates. In the guide, there are several chapters regarding specific steps in the admissions process alongside an extended literature review of already existing guides or relevant articles.

How Biophilic Design Impacts Office Spaces, Addison Carter

Honors Projects

Many working individuals experience burnout and dissatisfaction in their jobs. Although is this a result of individual mental strain, or are there other environmental factors contributing to the problem? This study investigates the impact of design on well-being and examines how biophilic design can serve as a solution to the negative effects certain architectural features may have on occupants. A literature review was conducted; it analyzed existing research on topics such as office design, biophilic design, and the influence of architecture on comfort and wellness. To explore how biophilic design can be applied in all settings, not just new construction, …

“I Think Even In Challenging Times We Can Still Be Uplifting”: Indigenous Women’S Experiences Of Resilience To The Covid-19 Pandemic In Alaska, Marya Rozanova-Smith, Charlene Apok, Andrey N. Petrov

Faculty Publications

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alaska communities faced an extremely challenging situation given their socioeconomic, cultural, and demographic characteristics, as well as issues related to remoteness and colonial legacy. This paper seeks to advance the understanding of the gendered impacts and implications of crises like the COVID-19 pandemic on Indigenous women in Alaskan urban and rural communities through a resilience lens. The paper addresses two primary research questions: (1) What are the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Indigenous women in urban and rural Alaska, and specifically what are the gendered implications in the personal, sociocultural, and economic domains? (2) What …

Critical Themes From Nyls’S Education Justice Symposium, Samantha C. Pownall

NYLS Community News

No abstract provided.

The Implementation Of Higher Education In The Prison System In Mississippi: The Challenges And Benefits, Elizabeth F. Ratliff

Honors Theses

Growing support for higher education in prison has sparked much conversation regarding the challenges and benefits of the programs and their implementation. In Mississippi, this has become an increasingly prevalent issue as the incarcerated population continues to grow and programs continue to be limited in accessibility. Mississippi’s incarcerated population deserves the opportunity to gain knowledge and skills through higher education to better themselves individually and better their communities upon release. However, Mississippi faces unique challenges in its prison system, preventing the benefits of these programs from showing. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the challenges and …

It’S Not Like Riding A Bicycle: How A Steadfast And Committed Effort To Writing Can Contribute To The Development Of Student Writers, Meredith J. Whited

Honors Theses

This work investigates the effect of writing routines in public education. Propelled by the words and ideas of Penny Kittle, Cynthia Urbanski, Ralph Fletcher, and many more, a study was completed with high school aged students to find the correlation between writing routines and levels of writing apprehension. These students were given The Daly-Miller Test as a pretest via Google Forms at the start of the study. After responding to a series of five-minute writing prompts over the course of several days, students were given a post-test of the same survey to determine if changes in writing apprehension had occurred. …

A Focus On Face-To-Face Communication As A Source Of Relational Life And Renewal Of Community Within The Church, Ronald Edwin Hammer

DMin Project Theses

Increased digital engagement at the cost of in-person interactions has negatively impacted communal life in the Gateway City Church — St. Charles Ministry. Amid an increase in online connectivity, relational connections have suffered as church members add more and more to their already busy schedules. Research has noted multiple ways in which this significant drift from inperson engagement has brought harm to people’s overall health. The literature demonstrates a key root of this phenomenon to be widespread efforts to incorporate digital church engagement in an attempt to supply convenient access to spiritual resources. This tension between convenience and suffering relational …

From Center Stage To Starting Wage: Structuring Salary Transparency Legislation To Benefit The Performing Arts Industry, Emma Taylor

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Solution-Focused Brief Group Counseling As An Effort To Reduce Phubbing Behavior Among High School Students, Awalya Siska Pratiwi, Arbin Janu Setiyowati, Im Hambali, Siti Syazwani Zulkuple

Jurnal Kajian Bimbingan dan Konseling

The act of phubbing has been observed to disengage from their surroundings, often finding greater comfort in solitude with their mobile phones. The research objective was to ascertain the efficacy of solution-focused brief group counseling to reduce phubbing behavior in high school students. This study employed a quasi-experimental quantitative research methodology with a pretest-posttest control group design. A total of 10 students, exhibiting a high level of phubbing behavior, were divided into two groups: the experimental group and the control group. The results of the Two-Independent-Sample Test-Mann-Whitney U test are presented in the Asymp .sig column, with a value of …

