Digital Commons Network^™

Teach In English Or Perish: A Phenomenological Inquiry Into The Lives Of Three Emi Educators, Michela Gronchi

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

Teaching in English Medium Instruction (EMI) programs can significantly reshape educators’ professional identities particularly when English is not their first language. This article summarizes a previously published phenomenological study with three Italian EMI educators in educational linguistics. Drawing on creative fortune lines to trace their experiences, the study showed that participants’ disciplinary field played a central role in their lived identity, intersecting with issues of language teaching and native-speakerist ideologies. The findings also revealed a heightened awareness of multilingual competence across English and other languages, which contributed to identity formation, alongside a pronounced tension between their professional selves expressed in …

Experience Therapy: How Service Experiences Regulate Everyday Negative Affect, Chang Ma Ph.D., Jae Eun Park, Alei Fan, Laurie Wu

Faculty Publications

In today's fast-paced and high-pressure society, maintaining emotional well-being requires effective strategies for managing everyday negative affect. This research examines the role of service experiences in reducing negative affect and introduces experience therapy as a novel strategy for affect regulation. Through a series of studies, we assess the effectiveness of experience therapy and investigate how different service experiences—varying in levels of personal effort involvement and social involvement—contribute to negative affect regulation. The findings demonstrate that experiences requiring high personal effort and social involvement are particularly effective in alleviating negative affect, especially among emotionally stressed individuals. These effects are mediated, respectively, …

Enhancing The Metacognitive Thinking Of Middle-Grade Multilingual Learners: A Design-Based Research Study Leveraging Dialogic Teaching, Renee R. Burns

Dissertations

This study explores how dialogic teaching can enhance metacognition and self-efficacy among middle school multilingual learners (MLs) who face challenges with the academic language demands of literacy tasks. Using a design-based research (DBR) methodology, specifically formative experiment, the Metacognitive Dialogic Teaching Protocol (MDTP) was implemented over seven iterative cycles. The research questions were as follows: How do dialogic interactions impact metacognition in middle-grade MLs? How does Metacognitive Dialogic Teaching affect comprehension development in these students? And how does it influence their self-efficacy? The participants included six middle-grade MLs engaged in a Tier 2 literacy intervention who initially exhibited fake reading …

Indigenous Child Language Research Center Report 3, Saad K’Idilyé, Indigenous Child Language Research Center

Indigenous Child Language Research Center

This report shares some of the preliminary finding of the research work that is being conducted by the Indigenous Child Language Research Center. The ICLRC aims to report to their community partner, Saad K’idilyé, the results of their groundbreaking work. This information is typically delivered in person at a planned meeting. This research is long-term and the data is being prepared for optimal analysis to be shared through published works, workshops, and conference presentations.

Indigenous Child Language Research Report 2, Saad K’Idilyé, Indigenous Child Language Research Center

Indigenous Child Language Research Center

This report shares some of the preliminary finding of the continued research work that is being conducted by the Indigenous Child Language Research Center. The ICLRC aims to report to their community partner, Saad K’idilyé, the results of their groundbreaking work. This information is typically delivered in person at a planned meeting. This research is long-term and the data is being prepared for optimal analysis to be shared through published works, workshops, and conference presentations.

Indigenous Child Language Research Report 1, Saad K’Idilyé, Indigenous Child Language Research Center

Indigenous Child Language Research Center

This report shares some of the preliminary finding of the research work that is being conducted by the Indigenous Child Language Research Center. The ICLRC aims to report to their community partner, Saad K’idilyé, the results of their groundbreaking work. This information is typically delivered in person at a planned meeting. This research is long-term and the data is being prepared for optimal analysis to be shared through published works, workshops, and conference presentations. This is the very first research report that came out of our partnership.

