Digital Commons Network^™

Ice Castles, Jacqueline Keren

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Variations, Leandro Fefer

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Blue Porch, Bill Stenson

Valparaiso Fiction Review

No abstract provided.

Exploring Hindrances To Artistic Expression In The High School Art Classroom, Meagan Matticks

Art 895 Research Papers

This qualitative phenomenological research study focuses on the exploration and understanding of the experiences of students who may feel hindered in their creativity and artistic expression in the high school art classroom due to various constraints. The major objectives of this study include researching ways artistic expression and creativity are hindered, including institutional policies, time limitations, resource availability, and other potential external pressures, such as curricular mandates. Data will be gathered through classroom observations, the collection of ninth through twelfth-grade student artwork created under varying levels of constraint, and written student reflections. This study will provide potential insights that result …

Leading Like Jesus In Organizations: Assessing The Practices Of Servant Leadership, Keenan A. Siegal

M.S. in Leadership

This project explores the concept of servant leadership through examining biblical accounts of Jesus Christ’s life and teachings. This project highlights how Jesus exemplified key principles of servant leadership, including humility, empathy, self-sacrifice, and a deep commitment to serving others before himself. The project contrasts Jesus’ leadership style with modern leadership models and discusses its relevance in today’s professional settings. Overall, it aims to explore a transformational approach to leadership in which it that prioritizes compassion, integrity, and the empowerment of others over meeting the needs of the business or serving yourself as a leader.

A Movement In Process: The Effects Of Post-Dictatorship Politics On The Legalization Of Abortion In Argentina, Corinne J. Robbins

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

Access to abortion is an inherently critical aspect of sexual and reproductive rights. That is to say that access to safe abortions is of equal importance to guaranteeing a person’s right to safety during the pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum period. This research primarily focuses on the trajectory of the legalization of abortion in Argentina after the end of the last military Dictatorship (1976-1983), the factors that impacted the movement, and how the movement is received in Argentina today. Argentina’s current administration has been unsupportive of the current abortion law, but past successes demonstrate that abortion rights activists in Argentina are …

Walking In Town: A Study Of Walkability And Its Impacts On Students At Eku, Emma Garland

Honors Theses

This project explores the current state of walkability in Richmond, Kentucky, with a specific focus on connectivity between Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) and essential services in the surrounding community. Utilizing the PRECEDE-PROCEED model as a planning framework, the study combines secondary demographic health data as well as

primary data collection—including student surveys and a walkability audit using a modified Delaware Walkability Assessment Tool—to assess pedestrian infrastructure, access to amenities, and safety concerns. Findings reveal a lack of continuous, safe, and accessible walking routes, limiting physical activity and contributing to broader health disparities. Based on these findings, two primary evidence-based interventions …

Navigating Transparency In The Digital Age: An In-Depth Study Of Disclosure Practices In Influencer Marketing On Social Media., Devan Klarisa Grey

Dissertations - ALL

This study examines the disclosure practices of nano and micro-influencers on TikTok, focusing on their adherence to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines and the impact on transparency in sponsored messaging and regulatory enforcement. With the increasing use of influencer marketing, sponsored content with disclosures has become a critical issue. Regulatory bodies emphasize the need for clear and concise disclosures, yet influencers' compliance varies despite existing guidelines. This inconsistency raises concerns about consumer deception and ethical issues within digital marketing. This research examines influencers' disclosure practices on TikTok through a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The quantitative analysis …

The Rainbow Nation Goes Dark: Unjust Energy Production And Load Shedding In South Africa, Grace E. Yearwood

Student Theses 2015-Present

Numerous inequalities experienced by South Africans right now are a result of the country’s previous apartheid government. One example is South Africa’s current energy distribution, which is extremely inequitable across communities due to the structurally failing energy grid and corruption within the government. Energy distribution in South Africa encapsulates the practice of load shedding, which is essentially controlled rolling electrical blackouts. Chapter One examines quantitative data regarding energy production and distribution in South Africa, including the details of load shedding. Moreover, this chapter explores the negative relationship between energy production, load shedding, and ecosystem services. The quantitative data lays the …

Climate Change Behind Prison Walls: Environmental Justice, Prison Abolition, And Social Welfare, Mia Moody

