Digital Commons Network^™

The Impact Of The Application Of Disability Ministry And Discipleship Within The Southern Baptist Churches Of Virginia, Minsoo Kim

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative phenomenological study examined how individuals with disabilities serving as church leaders and congregants experienced belonging within Southern Baptist churches in Virginia. The researcher framed the study using Baumeister and Leary’s (2017; 1995) need to belong theory, which posits that human beings possess an innate drive to form and maintain meaningful interpersonal relationships. The researcher examined how belonging was expressed through physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions within congregations engaged in disability ministry and contributing to fulfillment of the Great Commission. The researcher employed purposive sampling to recruit 11 participants from Southern Baptist congregations in Virginia who self-identified as individuals …

Distraction Or Tool? Exploring The Relationship Between Social Media And Practice Habits Of Collegiate Music Students With Adhd, Marianne Nicole Mills

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This qualitative phenomenological study examined the relationship between social media use and the practice habits of collegiate music students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). While social media platforms inspire collaboration, creativity, and educational resources, they also introduce potential distractions and barriers to initiating practice sessions, especially for students with executive functioning challenges. Using an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) framework, five applied music students at a small, private college in Florida participated in semi-structured interviews and kept reflective practice journals for six weeks. Findings indicated that social media served as a dual-purpose influence, supporting learning and community while also increasing procrastination, …

Most Granite Staters Report Good Or Better Mental Health But Anxiety & Depression Higher Than In 2022 4/29/2026, Unh Survey Center

All UNH Survey Center Polls

Three-quarters of Granite Staters rate their mental health as very good or good. Measures of anxiety and depression among Granite Staters have increased since January 2022 and under a quarter report feeling symptoms of loneliness in the past two weeks. A quarter of Granite Staters report high levels of stress, up slightly since January 2022. Politics, international news, and work are the most common contributors to daily stress and residents most often deal with stress by taking action to improve the situation, focusing on self-care, and taking their mind off of the source of stress.

Understanding Public School Montessori Teachers Who Align Their Methods Of Teaching Reading To The Texas Reading Academies: A Phenomenological Study, Christian T. Mcglory

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of the phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of K-3 public Montessori teachers who must align their methods of teaching reading to the Texas Reading Academies. To advance reading achievement for students, teachers must implement evidence-based instructional practices. The theory guiding this study was Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development. The central question for this study was, “What are the experiences of public Montessori teachers who provide reading instruction to students and incorporate reading comprehension strategies through the implementation of Texas Reading Academies?” The data collection process included interviews with 16 teachers who provided reading …

Literacy Nonprofits And Social Media: Advancing An Understanding Of Message Functions And Communication Flows In Online Stakeholder Engagement, Diane M. Goodman

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Countless nonprofit organizations in the United States have worked diligently to increase adequate access to literature and to improve child literacy rates through supplemental programming. Revenue growth in a nonprofit depends largely on the relationships between the organization and the public, yet nonprofits face additional obstacles to achieving strategic organizational goals in comparison with their for-profit counterparts (McGee & Donoghue, 2009). Although the majority of nonprofit organizations have been addressing societal issues at a grassroots level (Carter et al., 2019), most community-based nonprofits have faced challenges expanding to other communities and difficulties in replicating effective stakeholder engagement strategies (Nardini et …

Spiritual Mentoring In Action: Empowering Younger Women In Spiritual Growth Through The Wisdom And Guidance Of Spiritually Mature Women, Elwanda C. Richardson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This researcher presents an action thesis project that examines generational spiritual mentoring among women who are current or former members of Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church of Jesus Christ, with a focus on how structured mentoring can integrate biblical, theological, and apologetic principles into discipleship practices. While mentoring is widely used in academic and professional settings to transfer knowledge, develop skills, and foster personal growth across generations, this study adopts that model to a faith-based context. It emphasized the intentional sharing of Scripture, lived experiences, and a Christ-centered worldview to nurture spiritual maturity. The research investigates the effectiveness of a structured, …