Grapho 2026, Simon Niemtschk

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Grapho’s theme this year, “One Body in Christ”, encourages us to meditate on the ways our faith unites. By our Lord’s sacrifice, all believers are bound together with the resurrected body of Christ. Inspired by the great love God shared with the church as seen in Paul’s letters (Romans 12:4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13), we are freed from sin, death and the power of the devil, and empowered to a life together. Our theme this year invites Christians to consider how our unity is found scripturally, sacramentally, and liturgically.

Sisters Separated: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Relationship Between The Lcms And Wels, Peter Ross

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

There are two prominent confessional Lutheran synods in the United States, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Yet these two groups are not in altar and pulpit fellowship. It often comes as a surprise to many younger members of Missouri Synod congregations that there was a time when the two synods were in altar and pulpit fellowship. As time has gone on however, there seems to be a general warming in the relationship between the two synods. In light of this warming relationship, it is good to look at the past relationship of the two synods, …

The Broken Body, Benjamin Wagner

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

I remember sitting on the dugout bench wishing that I could play the same way the other kids did. They did not need to labor with such great exertion that their lungs might collapse—but I did. I was born with several chronic conditions that made all physical activities exceedingly challenging. For me, sports, exercise, or even playing with other kids always came with complications. I knew, deep down, that something was wrong with me. My body was not as it was meant to be.

An Ode To The “Free Book Shelf”, Henry Eising

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

It is rumored the younger generation does not know those solid joys and lasting pleasures in those ancient treasures. O tempora, O mores! — William Dallmann, My Life When a new mound of books begins to accumulate in some obscure corner of our campus, it is as though new life is stirring. There is excitement when it is brought to our attention that some seminarian of uncommon fortune has been given a set of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Our ears prick up at the hushed mention of some Ancient Christian Commentary volumes that have been acquired, which have also—blessedly—been made available …

Chapel Of Saints Timothy And Titus, Nathaniel Pekari

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Chapel of Saints Timothy and Titus

Jo March And "Me": Self-Recognition And Enchantment In Greta Gerwig's Portrayal Of Literary Ambition In Little Women, Britney R. Wells

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Despite the cinematic success of Greta Gerwig’s 2019 Little Women, literary scholars have yet to compare Gerwig’s directorial moves to Louisa May Alcott’s nineteenth-century novel. Relying on reader-response theory and peer-reviewed literature relevant to Alcott’s text, I examine Gerwig’s statements in interviews following the production of her film, focusing on comments that speak to her subjective response as a reader of Alcott’s novel. Rather than apply reader-response theory to this discussion broadly, I concentrate on what reader-response theorists call self-recognition and enchantment within the context of Gerwig’s response to Alcott’s Little Women. Further acknowledging this paper’s limitations, I …

James Joyce’S “The Dead” And The Irish Nation, Hyrum G. Baird

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper investigates themes of Irish nationalism in James Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” Drawing primarily in Joyce’s 1907 essay “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages” as a source for Joyce's political views at the time he wrote “The Dead,” I outline Joyce’s critique of both Irish nationalism and British Imperialism, which Joyce synthesized into a general contempt for Ireland’s compromised national identity. Benedict Anderson’s theory of nations as “imagined communities” provides a theoretical underpinning for Joyce’s transcendence of nationalism. I argue that both nationalist and anti-nationalist readings of “The Dead” are difficult to resolve with Joyce’s documented political views. …

The Intersection Of Gender And Ecohorror In Poe’S Short Fiction, Ellie Dana

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This article argues that Poe uses female characters to express ecohorrific anxieties and imagine posthumanist ways of being. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe associates Madeline with nature's terrors by describing Madeline's disease as distinctly physical and coordinating her exit from her tomb with a raging storm. In "Berenice," Poe uses the violations of the titular character's body to enter into conversations about the rapid extraction of natural resources and the possibility of sentience beyond material existence. An ecohorrific reading of Poe’s texts reveals how Poe dismisses women as merely corporeal beings; however, ecohorror also reveals how …

