Digital Commons Network^™

Ailan Zhu V. Attorney General United States Of America

2025 Decisions

Agency

Place, History, And Memory: New York City’S World’S Fairs In Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Peter Conolly-Smith

Open Educational Resources

This proposal for an intermediate-level History seminar taps into students’ memory, sense of place, and history skills by focusing on a space many of them already know: Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. From its origins as wetlands converted in the early twentieth century to a dumping ground for ashes memorialized in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and on to its later incarnation as the site of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs, the park’s history and those of the two fairs—richly documented, all—provide ample material for a place-based seminar that utilizes multiple aspects of experiential learning.

While all the reading and …

Global Development Theories At Your Doorstep, Jorge A. Alves

Open Educational Resources

This resource is an assignment for a course on the politics of international development (PSCI 230). This assignment will likely be a summative assignment either at the end of the first unit (where I discuss the different theories / approaches to development over time) or perhaps a substitute for the midterm exam. The goals of the assignment are A) for students to localize and critically ground existing global theories of development in their own lived experience / communities, and B) critically reflect on core assumptions and implications about the different conceptualizations of development (especially to see how these approaches might …

The Comment, November 20, 2025, Bridgewater State University

The Comment

No abstract provided.

Interview No. 1798, Alvaro Sauza

Combined Interviews

This oral history interview was conducted with Alvaro Sauza, age 81, a pastor, migrant minister, engineer, and founder of Adelante Naturopathic Center. Born in Monterrey, Mexico, he recounted his childhood faith, his family’s early connection to Adventism, and the spiritual calling that led him to migrate to the United States. He described discovering his hearing impairment while attempting to study English in seminary, which made learning the language nearly impossible and shaped the rest of his ministry. Despite speaking almost exclusively Spanish and navigating daily life with only a few English words, he built a long, border-centered pastoral career, preaching …

Creating An Iot User Centric Security And Privacy Label, Luke Joseph Gleba

Theses and Dissertations

Concerns for cybersecurity awareness and training in the public have been rising at astronomical rates over the past few years. People globally have entered a critical intersection with computers. Computers are being used in everyday life, and users do not have an easy way to understand their own cyber risk. Consumers deserve to know how secure their new Internet of Things (IoT) system is in a quick, efficient way before they purchase the device and while they own it. The following research looks to improve on ideas for the criteria and the development of a security label. Few prototypes currently …

Sex Differences In Self-Medication Patterns And Stress, Darin Challacombe, Paterson Romero

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective: The current study sought to find out to what degree the linkage exists between sex, stress levels, and self-medication activities. Method: We used an anonymous survey in both English and Spanish and surveyed 615 participants, of which the average age was 36.5 years. For gender, participants coded themselves as “male” (n = 350) and “female” (n = 243). We did not request participants to code ethnicity. We used a demographics questionnaire, a list of substances used for self-medication along with some questions about self-medication activities, and the Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen & Williamson, 1988). Results: We found a significant …

Navigating Structure, Function, And Stability: Bridging Immunotherapy And Protein Engineering In The Era Of Machine Learning, Christopher J. Haynie

Theses and Dissertations

The immune system is a remarkably adaptive network, yet it often fails to function optimally due to evasion strategies of pathogens or mutated cells. Many of these evasion strategies involve alterations in protein expression and function. Protein design is an area of computational biology with potential applications in improving protein function and therapeutic protein engineering. This thesis explores methods to enhance immune function and protein design across multiple scales, from molecular engineering of antibody fragments and chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to cellular immune responses, and computational approaches for protein structure optimization. We characterize Thymidine Kinase 1-specific single-chain antibodies, highlighting both …

Final Assignment - Group Performance, Asya Gorovits

Open Educational Resources

The final assignment invites students to collaboratively devise and perform a site-specific, immersive theatrical experience in the ground floor of the Music Library. Working in groups, students will create a 7-minute mini-scene that engages with the space, considers audience sensory and emotional experience, and draws on techniques from twentieth-century avant-garde movements as well as insights from their midterm fieldwork. Through workshops, rehearsals, and a public performance, students practice creative collaboration, spatial analysis, and experiential design. The project emphasizes process, responsibility, and teamwork, enabling students to apply course concepts in embodied ways while developing practical skills in directing, performing, and devising. …