Exploring The Relationship Between Telework Intensity And The Voluntary Or Involuntary Nature Of Physical Work Arrangements Related To Work-Related Rumination, Savannah R. Schwartz

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Work-related rumination occurs when an individual thinks about work during non-work hours. Following the emergence of COVID-19, more employers adopt flexible models of physical working arrangements for their employees that extend beyond traditional on-site (working from a designated business office location) models, such as hybrid (working part of the time from home and part of the time at a designated business office location) and fully remote (working from home all of the time) models. The present non-experimental quantitative, cross-sectional survey study explored the relationship between telework intensity (i.e., the amount of time one spends working remotely), as well as the …

A Qualitative Content Analysis Of The Rhetorical Situation In Aviation Communication, Paris Ernesto-Jason Brown

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Using qualitative content analysis to organize the thematic elements of Bitzer’s (1968) rhetorical situations, the researcher provides actionable insights into reducing errors and improving aviation communication. The problem lies in the gap between aviation communication and rhetorical situations to determine if this theory impacts pilot errors and affects flight safety. Strategies in this area must be improved to ensure effective communication among pilots and between them, control towers, and other contributors in the aviation industry. This dissertation aims to apply rhetorical situations to enhance communication strategies and improve flight safety by analyzing NTSB reports, while using the software, MAXQDA, to …

Predicting Middle School Students’ Attitude Towards Mathematics By Race And Biological Sex After Participating In Open Up Resources Mathematics Curriculum: A Quantitative Study, Sharonna Laquenette Howell

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this quantitative predictive correlational design study was to examine how well race/ethnicity and biological sex predict students’ attitudes toward mathematics among middle school students following participation in the Open Up Resources mathematics curriculum. By conducting this study, the researchers filled a gap in the literature by determining whether the use of the Open Up Resources mathematics curriculum, race, and biological sex predicted students' attitudes toward mathematics. Research on the impact of K-12 Open Education Resources curricula on students’ attitudes toward mathematics was lacking. Participants in this study included middle school students in a North Carolina school district. …

James And Paul: Conflict Or Continuity, Brian Allan Elensky

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This dissertation investigates whether the Epistle of James presents a fundamentally different gospel from Pauline theology, a claim advanced by Robert Eisenman and other scholars who portray James as the leader of a rigorist, non-resurrectional, sectarian movement. The study employs a forensic investigative model shaped by the researcher’s experience as a police officer, combining historical-grammatical exegesis of James with analysis of key New Testament texts, early Christian witnesses such as Eusebius and Hegesippus, and modern scholarship on James, Paul, and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The research concludes that James does not oppose Paul but complements him. James 2:14–26 rejects a …

Health Behaviors Of First-Generation College Students Affected By Acculturation, Angel Camacho Castro

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this qualitative narrative ethnographic study was to understand how acculturation affects health behaviors and wellness of first-generation college students at a state university on the West Coast of the United States. The theory guiding this study was social constructivism theory, proposed by Lev Vygotsky, who claimed behaviors are constructed by social interactions around social settings. This research focused on how students navigated the changes in inherited cultural values of health behaviors and wellness practices affected by mainstream and college cultures. The dissertation investigated challenges first-generation college students faced in an environment that often conflicted with family values …

Leading Like Christ: A Phenomenological Study Of The Biblical Shepherd Motif In Christian Parachurch Executive Leadership, Alex Sefton

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Christian nonprofit parachurch organization executive leaders in southeastern Indiana (i.e., Decatur County and its adjacent counties). For the purpose of this study, executive leaders was defined as those who hold a top-level leadership position at an organization, and Christian nonprofit parachurch organization was defined as an organization designated under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) that advances biblical principles and social welfare. Shepherd-like leadership was generally defined as a leadership style that demonstrates relational care, personal guidance, and protection of well-being, as seen in Psalm …