Eliminating Barriers For The Implementation Of Automation In The Mining Industry, Sefiu O. Adewuyi, Kray Luxbacher, Kanagy David, Miller Ben, Miller Hugh, Michael Moats, Savit Mark

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The integration of new technologies into U.S. mining operations is necessary for achieving continuous improvement in worker health and safety, as well as improving operational efficiency, but many have questioned why uptake of autonomy in the U.S. mining industry has been slow compared to other nations. Despite extensive research on mining automation, there remains a critical gap in understanding and systematically identifying the barriers to its adoption within the U.S. mining industry and globally. To quantify these barriers, a workshop model of data collection was employed. A total of 708 invitations were extended to professionals to participate in nine different …

Robotic-Assisted Pedicle Screw Placement Achieves High Accuracy And Narrows The Experience Gap: A Preclinical Evaluation, Anna T. Reza, Matthias Walper, Mitchell K. Ng, Paul G. Mastrokostas, Andrew S. Lee, Rafael G. Rafael, Kornelis A. Poelstra, Ratliff K. John, Rajiv K. Sethi, Michael A. Mont

Rothman Institute Papers

To assess a robotic-assisted system versus open manual techniques to: (1) compare pedicle screw accuracy between fellows and attendings with and without robotic assistance, and (2) evaluate executed versus planned trajectory fidelity relative to prior reports. Robotic-assisted spine systems aim to improve the accuracy, reproducibility, and safety of pedicle screw placement. Limited evidence compares outcomes across differing surgeon experience levels. A total of 255 thoracolumbar pedicle screws were placed in synthetic torsos simulating adult degenerative anatomy. Four surgeons (two fellows, two attendings) each placed half their screws using open fluoroscopy-guided techniques and half using a minimally invasive percutaneous approach with …

Introduction: 18(3) 2026 Emerging Scholar Research Summaries, Rosalind L. Raby

Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education

No abstract provided.

The Best Children's Books Of The Year [2026 Edition], Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee.

Children's Book Committee

Includes more than 600 titles chosen by the Children’s Book Committee as the best of the best published in 2025. In choosing books for the annual list, committee members consider literary quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Other criteria include credibility of characterization and plot, authenticity of time and place, age suitability, positive treatment of ethnic and religious differences, and the absence of stereotypes.

Using Perusall To Increase Student Engagement With Assigned Readings, Diana Moore

Open Educational Resources

This assignment uses collaborative annotation through Perusall to encourage students to complete course readings and engage more actively with assigned texts. Advance discussion questions and peer annotations help students identify key ideas, develop critical reading skills, and improve their ability to summarize and synthesize information. By grading annotations for completion rather than length, the assignment promotes authentic student voices, supports the development of effective reading habits, and reduces reliance on AI-generated responses.

Attachment Style, The Working Alliance, And Client Self-Disclosure In Individual Psychotherapy, Jennifer S. Baar

Dissertations

Client self-disclosure is a core component of the psychotherapy process and increased levels of client self-disclosure have been shown to predict more positive therapeutic outcomes (Pattee & Farber, 2008; Sloan & Kahn, 2005). Similarly, the working alliance and attachment are constructs that have been studied in psychotherapy research and are consistently associated with therapeutic outcomes. Specifically, stronger working alliance ratings and higher levels of secure attachment have been found to predict more positive therapy outcomes (e.g., Flückiger et al., 2018; Mallinckrodt et al., 2005; Sauer et al., 2010). As these three constructs have been found to influence psychotherapy outcomes, the …

Evaluation Associations As Catalysts For The Professionalization Of Evaluation Practice: A Comparative Case Study Of Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia And Uganda, Amy C. Jersild

Dissertations

Professional associations are recognized as key actors in promoting the development of the evaluation field across the globe. There has been exponential growth of Voluntary Organizations for the Professionalization of Evaluation (VOPEs) in the Global South in the past several decades in response to an evolving international aid agenda and a mobilized international evaluation field intent on supporting the development of national monitoring and evaluation systems and the professionalization of the field. VOPEs have featured as a central actor in the Global Evaluation Agenda, an initiative developed by the international community aimed to promote professionalization of the evaluation field as …