Midterm Assignment, Asya Gorovits

Open Educational Resources

This midterm assignment invites students to investigate theatricality beyond traditional theatre spaces by attending and analyzing a live, non-theatrical event such as a concert, religious service, festival, sports game, tour, or audio-guided experience. Through a 4–5 page reflective paper and a brief oral presentation, students will observe audience behavior, spatial dynamics, and implicit rules of participation, and relate these observations to early anti-realist theatrical movements discussed in class. The assignment develops close observation, critical thinking, and communication skills while encouraging students to connect personal experience with historical avant-garde practices and to contribute to a collaborative exploration of how performance operates …

Semaglutide Use Before Single-Level Lumbar Fusion Associated With Fewer Readmissions And 90-Day Costs, Mitchell K. Ng, Paul G. Mastrokostas, Ariel N. Rodriguez, Abigail Razi, Leonidas E. Mastrokostas, Ahmed K. Emara, Brian T. Ford, Jacquelyn J. Xu, Jonathan Dalton, Rajkishen Narayanan, Christopher K. Kepler, Alan S. Hilibrand, Alex R. Vaccaro, Jad Bou Monsef, Afshin E. Razi

Rothman Institute Papers

CONTEXT: Semaglutide, a glucagon-like protein-1 receptor agonist used in diabetes and obesity management, has demonstrated perioperative benefits in other surgical populations. However, its role in spine surgery remains unclear.

AIMS: This study aims to evaluate whether patients undergoing single-level lumbar fusion demonstrate: (1) fewer medical complications; (2) surgical complications; and (3) healthcare utilization as measured by readmissions and costs.

SETTINGS AND DESIGN: A retrospective cohort study using a national claims database from 2010 to 2021.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Patients with diabetes mellitus undergoing single‑level lumbar fusion were identified and matched 1:5 using propensity scores based on age, sex, body mass …

Hide And Seek: Offshore Financial Centers And Targeted Sanctions, Menevis Cilizogula, Chelsea Estancona

Faculty Publications

The movement of capital across borders has never been easier, as evidenced by the recent proliferation of offshore financial services. But these services are a double-edged sword: while boosting economic efficiency, they can also facilitate illicit financial activity. In this paper, we discuss the symbiotic relationship between financial liberalization and the pursuit of financial anonymity by secrecy-seeking actors. We examine a hide-and-seek dynamic between governments increasing monitoring of international finance and actors seeking anonymity via offshore financial centers. Under what conditions can international financial monitoring have the unintended consequence of increasing the use of poorly regulated and opaque offshore financial …

Back To Basics: Empowering Our Patient Support Team Members As Healthcare Leaders, Colleen Coyne, Elizabeth Thachanalil Xavier, Cristina Romancyck

Biennial Convention (CONV)

This presentation explores "Patient Care Basics," a transformative orientation session designed to equip newly onboarded patient support staff with knowledge, skills, and confidence to deliver exceptional patient-centered care. A needs assessment revealed a gap regarding leadership and patient-centered care. This program addresses the vital role of patient support team members by adapting adult learning principles and foundational patient care concepts. We identified the unique needs of these often first-time healthcare workers by collaboration with stakeholders.

"Patient Care Basics" utilizes a two-part, session-based approach. The first session immerses participants in a collaborative hospital leadership simulation. Working in small groups, participants establish …

The Effects Of Eliminating Idiomatic American English From High-Stakes Nursing Examinations, Timothy Michael Parker

Biennial Convention (CONV)

Background: In the United States, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) health care providers are important to the nursing workforce but often face challenges when taking the NCLEX-RN examination. This study evaluated the effects of removing slang and words with multiple meanings from high-stakes examination questions.

Method: This study used a quantitative, experimental posttest-only control group design and included a convenience sample of 169 nursing students from a college in southern Florida.