Investigative Needle Core Biopsies Support Multimodal Deep-Data Generation In Glioblastoma, Kenny K H Yu, Sreyashi Basu, Gerard Baquer, Ryuhjin Ahn, Jennifer Gantchev, Sonali Jindal, Michael S Regan, Zaki Abou-Mrad, Michael C Prabhu, Marc J Williams, Alicia D D'Souza, Seth W Malinowski, Kelsey Hopland, Yuval Elhanati, Sylwia A Stopka, Alexei Stortchevoi, Charles Couturier, Zhong He, Jingjing Sun, Yulong Chen, Alexsandra B Espejo, Kin Hoe Chow, Smitha Yerrum, Pei-Lun Kao, Brittany Parker Kerrigan, Lisa Norberg, Douglas Nielsen, Vinay K Puduvalli, Jason Huse, Rameen Beroukhim, Betty Y S Kim, Sangeeta Goswami, Adrienne Boire, Sarah Frisken, Michael J Cima, Matthias Holdhoff, Calixto-Hope G Lucas, Chetan Bettegowda, Stuart S Levine, Tejus A Bale, Cameron Brennan, David A Reardon, Frederick F Lang, E Antonio Chiocca, Keith L Ligon, Forest M White, Padmanee Sharma, Viviane Tabar, Nathalie Y R Agar

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive primary brain cancer with few effective therapies. Stereotactic needle biopsies are routinely used for diagnosis; however, the feasibility and utility of investigative biopsies to monitor treatment response remains ill-defined. Here, we demonstrate the depth of data generation possible from routine stereotactic needle core biopsies and perform highly resolved multi-omics analyses, including single-cell RNA sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, phosphoproteomics, T-cell clonotype analysis, and MHC Class I immunopeptidomics on standard biopsy tissue obtained intra-operatively. We also examine biopsies taken from different locations and provide a framework for measuring spatial and genomic heterogeneity. Finally, we investigate the …

Hybrid Bermudagrass Drought Tolerance In A Cool-Season Climate, Ashley J. Beazer

Theses and Dissertations

Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) (KBG) is the most commonly grown cool-season C3 turfgrass. However, as global temperatures rise, KBG struggles to tolerate higher temperatures, leading to increased irrigation demands--a growing concern in arid and semi-arid regions facing escalating drought conditions. In contrast, hybrid bermudagrass (HBG; Cynodon dactylon [L.] Pers. x Cynodon transvaalensis Burtt Davy), a warm-season C4 grass, has demonstrated promising adaptability in traditionally cool-season climates. Since 2008, HBG has been successfully grown with minimal winterkill in Provo, UT, USA, and is now being considered for broader adoption in similar climates. Two separate studies were conducted to evaluate the …

Fractal Dimension And Entropy Analysis Of Medical Images For Knn-Based Disease Classification, Krishna Mahapatra, Selvakumar R

Baghdad Science Journal

The study of medical image-based disease detection has witnessed a notable surge in interest and success with computational methods. This work proposes a novel framework to detect diseases at earlier stages from medical images, using mathematical model and Machine Learning. Introduce two new quantitative measures for COVID-19 and Tumor disease detection: image uncertainty based on Shannon entropy and image complexity based on fractal dimension. Our result demonstrated that in COVID-19 positive images exhibited skewed pixel distribution due to the hazy regions resulting in lower entropy values for diseased cases compared to healthy ones. The second quantity, fractal dimension was measured …

Facebook Comments-Based Assessment Model For Food Product Companies Using Four Machine Learning Methods With Arabic/Iraqi Lexicon, Raad Sadi Aziz, Sura Mazin Ali, Ahmed T. Sadiq

Baghdad Science Journal

People's need for food is increasing day after day due to the large population increase that has occurred in human society, which has led to a significant increase in the activity of food product manufacturing companies in the world. Hence the necessary need to evaluate the performance of food production companies. We found that the best way to evaluate the performance of these companies is through social media comments, because it is the newest and most common method among people. In this paper, 4 machine learning techniques were relied upon to evaluate participants' comments in evaluating food production companies after …

Essays In Macroeconomics, Manu Garcia

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is organized into three chapters, each offering novel insights into macroeconomic theory and practice. While the chapters address distinct phenomena, a common thread runs throughout: each study examines a transmission mechanism---whether of monetary shocks, normative change, or academic strategies---and underscores the importance of heterogeneity and dynamic adjustment in macroeconomic outcomes. In Chapter 1, I explore one of the most direct channels of monetary policy transmission---the refinancing window in the housing market. By exploiting comprehensive mortgage data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) spanning several decades, the analysis identifies episodes of heightened refinancing activity as quasi-natural experiments. Regions …