Emotional Support Through Ai: Venting To Artificial Intelligence Or A Perceived Human May Offer Comparable Emotional Well-Being Benefits, Meilan Hu, Jerlyn Q. H. Ho, Claire Ng, Shermaine S. M. Wong, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots are increasingly being explored as sources of informal emotional support, with emerging evidence suggesting that venting to these systems can reduce negative affect. Yet, it remains unclear whether such benefits depend on the responder's perceived identity. Given that emotional relief from venting often hinges on perceived authenticity and emotional validation, this study investigates whether the emotional well-being benefits of venting differ when users believe they are interacting with an AI chatbot versus a human, even when responses are content-matched. In a pre-registered experiment ( N = 279), participants were randomly assigned to either an AI-assisted venting …

Beyond Religious Narcissistic Identification: Agnostic And Atheistic Narcissism, Magdalena Żemojtel-Piotrowska, Jarosław Piotrowski, Bartłomiej Nowak, V. Saroglou, John Maltby, Constantine Sedikides, Mladen Adamovic, Nur Amali Aminnuddin, Seth Christopher Yaw Appiah, Rahkman Ardi, Zana Babakr, Einar Baldursson, Sergiu Bălţătescu, M. Bilgehan Aytaç, Li, Norman P., Bruno Bonfá-Araujo, Matthias Burghart, Phatthanakit Chobthamkit, Marilyn Clark, Magali. Clobert

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Agnosticism and atheism are often grouped simply as nonreligious identities, yet emerging research highlights their distinct psychological profiles and social implications. Among these distinctions, collective narcissism—characterized by strong attachment to one’s group, exceptionalism, and grievance for recognition—offers a framework for understanding identity processes in both nonreligious groups. We examined whether agnostics and atheists exhibit collective narcissism and its forms (agentic—focused on exceptional effectiveness; communal—focused on exceptional morality) similarly to believers. We explored crossdenominational variance in agentic and communal collective narcissism levels relying on data from 77 countries (N = 3,570; 1227 agnostics, 2343 atheists). Agnostics and atheists from secular countries …

“From Remembering To Shaping”: Narrating Shared Experiences By Co-Designing Cultural Heritage Artifacts In Collaborative Vr, Yushang Yang, Fanxu Meng, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, L. C. Ray

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The ways people remember and recall places reveal an invisible aspect of cultural heritage (CH), reflecting how individuals and communities relate to these places. Heritage is communal, emerging through collaboratively constructed narratives rather than individual records. To probe how people may share collective memories, we designed an immersive two-person workflow for collaboratively co-designing 3D artifacts and environments in virtual heritage locations, using Generative AI (GenAI) to instantiate these intangible memories. Observations of the co-creation process revealed that participants merged prompts and model placements when negotiating different perspectives. They used spatial operations to compose scenes, and also to express personal and …

Context Matters: Auditing Gender Bias In T2i Generation Through Risk-Tiered Use-Case Profiles, Jose Luis Luna Campoverde, Yankun Wu, Xiaofei Xie, Noa Garcia

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Text-to-image (T2I) generative models are increasingly used to produce content for education, media, and public-facing communication, and are starting to be integrated into higher-impact pipelines. Since generated images tend to reinforce stereotypes, producing representational erasure via “default” depictions and shaping perceptions of who belongs in certain roles, a growing body of work has proposed metrics to quantify gender bias in T2I outputs. Yet existing evaluations remain fragmented. Metrics are often reported without a shared view of what they measure, what assumptions they entail, or how their results should be interpreted under different deployment contexts. This limits the usefulness of gender …

“Megadeal” Subsidies, Local Spillovers And Corporate Innovation, Yoojin Lee, Shaphan Ng, Aruhn Venkat