Results: Nursing students per-formed significantly better on the experimental (M = 79.9 [7.48]) than on the control examination (M = 75.08 [10.51]), t(151.8) = 2.973, p = …

Mortality And Immortality: Reconsidering Anglo-American Perspectives In Light Of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, And Jonas, Mehrzad Ali Moin

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation addresses fundamental questions surrounding mortality and does so existentially. Of central concern is what it means to be mortal, the value of mortality, how we ought to relate to it, whether immortality is preferable to mortality, and what moral obligations can be derived from our mortality. By engaging thinkers such as Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Jonas, Epicurus, and contemporary anglophone philosophers, this project seeks to challenge prevailing attitudes towards death. Through a meta-philosophical lens, I argue for the value of mortality as a shaper of the meaningfulness of existence, and for the cultivation of what I call ‘genuine mortality consciousness’ …

Queens College Paranormal Investigation, Ash Marinaccio

Open Educational Resources

This two-week module for MEDST 343W (Nonfiction Forms) invites students to explore the “paranormal” as a nonfiction form through experiential, critical, and creative engagement. Framing paranormal investigation as a documentary and narrative practice, the module examines how the genre functions across media (particularly television, podcasts, and documentary film) and how it intersects with questions of belief, storytelling, evidence, and place.

Through a site-based paranormal investigation on the Queens College campus, students will engage directly with the conventions and techniques used in nonfiction media to construct truth-claims, stage suspense, and shape narrative authority. Students will document, interpret, and reflect on their …

Local And Community History – Ten Blocks, Johnathan Thayer

Open Educational Resources

Description

Walk or otherwise move through physical space ten blocks (or its equivalent) in any direction from wherever you call home. Take note of the component parts that make up your locality, including the weekly topics on our syllabus (nature, parks, cemeteries, burial grounds, buildings, restaurants, bars, theaters, temples, schools, and governance). Make a list of the histories of these components that you know, and a list of the histories that you wish you knew more about.

Where I plan to use this resource

In my LBSCI class Local and Community History Methods. This will be the first assignment of …

Dimensions Of Queens Culture / The Personality Of Queens, Claudia Brumbaugh

Open Educational Resources

1. Description of the resource: This assignment will be given early in the semester, and will be due near the end of the semester, scaffolded into steps over the semester:
   1. Via descriptive writing, define one of five, cultural dimensions / Big 5 traits. Then, define the dimension / trait in terms of the local conditions in Queens (e.g., what it means more specifically in the context of Queens).* You can pick the level of analysis for “Queens”. It could be QC, or neighborhood, or the entire borough. Next, place your level of Queens analysis into historical context, describing past movements/events, and …

The Cowl - V. 89 N. 9 - November 20, 2025

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol. 89 No. 9 - November 20, 2025. 24 pages.

Virtual Reality In Esl Teaching And Learning In A Hybrid Learning Environment In The Uae, Basma Abdulla Abri

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

This study investigates the impact of Virtual Reality (VR) on the oral proficiency of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It also explores the perceptions of students and their instructor regarding the use of VR as a tool for language learning. The research was conducted in an English Communications program at a higher education institution in the UAE, with 44 Emirati students divided into a control group and an experimental group. The control group practiced speaking using traditional classroom methods, while the experimental group engaged in communicative activities through VR environments. A mixed-methods …

The Social History Of Queens And Brooklyn Research Project, Kara M. Schlichting

Open Educational Resources

“The Social History of Queens and Brooklyn Research Project” is a research assignment that culminates in an original research paper. Students will research a topic of their interest related to 20th century social history in two of the city's outer boroughs, Queens and/or Brooklyn. The goal is to explore everyday histories of regular people, including how ordinary people experienced major events (political, social), the institutions that shape peoples’ lives, cultural practices, and family and community dynamics in New York City in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Place, Space, And Landscape: Discovering Queens Through Community Music And Performing Arts, Claudia Calì

Open Educational Resources

Place, Space, and Landscape: Discovering Queens through Community Music and Performing Arts is a graduate-level course designed to explore how music, dance, and theater can engage, reflect, and transform local communities through a critical pedagogy of place (Gruenewald, 2003) and service-learning experiences (Mitchell, 2008).

Intended for graduate students in music, visual, and performing arts, this interdisciplinary course blends theory and practice to help students: (1) gain awareness of the spatial dimensions of their artistic experience; (2) build meaningful connections and relationships of care with local communities; and (3) engage with the concept of reinhabitation (Gruenewald, 2003), situating learning within specific …

Environmental Justice And Warehouse Pollution In New York City, Natalie Bump Vena

Open Educational Resources

I am preparing a class module that will help students learn about environmental (in)justice, air pollution attendant to urban warehouses, and city policymaking. The primary learning outcomes will be:

1. Apply the concepts of environmental racism and environmental justice to the problem of NYC’s warehouse facilities and the resulting movements to mitigate their pollution.
2. Read and analyze legal documents.
3. Analyze the extent to which an individual’s interests and experiences shape their policy positions.
4. Evaluate the efficacy of proposed city legislation and zoning changes in advancing environmental justice in communities living with warehouses.