Building Human-Aware Ai: Learning From And Assisting Human Decision-Makers, Saumik Narayanan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

As artificial intelligence systems become more capable, they are increasingly used not only as standalone problem-solvers, but as systems that learn from and interact with humans. In these settings, success depends not only on the strength of the model in isolation, but also on how well it fits the humans it is trained on or deployed alongside. This dissertation argues that human heterogeneity is a central ingredient in the design of effective human-aware machine learning systems. Rather than treating differences between people as noise to be averaged away, I show that variation in human expertise and preferences can provide useful …

Benefits Of Traffic Reprofiling For Delay Sensitive Networking, Jiaming Qiu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Deterministic networking systems, such as Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) and Deterministic Networking (DetNet), require strict end-to-end delay guarantees while efficiently utilizing limited network resources. Conventional approaches typically focus on fixed traffic profiles, which can lead to suboptimal resource utilization in scheduling or admission control problems. This dissertation investigates traffic reprofiling—the proactive reshaping of traffic arrival patterns—as a complementary mechanism for improving both resource efficiency and delay performance under strict service guarantees. The dissertation consists of three parts. The first part studies bandwidth minimization under hard delay constraints for Service Curve Earliest Deadline First (SCED) schedulers. We show that traffic reprofiling can …

Assessing Hyperlocal And Local Air Quality Through Passive Samplers And Low-Cost Monitors, Yan He

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Air pollution is a major environmental health concern and has been associated with respiratory disease, cardiovascular morbidity, metabolic disorders, premature mortality, and additional adverse health outcomes. Air pollution often exhibits substantial variability at fine spatial scales, yet conventional regulatory monitoring networks are too sparse to resolve neighborhood-level exposure gradients that may exist in many urban and rural communities. Hyperlocal differences in pollutant concentrations—driven by local emission sources, land use characteristics, atmospheric chemistry, and meteorological conditions—can lead to systematic differences in long-term exposure among populations living only short distances apart. Improving exposure characterization therefore requires dense monitoring strategies and spatial modeling …

Acquired Von Willebrand Syndrome From Pathological Cardiovascular Flow, Alice Liu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Acquired von Willebrand syndrome (AVWS) is a bleeding disorder characterized by the loss of high molecular weight von Willebrand factor (VWF) multimers. It is often associated with a wide range of underlying diseases, including individuals who receive mechanical circulatory support (MCS) and myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) patients, yet the mechanical mechanisms remain incompletely understood. In circulation, VWF undergoes force-dependent conformational changes that regulate its susceptibility to cleavage by the metalloprotease ADAMTS13. While elevated shear has long been believed to the main cause, pathological VWF cleavage cannot always be explained by shear alone, suggesting more factors are at play. The goal of …

Lateral Habenula And Dorsal Raphe Neurons Signal Value Computations In Multi-Attribute Decision-Making, Yang-Yang Feng

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Decision-making is a fundamental part of adaptive behavior and can be compromised in psychiatric illness. Humans and animals are continuously presented with objects and opportunities as options to decide between. One challenge is that these options may independently vary along multiple dimensions or attributes that we care about. This can include attributes of physical reward, such as amount, delay, or uncertainty. When these attributes are present, the possibility of an abstract, cognitive reward, advance information to resolve uncertainty, may also motivate our decisions. It is unclear how the brain makes these subjective decisions, trading off between these multiple attributes based …

Revisiting Visualization Literacy: What Standardized Assessments Reveal And Conceal Across Instruments, Cultures, And Ai Systems, Saugat Pandey

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Data visualizations are now a primary medium for public communication, scientific reasoning, and decision-making. By transforming complex data into accessible graphical forms, visualizations are widely assumed to make information comprehensible to broad audiences. Yet the ability to accurately read, interpret, and critically evaluate a visualization, what researchers call visualization literacy, is neither uniform nor universal. It is a learned, multidimensional skill shaped by prior exposure, educational opportunity, and context. While the field has developed standardized instruments to measure visualization literacy, these tools were built under narrow assumptions: participants are typically paid, English-speaking, and recruited from Western online panels. When any …