Citizens United: The 2010 Crisis In The Marketplace Of Ideas, Abbagayle Grace Madanat

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

In Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the Supreme Court ruled that corporations, like individuals, have First Amendment rights, enabling limitless corporate spending on political advocacy. This decision, made in the name of free speech, discounted concerns about corruption and destabilized the marketplace of ideas by granting corporations disproportionate influence and effectively drowning out citizens’ voices. I demonstrate how Citizens United deviated from legal precedents and the Framers' intentions for the First Amendment. Drawing from On Liberty, I argue that John Stuart Mill, one of history’s greatest free speech advocates, would have opposed the ruling, recognizing its distorting effects. I further …

The Power Of Personalization: How Tailored Marketing Drives Consumer Engagement, Roberto Alonso-Guma

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

Personalized marketing uses consumer data and advanced technologies to deliver highly individualized content and offers, reshaping traditional one-size-fits-all strategies. Over time, brands have transitioned from broad campaigns to data-driven efforts capable of catering to personal preferences. Consumer engagement evolves beyond basic clicks or purchases, encompassing emotional connection, brand loyalty, and sustained lifetime value. This thesis examines the evolution of personalization and investigates metrics to assess effectiveness. It also addresses the core strategies and ethical concerns of consumers. Ultimately, this work argues that personalized marketing significantly enhances consumer engagement and loyalty by creating individualized experiences grounded in responsible data usage and …

Study Group Environments And Their Connection To Study Plans And Strategies, Tatyanna Caputo

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

Students have a mental image of how they intend to study but may fail to anticipate possible distractions or unexpected obstacles. A potential solution is for students to collaborate in study groups. If students fear disappointing their fellow peers, they may be more likely to fulfill their intended plans. In addition, studying in groups may encourage the use of active study strategies. In this study, college students reported their upcoming study plans, which were then analyzed to see if students planned to work with others and use stronger study strategies. We correlated their plans with the students’ later self-reports on …

How Effective Are Machine Learning Algorithms In Enhancing Marketing Strategies?, Kassidy Dunn

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

In recent years, machine learning algorithms have become a vital tool in marketing, yet their impact remains underexplored. This study investigates the mechanisms and applications of machine learning algorithms in marketing strategies, assessing whether they benefit or restrict the effectiveness of marketing strategies. Through relevant research and case studies, we argue that while machine learning-driven marketing offers measurable benefits in personalization and return on investment, its implementation must be balanced with ethical considerations to avoid biased outcomes.

Digital Discourse On Alzheimer’S Disease: A Text Analysis Of Crosscultural Sentiments In Online Communities, Maryam Imran

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological condition characterized by a significant decline in cognitive function. Due to its severe effects and the absence of a cure, early diagnosis and treatment are crucial for slowing its progression. My project examines how cultural perceptions of Alzheimer’s disease are reflected in digital discourse. Using Voyant, a text analysis tool, and the NRC Emotion Lexicon, I analyzed Reddit discussions from South Asian, East Asian, and North American individuals, categorizing their posts into three themes: diagnosis perceptions, treatment decisions, and family/social dynamics and classifying sentiments as negative, positive, or neutral to gain a deeper understanding of …

The Impact Of Corruption On Lebanon's Governmental Institutions And The Connection To Terrorism, Joseph Mansour

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

This thesis explores how systemic corruption in Lebanon, deeply rooted in sectarian power structures and elite dominance, has eroded governance, exacerbated socioeconomic inequalities, and created vulnerabilities conducive to terrorism. Applying Dennis F. Thompson’s institutional theory of corruption alongside Seamus Miller’s normative and causal frameworks, I analyze how resource mismanagement, elite capture, and governance failures have degraded public trust and diminished state capacity. Drawing on empirical case studies—including the Beirut Port explosion, the failure of Electricité du Liban, and the manipulation of foreign aid—I demonstrate how corruption has weakened institutional legitimacy and contributed to national insecurity. The study concludes by advocating …

The Potential Of Brain Organoids In Addressing The Heterogeneity Of Synucleinopathies, Xiao-Jun Diao, Claudio Soto, Fei Wang, Yu Wang, Yun-Cheng Wu, Abhisek Mukherjee