Student Theses 2015-Present

Unbeknownst to many, human rights violations occur on a large scale behind prison walls. This paper examines some of these violations, especially those exacerbated by climate change, through an environmental lense in order to emphasize the need for social welfare-based solutions in the abolition of the prison industrial complex. It also seeks to illustrate the connection between the environmental justice movement and the prison abolition movement so that marginalized peoples may be free from shouldering disproportionate effects of environmental hazards and imprisonment. This paper is introduced with a brief overview of the human rights violations occurring in prisons. Using quantitative …

Investigating Cross-Modal Temporal Dynamics And Semantic Incongruency In Multisensory Integration, Xiaoxiao Chen

Theses - ALL

Multisensory integration is a pervasive phenomenon in daily life, where our senses (commonly visual and auditory) demonstrate a high degree of interdependence in information processing. This integration is often regarded as automatic and pre-attentional. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential (ERP) component that captures the difference between novel stimuli (deviant, unexpected trials with low frequency) and regularly occurring stimuli (standard, expected trials with high frequency). MMN can detect unexpected sensory inputs and provide information about the timing of how the brain processes information from different modalities. However, limited research has explored MMN’s application in multisensory processing, with most …

From Male Gaze To Feminist Vision: Exploration Of Women’S Roles In Film, Yuping Zeng

Theses - ALL

Every era has its own form of female consciousness awakening. As early as the 1970s, under the influence of feminist movements, a wave of outstanding female-centered films emerged. Simone de Beauvoir stated in The Second Sex: “The representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.” (166) Perhaps as a direct challenge to this so-called “absolute truth” created from the male perspective, female directors often crafted female characters who sharply contrasted with the popular portrayals of women in mainstream cinema. For …

An Examination Of Writing Attitudes And Writing Proficiency Throughout A Performance Feedback Writing Intervention, Sophia Victoria Alderman

Theses - ALL

Writing attitudes, defined as self-assessments of liking or disliking writing (Ekholm et al., 2017), are important motivational factors that can impact writing development. A review of the literature on writing attitudes found that attitudes positively predicted writing achievement and that writing interventions can increase writing attitudes (Ekholm et al., 2017). Existing empirical literature has primarily focused on examining writing attitudes before and after implementing writing interventions, which vary in empirical support (Boscolo et al., 2012; ; Knudson, 1991b, 1992; Seban, 2012). However, no studies have dynamically assessed writing attitudes throughout the course of an evidence-based writing intervention with emerging writers. …

Foraging Connections: Exploring The Relationship Between Optimal Foraging And Phonological Fluency Performance, Kimberly Savika Arjune

Theses - ALL

The semantic fluency task is a timed listing of as many words as possible within a certain category (Bousfield & Sedgewick, 1944). Optimal search requires traversing resource-rich clusters (groups of consecutive responses with shared characteristics) and weighing the benefit of staying in the current cluster, decreasing the rate of return, or switching to a new cluster with more easily accessible resources, but with the cost of search time (Charnov, 1976). According to the marginal value theorem, a switch to a new cluster should occur when the rate of finding words in the current cluster drops below the average rate for …

Waste In The Food Industry: How Farm-To-Table Restaurants Reduce Food Waste And Promote A Circular Economy, Maia J. Werner

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper addresses the issue of food waste and how farm-to-table restaurants use minimal waste through their promotion of a circular economy. Using quantitative and qualitative data, Chapter 1 describes the current issue of wasteful human habits, diving into the causes and effects of food waste and how excessive waste affects our ecosystem. Chapter 2 explores the environmental history of farm-to-table restaurants and how we went from living on farms to living in cities, where there is a demand for more local produce. Chapter 3 delves into the environmental economic aspects of farm-to-table restaurants and their monetary versus non-monetary costs …

Contending With Anxiety In The Elementary Art Classroom, Natalie Petrushonis

Art 895 Research Papers

The focus of this qualitative study is to explore how students are affected by anxiety in the art classroom. The major objective of this research is to explore methods and strategies to support students who suffer from anxiety to prevent it from negatively affecting their art education. The participants of this study will be elementary students within an art classroom who feel anxiety while engaging in artmaking. This case study research will provide insight into approaches that have been utilized to assist students with anxiety in art while observing the effectiveness of these methods with students in an elementary art …

The Effect Of Binaural Beats On Recognition And Recall, Meredith Brown

Honors Theses

Binaural beats, the playing of a different frequency in each ear that the brain perceives as one, have been tested with recognition and recall in forms of simple memory tasks. However, there is a lack of investigation on binaural beats' effect on recognition and recall in more complicated ways of these forms. A relationship between these would be beneficial and additive to the field of music and memory as a significant effect could indicate a place in education for binaural beats. It is hypothesized that binaural beats will have a positive effect on higher forms of recognition and recall. Participants …