Smart Kitchen: Towards Real-Time Ai Systems For Cognitive Support In Daily Activities, Ruiqi Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The rapid growth of the aging population and the rising prevalence of Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) highlight the need for continuous, unobtrusive assessment of functional cognition during everyday activities. Vision-based smart home systems offer a promising pathway for monitoring behavior and supporting independent living. However, enabling real-time cognitive assistance remains challenging. It requires not only accurately interpreting complex human behaviors to detect cognitive errors, but also supporting real-time deployment on resource-constrained edge devices and under dynamic wireless network conditions. This dissertation presents Smart Kitchen, an AI-driven system for real-time cognitive error detection through the monitoring of daily cooking activities. Under …

Deep Learning Enhanced Multimodal Endoscopy For Colorectal Cancer: From Real-Time Software Architecture To Clinical Response Assessment, Haolin Nie

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, with a concerning rise in incidence among younger adults. Clinical management is currently shifting toward organ-preserving ``watch-and-wait" strategies for rectal cancer and precision endoscopic resection for early-stage polyps. However, current diagnostic standards, including white-light colonoscopy (WLC) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), lack the resolution and functional specificity to accurately assess the invasion depth of precancerous polyps or to reliably distinguish post-treatment fibrosis from residual viable tumor. This dissertation advances colorectal cancer diagnostics through three integrated contributions: CPU-optimized photoacoustic …

Individualized Models For Perception And Cognition, Dominic Marticorena

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation develops individualized models of perceptual and cognitive behavior, inferring latent capacities from limited data with sufficient efficiency, precision, and generality for person-level prediction. In perception, a nonparametric Bayesian framework for adaptive psychophysics is extended from audition to vision, producing an estimator that recovers dense individualized contrast sensitivity profiles through variational inference, a generalized kernel, and information-guided stimulus selection. A multitask extension enables simultaneous estimation of multiple psychometric fields by exploiting shared latent structure. Transferring this inferential logic to cognition, where relevant dimensions must be supplied by task design rather than physics, requires new measurement infrastructure. A Minecraft-based platform …

Inference-Time Scaling For Robust And Adaptive Computational Imaging, Yuyang Hu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Computational imaging has transformed fields such as medical imaging, computational photography, and remote sensing by combining physical measurement models with advanced image reconstruction algorithms. Two major paradigms have driven significant progress: model-based deep learning (MBDL), which integrates learned priors with physics-based data consistency, and generative models, especially diffusion models, which capture complex image distributions and enable posterior sampling for uncertainty quantification. Despite their success, most existing methods still operate under static inference: they rely on fixed pretrained priors, predetermined sampling procedures, and a fixed forward model during reconstruction. This rigidity limits their robustness in the presence of distribution shift, complex …

Functional And Spatially Specialized Inhibition And Neuromodulation During Learning In The Hippocampus, Gerardo Enrique Molina

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The hippocampus relies on a diverse network of regulatory components for memory formation. Neuromodulators and inhibitory interneurons act in concert with excitatory neurons to control learning. Even within one of these components there is a vast diversity of genetic or chemical composition that may come from unique sources at uniquely timed intervals or events. The goal of this dissertation is to identify specific functional-behavioral attributes of two such examples: parvalbumin (PV)-expressing interneurons and the neuromodulator dopamine, in hippocampal CA1. In separate experiments, I used two-photon microscopy of the calcium sensor, GCaMP, which measures neuronal activity, and GRAB-DA, which reports levels …

An Autism-Centered Analysis Of The Aesthetics And Narrative Of Gene Wolfe’S Book Of The New Sun, Sebastian Peterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2020 - Present