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Synucleinopathies are a group of diseases characterized by neuronal and glial accumulation of α-synuclein (aSyn) linked with different clinical presentations, including Parkinson's disease (PD), Parkinson's disease with dementia (PDD), Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) and Multiple system atrophy (MSA). Interestingly, the structure of the aSyn aggregates can vary across different synucleinopathies. Currently, it is unclear how the aSyn protein can aggregate into diverse structures and affect distinct cell types and various brain regions, leading to different clinical symptoms. Recent advances in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)-based brain organoids (BOs) technology provide an unprecedented opportunity to define the etiology of synucleinopathies …

Effect Of Asphalt Content On Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrum And Aging Evaluation Of Asphalt Mixtures, Chenyue Mei, Wei Wang, Junan Shen, Jinkun Sun, Yilin Xu, Jia Che

Civil Engineering & Construction: Faculty Publications

The aging of asphalt mixtures has a significant impact on the service life of asphalt pavements. Currently, the commonly employed method for assessing aging involves the extraction of asphalt from asphalt mixtures using the Abson method. However, this method is known to be detrimental to the extracted asphalt samples, time-consuming, and environmentally unfriendly. This study explored a novel non-destructive method for assessing asphalt aging, known as low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LF-NMR). It primarily investigated the influence of asphalt content in asphalt mixtures on the patterns of LF-NMR spectra. Specifically, it examined the effect of asphalt content on LF-NMR spectra in …

Improving Access To Mental Health Care Using Telehealth, Lavern Palmer

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

More than half of adults with mental illness in the United States live in mental health deserts—geographic areas with limited access to mental health services and persistent barriers to care. This study investigates the impact of telehealth implementation on patient no-show rates at a rural community clinic in Georgia. The aim was to determine whether the use of telehealth for psychiatric care would decrease the no-show rate of mental health appointments. A retrospective analysis was conducted using patient attendance logs collected 12 weeks before and after the implementation of telehealth services. Quantitative data were analyzed using a Pearson correlation to …

Fact-Based Counter Narrative Generation To Combat Hate Speech, Brian Wilk, Homaira Huda Shomee, Suman Kalyan Maity, Sourav Medya

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Online hatred has become an increasingly pervasive issue, affecting individuals and communities across various digital platforms. To combat hate speech in such platforms, counter narratives (CNs) are regarded as an effective method. In recent years, there has been growing interest in using generative AI tools to construct CNs. However, most of the generative models produce generic responses to hate speech and can hallucinate, reducing their effectiveness. To address the above limitations, we propose a counter narrative generation method that enhances CNs by providing non-aggressive, fact-based narratives with relevant background knowledge from two distinct sources, including a web search module. Furthermore, …

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 04.28.25, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Notre Dame Law School Hosts Inaugural Affinity Alumni Reunion Weekend
• Yusef Salaam shares message of justice, faith, and legacy at Notre Dame Law School
• American Constitution Society selects ND Law's Varun Cidambi as a 2025 Next Generation Leader
• Faculty profile: Professor Svitlana Khyliuk, leading expert in criminal justice and the European human rights system

Faculty Briefs

• Last week, Paolo Carozza was interviewed by a variety of news outlets in connection with 11 new published decisions by the Meta Oversight Board.
• Carter Snead appeared over the weekend on LiveNOW from FOX in a ten-minute interview about the direction …

Ai-Assisted Model-Guided Image Reconstruction Methods For Photoacoustic And Ultrasound Computed Tomography, Luke Joseph Lozenski

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) and ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) are two emerging medical modalities that hold great promise for both pre-clinical and clinical imaging applications, including cancer diagnosis and management. PACT is a hybrid imaging modality that combines benefits from both optical and acoustic imaging to provide high contrast images of biological absorbers. USCT is an ultrasound imaging modality that provides high-resolution quantitative images of acoustic properties utilizing accurate physics models. Both PACT and USCT can be applied for monitoring or diagnosis of cancer and are non-invasive and radiation free. However, both imaging modalities are in the early stages of …

Interference Management For Next-Generation Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, Jie Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The exponential growth of wireless devices and bandwidth-intensive applications has intensified the demand for efficient spectrum utilization, exposing the limitations of traditional static spectrum allocation schemes. Next-generation spectrum sharing has emerged as a transformative solution to enhance spectrum efficiency by enabling multiple wireless systems to coexist opportunistically in the same frequency band and geographic area. However, such dynamism introduces significant challenges, particularly in interference management, which is critical to enabling reliable coexistence, ensuring access priority, and building mutual trust across diverse applications. This thesis advances interference management by developing advanced techniques for interference prediction, monitoring, and control in dynamic spectrum …