This project engages Queens by considering how proposed citywide …

Queens Mindscapes: A Digital Field Research Project, Shonelle George

Open Educational Resources

This Open Educational Resource (OER) is designed for an undergraduate Introduction to General Psychology course at Queens College, CUNY. Titled “Queens Mindscapes: A Digital Field Research Project,” this assignment is part of a module that engages students in real-world psychological research grounded in the diverse communities of Queens, New York. Drawing from the Noba module from the course textbook, “Conducting Psychology Research in the Real World”, this resource emphasizes experiential learning through ethical, place-based inquiry.

Students will select a Queens neighborhood undergoing social, economic, or cultural change and use real-world research methods such as diary entries, experience sampling, or oral …

Engaging With The Archives To Engage With Our Communities, Andrea Efthymiou

Open Educational Resources

This resource offers an assignment sequence for a 200-level writing class. As a variable topic course broadly titled “Writing for Special Fields,” I have flexibility in terms of course content. I ground this course in theories of community writing, where students will learn about how people have written about and for their communities. The resource supports students engagement with their communities, starting with an introduction to QC’s archives. specifically the “LIfe at Queens College” archive, as a way to tell a story about place. Students will then be invited to tell a story about a community to which they belong …

Exploring Cultural Diversity In Queens, Line A. Saint-Hilaire

Open Educational Resources

In this course, students examine Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) and how it can be applied in classrooms. This assignment builds foundational knowledge about the diverse cultural communities of Queens, NY, supporting discussions of CRP’s significance and use in schools.

Working in groups of 3–4, students will select one of Queens’ seven educational districts to explore. Each group will identify a cultural group within that district, conduct research, and visit the area where the group is predominantly located. During their visit, students will observe, take photos, speak with community members, and explore culturally relevant music or another significant aspect (e.g., a …

Queens: An Urban Palimpsest, Lee Norton

Open Educational Resources

Overview:

“Queens: an Urban Palimpsest” is a 2-3 week module about community archives, primary source research, and the importance of place in collective memory. It is centered around the digitally-accessible archival documents hosted by the Queens Historical Society in Flushing, NY.

This resource is offered in three parts: most substantially, five class sessions, written up as instructor scripts; second, a list of additional resources to scaffold the module, which, in its initial design and implementation, kicks off the second of three units in my College Writing I course; and, lastly, an outline of several possible ways of continuing beyond this …

English 130: Writing About The Literature Of Queens (Essay Sequence), Kate Schnur

Open Educational Resources

Source Description — Attached is a draft of a new essay sequence for English 130 (Composition II, Writing About Literature). The traditional essay sequence for this class is: 1. a close reading essay, 2. an analysis of a text through a lens, and 3. a research essay. I have shaped the sequence around a group of literary texts about Queens (you will see a provisional list on the essay 1 prompt) and a small selection of secondary sources about Queens. The first essay is a close reading assignment of one of the literary texts we will read in the first …

Assignment Prompt: Presentation On The Arts In New York City, Caroline K. Hong

Open Educational Resources

I will be creating a prompt for a presentation assignment for a first-year Macaulay Honors College course, Honors 125 (also known as Seminar 1): The Arts in New York City, which I usually teach every fall. Students will be required to present on a specific art form, artist, artwork, or arts institution/organization from their neighborhood or community. The format will be a PechaKucha presentation, which consists of a slideshow that shows 20 slides or images, each for 20 seconds, and the slides advance automatically as the presenter talks along with the slides.

The goals of this assignment are for students …

Creating An Ofrenda, Sara Hinojos

Open Educational Resources

You do not need to be Mexican to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). What you need however is a deep and thoughtful cultural understanding of the practice. This lesson plan teaches students what Dia de los Muertos is, the influence of colonialism (past and present), how mainstream media understands the celebration in the U.S., and how local communities honor the celebration. This approach is from a media studies perspective and a particular focus on art, specifically altar making or making an ofrenda. Writer, philosopher, tejana Gloria E. Anzaldúa details that altars are “‘the sanctuary of the …