Much of the recent work published within the literary neurodiversity studies field focuses on how certain writing techniques can be viewed as representing the experience of being autistic by influencing the reader so that they experience distinctly autistic patterns of cognition. Likewise, the Book of the New Sun series employs many such techniques within the narrative and prose. This is in addition to the fact that the plot contains elements that mirror the relationship and conflict between those with autism and neuronormative hegemony (that being the ways in which societies oppress, mistreat, and belittle those not deemed “neurotypical”). The goal …

The Right Time For A Synapse To Change: Windows And Mechanisms Of Multiday Training Trials, Rong-Yu Liu, Yili Zhang, Roberta Calvo, Paul Smolen, John H Byrne

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Although learning over multiple days is more effective than a single day of training, the underlying cellular mechanisms of repeated training trials remain poorly understood. With a combination of empirical and computational approaches, we determined a critical time window for a second stimulus block of a multiday training protocol to augment long-term synaptic facilitation (LTF) of the Aplysia sensorimotor synapse and long-term enhancement of neuronal excitability (LTEE), two cellular correlates of learning and memory. A second stimulus block delivered 24 h after the first block significantly enhanced LTF and LTEE, but was without effect at 18 or 32 h. This …

Rosai-Dorfman Disease In A Rare Cardiac Presentation: Left Ventricular Mass Causing Ventricular Tachycardia, Motaz Al Yafi, Swetha Pasala, Valentina Robila, Cory Trankle, Bharadhwaj Kolipakkam, Patricia Nicolato

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Rosai-Dorfman disease (RDD) is a rare, benign histiocytic disorder that most often presents with nodal involvement. Cardiac involvement is exceedingly uncommon and poses significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges.

Case summary: A 51-year-old woman presented with shortness of breath and palpitations and was found to have monomorphic ventricular tachycardia. Imaging revealed a left ventricular mass, and biopsy confirmed RDD. The lesion was surgically excised with cryoablation and CorMatrix reinforcement. The patient recovered uneventfully and remains disease free 25 months postoperatively.

Discussion: RDD with cardiac involvement has been reported in only approximately 25 cases, with very few affecting the left ventricle. …

Isu University Band: April 29, 2026, Lauren N. Bobarsky, Wesley Anderson, Madison Mueller-Howell, Colby Powers, Alexandra Karafotias, Michael Hammon, Sam Kapus, Gunnar Tejes, Jessica Wenc

School of Music Programs

This is the two hundred and fifth program of the 2025-2026 season.

Center for the Performing Arts

April 29. 2026

Wednesday Evening

8:00 p.m.

Cooperation And Conflict: Oswald Veblen And Abraham Flexner, Juan Carvajalino, Della Dumbaugh

Department of Math & Statistics Faculty Publications

In 1929, Caroline Bamberger Fuld and her brother, Louis Bamberger, sold their department stores, Bamberger & Co., at a particularly timely moment. They invested their sizeable fortune in a new academic initiative in America, an institute devoted to research that would go by the name of the Institute for Advanced Study. This paper introduces two colleagues, Abraham Flexner and Oswald Veblen, and explores the cooperation and conflict between them as they worked alongside one another to shape the Institute for Advanced Study and the School of Mathematics within it.

Spartan Daily, April 29, 2026, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2026

Volume 166, Issue 39

Biblical Leadership And Gender: Balancing Cultural Context And Theological Conviction, Lorie Lynn Heath

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

God originally made male and female in His image, imparting to them a shared authority over creation. They were co-heirs equal in purpose, mission, and value. However, cultural practices and patriarchal traditions have long obscured this original biblical design. Consider a qualified young woman in a local church, called, talented, and valued by her congregation, yet repeatedly overlooked for preaching and teaching positions because of her gender. Her story is not unique. This misapplication of Scripture not only harms women but also weakens the body of Christ and impedes the church’s testimony to the gospel. Accurate comprehension of the Bible …