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether the largest place-based, firm-specific corporate subsidies (“Megadeals”) awarded by state and local governments affect local firms’ innovation. First, we document that 1) subsidy firms innovate in the subsidized county and 2) subsidy firms bring inventors from other counties into the subsidized county, consistent with subsidy firms generating new knowledge locally. In our main test, we use a stacked cohort design with stringent fixed effects to document that local firms increase patenting following a Megadeal. Cross-sectionally, effects are increasing 1) in subsidy firm innovativeness, 2) in the technological closeness of subsidy firms and local firms, 3) when subsidy …

Beta2-Agonist And Anti-Inflammatory Combination Therapy For Asthma Rescue: A Paradigm Shift In Asthma Care, Neil Skolnik, Jessica Stieritz, Julie Akers, Timothy Hudd, Wendy L. Wright, Ileen Gilbert, Nazrin Yusufova, Bill Cook, Emily Robb, Henry Naddaf

Abington Jefferson Health Papers

The Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) report and national and international guidelines have shifted away from short-acting beta2-agonist (SABA)-only bronchodilators as first-line asthma rescue therapy, recognizing that both bronchoconstriction and inflammation underlie the increase in symptoms preceding an exacerbation. Instead, the GINA Committee supports strategies to reduce inflammation, such as anti-inflammatory reliever (AIR) therapy (as-needed, low-dose inhaled corticosteroid [ICS]–formoterol or SABA–ICS for symptom relief) and single maintenance and reliever therapy (SMART) or maintenance and reliever therapy (MART; i.e., ICS–formoterol used as both maintenance and as-needed rescue therapy). This narrative review discusses the rationale behind the move toward AIR and SMART …

Malignant Transformation Of Sacrococcygeal Teratoma Versus Presacral Teratoma In Currarino Syndrome: Results Of 'The Sct-Study'., Lieke J. Van Heurn, Joep P M Derikx, Nigel J. Hall, Amr Abdelhamid Abouzeid, Simone De Campos Vieira Abib, Lohfa B. Chirdan, Shigehisa Fumino, Seong C. Kim, Oliver Muensterer, Maricarmen Olivos, Shawn D. St Peter, Jos Twisk, Nicolas Vinit, Tianyou Yang, Augusto Zani, L W Ernst Van Heurn, Sct-Study Consortium

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

BACKGROUND: The risk of malignant transformation and recurrence of Sacrococcygeal Teratoma (SCT) is relatively high, while it is possibly lower in cases associated with Currarino Syndrome (CS). However, the existing literature gives contradictory results. We aimed to examine the risk of malignant transformation in a large cohort of SCT and CS patients.

METHODS: In a global retrospective cohort study, data of consecutive SCT patients and CS patients with presacral teratoma was obtained from 132 institutes in 62 countries. Malignant transformation, defined as malignancy at initial resection, malignant recurrence, or death due to malignancy was analysed for SCT and CS patients. …

A Word From The Writing Team (June 2026), Pam Walter, Mfa, Laura Deloretta, Phd

A Word From the Writing Team (Newsletter)

No abstract provided.

Ammonihah's Allegory Of Damnation: "Fire And Brimstone" In The Book Of Mormon And Doctrine & Covenants, Ella Bethany Sessions

Honors Projects

This paper examines D&C 76, an 1832 revelation penned by Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon that details Mormon theology in regards to eternity, salvation, and damnation, and Mosiah 27 and Alma 9–14 from the Book of Mormon to observe and analyze how the D&C 76’s specificity is mirrored and encased in two Book of Mormon stories: Alma the Younger and Ammonihah. The first section synthesizes D&C 76’s doctrinal claims and contextualizes Mormonism’s salvation and damnation as uniquely epistemic—or reliant on knowledge—and oriented around the internal processes of progression towards or away from God as necessary precedents to external and eternal …