Measurements And Modeling Of Phonon-Mediated Quasiparticle Poisoning In Superconducting Qubit Arrays, Eric Yelton

Dissertations - ALL

The realization of a quantum computer that can correct for random errors on its constituent quantum bits, or qubits, is one of the primary goals in the quantum information science community. One of the leading protocols to correct these errors on a quantum processor relies on nearest-neighbor coupling of an array of physical qubits that act collectively as a single logical qubit. Superconducting circuits are a leading implementation of a physical qubit and have been used in some of the first demonstrations of this error correction scheme. A key assumption of this protocol is that errors on the physical qubits …

The Investigation Of Lateral Foraging Patterns In Fin And Sei Whales, Alex Eschmann

Theses - ALL

Lateralization is the specialization that enhances an organism’s survival by dedicating specific tasks to the hemispheres of the brain, strengthening neural pathways to enhance speed and dexterity of task performance. First described in humans in 1861, lateralization has also been observed in non-human organisms where it often plays a critical role in predator-prey dynamics. Lateralized behaviors for prey foraging, social interactions, and communication have been described in some species of marine mammals from across all three distinct taxonomic orders. In the Order Cetacea, toothed and baleen whale species exhibit lateralized foraging behaviors for prey capture. In this study, I investigated …

Hooves, Paws, And Patriarchy: Reimagining A Multispecies Society In Late Chosŏn Korea, Jenny Paszik

Theses - ALL

In late Chosŏn Korea, domesticated animals were more than passive fixtures of human society and culture, but rather active participants in the negotiation of social power dynamics. This paper proposes a species-inclusive reading of Chosŏn society, focusing on the eighteenth century, to expand our understanding from a patriarchal system to a kyriarchal framework. This thesis examines how horses, dogs, and sacrificial animals were enmeshed in intersecting hierarchies of gender and social class in urban and peripheral spaces. I argue that while interactions and conceptions of animals were shaped by the prevailing Confucian worldview, these relationships also worked reciprocally to reinforce, …

Discovery Of Film, Nikou Zabihi

Theses - ALL

In this paper, I introduce my personal journey into film—how I came to fall in love with it, and how my relationship with genres has shaped that passion. I explore how genres helped me shape my understanding of film, guiding the way I interpret and engage with different stories through their distinct characteristics and elements. I will explain why I'm fascinated by genres and how I aspire to blend them in my own creative work to craft unique experiences for my audience. My goal is to evoke connection and catharsis through films that reflect my understanding of genre, drawing from …

Development And Application Of Low-Cost Carbon Dioxide Sensors In An Urban Environment, David Coghiel

Theses - ALL

Advancements in sensor technology have made air quality monitoring platforms more user-friendly, compact, and affordable. This provides new opportunities to monitor areas of interest in environments previously not investigated. The existing elevated I-81 Viaduct that runs through downtown Syracuse, NY is being demolished to be reconstructed as a ground level community grid. The goal of the study was to develop a network of low-cost air quality sensor units to monitor concentrations of carbon dioxide along the viaduct prior to its reconstruction. Multiple low-cost carbon dioxide sensors were purchased and tested under laboratory and field conditions to determine applicability for continuous …

Investigating The Impact Of Contextual Semantic Information On L2 Garden Path Sentence Comprehension, Jiaxing Lin

Theses - ALL

This study investigates whether contextual information aids syntactic reanalysis in garden-path sentences and whether native (L1) English speakers and L1 Chinese learners of English (L2) differ in using such cues. Using a self-paced reading paradigm, 29 participants (5 L1, 24 L2) read sentences varying in syntactic ambiguity and contextual plausibility. Reading times in key disambiguation regions (e.g., auxiliary verb, participles) and comprehension accuracy were analyzed. L1 participants showed longer reading times when context mismatched syntax, indicating context-sensitive online processing consistent with constraint-based models. In contrast, L2 participants showed no significant context effects, suggesting difficulty using context in real-time parsing. No …

Reckoning With An Icon: Exploring The Activism Of Mĩcere Githae Mũgo, Erica Charles Kiduko

Theses - ALL

This thesis examines the activism of Mĩcere Gīthae Mũgo, a distinguished Kenyan literary scholar, playwright, and feminist, whose works remain a vital part of twentieth and twenty-first century liberational struggles across Africa and the diaspora. Through a critical analysis of her literary projects, academic work, and political engagements, this study explores how Mũgo’s intellectual interventions challenged colonial, postcolonial, and patriarchal structures. It draws on feminist, Pan-Africanist, and decolonial theoretical frameworks, to situate career struggles for intellectual freedom, gender justice, and cultural reclamation. The thesis investigates foundational elements of Mugo activism, employing a multi-method qualitative approach: that includes textual analysis, oral …

The Known Unknown, Tevvon Hines

Theses - ALL

Understanding that artists are not obligated to reflect a faithful reality is a realization that is both freeing and intimidating. My graduate filmography is identifiable by its affinity towards fictional narratives that depict the resolution of internal conflicts through intimate relationships and spiritual connections. This thesis investigates my practice by paying close attention to the psychology and philosophy of my screenplays. This is followed by an inspection of my aesthetic approach in order to distinguish their narrative importance and examine subtext. The completed film is then properly defined against the fantasy genre in order to distinguish my narrative choices from …

Decisions From Experience: Beyond The Gap, Nicholas Ryan Pappas

Dissertations - ALL

Across the risk and uncertainty literature, a particular focus has been made on the description-experience gap (DE Gap). The DE Gap creates figurative and literal gaps between description and experience-based choices. Researchers claim that these DE Gaps are problematic for classic models in decision-making research, such as Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT; Kahneman & Tversky, 1992). This has led to a focus on experience-based models instead. However, following a literature review on CPT and the DE Gap, I aimed to test these claims. In fact, throughout three experiments, I demonstrate that the description-based theories need not be tossed away wholly. Instead, …

Towards The Next Generation Of Storage Stack For Nand Flash Memory-Based Systems, Ziyang Jiao

Dissertations - ALL

The explosive growth of data has led to increased attention on NAND flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs), which offer high performance, low power consumption, and significant capacity per unit volume when compared to traditional hard-disk drives (HDDs). However, as NAND flash memory density continues to scale, modern SSDs suffer from what is known as fail-slow symptoms, and their performance degrades over time as they wear out. In this dissertation, we focus on understanding and addressing the performance, reliability, and sustainability challenges of modern flash-based storage systems by modeling key metrics, analyzing the design tradeoffs between these metrics, and optimizing existing storage …

Quasiparticle Poisoning And Mitigation Strategies In Superconducting Qubits, Clayton Larson

Dissertations - ALL

Quantum computers promise to solve currently intractable problems of great interest for a diverse range of applications. For a quantum computer to solve these problems, it must handle occasional errors with quantum error correction, which distributes the quantum information across many physical qubits, increasing resilience. A promising technology for implementing such a system uses superconducting circuits as physical qubits. Standard quantum error correction schemes can accommodate random, local errors, but errors that are correlated across multiple qubits are fatal. Correlated errors can arise from ionizing radiation impacting the device substrate, which creates free charge that can be sensed by the …

Breaking Down Black Beauty: Deconstructing Unsustainable Racist Practices In The Beauty Industry, Jaron Givens

Student Theses 2015-Present

The glitter of the beauty industry creates an undeniably attractive fantasy. Cosmetics and dermatology allow for finding a new sense of self through beauty. However, is beauty's fantasy world accessible to everyone, specifically the Black dance community? The beauty industry, historically and presently, has disproportionate effects on people of color communities like the Black dance community. The unsustainable practices and toxic products in the beauty industry hinder the health of Black individuals at different rates than other racial counterparts. There is still work to be done in deconstructing the racist practices of the beauty industry and in facilitating environmentally sustainable …

Breaking Down Black Beauty: Deconstructing Unsustainable Racist Practices Within The Beauty Industry, Jaron Givens

Student Theses 2015-Present

The glitter of the beauty industry creates an undeniably attractive fantasy. Cosmetics and dermatology allow for finding a new sense of self through beauty. However, is beauty's fantasy world accessible to everyone, specifically the Black dance community? The beauty industry, historically and presently, has disproportionate effects on people of color communities like the Black dance community. The unsustainable practices and toxic products in the beauty industry hinder the health of Black individuals at different rates than other racial counterparts. There is still work to be done in deconstructing the racist practices of the beauty industry and in facilitating environmentally sustainable …